You didn't really build an engine. You have one Village and a few Wharves.
What you played was much more like Big Money+Familiar+Wharf, even if you meant to build an engine. A Wharf engine should probably, just before greening, end up with a point where you draw your whole deck. You never even came close, I think.
Note how on a worker's village/wharf board, by turn 27(!!) you had only 3 provinces. If your opponent is not cursing you, that's actually quite slow for a Wharf game.
By the way, I see that nowhere in your summary - not in the thread title, or in your blurb - do you mention Hoard. Hoard was really the star of the show for your opponent - it's got great synergy with Duchy/Duke (makes buying Duchy with Hoard in play much better!), great with Island (again, VP to buy with hoard in play) and with Salvager (trashing those golds for $6). It seems to be a key card for your opponent; he *really* went for it, Salvageing Silvers multiple times to buy Hoards.
Since your opponent didn't really attack you, perhaps its worth soloing this set a few times to compare? Try building the engine and see how fast you can make it. I bet that with a little bit of practice, you'll be able to piledrive Provinces+Islands by turn 27 instead of just having a few.
Hmm, other comments... I think I'll quote part of the Duke strategy article that would help.
First, playing against a Duchy/Duke opponent. You want to know that Duchy/Duke is a little better than going for Provinces on a straight-up Big Money board. So if you’re not going for the Dukes yourself, you must have a reason (this is very often the case). Usually that reason is because you think there’s a deck to be built that will get you ALL the Provinces before your opponent gets to 11 Duchy/Dukes. If that’s the case, you should NOT, I repeat NOT try to contest Duchies until very late (assuming that you’ve identified that your opponent is going Duchy/Duke, hold off on Duchies yourself until later than you normally would), when you’ve got the vast majority of your points, as they’ll only clog you up, probably much more so than your opponent.
Editor’s note: As DG says, “This section hints at how many games are lost on Duchy/Duke boards. If you buy a Duchy you’re going to score at least 3 for yourself but deny your opponent the same Duchy to score 3 + the number of Dukes they own. This is a big swing. So if you’re on a province strategy it’s very tempting to buy some Duchies as a spoiler, but one isn’t going to make much difference so you buy two or three, and then you’re inevitably sucked into a Duchy and Duke race that you haven’t prepared for and then can’t escape. The solutions are clearly to trust your initial judgement and just buy provinces or (more often) to prepare for Duchy/Duke from the start. On the other hand if you’re on a Duchy/Duke strategy then buying a province is is nearly always worse than buying a Duchy.”
You dipped into duchies to deny your opponent some of them - but in doing so, prevented yourself from piledriving provinces, which is what you need to do to beat duke/duchy.
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Topic: Apparently Duchy/Duke CAN ignore Familiar? Even on a Wharf/Village engine board? (Read 4199 times)