I've played TheSadPanda a LOT in the past few days - there have been long stretches where I was the only one auto-match set against him, and he was either the only one or one of two for me, so some epic wars. There are three really interesting games that I seriously considered doing annotated games on, but which I ultimately think are going to be best fit as regular old game reports. So, I figure, same opponent, why not same thread?
Game 1 (Note, these were not consecutive, and this probably isn't even the right order on them; also, they're cherry-picked by me, so take that for what you will):
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/21/game-20121221-163403-d5463d18.htmlSo University-vineyards is super obvious here, but what else to do? We both open masquerade with our potions, which makes a lot of sense to accelerate and thin. But I have what I think is a very clever idea which I think largely wins me the game. And that's to focus crossroads. I realize I hardly need any money, so I just pass away my coppers in preference to estates, virtually every time (there was one or two that I wanted to make sure I had $2 left). This allows my crossroads to cycle my through at a good rate. Eventually, when I am drawing big parts of my deck, I grab some oases to let me hit the $5 I need to to reach Horn of Plenty. But generally, I am discarding coppers to them rather than estates, to let my crossroads draw more.
A few more notes. HoP is big - I think it was at least $8 every time I played it - but what do you get with it? Well, I definitely wanted more, villages but mostly actions help the eventual vineyards, so BV->extra HoP makes a lot of sense. Eventually though, we get to a little bit of a dance where there is a trade-off between piling out and getting points. In these situations, in mirrors like this, you generally want to take points a little sooner than the expert engine player realizes. Reason is that the lead can actually act as a defense against the continued building up of an engine by the opponent, as you can pile out with a win (something that a BM opponent generally doesn't have the luxury of). So eventually I start grabbing provinces to cement my lead, and always always look out for ways to pile out with a win, as I eventually do.
Golem is something I'm not sure about here. I think it was good for him; for me, the thought was to play university more, but I am not so sure it was the right call. Probably should have headed for vineyards sooner, both of us. It's weird - usually you eventually pick up a second, maybe third potion, to really hammer down the vineyards, but here, we are drawing too much of our deck to make use, with absolutely no +buy on the board.
Game 2:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/21/game-20121221-161408-f3fdc35f.htmlFull disclaimer, I got really lucky here on the start. And player position. So IGG and embargo. Embargo is a SUPER high skill card. So the interesting thing is what to embargo. If he had gone for potion, I probably try to go block scrying pool. If he goes for something conventional looking, I will block IGG while I have a lead in them, then head into a duchy/duke slog. And if he defends against that (as he does) by going for gainers, I definitely DON'T want to embargo IGG, since he can still get into them, and I build the boring old IGG rush deck, embargoing something nobody will buy, so that his gainers getting around it is absolutely unimportant, and my money lead rules the day. Basically, there wasn't much he could do here, but I had to have all this worked out, and he did well to go after the trickiest of these.
Game 3:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/21/game-20121221-152507-bdf27d76.htmlI figure it fair to post a loss - I've definitely had my fair share! This game makes me think I have spent way too much time watching Stef and Marin. I see monument with something vaguely enginey and immediately try to figure out how to play it a million times. And I do! But there's a way you can do this while also buying provinces, which is more or less what TheSadPanda does. I lay off HARD on provinces, though part of me thinks that the big forge into the one province actually might have been what did me in here. I was always really close, but not quite getting there. I almost certainly should have done something more with inn and tunnel, and bought some more provinces earlier. I do like the preferential trashing of copper over estate early on with upgrade, to help cycling, particularly (well, basically entirely) because of crossroads. Well anyway, he played well here and I got too cute, a deserved win from him.
