With -Stef-'s recent excellent article, I have been rethinking my approach to different kinds of articles and what goes where. There's annotated games, which can be good for lots of stuff, but I think their real strength is in showing more tactics and short-term, adaptive strategy - i.e. how someone adjusts to the game state, draws, and what the opponent does. This doesn't SO much lend itself to the preview kind of concept, and it is what I am doing below.
There's what Stef did, which he called Dominion Academy, where you look at a board, the best few strategies (best one or two of each type generally, which are viable), which is better overall and/or how they interact with each other. I don't know what I would call these, if I did one (which I would like to at some point, though perhaps slightly differently for my own spin, though of course I hope he duplicates the first one,a s it was probably the best thing I have read on the site).
Finally, I have an idea which will focus on the kind of board analysis that we used to get with the old annotated game previews from the blog. I actually liked those more than the games themselves, the discussion of what is best to do. Tentatively, I am planning on calling this WWWWW - that's WanderingWinder Wonders What Wins - i.e., it's a board and we're looking for the best strategy out of many, which is not at all clear, at least to me. It is meant to be largely an interactive exercise, where we try to work out what the optimal strategy ont he board is together, probably with the use of simulators and especially the invocation of 'science', though I will probably include a game as a starting point at the least.
Anyway, this one's an annotated game, or rather part of one. Incidentally, I have decided just to leave the names in, mostly because with the return of CR, you can just go look the game up if you are so inclined, but also because people are having issues getting at the attachments.
This one was one with Mic Qsenoch, he of the consistent top-5, often top-1 of the leaderboard for a while now. Strategically, it's not that interesting:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130106-103045-d72f7479.htmlcards in supply: Bank, Border Village, Cartographer, Colony, Cutpurse, Fairgrounds, Grand Market, Haven, Inn, Platinum, Remake, and Secret Chamber
I get secret chamber early, he starts with silver (probably a little better), I get a cutpurse, which I quite like, but basically we are both using remake to trash way down, grab a little money and a lot of grand markets, with some havens and a very thinned out deck. We both accomplish this fairly equally.
Let's pick up the action after turn 12. Here's how the decks look:
Card WW Mic
GM 5 5
Haven 4 5
Duchy 0 1
Silver 4 5
Remake 2 1
Cutpurse 1 0
Estate 1 0
The Havens and Grand Markets are out, and there's one estate gone. However, with only 5 GMs each, that makes 6 buys, which means that piling out the estates isn't an option (and part of why it was safe for me to grab the estate on turn 12). Still, three pile endings are a big threat. But at the same time, nobody can actually commit to one in a single turn; it will take two. This means that we must jockey back and forth for the lead, to stop our opponents from getting a leg up on the three pile endings, but also be preparing to go in for a bit of a longer game.
This is what motivates my turn 13. I remake my extra 4-costs into a duchy, because I need lead now, and a cartographer, which will greatly help (along with the havens) in the fight against greening. I then buy with my $14 a platinum, for longevity, and a duchy. I know that he doesn't have enough money in his deck to buy out the last 5 duchies; the best he can do is four. And if he does this, then all I need to be able to do is get the last one with a province - 3 duchies and one province will cancel out his 5 duchies, and I would win on the estate. So he can't really risk this happening, and will go for more points. Ergo the platinum and cartographer will really help me out in the long run - it all fits together, and this was all going through my mind as I chose what to do out of that last haven play.
He comes back with a strong hand on his own turn 13, building up $18 and buying a colony and border village into duchy. This is not a foolproof play - I can now win the game if I am able to get the last 4 duchies, either by producing nearly all of my money, or possible using a remake trick on the cartographer into border village gaining duchy to help me out. On the other hand, it would need a pretty good draw to do this, and at some point, he has to leave himself open. The thing I question, though, is what he saved with the haven. The border village is next to useless for him, as he only has one terminal. Actually, it might be worse, as it can mess haven up. On the other hand, in some cases it might bump fairgrounds. Probably this wont' come into play, but it might. Anyway, he could have saved $2 more. Unless he, and I would guess this actually is the case, set aside a silver on the last haven, having a hand full of them. In which case that's pretty bad luck (and at this point, it would have been a forced choice). In any case, if I were him, I would seriously have considered grabbing an estate with the duchy rather than the border village. It does clog his deck, but on the other hand, I can't pile out estates (if I use the 6 buys on this, I will be behind in points, unless I can also pull a remake trick for BV->duchy, in which case I am probably winning anyway), and he would give himself the possible opportunity to do so on the following turn, as well as evening out the point from my estate in a lot of cases.
My Turn 14 I have 17, which I need to spend on a colony, to re-equalize points, and then I get a border village into... inn. Well, cartographer was possible as well, but I knew inn would come to me pretty much right away, which was important, and basically I am using the inn similarly - I want a mini-warehouse (again, it might also help for fairgrounds at some point). It is important NOT for me to buy duchy - sure, he can win by piling out the last of the duchies, but if he gets that draw, I am lost anyway. So I decide to build, in the hopes of a bigger turn down the road.
His turn 14, and we can really start to feel the effects of the lack of draw on this board creaking in, as the green we have is starting to clog our moment-ago-very-trim decks. He is only able to muster 12, and he has little choice but to grab a colony.
Finally, on my turn 15, I am able to make good use out of the cartographer and the inn, draw up a bunch of money, $21 and 5 buys, which I could use to take a bunch of points, but notice is able to end it right away on duchies, which I do.
Could we say that first turn won it for me here? Absolutely. But it's not so much a lucky hand at the end - it was having the time to set it up earlier on. I exploited this, and that's definitely a firts turn thing too - he did not have such a good opportunity.
