So, it was -Stef- vs lespeutere, as you might know.
Result:
-Stef- vs lespeutere 4-3You can watch the games up
here.
Post game-analysis
Apprentice, Caravan, Cellar, Colony, Feast, Forge, Great Hall, Monument, Pawn♦, Platinum, Swindler, Woodcutter, and Young Witch1-0There is young witch on this board without any +actions. Pawn as bane is easily spammable but then what do you do with a hand full of pawns? Trashing is provided by apprentice and forge which are potentially nice trashers but they are expensive so getting them might be really hard with curses being thrown around. We both open silver/YW and t3/4 gives this game a direction it will not depart from till the end: while -Stef- plays his YW on t3, I get to play mine on t4, giving him the curse after the reshuffle while I already have one in my deck when I reshuffle. We both get an apprentice on t3 and while he gets a caravan on t4, I get a silver for 4$. My reasoning is, I want to get forge as quickly as possible although I see caravan’s usefulness in this sloggy game. T5/6 sees -Stef- playing caravan/YW and apprenticing 2 estates getting apprentice and gold such that the 2nd curse I give him on t6 misses the reshuffle again. I get apprentice/silver. The game feels pretty much over at this point and -Stef- doesn’t have problems taking this one home as is expected. His $ split nicely as he gets a pawn with 3$ on t7 and a forge for 8$ on t8 while I’m restricted to silver and caravan. T12 is lovely for thim when he apprentices gold and is eventually able to forge his whole hand (4 coppers, 2 pawns, apprentice, curse) into a platinum while I just reach 7$ and the forge this turn. He gets three more platinums and finally takes it home with 5 colonies and a 20 point lead only since I buy the last colony for the end: 56-36.
Black Market, Caravan, Counting House, Fishing Village, Horse Traders, Island, Mandarin, Scout, Talisman, and Trader
1-1There is a lot of +actions here from fishing villages but there is no carddraw at all (except for wharf, oracle, moat, witch, jack from the black market). There is trader and mandarin which I identify as a nice BigMoney option here since we open 2/5. So I open -/mandarin/trader while -Stef- skips mandarin. At this point I am not really sure what he is aiming for. He gets a FV, a BM, a horse traders, some caravans but doesn’t get anything useful from the black market throughout the whole game while I play pretty much pure BM, trading an early estate which provides 3 quick golds on t5/7/8. I get another mandarin when I hit 5$ including a gold and cruise to victory with 6 provinces, a duchy, 2 islands in 19 turns which surprises me a bit considering it’s only 2 mandarins and a trader (which I played twice) getting me there: 26-45.
Bridge, Great Hall, Highway, Hunting Party, Ironworks, Menagerie, Moneylender, Mountebank, Swindler, and Tournament
2-1Potentially, there is a lot of things going on here: there is ironworks/great hall, there is highway/ironworks synergy, there is bridge, there is HP, moneylender for copper trashing, and swindler on top of it all. However, there is no +actions; and, even more decisive, there are mountebank and tournament. We open 4/3 and I open tournament/swindler which I still like. -Stef-, on the contrary, starts moneylender/silver. I get lucky to hit his moneylender which I swindle into a moneylender. At the time I figured moneylender to be the weakest 4$ card. Moreover, I hit 5$ twice, which gets me a mountebank and a HP and I feel very well as he gets two tournaments only on t3/4. I get 2 more HP on t5/6 (with 7$ on t6, should’ve been gold, I guess, but I wanted to try and make sure I play mountebank every turn) while -Stef- gets a mountebank and HP. But then, miraculously, he pulls off 8$ on t7 and from here, things start to fall apart for me. I get another HP with 5$ on t8 but he pulls off another 8$ on t9, drawing province/tournament for t10, denying my tournament which results in another HP for me (which definitely should’ve been a gold now). -Stef- starts winning prizes on t10 (trusty steed) and buys his third province on t11. He then denies more or less every tournament of mine, gets followers and his provinces hit by my swindlers twice, taking it home with 4 provinces and 5 duchies while I try some desperate highway/ironworks things which are supposed to never work. In hindsight, I really needed a gold much earlier than I got it but I still don’t really get it how he managed to get these 3 provinces without reaching 5$ on t3/4 and his moneylender taken out of the shuffle by my swindler. Anyway, he wins it comfortably: 42-25.
City, Conspirator, Fishing Village, Great Hall, Ironworks, Royal Seal, Steward, Venture, Wharf, and Workshop
2-2Another highly interesting board. There is fishing village/wharf, there is conspirator for $, there is steward for trashing, ironworks for gaining conspirators/FV/great hall. And cities on top when piles run out. We start 3/4 and both of us open steward/ironworks. I haven’t really decided whether I want to have wharves quickly and trash more aggressively then or whether I want to trash first to get the wharf engine up and running as soon as I get wharves. I buy a FV on t3 while -Stef- gets the nice ironworks for FV, trashing 2 estates with steward t3. My steward is card 11 or 12 and I now have the choice to gain a great hall with ironworks to draw steward with a 50% chance to trash copper/estate and buy nothing. I decide against this and get another FV and buy another steward while he gets his 2nd FV as well. We both play FV and steward for carddraw to buy a wharf on t5 while I gain another FV from ironworks, -Stef- gets a conspirator. T6 is my 4th FV and his 2nd wharf. He gains momentum when he can play the first wharf on t7 and gains another conspirator while I can play my first wharf on t8 only, when I trash two coppers and buy another FV. He, in turn, is able to buy wharf/conspirator. On t9, I miss playing a wharf but buy 2 of them, whereas he gets his first huge hand and buys wharf/3 conspirators with 17$. T10 sees me playing all my 4 wharves leading to 14$ and piles have run very low (2 FV, 2 conspirators, 2 wharves) so I know he can end it with all the $ from his conspirators which is why I feel I need to buy points: a province and 2 great hall. He had 2 wharves in play but no FV and doesn’t draw any of them into his 9 cards hand so that he can only buy a great hall. On t11, I draw my whole deck and gain a conspirator along the way but don’t have any wharves to play. I have exactly 16$ but buy one province to enlarge my lead and wharv/FV to work towards 3piling as I feel he can still overtake me as his deck is still better than mine. He gets a big turn 11 buying 2 provinces and a duchy but can’t overtake me and I get lucky enough to get some carddraw going to pile out conspirators (via ironworks), FVs and wharves for the win of this 12 turn, 20 min game: 16-19.
Alchemist, Apothecary, Fool's Gold♦, Horn of Plenty, Potion, Royal Seal, Saboteur, Smithy, Thief, Tournament, Workshop, and Young Witch
3-2There are 3 important cards here: young witch again, tournament again and fool’s gold as bane. -Stef- opens FG/YW while I open FG/FG to 1st not lose the split and 2nd deny his YW. Both works out nicely, we split FGs 5/5 and I can deny his YW every single time. On t4 he gets a horn of plenty that lets him pick up a FG on t5. Rest of the game is told fast, he wins some tournaments and the game by getting 5 provinces: 38-26.
Alchemist, Cartographer, Familiar, Farming Village, Fool's Gold, Goons, Harem, Ironworks, Nobles, Potion, and Torturer
3-3There are 2 cursers available here, familiars and torturers. I have recently been crashed by a torturer engine when I went for familiars but at the time I felt I got a little unlucky so I still went for familiars, as did -Stef- with both of us opening potion/silver, getting silver/familiar on t3/4. Both familiars miss the reshuffle but on top of that, -Stef-‘s potion misses it, too, so he gets farming village/torturer while I can buy silver/familiar. We start cursing each other with familiars and I get a cartographer and a 3rd familiar on t7/8 whereas he gets FV/torturer. I discard to his torturers whenever he plays them and manage to win the curse split 8-2. I add 4 more cartographers to have 5 while he has 2, we get goons (2 vs. 1) and when it’s obvious I can draw large parts of my deck consistently with cartographers/FV/Nobles while he can only once in a while he resigns after 23 turns instead of dragging this into another 20+ minute game.
Adventurer, Conspirator, Crossroads, Highway, Inn, Menagerie, Potion, Stash, Torturer, Treasury, and Vineyard
4-3This time, the torturer chain is inevitable. We want 5$ quickly so we both start conspirator/silver (I have to admit I thought about starting menagerie or Xroads instead of silver but felt that I didn’t want to start gambling in game 7 of this series, even when I was p2). T3 gets -Stef- a menagerie while I get 5$ which makes me think for quite a while. I decide to play this aggressively and try to win the curse split so I get a torturer. Surely enough, he gets his torturer on t4 and I like very much what I see on t4 when I hit 5$ again to get me an inn which lets me put back inn/torturer/conspirator. -Stef- plays a torturer on t5 to buy his first inn, while I can play inn/torturer/conspirator after discarding. This goes on for a while, we get torturers and inns, respectively, I also add a menagerie when I have 4$. He sees 2$ only on t9 and buys a crossroads after I tortured him a lot. Next turn, I torture him again down to 0 cards, while he takes a curse next turn. I take 2 on t10, while he discards to 0 again, to take 2 on my t12 when I buy the first province. At the time, I am pretty sure we split curses 5/5 and I really want to be up in points as there is no +buy on this board. We indeed split curses 5/5 and I am up by a turn, then I lead by 3 points even after his turn when he buys a duchy to his province while I just my 2nd province. I have 4 inns compared to his 3 while he has one crossroads so overall, I feel pretty well but then he is able to make better use of his menagerie (i.e. he is luckier) and I have a hurting t15 when I have 1$ only so that I miss the Xroads, so that we are equal on t16 and he gets a 6 point lead by buying province/Xroads/province compared to my duchy/Xroads/duchy. T20/21 is 2 more Xroads for me, 1 for him. T22 lets him buy the penultimate province for a 12 point lead and I start to feel really desperate so I get a potion. We dance around a little and I am able to decrease his lead to 5 points buy a duchy on t28 such that he is in striking distance again. I draw a potion and would’ve decreased the lead by another 4 points but that is just too much time for him to not have a decent hand and he eventually puts together his decisive hand by drawing 14 cards from Xroads alone to scrape together 8$ (well, maybe he didn’t need to scrape but had some more actions in hand which he didn’t need to play and which I can’t see from the logs) for the win of this 30 min match: 41-30.
So, we both agreed that our performances matched rather equally, that this came eventually down to his overall 1st player advantage as all the games were won by first players. And this (including the fact that I’m the first who took him into a 7th game) is something I’m very proud of. Of course I would’ve liked to win and I am a little disappointed – on the other hand, being an equal match to -Stef- today is more than I could’ve hoped for at the start of this tournament. So many thanks to -Stef- for this interesting series. I also wish to thank all those people on isotropic for wishing me good luck and providing other kind words during the last week. I really appreciate it. As well as jonts26 and greatexpectations for managing this tournament, I enjoyed it a lot. I felt this was a good place to say this, even though there is one more match to come. Stay tuned. ;-)