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[SirPeebles]

We're playing a two player game of Dominion, and I just trashed a card.  After resolving all when-trash effects, reactions, effects triggered by reactions, etc. our respective VP totals have changed.  What is the biggest VP swing possible?

Clarification:  You do not finish resolving the card which triggered the trashing.  That is, if I Mine a Harem into an Ill-Gotten Gains, then the VP swing is 2:  I lost two points for losing the Harem, and I have not yet gained the IGG nor have you received the Curse (which would have brought it to a net one point swing in your favor)

[Awaclus]

Do we resolve the whole trasher before checking how big the VP swing is? For example, do I get to trash a card with Governor too?

[heron]

If the answer to Awaclus's question is yes, I have 60 Points


Current point swing is written in parentheses (0).
You trash Dame Josephine with Governor (2), reducing the value of all 8 Vineyards (10), Silk Roads (18), Gardenses (26), and Fairgrounds (42).
Your opponent, who has no silver, trashes feodum, boosting his other seven feodums (49) and gains a duchy (52), boosting his 8 dukes (60).

There are more than 3 piles empty in this scenario because the last few vineyards, silk roads, etc. on that turn.


Oh, it looks like the trasher is not resolved. That makes this change to 42. Man, that's a good bit lower.

[thirtyseven]

Here are three attempts; the first two aren't impressive at all but helped get the creative juices going for a much better third answer (all three have separate spoiler tags). Looking forward to even better answers from the rest of you! Oh, and check my math, please. (Edit conflict: have not read heron's answer yet.)

You Bishop a Platinum for 5VP. Your opponent misclicks and trashes a Colony, making the VP swing 15.

You desperately want to thin out your deck and Governor-remodel a Colony into nothing. Your opponent trashes a Forge and gains a Province, making the VP swing 16.

You desperately want to thin out your deck and Governor-remodel a Colony into nothing. Your opponent, who has piledriven the Fairgrounds, trashes a Bank and gains a Province, giving him 10 unique cards in his deck (he still has another Bank in his deck, and this is his first Province). This gives him 6+16 VP, or 22 VP, making the VP swing 32.

[SirPeebles]

I added a clarification that your trasher does not finish resolving, this is just taking into account the consequence of the trashing itself and the ensuing cascade of when-effects, reactions, etc.

I can get an 82 point swing.

[AJD]

I don't have time to calculate it out right now, but how about trashing Hunting Grounds and using Trader and Market Square to thereby gain two Estates, a Silver, and a Gold, thereby feeding your huge piles of Gardens, Silk Roads, Feodums, and Fairgrounds?

[SirPeebles]

AJD is on the right track (at least to my solution), but there are still a few tweaks that boost the swing.

[heron]

AJD solution can get 46 if you trash with bishop and I counted right
Edit: 42 You don't get the points from bishop.

[florrat]

Just trashing one vineyards can make a point swing of over 100 VP, I think. You can have over 300 action cards in your deck:
Kingdom: include Black Market (with all not-used randomizers as black market deck), Tournament, Urchin, Hermit, Graverobber, rats and 5 other kingdom piles (one which is the bane pile). Oh and include one Looter.

Before this turn, first buy the whole black market deck, 9 of all kingdom actions, all madmans, prizes, ruins and mercenaries, regain all action cards with graverobber.
At the start of this turn first gain al action cards you do not yet have (for example: use king-courted bridges+ironworks), then just trash 1 vineyards.

The number of action cards in your deck is:
120 (regular kingdom piles (note: rats+bane))
24 (mercenary, madman, prizes)
10 (ruins)
about 150 (actions in BM-deck (too lazy to count; does someone know how much kingdom action cards there are?))

Which totals 304, so that Vineyard is worth 101 VP. Probably it can be optimized by some reactions.

EDIT: There are 190 pages in the category "Action Cards" on w.ds, so excluding 5 ruins, 4 prizes, 10 knights (there are 11 pages about knights, we just want to count it once), mercenary+madman we get 190-21=169 kingdom action piles, so 158 in the BM-deck, which results in a total of 312 action cards possible in a deck, making a vineyard worth 104 VP.

[SirPeebles]

Powerman and Florrat both make good points.  I hadn't thought of trashing an inflated green card.  I hate to keep adding conditions, but let's say that the single card trashed triggering this swing is not a Victory card.  In fact, let me go a step further and say that the decision to trash the card is a wise decision, rather than some suicidal one.

[heron]

Using florrats idea with fairgrounds instead gets only 88 points. I thought it would be more.

Edit: So you're saying that we want the largest positive swing, SirPeebles?

[SirPeebles]

To be safe, I'll say that all decisions made are in the immediate VP gaining interest of the player making them.  In particular, neither player is choosing to trash hyper inflated alt VP to cause a net positive swing.

And by immediate, I mean by the end of the puzzle's resolution.  Certainly neither player is passing on an Estate to build towards a future megaturn.

[florrat]

Okay, you trash a hunting grounds for a duchy, reveal 10 market squares, a trader ten times, gaining 1 duchy and 10 silver
This can make each:
*silk roads, duke worth 1 VP more (you had 3 mod 4 VP cards in your deck)
*gardens, fairgrounds worth 2 VP more (you had 9 mod 10 cards, no duchies and 4 mod 5 differently named cards in your deck) [EDIT: Garden gives only +1 VP; see below]
*feodum worth 4 VP more (you had 2 mod 3 silver in your deck)

So if you have 8 of each this will give you 3+8*(1+1+2+2+4)=83 VP.

Interesting that going for 1 duchy is worth more than going for 3 estates, unless I'm missing something.

EDIT: I hope that the decision to buy 8 dukes and no duchies is allowed 

[SirPeebles]

Yup!  I thought of Dukes just a few minutes ago and that it would reach 83 points.

My 82 point solution trashed Squire into Dame Josephine or trashed Catacombs into an Island.  This boosted Vineyards rather than Dukes, but the gained card is only 2 VP not 3 VP.  To boost the action card count for Vineyards I had the trashing occur during a Possession round.

[florrat]

To boost the action card count for Vineyards I had the trashing occur during a Possession round.

LOL, nice!

Also, with my solution with the duchy, you can gain a duchess. This can give all your vineyards +1 VP. But I also made a mistake: you only gain 10 cards (since you're also losing 1), so gardens can only be worth +1VP. This means that my optimal solution is still 83 VP, but in another way than above.
EDIT: wait, we also lost a hunting grounds, so we don't have more action cards than we started with. So this solution only gives 75 VP
EDIT 2: but if you do it in a possession turn, you can gain both the +2 VP bonus from gardens and the +1 VP bonus from vineyards, so that way you can get 91 VP

About Catacombs: if you gain a garden, you can get over 100 VP... Let's calculate:

Trash catacombs: gain garden + 10 silver (trader+market square). This will make:
*silk roads worth 1 VP more
*fairgrounds worth 2 VP more (you didn't have a garden yet)
*feodum worth 4 VP more

Now kingdom must be: Black Market, Tournament, Urchin, Hermit (bane), Graverobber, Rats, Silk roads, Gardens, Fairgrounds, Feodum + 1 more pile (and a BM-deck of 181 cards).
If, before trashing, you have all possible cards (including the 10 starting cards of your opponent by using masquerade with an empty hand), except:
- 8 gardens
- 11 silvers
- a few victory cards such that you have 3 mod 4 victory cards
- a few cards from the BM-deck such that you have 4 mod 5 differently named cards
(the last two points can be always less than 5 cards)

In this case, your garden can be worth 53 VP (181 BM-deck, 105 kingdom cards in play, 10 ruins, 206 basic cards (including curse, potion, platinum, colony), 40 non-supply cards (spoils, madman, prizes, mercenary) minus a few cards).

This results in a total of 53+8*(1+2+4)= 109 VP

[SirPeebles]

The gaining a Gardens thing, I hadn't ruled that out, but that still not the sort of thing I was really looking for.  I mean, I was trying to design the puzzle to avoid just gaining/trashing bloated VP cards.  I do like the Duchess addition a lot though!  That's more what I was looking for.

[jomini]

I'm not sure if you resolve Saboteur for the calculations, also if we count Procession -> Sab here

The basics:
I have played exactly 5 cost reduction (if needed you can get Princess, Bridge, and Highway out of the Black Market to hit this with a Prssn -> Brg play). I have previously played a mass chain of Kc -> Gov & Kc -> Council room to give you a massive sized hand. I then played Outpost and managed to draw my entire deck. I played Sab.

This results in:
1.My Sab goes through your entire draw deck before hitting the last card, a Peddler. You trash the peddler and gain a Border Village/Garden*.
2. My Sab discarding all 8 Tunnels, you gain 8 Gold, except that you reveal a Trader and get 8 silver instead.
3. You reveal & discard 10 Market squares, again gaining 10 Silvers instead of Golds.
4. You reveal & discard 10 Beggars, gaining 20 Silvers
5. You also get bumped up 2 VP per Fairground as you had no silver for some odd reason.
6. You also get bumped up 1 VP per Silk Road as the Bv tipped your over a threshold.*


Thus you net 38 Silvers, which can be worth 32 VP from Gardens and 104 VP from Feoda. Thus you get a total of 152 VP without the Garden gain and somewhere around 210 VP with it.

*Requires Garden gain

If I'm allowed to mostly resolve Prssn -> Sab, we can double this total.