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[fencingmonkey]

It really felt like I was in this one until the end, but that might be generous:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110923-071430-f904de03.html
It's not a great board, all terminal actions, but I keep thinking about it because my opponent and I took different strategies and his ended up paying off. I want to know if I lost because of luck, or if his was just clearly the better option.

I open Monument/Silver and see that he goes Sea Hag/Silver. I decide not to play the Sea Hag game; instead I'm going to use Vault to skip over those Curses, get me up to Goons, and start hitting him with that. Was this Mistake #1?

On Turn 7 I get $8 and pick up my first Province. With a deck this slow and no real way to speed it up other than Vault I'm not concerned about putting together a bunch of treasures. This might have been Mistake #2 but I think I made the right call. This is also a turn where he had (unbeknownst to me) a Goons/Sea Hag collision, which I cleverly avoided by skipping Sea Hag altogether. So at least he had to deal with that, but I don't think it hurt him much.

Turn 8 I pick up another terminal, I go with Monument over Sea Hag because I'm still concerned about money and I think this is going to be a close game; the victory chips could decide it. Mistake #3?

Second Province on turn 10 so I'm still pretty confident about what I'm doing. I know I'm going to slow down but I think I've built up enough of a lead to ride out the rest of the game. I am wrong. He gets his first Province immediately after, on his Turn 11.

It looks like the turning point was Turn 15, where he was able to switch over to Duchies and I only had enough to pick up a Courtyard. Still, I felt like I was in it until the end. Was I right?

Other observations: I bought a lot of Silver, and didn't use my Goons +Buy to get Copper/victory chips, which he started getting towards the end. I was still banking on getting enough $ in hand to get the last Province. Should I have backed off of the Silver early on, or ramped up on the Copper in the late game?

[jonts26]

1. Monument is an often underrated opener. But sea hag is an elite opener on most boards, particularly with a lack of trashing. I'd say your opponent had the better opening.

2. With vaults, province on turn 7 is probably the right move. The goal of a vault is to get golds when you have 6, then with a gold get a province. Vaulting is a decent counter to cursing attacks, but it's not very compatible with goons. You'd be better off going one or the other.

3. You'd have been better served with a second vault, if you were going for that strategy on turn 8. And it might be too late to grab a sea hag at this point.

[The Adventurer]

I don't like criticizing other's games because I am not such a pro myself...
But one thing I've come to realize in my own games, which you have not applied here, is that monument, although it is underrated and I do like it myself, comes to be somewhat useless when there is goons to supply you with VP chips anyway.
Monument is especially useful when there is no other, better way to get VP chips as it would give you an edge on someone who doesn't go that way.

Also, getting that monument in "only terminals" setting will likely just conflict with goons later on, and you should've probably just chosen either monument OR goons in my very humble opinion, goons being the better of the two.

[Anon79]

Monument vs Sea Hag. With no trashers, Sea Hag is stronger. Each time you play Sea Hag, your opponent gets -1 vp. Each time you play Monument, you get +1 vp. So the two are almost identical in terms of points. The difference is that Monument is slightly faster earlier (+2$), but a lot slower later (since it does not muck up the opponent's deck with curses). This could be mitigated by Vault, true, but:

Vault vs Goons. Vault doesn't work well against Goons! Start with a 3-card hand, play Vault, so now 4 cards in hand, and you're looking to make $8 with that? Not very likely esp. with 7 coppers & multiple curses in deck.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

Yes, Vault really is terrible against hand disruption.   That is an ugly Kingdom, the kind that you just have to grab your socks and hope it turns out well.  I think Courtyard may be a key card on this board.

[The Adventurer]

I never regarded courtyard as being helpful until Mean Mr Mustard here kicked my butt with it (paired with venture). I will need to reevaluate it's worth and try it out more it seems...

[DG]

I open Monument/Silver and see that he goes Sea Hag/Silver. I decide not to play the Sea Hag game; instead I'm going to use Vault to skip over those Curses, get me up to Goons, and start hitting him with that. Was this Mistake #1?

Each play of a monument gains you a vp. Each play of the sea hag loses your opponent a vp. So the question is whether the +2$ acceleration from the monument is worth taking the curses into the deck. The kingdom is pretty mediocre here and the answer is no. You only took one vault so that wasn't going to skip many curses. Using terminal cards as stepping stones to more terminal cards is problematic too.

Your deck quality was irretrievably bad due to the curses so this was probably a game when you could buy extra copper for vp without doing much extra damage.

[Fangz]

Yeah, this looks like an ugly board with no clear dominant strategy. Sea hag in particular looks dangerous to ignore.

The one thing I'd suggest actually is treasure map. Courtyard might enable it, if you go for it fast enough before curses have a strong effect.

[Geronimoo]

The board might be ugly, but there's certainly a dominant strategy and it starts like this:

Open Sea Hag/Silver

How to continue after that is a bit blurry, but I expect some mixture of Vaults, Goons and Courtyards will be involved. Just make sure terminal action collision isn't too high. Gold is going to be crucial to get to Provinces, so when in doubt take the money. And always buy Copper when you played Goons because your deck will be awful (unless opponent decided to do something silly like not opening Sea Hag).

Buy Treasure Map over Sea Hag and expect to get crushed. Same goes for Monument.

[fencingmonkey]

I open Monument/Silver and see that he goes Sea Hag/Silver. I decide not to play the Sea Hag game; instead I'm going to use Vault to skip over those Curses, get me up to Goons, and start hitting him with that. Was this Mistake #1?

Each play of a monument gains you a vp. Each play of the sea hag loses your opponent a vp. So the question is whether the +2$ acceleration from the monument is worth taking the curses into the deck.

Thanks! This is exactly the question that I didn't even know I needed to ask. Now that I see it I can evaluate the board better.