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[timchen]

What has been your worst lookout draw?

Here's one that occurred a week ago, probably the most interesting one I've had:

I still have like 7 estate+coppers in my deck. I draw 2 tournaments and 1 province. Those are the only tournaments I have in my deck; I think I have one more province.

[biopower]

If you're talking about this game, you buy two lookouts Turn 8, and trashed down to 6 estates/coppers by turn 16. You had 40 cards in your deck at that point. That doesn't give you amazing odds for Lookout; it's around a 60% chance you have to pick between three good cards, and you did manage to draw all your coppers into your hand by the end of that turn, so you probably had some idea of how many bad cards were left in your deck. Really, Turn 5 Province followed by Turn 8 prize in that game was amazingly good, probably offset your bad lookout draws on your last turn, where it didn't matter at all.

[timchen]

No, not this game. I think you can safely assume I am not that kind of person who still whine when they win handily.
Also, in the game I mentioned, I hadn't got any of the prizes when the bad lookout draw happened.

[Fangz]

Worst lookout draw? When I idiotically played lookout when I had only 1 card left to draw, and it was a province.

[ftl]

Once, early on in an IRL treasure map game. I had gotten two or three treasure maps, two warehouses, two lookouts. I keep being unable to get two treasure maps in hand.

My lookout draws two treasure maps and something else. I have to discard one. It's another reshuffle or two before I get them to collide. Grrrrr....

[guided]

Wasn't there an example posted in the blog (some time ago) of Lookout drawing 3 Colonies?

[Jimmmmm]

My worst was in real life. Twice in one game I drew Province, Duchy, Harem.

[Jack Rudd]

There's at least one recorded instance of someone's drawing Colony, Colony, Colony with a Lookout.

[timchen]

drawing 3x colonies is certainly bad, but probably not frustrating.

[Elyv]

http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/04/13/greatest-isotropic-moments-vol-i/

Last one is drawing 3 Colonies.

[freezeframe]

--- patheros's turn 15 ---
patheros plays a Lookout.
... getting +1 action.
... drawing 3 cards.
... trashing a Colony.
... discarding a Colony.
... putting a card back on the deck.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110929-220005-91003993.html

[Davio]

Well, if you already have 3+ Colonies, your deck is probably good enough to stop playing Lookout.

When he played it, he had just 1 Estate and 3 Coppers left in a 13 card draw deck.
There were just 2 Colonies left in the pile, so trashing the Estate may have been hurtful.

His chances to reveal at least 1 of those Coppers were 60%, but I think the risk was too great, because he could easily be forced to trash something better, which did happen. Besides, his small deck would have a harder time to recover from losing a critical card, Col-Col-Plat would also have been a nasty draw.

Still makes for a great moment though.

[DG]

I suspect that plenty of games are lost on turn 3 with: lookout trashes a copper, discards a copper, puts a copper back on the deck.

[Fangz]

Ehn, that's not nearly a bad thing.

[ackack]

Ehn, that's not nearly a bad thing.

I thought it was a pretty sharp comment. Early buying power is big, and that kind of draw means you're looking at a first shuffle of 5 Coppers, 3 Estates, and whatever your other opening buy was. That is a painful concession for the privilege of trashing one Copper, especially since it doesn't even get a reshuffle a turn earlier.

[Anon79]

Ehn, that's not nearly a bad thing.

I thought it was a pretty sharp comment. Early buying power is big, and that kind of draw means you're looking at a first shuffle of 5 Coppers, 3 Estates, and whatever your other opening buy was. That is a painful concession for the privilege of trashing one Copper, especially since it doesn't even get a reshuffle a turn earlier.

And if your "other opening buy" is a Remake? Baron?

[tlloyd]

What has been your worst lookout draw?

Here's one that occurred a week ago, probably the most interesting one I've had:

I still have like 7 estate+coppers in my deck. I draw 2 tournaments and 1 province. Those are the only tournaments I have in my deck; I think I have one more province.

The same thing happened to me recently. Got off to a perfect start with Lookout/Tournament opening. Bought a Province on turn 6, then my next turn I drew Province, Tournament, Tournament. Even more frustrating than losing the Tournament was losing the prize that I would have gained on my next turn. I made a mistake later (took Trusty Steed over Followers) that sealed my defeat, but if not for my unlucky draw I could have gotten both those prizes before my opponent got any. Oh well.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111002-163657-c20cf581.html

[Fangz]

Ehn, that's not nearly a bad thing.

I thought it was a pretty sharp comment. Early buying power is big, and that kind of draw means you're looking at a first shuffle of 5 Coppers, 3 Estates, and whatever your other opening buy was. That is a painful concession for the privilege of trashing one Copper, especially since it doesn't even get a reshuffle a turn earlier.

It is one of the worse cases of lookout, for sure, but game losing? Not slightly. It can for example prevent you from getting your $4 buy delayed until turn 5 and makes sure it doesn't miss a reshuffle. It ensures that the next hand you get after the reshuffle won't have two of it be from your starting selection. And so on. Not getting a $5 or $6 you would have had is pretty bad, but most of the time people don't get those anyway. And if you are clever, your other card might be able to make something of those estates.

[ackack]

And if your "other opening buy" is a Remake? Baron?

Yes, these are pretty much universal scenarios for Lookout (love that Remake/Lookout opening!) such that "plenty of games are lost" is contradicted.

It is one of the worse cases of lookout, for sure, but game losing? Not slightly. It can for example prevent you from getting your $4 buy delayed until turn 5 and makes sure it doesn't miss a reshuffle. It ensures that the next hand you get after the reshuffle won't have two of it be from your starting selection. And so on. Not getting a $5 or $6 you would have had is pretty bad, but most of the time people don't get those anyway. And if you are clever, your other card might be able to make something of those estates.

So we've now gone from "not nearly a bad thing" to "not slightly game losing," and also basing cleverness on retroactively having picked a good opening based on hitting a Copper/Copper/Copper Lookout. Good stuff.

[Empathy]

And if your "other opening buy" is a Remake? Baron?

Yes, these are pretty much universal scenarios for Lookout (love that Remake/Lookout opening!) such that "plenty of games are lost" is contradicted.

It is one of the worse cases of lookout, for sure, but game losing? Not slightly. It can for example prevent you from getting your $4 buy delayed until turn 5 and makes sure it doesn't miss a reshuffle. It ensures that the next hand you get after the reshuffle won't have two of it be from your starting selection. And so on. Not getting a $5 or $6 you would have had is pretty bad, but most of the time people don't get those anyway. And if you are clever, your other card might be able to make something of those estates.

So we've now gone from "not nearly a bad thing" to "not slightly game losing," and also basing cleverness on retroactively having picked a good opening based on hitting a Copper/Copper/Copper Lookout. Good stuff.

Hm, I'm unsure what to think here. Both sides have a grain of truth. Ackack and fangz gave the most arguments to work with. The complement each other really nicely, actually. On the one hand, either you take it for granted that this is a losing scenario (because of the 1$ lost), and hedge against it with one of the aforementioned cards (you can add ambassador, remodel, salvager... to the list), or you don't hedge against it, in which case you consider it not a big deal. The event has an 8% chance of happening.

Now if you consider that it is a big deal, but the probability is too low to hedge against it, that means your 4$ buy has a really high value (tournament, sea hag, feast...) in which case this scenario is probably noise to whatever randomness comes from the high value card.

In any event, even seeing a hand full of 3E+L+C, knowing with 100% proba that you will lose buying power next turn, I would play the lookout on most boards (skipping your 5th turn is just too good). Obviously it hurts, but that would be true regardless of the lookout. If anything, the lookout made the situation slightly better by accelerating your deck cycling to "forget" about the bad event, and have a second shot. The 8% chance of failure also wouldn't deter me from buying the lookout in the first place, for exactly the same reason. I mean, if the 5$ drop is crucial to hit (mountebank, witch, vault because of grand market...), then you wouldn't open with lookout anyway, right?

I hope this covers more scenarios. The crucial point that seems to appear in the discussion is the person's 4$ buy, as well as the intended 5$ buy. Lookout is good, but the randomness it creates can easily be swamped by other cards. If it isn't the case, and lookout is your most important card in the first few turns, then the 4$ choice should be a sidekick of the lookout, and hence hedge against the bad scenario? If the 4$ card is your crucial card, then the lookout is but a sidekick, and the event is probably overshadowed by the 4$ card. In the case of the 5$ card being dominant, you might skip lookout altogether. Writing all this up, I see that the annoying situation is if your 4$ drop is at roughly the same powerlevel as the lookout, and the hedger would be a sub-par card I cannot think of a specific example right now, however.

[Anon79]

Yes, these are pretty much universal scenarios for Lookout (love that Remake/Lookout opening!) such that "plenty of games are lost" is contradicted.

Remake/Lookout certainly does better than Silver/Lookout when Remake is on the board, so I have no idea what you're getting at. You've probably been trashing Estates with your Lookout when you open Remake/Lookout?

[ackack]

]
Remake/Lookout certainly does better than Silver/Lookout when Remake is on the board, so I have no idea what you're getting at. You've probably been trashing Estates with your Lookout when you open Remake/Lookout?

Lookout seems like a silly purchase if you're buying Remake. It becomes useless to unplayable quite quickly for a marginal speedup in trashing. Arguing that you can Remake it to a good 4 doesn't make much sense to me, because you can say that about a lot of other 3s as well. I don't doubt Remake/Lookout is better than Silver/Lookout, but I expect Remake/Silver is substantially better than both.