Yesterday we played the preliminaries in Utrecht. It was fun to play with real cards in a competitive setting.
And strange to play with only Base and Intrige after so many other sets have been released.
We all played 2 matches against each other: Floris (florrat), Philip (SheCantSayNo) and Gijs (no account here)
My first match (p1) was against Gijs, on a pre-selected kingdom: Adventurer, Bridge, Laboratory, Library, Masquerade, Militia, Shanty Town, Steward, Throne Room, Trading Post.
Gijs turned out to be really new to the game but he had a very good feeling for playing BM-like boards. Unfortunately for him, this wasn't one of them. I got a fair share of the Laboratories and at some point the Bridge-megaturn was inevitable.
From here on we played veto-mode.
Game #2 was against SheCantSayNo. The board had Witch, Nobles, Gardens and 7 more that seemed completely irrelevant. No trashing, no other village, and no gainers. We were both playing BigMoney with 2 witches. At first I was really lucky, because my Silver/Silver opening lead to $5 twice on t3/4. He had to settle for only 1 Witch and another Silver. But the rest of the game was horrible: my witches collided, my witches collided both missing the reshuffle, and then my witches collided. I had a very early $8 (gold) and many many $5's. I ended up with 6 curses and only 3 provinces. I lost without much hope.
Game #3 against Florrat featured Conspirator, Market, Masquerade, Pawn, Bridge, Shanty Town, Spy, Cellar
Without real villages/draw, we both opened Masquerade/Silver going for the conspirator chain. Again I got a lucky start: I traded an estate for his copper, resulting in Market-Shanty town on turns 3/4. I went on to buy 7 of the Markets, and things were looking really good. By some shuffle miracle though I still got stuck twice in a row very late, and all of a sudden I was 0-2 behind on Provinces. On yet another dead turn I sneaked in a Bridge, and he copied that move on his dead turn. Then finally my deck did what it was supposed to and with everything in play I was able to clear out the Estates and buy a Province for the win.
Game #4 against Gijs had Village, Nobles, Woodcutter, Steward, Masquerade and 5 more I don't remember.
I wanted to build an engine where I definitely shouldn't have. Without those cute Guilds-coins, it's really bad if you only want to have $3 or $6. He bought 1 Masquerade, 1 Steward and lots of golds. I fell behind badly, 4-0 on Provinces and a Duchy versus maybe 2 Nobles. But as his deck turned more and more green I slowly got some hope back. I was very lucky that his last two hands were $7, and I could sneak out the win with 7 nobles, 3 provinces, 3 duchies and an estate (versus 5 provinces, a nobles and 3 duchies).
Game #5 against SheCantSayNo had exactly the same theme, although the engine was a bit better here. Cellar, Pawn, Moneylender, Remodel, Gardens, Spy, Laboratory, Torturer
He started of with $5 for a torturer, playing BigMoney with eventually 2 Cellars and 2 Torturers. I opened Moneylender/Silver, adding a Remodel a few turns later. I think the engine should win easily here, but my early draws were very bad (torturer always hitting the money hand, remodel missing estates for a long time). Nevertheless at some point my deck really got going; with 10 laboratories and 2 cellars it was hard to get a bad draw. I ended up with 7 Gardens (41 cards), 3 provinces and some small things, for a 3-point victory.
Game #6 (florrat) was the 4th time I tried to play engine while my opponent didn't. The board had Council Room, Remodel, Wishing Well, Bridge, Throne Room, Spy. The lack of villages convinced him no engine was available, but I really love the wishing well-Remodel engine, and it has some great support here. Spamming Wishing Wells means Throne Room will be a very good village actually. My start wasn't exactly good (remodel with 4 coppers) but this time I never worried. In the last turn I had 15 buys with a cost reduction of $8.
SheCantSayNo won 4 of his games, resulting in a 2nd place so he'll be there on the next round as well.
I tried to build an engine 5 times, and a BM deck once. I won 5 games and lost one. Hmmm
@ArjanB: sorry you weren't there. It wasn't really a copy of last year, because now we played 1 vs 1 games. And much more important: you could lose a game (or 2) and still make it through.
