shraeye vs lespeutere 0-3
shraeye suggested to play with identical starting hands and goko was nice to us, only making us restart once!
Poor House, Herbalist*, Bridge, Monument, Tournament, Wandering Minstrel, Young Witch, Graverobber, Jester, Mystic, VaultSo, he started monument/silver on this YW board, which made me start YW/silver. As he picked up a jester on t3, I switched my game plan from "YW and then mostly money" to "YW into fast cycling engine with a bunch of WMs". He got a herbalist, but only managed to block my single YW once, he got his YW from jestering mine, but eventually we split curses 9-1 (!) in my favour due to my jester hitting green twice. WM then combos nicely with mystique and I got huge luck to draw tournament and province together on the first shuffle after province purchase. shraeye invests in money, mainly, but it's just to hard to overcome this curse distribution with me winning trusty steed, followers, so I when WM and curses are gone, I am able to safely empty herbalists: 22 - -3.
Transmute, Secret Chamber, Chancellor, Bridge, Ironworks, Salvager, Spice Merchant, Margrave, Rebuild, StablesI am still not 100% sure, but it looks like a clear rebuild setup. There is, however, the possibility to build a stables engine with a margrave, but that margrave is even helpful to the rebuild player. So while he starts spice merchant/silver, I go SM/chancelor, which I like quite a lot as it speads up my early game significantly. Both of us didn't keep much track of the points, we both get 2 rebuilds. Key difference is that I stop buying estates when duchies are out but get a few golds when I have 6 or 7$. He chooses province twice and hits estates with rebuild giving me the chance to overtake him. Had he chosen estate, he would've ended this in his favour. I get lucky, however, on my final turn letting me go double province with a rebuild, 2 coppers, 2 golds hand: 30 - 27.
Scrying Pool, University, Great Hall, Shanty Town, Philosopher's Stone, Gardens, Moneylender, Counterfeit, Rabble, TorturerA classic university/torturers game. He opens potion/great hall, and his potion is card 12, while I open (correctly) potion/shanty town and get university on the first shuffle. We get lots of torturers (6-4 for me), I also pick up a moneylender and a counterfeit - and that's pretty much it. We split curses 9-1 again, since I close this one out with gardens/curse after having picked up the remaining GHs: 8 - -2.
Many thanks to shraeye for easy scheduling despite the 6 hour difference. Fun games for me, I hope you had some, too. Moreover, he astonished me by speaking German really well, so if anyone of the German community plays him, he's happy to speak some German. ;-)