I played my games agains WanderingWinder yesterday after some technical difficulties, and in a hurry, since he had to go somewhere. And the speed was in focus of my vetoing, not some tactical vetoing.
Game 1 - We both went for some Monumental extra VPs. I think I got a monstrous start and was able to win from there.
Game 2 - I went for Hunting Party, since I think it's generally too good to not play, while WW grabbed two Margraves. I had to break PPR, but WW didn't get the treasure he needed for the last Province.
Game 3 - WW played it cool and steamrolled with a double Tactician/Bridge-combo. I didn't think it was going to be that fast.
Game 4 - A really close game with a lot of counting from my side in the final round. In the end I decided to buy the last Province because I thought it would bag me the win.
Game 5 - I manage to get the first, but in a Tournament game the first Province matters more. And WW gets the first prize, which is Followers and it's an uphill battle from there.
Game 6 - Let this be a lesson to all players. Count the number of Duchies and Provinces you buy and do it good. I didn't, and it was probably what cost me the game. Besides WW accumulating more points at a higher rate than I did.
Game 7 - I'm not sure if it was my decision to go for a Quarry and not a Bishop or Silver that cost me the game. It could also be me buying a Labratory and not a Haggler with my first Quarry. Anyways, congratulations to WanderingWinder, and thank you for a nice set of games!
And for those of you who doesn't feel like counting or reading logs or my whole post. WanderingWinder beat me 4 wins to 3.
Yeah, sorry about that. It was really annoying for me to have the bugs with my browser (I'm actually not even 100% there). I eventually had to play from a backup browser, and there were really small issues with some of the text overlapping, though I could always tell what it was supposed to be, and it ended up not being a factor in my play. I don't
think being rushed affected me either, though I was keenly aware of it, and I hope it wasn't an issue for you. On to my analysis of the games!
Game 1: Well, I stupidly got silver over Royal Seal on turn 3. Probably turn 4 is a little too soon in general to grab the second monument, but you'd already gotten a gold (which was, I think, the big factor), so I felt I needed to get a little lucky (by avoiding collisions) to catch up anyway, so I played for the luck. The thing I don't understand is why you got so many inns so early, and didn't get more monuments. Well, I think that was a little bit of a problem for you, but not as much as the early gold helped you, and I could probably have gone for an inn at some point as well. Actually inn/monument heavy might be pretty strong here. Not sure. Overall, a little luck, but I don't think either of us played significantly better/worse than the other, and the extra turn decided.
Game 2: Well, I'm not so sure about lookout. I don't like it in general, and I don't think it's so great with hunting parties. Speaking of which, I think you got too many golds and not enough hunting parties for your strategy. I strongly considered going HP/Festival here (Buy up to 1 gold, then up to 1 festival, then as many hunting parties as possible), but I considered that HP is really fragile against handsize-reducing attacks. So I thought Margrave should be good. I probably shouldn't have gotten the shanty town, but more than this, I was very unlucky to collide my margraves a couple times and have them miss the reshuffle on at least one occasion as well. And I probably misplayed the endgame as well, going a little bit too heavy on the green too soon. It's not like actually catching up for the 2 province deficit was going to happen for me. Again, probably pretty close strategies overall, and the cookie crumbled in your direction
Game 3: Who says I can't play a combo/engine deck? I think the interesting thing here was to actually go for double tactician with menageries, which I could only do with enough hamlet (and oasis) support. Well, the bridges were obviously key, but so were all the other cards, and since it's a 5-card combo, don't expect to ever see it. But it was nice that I spotted it.
Game 4: I actually thought I was doing really well early on, but then Lekkit's double apprentices really got on a roll like I've never seen. I think he started saccing things a touch to early maybe, but hey, it was just enough, with the extra turn, to lock it in. Again I had the last province on the next turn if able, but I felt like I needed to break PPR in this situation.
Game 5: I was very worried when he was able to get salvager-silver-estate-copper-copper, s that's huge for him winning the tournament race. I'm not sure whether tournament/silver is better than silver/silver, with tournaments on 4 thereafter. I tend to go with the latter, but I just couldn't resist here. This seems to me to be a game that's a race to the followers. I won that race and the game, but it felt pretty lucky for me to do so.
Game 6: I actually bought a moat in this game without attacks. Well, I ended up not getting so many fishing villages I expected, but I really wanted to prefer them to silver here, mostly for the peddlers being cheap. Lekkit ended the game behind, but it was going to be tough for him to catch up anyway, especially with all the duchies being gone and me having the tiebreaker.
Game 7: I didn't really understand what the quarry was for here. I mean, there are a couple nice 5 actions, but the quarry doesn't help you to get those THAT much more than silver, and after not very long at all you want to buy gold, province, platinum, and colony. And bishop is a little nicer on colony boards than non-colony ones. But I think the big thing is Haggler, which is just a monster here - I can get gold+Lab, Province+Gold, Colony+Platinum, Platinum+Gold, it really strengthens me up. I think it's a bit of a sneaky great card, and especially on a BM Colony board.
Anyway a very good match which, for most of it, I expected to lose against my strong opponent. Thanks for the games.