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[Jimmmmm]

Jimmmmm plan of highways really needed a draw 3 to work well I think.
But in general I think it is correct to stick with your plan in this situation.

Yeah, I was planning on getting a Stables or two and feeding Silvers to it. When you started getting Great Halls early on instead of Silvers, I figured it was to help you get similar Festival/Highway combos going, but it was a much more sneaky way of helping your Adventurers find your Tunnels (or rather, not hindering them).

[Lekkit]

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.

[WanderingWinder]

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.

[PerdHapley]

Since we're the last match left at this point, I should mention that shark_bait and I have plans to play tomorrow morning. One of us will post results immediately after.

[Lekkit]

@WanderingWinder: Game 1: The reason I bought Inns was that the first time I got to shuffle a Monument into my deck. The second one was basically an expensive worse Warehouse. I could probably have gone for a second or possibly a third Monument, however the early Gold got me to high amounts of money early and then I kinda went kinda green.

Game 2: With only HP as the "engine" I prefer getting more Golds than most other people. It could be due to some previous bad luck, however I've generally had better results with more Gold and not just Hunting Parties. The Lookout was mainly to speed up the start and making me have to get less Hunting Parties to draw them.

Game 3: Once again, nicely done. I saw what you were doing when you got your second Tactician. I did not expect it to be that strong at all.

Game 4: I really like Apprentice, I'm not sure I should get it as often as I do. And I'm not really good with it either, since I hardly ever know when to trash my expensive cards. In the end it worked out for me, but it doesn't always do.

Game 5: Not much to say here.

Game 6: What I said about Game 5.

Game 7: I thought that both Haggler and Labratory would be really strong in this kingdom and I didn't want to miss them. Also, I was hoping that you would get a Bishop so that I could start trashing coppers, and then a Quarry would help in the early rounds. And it would give me an additional chip over a Silver if I'd trash it with my own Bishop that I wanted to get.

[Geronimoo]

Hunting Party is a unique card: it's an engine all on its own and I bet a lot of people are playing it wrong.

If you take the simple case of Hunting Parties + money, buying more than 1 Gold will decrease your winnings by 10%. This is because 1 Gold is enough to buy a Province if you played a few HPs and the extra Gold you bought means 1 fewer HP in your deck.
Adding Lookout is actually disastrous. The HP already skips all your Estates and Coppers so you don't need it and the HP can't skip the Lookout like an excess Silver so you'll constantly be drawing it even when you're greening.

[Reyk]

And bishop is a little nicer on colony boards than non-colony ones.

What do you mean here? I always thought the opposite is true.

[kn1tt3r]

And bishop is a little nicer on colony boards than non-colony ones.

What do you mean here? I always thought the opposite is true.

I've also considered victory token cards are in general a bit weaker in Colony games, basically because the additional points have more weight with a lower general score level.

The exception is maybe Goons, which sometimes profits from longer games.

[Lekkit]

I find that thrashing helps a lot on Colony boards. Bishop is a trasher. And aven if it don't work as well as a VP-generator the same way it does on Province boards it still helps to break ties. As in the game me and WW played.

[kn1tt3r]

I find that thrashing helps a lot on Colony boards. Bishop is a trasher. And aven if it don't work as well as a VP-generator the same way it does on Province boards it still helps to break ties. As in the game me and WW played.

But well, it trashes your opponent down too, so there is not much net benefit from it.

[Lekkit]

If i trash all my Estates with my own Bishop and you trash all your Estates with my Bishop I'm actually one Province ahead. Even on Colony boards that is sometimes a tie-breaker.

[Jimmmmm]

If i trash all my Estates with my own Bishop and you trash all your Estates with my Bishop I'm actually one Province ahead. Even on Colony boards that is sometimes a tie-breaker.

On the other hand, if I bought a Monument instead you're only a Duchy up, and I'm making more money.

[Lekkit]

That is true. However, one card being a better buy than another card in a certain scenario is not something that changes the Bishop's general usefullness in a Colony game.

[Jimmmmm]

That is also true. But regardless of whether or not it's a Colony game I rarely if ever buy one in the first few turns. It'll get you an early lead, but it's a terminal Copper, unless you use it to trash a Copper, in which case it's a terminal $0.

It also happens to be one of my favourite cards (1.20 win rate with, 1.36 win rate without), and often I'll finish with as many or more VP tokens as my opponent who bought his Bishop 10 turns before I did.

[Lekkit]

If no other trasher is available I'd go for a Bishop as early as possible in a Colony game. In a Province game I prefer to get him later and get a massive amount of chips from more expensive cards. However, there is a great difference in playing a Bishop as a trasher and as a VP-generator.

[Jimmmmm]

I don't see your logic. If you open Bishop, particularly with no other trashing, you can generally expect your opponent to trash something to it just about every time you play it in the early-mid game, providing you with no trashing advantage at all. Your opponent now has more expensive cards than you which he can either start collecting VP tokens for or build his engine + Platinums.

[DG]

Perhaps this bishop talk could be in its own thread. In this case the choice here seemed to be between using a bishop or haggler as the primary terminal action. The trashing would be roughly equal for both players and the haggler has to gain enough momentum to take the colonies 5/3, which seems plausible. The lab and cartographer are good support cards for both the bishop and haggler, for different reasons, and I wouldn't like to predict a winner.

Lekkit had some good draws in this series but in this last game he got a stinker, drawing his estates and coppers again in turns 3 and 4, the 1 in 66 bad draw.

[Lekkit]

@DG: I can live with bad draws. Generally I don't draw overall bad or overall good. I think I got lucky during two or three games, but only really lucky in one of the games.

There is a small advantage being the player not going for the Bishop first, however I still prefer both player trimming their decks to two non-trimmed ones.

[EDIT:] If some mod would like to split the topic I surely wouldn't mind.

[PerdHapley]

Shark_bait and I just finished a nail biter of a series, with him pulling ahead in the end.

Game 1 perdhapley: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/15/game-20111115-101029-736dcf12.html Torturer/nothing vs double Ambassador, with Torturer letting me get to the Hunting Parties much quicker. I drew really lucky throughout this game and amassed enough Hunting Parties to rip through my deck and pull off a win.

Game 2 shark_bait: I must've accidentally deleted the log for this one... it was a Colony game with Tactician, Mountebank, Governor, JoaT, Stables and Spice Merchant that ended 52/49. I'll post the full log when it pops up.

Game 3 shark_bait: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/15/game-20111115-102551-cdc711b4.html A Tournament/Steward match in which I draw pretty ugly in the second shuffle (C/C/E/E/E turn 3 and Steward/4 coppers turn 4) and never really recover. Shark_bait grabs the Followers and the rest of the game proceeds inevitably.

Game 4 perdhapley: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/15/game-20111115-103256-5ed4dd39.html Another Colony game. Shark_bait goes for the Banks and I go for Hoards, both with Envoy support, and while we split the Colonies I manage to snag a few Provinces as well.

Game 5 perdhapley: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/15/game-20111115-104301-7f055c17.html A JoaT game that surely would've gone a LOT faster if I hadn't decided to snag a Young Witch along the way, but doing so let me pull off a win. A tense Duchy race in the middle, this one was a lot of fun.

Game 6 shark_bait: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/15/game-20111115-105305-b954815d.html Familiar, City, and, surprisingly, Farmland ended up being the trump cards here. I had to settle for University instead of Familiar early on, and my initial plan to combat Familiar by snatching the Upgrades and Cities proved fruitless.

Game 7 shark_bait: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/15/game-20111115-110629-8be83c28.html ...In which both of us activate Treasure Maps early (Inn is pretty great at this! who knew?), shark does it twice, and my ability to tie the score with a Province buy on my final turn is ruined by the fact I went first. I made one HUGE mistake here by thinking "oh, scheme/treasure map!" on turn 2, idiotically forgetting that, well, since playing TMs trashes them you can't exactly return them to your deck for another try. Hence the two scheme buys - replace one with an Ironworks and things might've gone differently.


Shark_bait was a blast to play with and we got lucky to get dealt a really varied set of kingdoms that lent the whole series a very epic feel. Good Luck to everyone for the rest of the tournament.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

<b>ROUND TWO FINAL</b>

<b>North Conference</b>
<b>1. shark_bait (1)</b>
vs
<s>6.perdhapley (24)</s>

<b>2. DG ( 8 )</b>
vs
<s>3. Mean Mr Mustard (11)</s>

<b>South Conference</b>

<b>1. califax (4)</b>
vs
<s>4. theParty (15)</s>

<b>2. ehunt (5)</b>
vs
<s>5. thisisnotasmile (18)</s>

<b>East Conference</b>

<b>1. Wandering Winder (2)</b>
vs
<s>4. Lekkit (16)</s>

<s>7. WallyNate (25)</s>
vs
<b>5. Dstu (19)</b>

<b>West Conference</b>

<s>1. painted_cow (3)</s>
vs
<b>4. geronimoo (13)</b>

<s>7. Jimmmmm (26)</s>
vs
<b>3. Rabid (10)</b>

[shark_bait]

You can get the logs from Perdhapley's post but I'll post my thoughts here.

Game 1:  Even though I thin my deck better with the ambassadors, it has no affect due to perdhapley's use of hunting party.  Loss goes completely to me for missing that interaction.

Game 2:  The one thing I remember about this game was that I didn't play JoaT as much as I could.  Pretty much only in the beginning or when I could trash a curse.  I didn't always want the silvers when trying to buy colonies and at that point I usually had more than 5 cards so I wouldn't have been able to draw either.

Game 3:  Perdhapley definitely had some unfortunate draws.  And like he said, I got the follower's and from then on it was just a matter of finishing the game.

Game 4:  Looking back... perhaps apothecary/market/bank would have been the best way to go. 

Game 5:  What he said.... YW won it for him.  I thought I could get by by using 2 JoaT to trash the curses they give me, but he loads me up enough to pull out a W.

Game 6:  Perdhapley misses the first set of familiar purchase and has to settle for university.  He goes for uber upgrade to counteract the amount of curses that I'm pumping into his deck.  He almost makes an epic comeback in the last turn but falls just short.

Game 7:  This was my favorite game of the series!  Starting from turn 11, I went through my deck in such a way that every action card previously purchased contributed to a string of 4 consecutive provinces to end the game before reshuffling.  It was fun to see all of the cards interact in such a great way.

Kudos to Perdhapley for playing some great games.  This series could have gone either way depending the cards played out in some the games.  Thanks for playing a fun series of games!

[Mean Mr Mustard]

Good luck in round 3, folks.

[Reyk]

Ehunt was my neighbour not only in the starting list for the tournament, but at the leaderboard as well when we played the match. Our score before was 4-4. So I expected a close match which indeed happened.
Some games were hard for me to grasp - so any comments are appreciated.

We played veto mode, without point tracker and without "identical starting hands".

1) http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111113-093038-9f6f8022.html

Key cards: Masquerade, Alchemist (Scrying Pool as Backup), Margrave (only + buy), no action providers.

I have the impression we missplayed this one.
Strange game because you really want both: Masquerade and Margrave (has anyone simulated one against each other with pure BM?).
I was afraid to play pure Masquerade/BM because of Margraves handsize attack (which maybe isn't so strong once you have enough gold?) and with 3/4 Masqu/Potion for Alchemists is much more tempting than Silver/Silver for Margrave + Money. But I remember now a discussion when council room/BM easily beat Alchemists. On this board there was even support for money strategies at 5$ with venture ...
We were really slow going for Potion - I probably wouldn't do it again. The simulator guys perhaps know how to play this board ;-)
Maybe Masqu + BM or Margrave + BM or even both + BM.

At the end I decided to just live with two terminal drawing actions and hope the best. Ehunt bought a second terminal too - but not a drawer: Explorer! I thought about garden intentions for a moment, but that's not possible in presence of Masquerade. The idea is obviously to generate Gold thanks to Alchemists/Province and to mitigate that way the absence of a plus buy?! It almost worked ...

Things went wrong for me after a 3-1 Province lead from turn 13 because I couldn't put back Alchemists anymore despite having 7, some trashing and some additional drawing power (another problem: even if you can the maximum number for alchemists to put back is 4 due to Masquerade) . In turn 16 I drew dead Alchemist/Alchemist/Masqu. with my Margrave and thought game over. But ehunt was unlucky too, got 7 and I finally got the last Province.

califax - ehunt 33:27

2) http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111113-094046-9f1246bd.html

I don't understand this game either. I started Lookout/Monument and drew both at turn 5. But it's a Colony and not a Chapel game - so its bad, but not the end of the world. From turn 7 ehunt heavily invested in Lighthouse and I couldn't figure out why (I even followed suit a bit at turn 12 - fearing the vineyards - which is an overreaction I guess). Maybe simply to avoid silver or deke some vineyard tricks (but with Colonies?) or to increase chances for Grand Market?! But he not only avoided Silver but a second Monument which is the only terminal action you want here. I could end it on 3 piles before his Grand Market majority and the Platinum could catch up.

ehunt - califax 24:32

3) http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111113-094944-ecc3bb3c.html

I have to admit that I was surprised to lose this game by 1 point. I probably lost score track on Estates. It was clearly a Hinterland board when ehunts' Develop/Feast start into Ill-Gotten Gains worked quite well. Later you can develop IGG into Feast/Gold to put them on top of your deck. I started Silver/Remake which looks reasonable too to trash more Curses and IGG into Farmland but it didn't help. Of course it was a three pile ending on IGG/Curses/Duchies.

ehunt - califax 24:23

4) http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111113-100424-047c0748.html

Another game with no action providers but two terminals you probably want to have: Bishop and Nomade Camp (for the only + buy). Bearing this in mind ehunt opened Talisman to avoid Nomade Camp which is interesting, but on ocassion clashes with Potion as you probably need to have Scrying Pool. Trashing on opponents Bishop to use an early Nomade Camp might be a try, but then you have to go for a 5-3 Province split which is not so easy to achieve.
I decided to give up Bishop at a certain point to use Nomade Camp. I fall behin in tokens, but could buy a double Province on turn 16.

califax - ehunt 49:39

5) http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111113-101111-f29d942b.html

An instructive game. My 5-2 start is probably favorable here but I was fooled into a Fool's Gold deck. First of all Trading Post isn't the best trasher for such a deck of course. I thought that Library would do it nevertheless but I was wrong. I bought 5th Province at turn 16 but then couldn't do literally anything the next three turns.
Ehunt chose an interesting strategy in heavily buying Duchies (drawing $7 repeatedly might have helped for this decision) to give me less opportunities for converting the Fool's Gold into real Gold. Despite the 3-5 Province split he won handily.

ehunt - califax 44:38

6) http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111113-102944-2a1fb64e.html

Luck on my side in this final game. I had favorable draws here playing my Stewart in turn 4 and 5 whereas ehunt drew his Stewart in turn 5 for the first time. So I established an early lead in Provinces but with cheap cards that work well together (Hamlet, Stewart) and +buy sources ehunt went for a viable Vineyard strategy. I felt I have to follow this because otherwise Vineyards would have enough time to overcome Provinces. I even bought a late second Potion to get a 4-4 Vineyard split and could end it on 3 piles.

califax - ehunt 35:25

overall califax - ehunt 4:2
Thx for the games.

[ackack]

I have the impression we missplayed this one.
Strange game because you really want both: Masquerade and Margrave

I agree, and I would buy both. I think I'd start this one Masq/Silver, buy a Margrave on an early 5 (the priority is not so high that I'd pick it over Gold), and then later 5s on Ventures. The occasional clash seems a worthy price to pay  Masq/Venture alone might also be pretty good if you preferentially trash Copper instead of Estates. But I think the attacking aspect of Margrave makes it worth having one.

Game 2, I'm guessing the initial double buy of Lighthouse was just that he preferred 2 Lighthouses to a second Monument or one Silver. That seems reasonable to me from the perspective of fastest boost to average deck quality/reduction in Copper density. I could also imagine a bit of paranoia regarding Saboteur. Later on, especially after you've bought 3 Lighthouses, I think there's a reasonable argument to be made for him to snatch up more and hope that his superior economy allows him to pile out quickly after grabbing some VPs. The Monument mismatch seems to have resulted in a 1 token difference, so I don't think that was a big factor.

[DG]

I suspect that this alchemist/masquerade/margrave kingdom is a competitive one where you have to react to your opponent. If you go for margrave/masquerade + treasure then you might have to compete for silk roads and gardens. If you go for alchemists then you can probably power past a silk road/garden opponent with repeated province buying. The terminals all mismatch with the supporting cards so yes I'd say it was a difficult kingdom.

I messed up my first game against Mean Mr. Mustard by looking for a similar triangle of straight envoy + treasure, poor king's court deck using shanty towns, and an unlikely silk road stratgey. The silk road deck probably wouldn't have worked but it still worried me enough to make mistakes.