Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[GenericKen]

Ever have that game where buys 1 and 2 are cards 11 and 12 after the shuffle?

The puzzle is simple - how quickly can you get to 5 provincies in solitaire given any set of kingdom cards? The catch is that instead of stacking your deck, your deck is stacked against you on every shuffle.

1) With trashing.

2) Without.

[jonts26]

Can I choose my opening split or do I need to figure out which split is worse?

[ftl]

Agh. Figuring out worst-possible-shuffles is *hard*.

I think I'm terrible at this... I thought the right thing to do was Tournament/Chapel, and then go for +coin cantrips (tournament, Market, Grand Market)  because everything else I tried seems to get destroyed by the possibility of terminals clashing and clogging up with green. That way I can do it in 17 turns, but it seems like that's too slow to be a contender for an actual solution.

Without trashing, I don't even want to start thinking about how those shuffles will work out and what to consider the 'worst' one...

[gamesou]

A good reason for asking specifically 5 Provinces ? Getting either 1 or 8 seem more canonical questions.

Here is a strategy to get "quickly" 8 provinces with worst luck, if you allow trashing :

Open Ironworks/Chapel as in the Lucky Chancellor puzzle, trash your starting cards (speeding up Ironworks with Great Halls) until your deck is Great Halls/Village/Remodel/8 Peddlers/Native Village. Then each turn you draw your whole deck, remodel a peddler into a Province and put in on your Native village mat.

Counting the worst-case number of turns and optimize everything is doable but a bit boring, I guess it's around 15 turns.

[Deadlock39]

The Lucky Chancellor problem was the first thing I thought of when I saw this one.  You could probably get the Peddlers a lot quicker by throwing in Worker's Villages instead of a regular Village.

[DG]

I've taken half my solution for the lucky chancellor and rebuilt it into a fairly fast solution for this puzzle, with trashing. I won't give any details yet to keep this puzzle alive. I believe that there will be faster solutions if you diverge from my old solution quite early, probably using cards that were not available back then, however I'm not willing to put the time into the exhaustive proof of all possible draws.

Can we have some clue Ken whether you've got a solution without trashing? It could be a vary major undertaking to rigorously prove for many turns, across all possible draws, with a big deck, that a solution is valid.

[GenericKen]

I chose 5 provinces because it's a more pragmatic benchmark than 8. Most games are won with 5 or 4 provinces. A better puzzle would be to find the fastest game to get 4 provinces and 5 duchys, but that doesn't have the same ring to it.

I do not have a solution without trashing yet.

Worst-luck puzzles are notoriously difficult to do alone. You'll post a solution and get holes poked in it within an hour. I was hoping for more collaborative solutions for the without-trashing puzzle.

As far as I can tell, the key to worst-luck is the first 4 turns, where you can be locked into 3-4 spits. Buying silver turns 1-4, you can go 3-4-shuffle-4-4-shuffle-4-4-shuffle-10. Baring fanciness in the 3-4 coin range, have to wait until after your fourth shuffle to ever see a 5-cost card in hand (turn 15-17 or so? late).

With no trashing, you are guaranteed 10 dead cards in the deck. Provinces can bring it up to 14.

Multiple terminals are not possible. Even with fishing village, worst luck will stack the terminals on top of each other and 2 turns away from every village (except perhaps walled village. Worth keeping in mind).

Imo, you either go for cash saturation or for drawing the deck every turn. The philosophies can't mesh in the worst-luck case. Just from feel, I don't think cash saturation is the answer (7-7-6-7-15 shuffle rounds would hurt).

Caravan +throne room (eventually) made some sense to me, as it would help the next turn.
Navigator was also a thought, as it helps the next turn as well. You'll never toss the cards with it, but it constrains the worst-luck order. Very difficult to calculate though.
Cellar can help reach that bottom card. You may not ever play it (always drawing it with what you needed already in hand), but again, it constrains the worst-order.

We may have to make a special case for allowing feast but not other trashing. Not sure.

I'm curious about your chancellor solutions. Chancellor should always be the last card you draw before the shuffle, making it inferior to silver.

I played around with the idea of hunting party and stash as virtual-deck thinners, but could never get them to work in my head.

[chwhite]

I haven't figured out the exact details, but I fully expect the notrash solution to involve Native Village/Bridge in some way.

[dondon151]

Well, you can get some really bad luck using NV/Bridge, such as never getting to 4, NVing away none of your Estates, NVing away all of your NVs (except for one), etc.

[DG]

If you want a collaborative solution, different to the one I've got already, I would suggest using a governor. It's really powerful, virtually impossible to draw badly, versatile, and suggests it's own 5 province finish. The difficulty is that you would have to prove a 4/3/4/3 start, 5/2/5/2 start, 4/3/5/2 start, etc, all come to the same mid game position when you start using 5 cost cards. If a solution starts with 4/2/4/2 then proving the variations can be avoided. Develop is also worth considering since it is a good deck expander that also puts cards onto the deck, providing it doesn't get lost amongst the copper.

[flymolo]

How about nomad camp/watchtower? Those screw with the shuffling.  When you get to 5, get Mandarin as a cheap gold, and another +5 next turn.
Mandarin also fixes terminal conflicts, so would they happen or not?

[DG]

Here is my 11 turn solution including trashing. Up to turn 9 this follows my solution for the lucky chancellor puzzle . There are opportunities to do more on turns 10 and 11 so perhaps better solutions are possible.


#1 - buy ironworks
#2 - buy chapel
#3 - buy ironworks
#4 - buy cellar

At this point we have have the worst draws, all copper and estates, but are not dependent upon 5/2 or 4/3 splits. On turn 5 there's a different continuation if you immediately draw the cellar and use to cycle cards but only trash 3 with with chapel. The worst draws puzzle is pretty bad to prove since I should really exhaust all possible draws.

#5 - ironworks, chapel, copper, copper, copper: ironworks gains great hall draws copper, chapel trashes 4 copper
#6 - 3 estate, 2 copper - do nothing
#7 - cellar, ironworks, chapel, copper, copper: ironworks gains great hall draws copper, chapel trashes 3 copper

On turn 7 the cellar will find the chapel if it is not originally in hand, so having it hand becomes the worse draw. After turn 8 we have a deck where we can play out all the non-terminal actions and leave the remaining cards as a five card hand. The original 5 cards drawn are not particularly relevant. I'm ignoring the play of the serial cards for brevity.

#8 - Ironworks gains great hall draws estates, chapel trashes 3 estates and cellar; ironworks left on deck.
Deck consists of 2 ironworks, 3 great halls, chapel

#9 - Play out cards to leave ironworks, ironworks, chapel, great hall, great hall in hand
Play ironworks gains village
Play great hall draw village
Play ironworks gains remodel
Play village draw remodel
Remodel chapel to feast
Play great hall draw feast
Play feast gain highway
Buy peddler
Deck consists of 2 ironworks, 3 great halls, village, highway, remodel, peddler

#10 - play out cards (including one ironworks gaining great hall) to leave ironworks, peddler, remodel, highway, village in hand, great hall in discard pile
Play village draw great hall
Remodel peddler to king’s court
Play highway draw king’s court
King’s court on ironworks gaining 3 highways
Deck consists of 2 ironworks, 4 great halls, village, 4 highways, remodel, king’s court

#11 - Play out cards to leave remodel, ironworks, ironworks, king’s court
King’s court on ironworks (king’s court, province, province) drawing king’s court, province
King’s court on ironworks (province, province, province) drawing 3 provinces   
Deck consists of 2 ironworks, 4 great halls, villages, 4 highways, remodel, 2 king’s court, 5 provinces

Chapel, ironworks, cellar, great hall, village, remodel, feast, highway, peddler, king’s court