Apologies for the terrible post title. Got the chance to play a game two nights ago after a very long hiatus. It was RT, LT, MH and myself. I had just downloaded the "Randominion" app for my Android phone. I'm not sure the app does anything intelligent, like finding good combos, but here's the cards we ended up with:
Pearl Diver
Native Village
Village
Lookout
Salvager
Remodel
Pirate Ship
Bazaar
Throne Room
Tribtue
I'll post what each card in Dominion does on this blog eventually, but for now the only card you really need to know for this post is Pirate Ship, which essentially reads: "Either: Attack your opponents, making them discard the top two cards of their deck. If anyone reveals a treasure, you can choose to make them trash it, and if you made anyone trash a card, gain a treasure coin. OR +X treasure where X is the number of treasure coins you have."
Sound confusing? Well it is! And also very, very fun. Our game quickly started off with each of us going for Pirate Ships. As soon as we drew them back into our hands, we started the attacking, which meant that we were trashing the copper in our decks quickly.
LT, RT and MH each ended up with four treasure coins, but I got unlucky with my opponents not discarding treasure cards, and thus my Pirate Ships not getting any treasure coins.
Once my three opponents had four treasure coins, it was only a matter of who was the fastest to play two Pirate Ships per turn to get 8 treasure and buy Provinces. RT used Village to play two Pirate Ships, while LT and MH used Throne Room to play Pirate Ship twice. I was left behind in the dust (or whatever wake a Pirate Ship leaves behind). The final scores were:
LT: 37
RT: 32
MH: 24
Me: 13
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
An Analysis of the "Curve"
I haven't been able to play in a while, so I thought I'd take a detour from the normal game summary to provide some insight into what I refer to as the "curve", which is essentially the speed at which a player can begin to buy Provinces, if they do nothing but buy treasure (Silver first, then Gold), and are not attacked. Please note that this is an analysis of averages, and of course in a real game you may get a hand that is full of Estates/Provinces and not be able to follow the curve to a tee.
On the left-hand y-axis you have the total net value of treasure in your deck. On the x-axis you have the turn you are on. On the right-hand y-axis you have the average amount of treasure in your hand (i.e. treasure in deck/cards in deck x 5).
As you can see, beginning on turn 14, you reach an average of 8 treasure per hand, and can begin purchasing Provinces. Of course, once you purchase a Province, the average amount of treasure in your hand decreases, so you must alternate purchasing Gold and Provinces to increase the probability that you have enough treasure in your hand to purchase a Province on the next turn.
What this means that is that in any given game, if you are unable to purchase a Province every other turn beginning on turn 14, you would have been better off not buying any kingdom cards, and only having bought treasure.
At first, this may seem like you're usually ahead of the curve, but think back to games that have dragged on a bit too long and I think you'll see, as I did, that there are definitely games where you can fall behind the curve by buying cards that aren't providing enough value to your draw deck. Remember to keep up the average amount of treasure of your hand!
On the left-hand y-axis you have the total net value of treasure in your deck. On the x-axis you have the turn you are on. On the right-hand y-axis you have the average amount of treasure in your hand (i.e. treasure in deck/cards in deck x 5).
As you can see, beginning on turn 14, you reach an average of 8 treasure per hand, and can begin purchasing Provinces. Of course, once you purchase a Province, the average amount of treasure in your hand decreases, so you must alternate purchasing Gold and Provinces to increase the probability that you have enough treasure in your hand to purchase a Province on the next turn.
What this means that is that in any given game, if you are unable to purchase a Province every other turn beginning on turn 14, you would have been better off not buying any kingdom cards, and only having bought treasure.
At first, this may seem like you're usually ahead of the curve, but think back to games that have dragged on a bit too long and I think you'll see, as I did, that there are definitely games where you can fall behind the curve by buying cards that aren't providing enough value to your draw deck. Remember to keep up the average amount of treasure of your hand!
Sunday, July 11, 2010
A Torturous Four Player Game
Had a horrible/fun game tonight with LT, RB and JN. We picked cards randomly, and removed one Alchemy card so that we wouldn't have to deal with potions.
We ended up with:
Cellar
Pearl Diver
Feast
Caravan
Thief
Cutpurse
Outpost
Torturer
Upgrade
and
Stash! This new card has been popping up recently. I believe that it's a special, one-off card printed by Rio Grande Games for players attending Dominion Tournaments, but I'm not certain about that.
Stash is a new 5 cost Treasure cards that provides 2 treasure, and has game text that says you can set it aside when you shuffle your deck, and place it anywhere within your deck after shuffling. The back of the card is even different so that you know where it is within your deck (your opponent does too though!). Apparently the rule is that Stash counts as a Kingdom card, even though it's a treasure.
With Thief, Cutpurse and Torturer the game moved very, very slow with an attack happening once each round. Each of us realized that we could use Upgrade to discard Curses from Torturer, but it was a hard combo to pull off and there was definitely a lot of hard choices made over whether to take a curse or discard two cards to Torturer.
I thought I'd stick with my normal route of card advantage, picking up Pearl Divers, Caravans and Upgrades, but I was moving miserably slow and just couldn't get anything going. I think I only had 6 treasure in hand twice the entire game. Everyone was similarly hurting and we had already run out of Pearl Divers and Feasts before any Provinces had been bought. With 2 Upgrades left, it was clear that we would not win by clearing out Provinces, and we started to fight for Duchys. JN managed to pick up 2 Provinces and we were convinced that he had won, when LT picked up the last Duchy trying to salvage 2nd place.
It turns out that RB actually managed to pick up 5 Duchys admist a bunch of Feasting and 5 treasure turns that even he had not been keeping track of, and he had also managed to Upgrade all of his Curses out of his deck. He ended up with 20 points, JN had 15, LT had 14 and I had 13 with 4 curses left in my deck.
Card advantage definitely didn't help me that game. I realized the power of Feast this game, if you have Kingdom cards that help you cycle through Victory cards (such as Cellar), Feasting for Duchys can be quite powerful. Stash is also a really fun card when you are keeping your deck lean, knowing that you can draw 2 treasure helps you set up some big turns!
Monday, June 28, 2010
Three player game - Laboratory wins!
I was introducing Dominion to a friend, DT, with my other friend, DH, Because we were teaching DT how to play, we stuck with just the base set. We played a quick round with the suggested starting cards, and then chose a new set, removing all attacks and Moat to ensure the game was finished quickly. We ended up with:
Cellar
Woodsmith
Village
Woodcutter
Moneylender
Throne Room
Remodel
Smithy
Laboratory
Mine
As usual, I decided that card advantage was the most important thing and had an aggressive strategy of purchasing Laboratorys. In order to help me get there, I also went for Moneylenders.
The game did move fast, and with the discard of Coppers to Moneylender, I kept my deck pretty thin. I also began purchasing gold as I was able to get up to 6 or 7 treasure per turn.
Within 10 turns, my deck had 5 gold and 5 Laboratorys in it, and every turn I was either buying more gold, or a Province.
I purchased the last Province to end the game and had 5, DH had 4 and DT had 3. It was a fun, fast game, and I'm going to keep sticking with my card advantage cards!
Cellar
Woodsmith
Village
Woodcutter
Moneylender
Throne Room
Remodel
Smithy
Laboratory
Mine
As usual, I decided that card advantage was the most important thing and had an aggressive strategy of purchasing Laboratorys. In order to help me get there, I also went for Moneylenders.
The game did move fast, and with the discard of Coppers to Moneylender, I kept my deck pretty thin. I also began purchasing gold as I was able to get up to 6 or 7 treasure per turn.
Within 10 turns, my deck had 5 gold and 5 Laboratorys in it, and every turn I was either buying more gold, or a Province.
I purchased the last Province to end the game and had 5, DH had 4 and DT had 3. It was a fun, fast game, and I'm going to keep sticking with my card advantage cards!
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Four player game with Alchemy
I had my first shot at playing Alchemy today. The biggest change I noticed in Alchemy is the introduction of a new treasure: Potion. Now, in addition to Copper, Silver, and Gold, you can use Potions to buy cards. New cards require potion to be used to purchase the card.
Here are the 10 cards we had to choose from (I forgot the 10th one):
Familiar
Transmute
University
Library
Apprentice
Island
Lighthouse
Masquerade
Mine
???
I decided that my strategy would be to use Familiars to curse my opponents, but things got very interesting when I realized that with Masquerade we would be passing cards to each other constantly, and each of us would be able to pass our curses to each other.
The game moved rather slowly and ended up being over an hour as we were all new to the cards, and passing cards back and forth with Masquerade slowed things down. We ran out of curses first, and then ran out of Islands soon after. Things were still moving slowly and only 5 of the Provinces had been purchased.
The game ended when Player 2 decided to purchase the last Alchemist, and then we were out out Alchemists, Islands and Curses. I'm not sure Player 2 or any of us actually knew who was ahead at that point, as the Masquerades/Curses had shifted a lot of negative points around.
The final point totals were:
Player 1 - 24 points
Player 2 - 19 points
Player 3 - 5 points
Me - 7 points
The winning player had gone with a strategy of buying lots of Islands, and ended up having 7 of them for 14 points. Despite having 10 curses, he still had 24 points total (he had managed to get two provinces in there), which was good for the win.
Alchemy is a very interesting and fun set. Islands are VERY powerful, much more powerful than we realized at first, as they allow you to remove Victory cards from your deck in addition to getting you points, for the cost of an action. The Potion treasure is a bit too involved, as getting a potion in your hand takes time, and none of the cards were overwhelmingly impressive to the point that you need them in your deck. Still, I look forward to playing with the other new cards from Alchemy!
Here are the 10 cards we had to choose from (I forgot the 10th one):
Familiar
Transmute
University
Library
Apprentice
Island
Lighthouse
Masquerade
Mine
???
I decided that my strategy would be to use Familiars to curse my opponents, but things got very interesting when I realized that with Masquerade we would be passing cards to each other constantly, and each of us would be able to pass our curses to each other.
The game moved rather slowly and ended up being over an hour as we were all new to the cards, and passing cards back and forth with Masquerade slowed things down. We ran out of curses first, and then ran out of Islands soon after. Things were still moving slowly and only 5 of the Provinces had been purchased.
The game ended when Player 2 decided to purchase the last Alchemist, and then we were out out Alchemists, Islands and Curses. I'm not sure Player 2 or any of us actually knew who was ahead at that point, as the Masquerades/Curses had shifted a lot of negative points around.
The final point totals were:
Player 1 - 24 points
Player 2 - 19 points
Player 3 - 5 points
Me - 7 points
The winning player had gone with a strategy of buying lots of Islands, and ended up having 7 of them for 14 points. Despite having 10 curses, he still had 24 points total (he had managed to get two provinces in there), which was good for the win.
Alchemy is a very interesting and fun set. Islands are VERY powerful, much more powerful than we realized at first, as they allow you to remove Victory cards from your deck in addition to getting you points, for the cost of an action. The Potion treasure is a bit too involved, as getting a potion in your hand takes time, and none of the cards were overwhelmingly impressive to the point that you need them in your deck. Still, I look forward to playing with the other new cards from Alchemy!
Welcome to the Dominion Game Blog!
Welcome to my new blog. I wanted to showcase my newest obsession, the Dominion Board Game. I'll be posting gaming reports, card analyses, news, and more about this fantastic game here, and hope that my fellow gamers will contribute and do the same!
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