Dominion: The Aggro Pile Deck

Aggro Pile:

One of my favourite strategies is to go for speed. To end the game on my terms. To take hold and bring it to an end before the opponent can really deploy their long-term strategy. Speed, not power.

This means three-piling. You need a few things for this to go right: the ability to get piles out, the ability to control when they empty, score enough points (and know how many that is), in the process. Usually, it also means doing something to slow your opponent down, as even mediocre Big Money decks are capable of scoring a reasonable number of points fairly quickly.

But WW, isn't this just a slog?

No. In a slog, at least how I'm thinking about it, you’re trying to get a matrix of VP points that is insurmountable. Your win condition is to get so many VP the opponent can never come back. In, contrast, aggro-pile decks aim to get the piles out and end the game before your opponent’s (typically superior) deck can get going enough to catch up with you. Your deck is not about scoring all the points possible, but rather about having all the pile control you can get, and having just enough pop to score a little more than the opponent.

Typically, you’re going to want your opponent to help you out in emptying at least one of the piles. Most often this comes from junking attacks (where, if they skip it, you’re going to crush them anyway - this is weakened significantly by the very strongest thinning). However, there are also some piles that just naturally you want to empty pretty fast - Fishing Village is a classic example.

Indeed, you generally need a combination of 2 enablers and/or naturally-emptying piles, and you will have time to knock the last one out by yourself. So Ruins AND curses works well, or a card like Fishing Village with either kind of junk, or some decent to nice gainer with a fast-emptying pile or junk.

Most often, you’ll be piling out with Duchies as that third pile. And you tend to start just hacking away at them near when there are a few gains left to 2 empty piles, and simply ride them hard until they’re gone.

It’s also possible to actually just blitz out piles, though this is quite a bit rarer. Ironworks is a key enabler for the rush, particularly with some Kingdom VP pile it can gain, since actually having 2 of your 3 piles be VP gives you obviously more points, which translates to a little more time. Stonemason is another big card here, as it can get rid of piles very fast. Same goes with Procession.

When playing against this kind of strategy, you typically want to not do something too fancy - that tends to be the number one way that Aggro Piles actually gets the time it needs. At the same time, you don’t want to touch Duchies at all, unless you’re either winning on the spot, completely locking them out (e.g. taking the penultimate Duchy with a substantial lead), or just contesting full bore in a mirror. 

Big Money tends to be a pretty bad matchup for this kind of deck, so you need to have a plan of defeating that as well. Indeed, Aggro Pile is a deck style which must always be very reactive to what your opponent is doing, and in most cases actually needs to have some kind of bailout plan as well - either you are an engine with an eye towards clamping down on the piles, or you have some kind of reasonable Big Money/Slog game-plan in case they go for points straightforwardly. It tends to be important to develop these fallback plans before comitting too hard to Aggro Pile.

Key Enablers in rough order from best to worst:

Junk: Ill-Gotten Gains (two piles by itself), Marauder, Young Witch, Cultist (which can sometimes be a second pile, but being this expensive is very risky), Mountebank, Sea Hag, Familiar, Soothsayer (though this is often more suited to Slogs)

Gainers: Stonemason, Procession, Ironworks, Border Village, Armory, Death Cart, Squire, Salvager, Workshop, etc. I want to point out City, as well, because if you can turn the corner on them at the right moment, it's often possible to slam down e.g. the Estate pile.

Empty-able Piles: Ruin, Curse, Stonemason, Fool's Gold, Squire, Hamlet, Duchess, Pawn, Pearl Diver (etc), often board-dependent, but things like Fishing Village, Ironmonger, etc that people just snap up at every chance because the cost is so low (and they’re so good)....






Example Games:
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151124/log.0.1448393618472.txt
Marauder, Cultist, Familiar - junk is flowing, you have multiple piles that are going to fall, so you can really start playing for the 3rd pile. I think Marauder over Cultist is very important here, since the spoils are good, drawing is less good (with a deck full of junk), and chaining is quite unlikely (and also has a chance to skip your Familiars. The important point is that treasures are good, which is very common in these kinds of games. My opponent shouldn't have bought the Duchy, but it's very unlikely they can get to 2 Colony and a Province in time, anyway.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151127/log.0.1448643955753.txt
Here we have IGG. Trader provides some defense, but also a combo. Jester helps, and FV isn't too bad, either. Notably, Duchess provides a great 3rd pile as well.
  
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151127/log.0.1448655452593.txt
Young Witch can make both Curses and Banes empty, and with Familiar available, this is a good bit more likely. Hamlet is another third pile, and so some jockeying for positions should have happened. Pile awareness here allowed me to steal this one.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151208/log.0.1449533322065.txt
Again, Curses and Ruins both running, Hunting Party is one of those stacks that tend to run, and we even have Stonemason for more shenanigans. 

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151230/log.0.1451490645872.txt
This one is all about piles that want to run (Highway, Market Square, Minion), plus the obscene power of Stonemason. In these kinds of games, you need to be very aware of what you need to do to run the game out, as well as what your opponents can do for the same.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160107/log.0.1452205936848.txt 
Another example in the same vein as the previous.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160107/log.0.1452191577234.txt
An example of the Procession style here. Very often you can process into process into mroe stuff into more stuff, emptying out LOTS of cards in a single turn. Note that you need to green pretty early to defend against your opponent doing do.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151119/log.0.1447972595341.txt
You didn't expect me to leave you without an example of a classic Ironworks rush, did you? The raw speed and power is on display here, since even facing down Goons on a Colony board, and totally uncontested (which is correct unless you want to mirror and contest fully), I'm able to knock out all the piles (and even nab a duchy) for a blistering 54 points and end the game in a mere 16 turns.

Dominion: The Good-Stuff Deck

I've written a lot about various different kinds of deck, generally lumping them into one of the following categories: Big Money, Engine, Combo, Rush, and Slog. These can in general be useful, though there are some serious limitations as well. As has been pointed out, Big Money and Slog often bleed together. Rush and slog can often do the same. Combo has never been terribly well-defined.

The subject I want to talk about today is very old, and one of my favorites. Generally I would classify it as Big Money, but it's not like the Terminal Draw-based decks which people usually think of with that term. Instead, these decks tend to pick up several terminals, and usually not much draw. They're even interested in Villages sometimes.

You might call this a "Good Stuff deck". In general, in this kind of deck, in your turn, you buy the card which most helps your deck. This is true in almost every deck, to some extent, but here, it's true in a much more straightforward, naive way. Essentially, you're looking to pick up the card which most helps your deck on your very next turn. There are few exceptions - most notably, of course, is that at some point you green, followed by considerations for shuffle timing.

Indeed, being able to anticipate what the rest of your shuffle will net you, in order to know whether to forgo a slightly better, cheaper card for a more expensive one, banking on picking the cheaper one up later, is probably the key subtle skill of playing this kind of deck.

The more straightforward strategy of this kind of deck consists of figuring out which terminals are best for your deck. Then you want to buy those, along with treasures, and you're good to go. Treasures are always good in this kind of deck (well, copper isn't, but I mean Silver+). Cantrips, including Peddler and Lab variants, are also nice in this kind of deck. Terminal draw is NOT good in these decks, as you will generally have a pretty high number of actions to draw dead, and you are going to get more mileage out of your other terminal effects. Indeed, I've toyed with calling this kind of deck a "drawless" deck, though that would probably be somewhat misleading, as you are still going to snap up Lab effects.

The question still remains, though: when do you want to go for this kind of deck? In general, this is based more on a lack of other options than it is on this deck being actively great itself. In particular, you want an engine to not be viable for some reason. Generally this means that it's not practical to build up enough draw for an engine to work - either because there aren't villages to pair with the smithies, there isn't enough trashing to get yourself thin, or sometimes just a combination of wonkiness - no +buy does a lot here, but it's not necessarily a dealbreaker.

On the other hand, this needs to be better than Big Money with Draw as well. And when the thing which holds the engine back is lack of draw, this is easy. But there are other cases where this beats that out as well - most often, when there are a good smattering of actions, especially cantrips, that you would like to play in your deck. These work well in this kind of strategy, but they don't play nicely with draw cards. In particular, non-drawing Villages, like Festival, and indeed most terminal Silvers feel most at home in this kind of deck, as they aren't very good to build an engine around, and they don't pair at all nicely with terminal draw. Junking attacks tend towards this kind of game as well (at least in the absence of strong trashing), but discard attacks do not (much preferring to be played in engines).



Example Games:

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150609/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1433889316070.txt
In this game, an engine is technically possible, with Villages and Hunting Grounds. However, there is no trashing whatsoever, which makes it pretty hard for the engine to get off the ground. Merchant Ship and Jester are both good for the Good-Stuff deck, but in particular Jester is very good against someone going for an engine without trashing.

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150417/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1429282199310.txt
Butcher and Lab are both good here, as in many such decks. Coin Tokens really excel in these kinds of decks which are all about hitting your price points at such times. In terms of the particular game, Butcher actually counters Possession reasonably well - you think it would be the other way around, because Possession hits both tokens and Trash For Benefit well, but Butcher just makes the game end so fast...

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150420/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1429545178321.txt
This is a very nice example of signs which point you to playing Good Stuff over an Engine. The draw here is Jack and Journeyman, and the village (Squire) doesn't draw - it's going to be way too difficult to maintain everything, especially with Mountebank pouring junk in on you. So it's better to just ignore it, at which point all these actions go very nicely together for a pretty smooth good-stuff deck. You're not expecting to get big turns, just fairly consistently decent ones.

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150423/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1429816066041.txt
Marauder is another card which excels in this kind of deck. The ruins clog them up, and the spoils stop you from being able to draw super well, though they do give you a pretty solid economic backbone, as well as now-or-later flexibility, which this deck is often looking for.

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150425/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1430002665675.txt
Doctor helps thin you down, which is nice, but it doesn't do a great job of keeping you clean against junk. There isn't much draw here. Ironmonger is always good, but most excels in good-stuff decks (where it's less often just a village). These are also definitely Harem's primary home.

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150527/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1432763576686.txt
Soothsayer is definitely most home in a good-stuff deck: gaining high-quality treasures is a definite boon, and the junk will really hamper them if they don't respond in kind here.

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150605/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1433518674229.txt
Again, here the only draw is Oracle, and Border Village + Oracle is pretty miserable without strong trashing and quite good payloads. On the other hand, Cartographer gives you nice selection without increasing handsize - basically the epitome of Good Stuff.

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150611/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1434056190377.txt
Another classic combination of simply good cards - in this case Butcher and Ironmonger - can lead to some VERY fast games...