Dominion: Plotting a Road to Victory

There isn't a ton going on here from a big picture strategic view. Some form of engine is going to clearly take the game down, with Horn of Plenty as a payload really shoring things up. There is definitely a question of which engine to go for (or perhaps you prefer the phrasing of how to build the engine), but the general principles will be the same.

As the game turns out, my opponent gets one Envoy and then sticks mostly to Hunting Parties with a few Stables, whereas I focus on getting lots of Envoys and supplementing them with Inn, fueling this strategy with a Workshop to up the number of Envoys. The question of when to go for Counterfeit and HoP amongst the 5s you want is a quite interesting one. My gut reaction, looking at things now, is that I would like to build the draw based on Stables, with a few HP sprinkled in. There are a few concerns with this plan, though - first of all, you are trashing treasures out from under yourself, which hurts Stables, and second, Stables, HP, Copper, Silver, Gold, Counterfeit, and Horn of Plenty only bring you up to a total of 7 unique cards. So things are a bit tricky - however, I don't think this is too much of a concern, and I believe that a Workshop to gobble up more silvers once the deck is getting closer to being under control can actually provide a solution to both problems.

Regardless of this, that's not the real reason I want to talk about this game. Instead, I want to jump to my eleventh turn . I dud out here, which is pretty unlikely, but not crazily so, and this plus my opponent's first-player advantage allows him to go up to six Horns of Plenty on his twelfth turn. We reach a first interesting positioning question here: should he have taken the seventh Horn? The main factor for is actually a denial plan - with only three, I can't fire off to end the game all that easily. The main call against are that getting another component makes his own deck far more reliable. In general, I am not a big fan of denial plans, but in this case, I think it was the right way to go. It was, however, a reasonably close call, and on an axis which can be difficult to see during the midst of the game - and I am not even certain which way is correct now - so this decision cannot be hugely faulted.

On my opponent's turn 13, he duds out. This helps me a lot. Still, on my own 13th turn, I am in a weird spot. Despite having picked up the 4th horn... 4 simply aren't enough. If I Counterfeit a Horn, I will have $7, can gain 5 Provinces, and... really not be able to quite put the game away. It's very tempting to go for this in a situation like this, because it looks really hard for my opponent to overtake and win in his next turn. He can't draw everything, and even if he could, he has 7 gains plus $10 and 2 buys, which is only enough to tie. On the other hand, if he just chooses to not go for it - as a good player should - then I am not doing much in the mean-time, and he would be able to pick up a bit more draw and another counterfeit or two and have his turn get quite a bit bigger. It's not entirely hopeless for me, but if he is merely patient, I'm going to need very good luck. So I build up my draw and bide my time. Almost certainly, this is a  mistake from me, in the very least by not picking up another Counterfeit for more pile control. And probably I should actually have gone for it at this point, anyways, because I have some chances of stringing together enough to try to limp over the finish line, whereas this way, once again, with correct play I am probably lost.

Then we come to the pivotal turn, turn 14. My opponent draws his deck, sans a Horn of Plenty I am able to deny on the last Envoy play, and he goes for it. He cashes all of his Horns of Plenty in for provinces, buys another province, and an estate to top it off. It's actually a pretty clear mistake for him to not counterfeit Horn, though I had kept in mind that he couldn't double-gain Province that way, as the Horn was his 8th unique card. Still, the extra Duchy would have been pretty good for him. Of course, the big weakness of this plan is that his deck becomes substantially worse, particularly in his ability to control the game. And the biggest problem is that he just doesn't need to do this - since I didn't pick up any more economic components, my best possible next turn is going to be more or less the same as last turn, and that's probably not enough. In the mean-time, he can continue to grab more draw, along with another counterfeit or two, and an Inn, which will not only let him kick off his next turn reliably, but also lets him counterfeit HoP for 2 provinces. This would essentially guarantee him the ability to get 8 provinces his next turn, forcing me to go for it. And then he would have a relatively sure thing of mopping up afterwards.

Certainly, on my own 14th turn, I can't come back - it's just WAY too many points. But I do know that I don't have just tons of time - he has enough decent treasures that he will lock me out within the next few turns, at least. But there is no point in cashing the Horns in until the last possible moment, and so I continue to build, while gaining points where I need to - most notably, Silk Road off of Workshops.

On Turn 15, my opponent can even pick up Province number 7 as well as a duchy. But Silk Roads are not to be underestimated! I draw my deck, do some calculations... and win rather cleanly. Certainly it was good to be able to win then, as with a good draw, my opponent could have grabbed Counterfeit+Gold+either of his other treasures, and finished off the provinces, though as things fell, I could have had another turn.

The thing I want to highlight here is not panicking. I got behind by a HUGE amount, but I didn't turn in for points. So often, I see people do this - they get behind, they feel pressure, and the knee-jerk reaction is to catch up ASAP, feeling that the opponent is likely to close out the game if they don't. The problem is, you actually need to have a plan to win the game. If you massively close the gap, but you're still behind, then where did you get yourself? Generally, you want to wait more or less as long as you can to pull the trigger on your mega-turn. If your opponent is liable to go off, in a way that will lock you out, then you have to think about going for it. But if they're going to be able to win the long game after by being patient themselves... you pretty much need to hope for them to have a dud. And when behind, going for it in a way that won't bring you the lead does no good. Either way, you need to have a plan for being able to finish the game out, and think in terms of "What gives me the best chance to win by the time the game ends?" rather than "What gets me the best points gap?"

Instructional Game #6: Empty the Treasure Maps

Game Log

...with Shelters.

My opponent opens Minstrel/Silver, gets a pair of Maps on turns 3 and 4, and collides them pretty quickly. I go for Silver/Silver into a Count and start trashing down. After turn 9, our decks look as follows:

The battle lines are drawn: he's attempting to use his quick map activations to power through Provinces and lock the game up. I'm trying to build more of an engine and... wait and see what to do. I have some options: just get some treasures and be able to single Province more consistently; use Stonemason to grab tons of components, probably to Graverob lots of things over a couple turns; use Bishop to score tons of points. I feel that probably any of these would actually work, but as the game state progressed in this particular game, I like the options progressively more as you got through that list. The reason for this is that the later ones give me increasingly more time before the game ends, and extra time should help me with my superior deck, as what I really need is to survive long enough for that quality to shine through. The key point here is that I expect my opponent's deck to break down if I give it long enough to do so.

At the time of the game, though, I was a bit wishy-washy, and my natural instincts of taking the points lead when it seems to be enough caught on for a moment, leading to my buying a Province on turn 14. This is a pretty bad play, as it just speeds up his win condition (empty the Provinces), while not really advancing my own thing at all. Soon after this, I strike on the optimal plan: Bishop golds for points, Stonemason overpay for more components, Stonemason Golds/Catacombs for components as well, loading up on more Maps to refuel. And it works like a thing of beauty. The other nice thing about this deck (besides being a strong, resilient way to gain a zillion points) is that it gives me a lot of control over when the game ends. I can always buy another Province to lock the game out, or I can also smash lots of things and make a pile ending happen, but either way, it will be on my terms.


As we finally round the bend on turn 18, I see an opening, using the on-trash ability of Catacombs, and pile out on Stonemason, Wandering Minstrel, and... Treasure Map!

Instructional Game #5: Maximizing Draws

Game Log

So there's a lot of Trash-for-benefit to note here, between Stonemason, Salvager, and Forge, with both Border Village and Cultist to enable that. The Tactician + Forge combo means that you should be able to clean your deck up - and this is important. You still need to go for Cultist here, for two reasons: First, getting too far behind in the Ruins split is going to be problematic, as though you can eventually clean up, it's going to take a lot more time. Second, the deck does need draw, and Cultist is by far the most efficient way to get it here (well, one could argue Tactician, but that's not repeatable).

With that layout, we enter the game. I open Salvager/Silver. You might be tempted by Spice Merchant here, but I want more money early, to get my Cultist, have a chance at double Cultist by spiking 7, and have decent chances at hitting 6 for Border Village into Cultist. Further, the Copper trashing may be less important here than normal, given that Forge will hopefully clean that up anyway.

I want to loop back to Border Village here for a second. Normally, the card is something you actually wouldn't want in your Cultist decks, as it can be drawn dead, you aren't very likely to draw them in the right order, and especially important for cultist, it hurts the chaining aspect. Here, though, I am planning on cleaning up, and especially, there's lots of Trash for Benefit.


The game progresses smoothly - my opponent is clearly on the same basic plan as me. I don't get to my Cultists at very nice points in the shuffle, and it might be easy to think I am falling behind for that reason. But on the other hand, I am hitting my money slots pretty well, gaining better cards. This is easy to underestimate, particularly by feel in-game, but in reality, my draws are really just exceptional. After my opponent's seventh turn, our decks look as follows:

We can see that I've just been drawing better than my opponent here. It's somewhat slow for me to get my Cultists online, but he's hardly been better, and to compensate, I have trashed an extra Estate, and more importantly, I have the next turn. With that turn, I get three Cultists fired off, making $7. I am significantly ahead, but it's really important to play precisely in these cases, to maximize your chances, as the luck can turn at any point. And there are lots of options. The main ones here are Forge, Border Village + 5-cost, or Stonemason into two 5-costs. I go for Stonemason-Cultist-Tactician. There are 6 ruins left at this point, so I don't want to abandon that split and pressure entirely. I also don't want to go double Cultist though, because 6 Ruins isn't so many, and I want to start setting up for clearing out. Finally, extra Border Village just doesn't do enough for me here.

The Ruins split ends up at 5-5, and my draws are good for the next couple turns. More importantly, my opponent, who is still playing quite well, misses his Forge on his Tactician turn. Thus, I have used my superior draws to set myself up that, even when I whiff on turns 13 and 14, by my next Tactician turn, on 15, I still have an advantage. And given my thin deck, and all the trash-for-benefit, I am on the prowl, and find the winning cascade of gains that Stonemason so often engenders. This is one last point of precision - just gaining some points would probably put me in very good position, but given the explosiveness of the board, there is some chance that my opponent could make some play making mid-turn gains and pull out some incredible comeback. Slamming the door when possible is something you always need to be on the lookout for, and take when you can get.

Instructional Game #4 Clean, Clear Subtleties

Game Log

Setup:

The first thing that jumps out at me here is Ironworks/Highway. Of course, in retrospect, there isn't that much support for it. In order for that to be a key or even significant part of your strategy, you need to be drawing good chunks of your deck pretty reliably. The only draw here is Torturer (a terminal with no village) and Vagrant (which doesn't help get the components together). The other way you can get to drawing that much is by thinning, but the only thinning is Counterfeit. It's possible to try to get Counterfeit to work, but it's pretty slow - and your opponent probably WILL be contesting you on Highways. So at best, that's a friendly interaction that can come up.

My opponent - again, a strong player - opened Ironworks/Silver. I actually think this is just a mistake here. Counterfeit/Highway probably should be a pretty central part of your plan, because Counterfeit thins and gives buys, and Highway leverages that pretty nicely. Perhaps more important, if you let one player get too many Highways, they might actually be able to do some pretty degenerate things. In any case, the important thing to note is that 5s are key. And Ironworks here, without a Highway in play, pretty much just grabs Silver. Now Silver is probably a reasonable card on this board, but here's where we look at the percentages: Silver/Silver is about 91% to hit at least one 5, including about 15% to get two. Ironworks/Silver is about 73% to get at least one 5, including about 1% to get two. Furthermore, if you use IW to grab a Silver in order to hit your $5, then you're not up anything over what Silver/Silver would have done unless you hit that 1% (in which case you've got an extra Ironworks). So where your real advantage lies, after the second shuffle, is in that, if you miss with your Ironworks hand in a way that you hit exactly $3 after gaining Silver, you end up with an extra Silver after that shuffle. (There's also some weird cases where your Ironworks misses the shuffle and then collides well, but these are really really fringe, and require getting Highway before Ironworks, and I really don't think you can bank on that). I in no way believe that that extra Silver can compensate for the lowered chance at hitting 5s. This thought process is what was going through my mind (not the exact percentages, mind, just the generalities) when I deferred my Ironworks until later - I want it to gain 5s, it can't do that soon, so I'd rather start my decks rolling.

Okay, so the game proceeds such that he does actually get that Ironworks leading him to $3, also hitting $5 on the other turn, equal spot, so that after the 4th turn, he straight up has an extra Ironworks compared to me. But the next shuffle is unkind to him (at this point, our shuffles become highly uncoupled due to the differing number of cards in our decks). By the end of turn 7, our decks look like this:

I have an extra Counterfeit. He has an extra Silver, Copper, and Ironworks. It looks at first blush that I might be a little ahead. But looks can be misleading - this advantage is already quite large, and he's going to need some good draws (more realistically, for me to have bad draws) in order to come back.

Over the next four turns, we can see how easy it is for an advantage like this to snowball: My deck is slightly trimmer, more efficient, and this compounds in on itself to get even sleeker (the extra Counterfeit is very nice for this as well), while picking up significant payload in a non-fattening way: the Card-neutral Highway. Thus, by turn 11, we are looking at:

I want to point out that my opponent has, given his situation, played very well here over the past few turns! His deck has lots of high-quality treasures and is set up like a quite decent Big Money deck ready for a healthy greening phase. Of course, the sleekness of my deck *ought* to leave me ahead here, but... over the next few turns, I play rather badly: I get a third Counterfeit (which I cannot support), and load up on Vagrants over Silvers. This is based on me still thinking of getting nice Highway chains capped off by Ironworks, but this is really an unrealistic pipe dream. My opponent keeps playing cleanly and hangs in the game the whole time. I make just one more good play, buying an Estate for effective $4 on turn 15 with 4 Provinces left - I am at the top of a shuffle and know I will never meaningfully see the next one, and given that the score is at all close, the point is absolutely worth it. Fortunately for me, my big early lead combines with a touch of first player advantage to overcome my later attempts to throw the game away, and I win on the 17th turn of the game.

Instructional Game #3: Jack, Duke, and Engines

Game Log

Setup:

There's two main plans here: Jacks into Duchy/Duke slog, or Engine into see-how-you-need-to-adjust. I want to stress that the engine player should not commit himself, in his own mind, to any kind of VP plan. That would be throwing away one of the biggest advantages of the engine: its flexibility. Ultimately, the decision of how and when to green should be a tactical one, based on the matchup and, more significantly, the game-state.

He goes for the slog plan. I go for the engine. I open Jack/Village. Jack in an engine is really quite reasonable, and it makes me think of my friend Adam Horton, who is a skilled proponent of this kind of strategy. Now, opening Village is something I rarely do (in fact, I think it has been years and several thousand games since it's happened), but there are several factors that lead me to it here, the lack of a $5 I want early is the biggest one. I am also eventually going to want LOTS of villages pretty clearly, and while Silver is a fine card for my deck, I figure I will get enough from Jack.

I am not going to talk too much about how my opponent played here - he got a stash before his second Jack, which seems pretty wrong to me, but other than that, he plays quite reasonably. He definitely did not have the best of luck down the stretch, but for the most part, his play seems quite textbook.

On my side of things, there are a few big decision points I would like to cover.
I get a Forge pretty quickly, despite having a fairly thin deck, no estates left, and Moneylender to take care of all the rest of my Coppers within the next 5 turns or so. The big reason for the Forge is that 1) it speeds me up a little in finishing to trash down, and 2) it lets me go Silver+Silver->Hunting Grounds, which is something I will want in order to keep my deck-drawing going, and potentially with Jack, in a nice draw-positive way. In general, it also gives me some control over how things are going.



I'm going to italicize the next three paragraphs, because I think they're really critical for wider strategy.


But the big decision-point I want to focus on is whether or not to contest Duchies. This is always a pretty key point. I actually think that, as it turns out, I would have won this game either way. But that isn't always the case, and so I want to look at the factors that go into it. First of all, the dangers. Contesting the green early can really choke your deck down and increase your chances to misfire. Furthermore, it can sometimes simultaneously hasten the end of the game on piles, which is generally not in favor of the engine, which is better suited for the long game. On the other hand, there are benefits as well: The Slog's game-plan often involves getting an insurmountable lead, and contesting can allow you to break up that unbeatable matrix of VP. 

In this case, stealing three duchies is enough to mean that ALL the Dukes isn't enough for the Slog player to lock it up (as is generally the case with Duchy/Duke) and there likely isn't a three pile coming until AFTER the Dukes are gone - certainly not if the Engine player is careful, as there just isn't any pile the slog player can realistically empty quickly. So the question becomes whether or not taking these three Duchies is too much trouble for it. To know that, we need to look at the other side. If we don't contest Duchies at all, they would typically need 11 5-cost VP cards to set up their matrix. In this case, though, we have the ability to grab Estates via trashing extra Hunting Grounds. So realistically, they'll need 12 of them. Whereas if we get the three Duchies, then 13 will be insufficient - they either need to empty 13 and then a third pile, or get 13 with a Province as well. So with any amount of realism, you're looking at 14-16. Basically, the question is whether this disrupts you enough to forego contesting or not. Getting 2 more 5s and an 8 or 1  more 5 and emptying a pile will cost them some amount of time. The question is, will that amount of time be more significant than the amount of time you are investing as the engine player? At the time of the game, I decided it was worth it to contest on turn 9. Looking back on things now, I think I would lean the other way. But it's definitely a close call.

And this is where a lot of the interplay comes in. The less the Engine player wants to contest, the more incentivized the Slog player is to build her deck up before turning for the green, so that she will be able to power through to her completed VP lockout more quickly. But the more the Slog player is building, the more incentivized the Engine player is to contest, since in this case, it hurts him less (since he's already built up more to be able to sustain green) AND it is more damaging to the Slog Player's VP Matrix. And all of these decisions have to be made based on the game-state as unfolding, but before the game is really clear - in my opinion, probably the most interesting part of a game.


Okay. So after the dust settled from that decision, following 11, our decks look liked this:

At this point, it's going to take him at least 7 turns to finish out the Dukes, after which he needs to empty a third pile (or at any point he can, take a Province). It's of course highly unrealistic for him to be hitting this every turn, though, so more realistically, I look to have a dozen turns or more to empty out the Provinces. Incidentally, his best bet is probably to spike a Province himself, so if he is ever hitting 6 soon, he can seriously consider taking a Gold, or possibly even a Hunting Grounds.

For my part, I ought to be able to get that Province-running task done with relative ease. The trick is to build my economy a bit whilst simultaneously keeping my deck at least as reliable in drawing as it is now. It is just barely drawing the deck now, if all falls perfect; it will fall well fairly often, but it will fail pretty often too, which means I would not actually consider it very consistent as is. So if you go through the log, you can see that I make a number of small errors from this point, mainly in not maintaining quite enough draw to be as reliable as I ought to be.

Nevertheless, a mere 6 turns later, following turn 17, the situation looks like this:

And despite having a complete dud on turn 18 (no Villages, which is less than 20% at this point, though obviously the chance to dud is a fair bit higher, as you could also find no Hunting Grounds), I was able to close things out on turn 19, for a fairly easy win: the Engine is just too strong here.

Instructional Game #2: Scrying Pool, Saboteur, and Switching Gears

Game Log

The card that jumps out to me here is Scrying Pool. Scrying Pool is incredibly powerful, on many boards drawing huge amounts of cards non-terminally. Something to note, though, is that, without trashing, you need other cards that draw cards in order to draw your deck. They don't have to draw many cards - cantrips work just fine - but they do need to draw some. Oasis is pretty good with Pool, but doesn't actually fill that role. Which means that here, you actually need a good amount of Worker's Villages. I do think that Pool is probably still worth it - it's really that good - but it is not as much a slam dunk as you might think (or as I thought at the start of this game).

Something I want to note at this point is that you will definitely want Marauder here. People think that Scrying Pool negates Looter attacks, but this isn't really true. Sure, it's less bad for my Scrying Pool deck than it is against a lot of other decks, but it's still a real pain. There's a couple reasons. First, the subtle one is that you can have Ruin on top of your deck followed by non-action: in this case, you will keep the ruin, then not draw all that much, whereas if the ruin wasn't there, you'd skip your non-action, and at the end of all this, you've drawn FEWER non-ruin cards than you otherwise would have (and drawing extra ruins really doesn't compensate). Second, and I think more important (though I'm not sure, as it's a bit tricky to quantify), you are just less likely to start with a Scrying Pool in your hand, which means you end up drawing stone nothing significantly more often than if the ruins weren't there. So this is really a pseudo-counter. While the Spoils do also reduce your ability to draw, they do so less offensively, especially since you can get rid of them at will, which isn't true of the ruins.


Ok, on to the game:
I open with Oasis/Potion. My opponent is on a 2/5 and gets a Saboteur. Ok, let's talk a bit about this decision. Saboteur is not a very good card. Really at all. However, I find it to be quite a reasonable opener on some boards. It will usually completely desctroy one of the opponent's opening buys, which is really a serious setback so early in the game, and then it provides some added value. It's still not great, and lots of other cards are better, but it's something you can do in a pinch.

His Saboteur hits my oasis on turn 4, and then it nails my potion on turn 5. In the meantime, he's added a potion of his own, but I've been fortunate enough to get two Pool buys in before my Potion goes down.

At this point, I decide to shift gears. Instead of rushing on focusing to re-buy my potion and continue with my original plan, I decide to play anti-Saboteur. There are a number of factors that lead me to this. Perhaps the biggest thing is that the Pools themselves are immune, which means that he's going to be able to nail my Oases, Potion, and Worker's Village with pretty high regularity. And since there are no decent 2-costs on the board, I end up getting nothing for them. So instead, I go for the anti-Saboteur strategy of "buy the most expensive thing possible". This will let me downgrade into those Potions if he hits my Gold anyway, and in general really lessens the effectiveness of his Saboteur. It's also fast enough that I figure I won't be too bad off against the Pool player, especially given that I already have a couple myself, and he was slow to start getting them. I am definitely still looking to pick up actions, when that's reasonable on a price-point, as they work much better with the existing Pools I do have.

I get a key stroke of luck on turn 11, when he ends up hitting 1p, which slows him WAY down in getting to his second Scrying Pool. At this point, he's going to be very, very slow at maneuvering the game into the state he needs. On that same turn 11, his Saboteur hits of my Golds, and I turn it into a Potion - I actually think this is a pretty serious mistake on my part, as it's a bit late to try to go back into pools, and I would have been much better served by simply taking a Marauder.

By the time we reach the end of turn 16, our decks looks like this:

His deck is going to be humming pretty nicely here, IF he can find his Scrying Pools often enough. My main trumps are my lead and his relative lack of Pools. I am also very well-positioned against his Saboteurs. The most damaging card for him to hit would be the Marauder, followed by the Oases. Nothing else is really close. Hitting Bank or Gold is not going to be much of a downgrade for me. And hitting my Provinces, at this point, increases the strength of my deck, dramatically increasing my chances to make MORE provinces. Three pools are also not really enough to zero in on my good targets with reliability. Still, there's some danger left for me, and if he can get a couple more Pools, his deck will suddenly be firing with pretty good regularity. I still like my chances here, because I only need a couple more Provinces to put him in a very difficult position (and he should seriously consider not playing his Saboteur starting around this point). And he definitely has some more building to do in the mean-time.

After some reasonably favourable draws for me, we reach the following state after turn 21:

...where it's very important to note that there is a province in the trash. What this means is that I believe I'm actually in very good shape. It's true that his deck is much better at this point, but I am closing in on having a fairly insurmountable points lead. I also have a Pillage, which apart from giving me safe sources of money, will, I hope, more importantly steal a big chunk of one of his turns by nabbing a Scrying Pool. Now, you might think that having such a big point lead doesn't mean much, given his Saboteur. The problem with this is, he really needs to train that Saboteur very well in order to hit what he wants - otherwise he's pretty likely to actually score me points by playing it. And even if he hits Province into Duchy, that is not such a huge blow for me. Indeed, he's in the difficult spot of needing his deck to maintain reliability whilst also running out the Duchies (to make his Saboteuring of Province that much more effective). Simultaneously, he has to worry about three-pile endings in that plan: Oases are gone, and only one Scrying Pool remains. So perhaps his best chance is to actually get a huge economic thing going and score a bunch of points at once. Triple Merchant Guild can help, but it will take a while, and my deck is not so bad - and he's running out of VP left in the supply, meaning he's running out of time. On top of this, he's still not actually that reliable to find a Scrying Pool. Yes, he is a favorite to do so, but not a huge one.

Despite him hitting some of my Victory cards, I am able to cash them in for other VP, and he has another dud turn. I more or less seal the game by grabbing another Province on turn 24.

Instructional Game #1: Of Ambassador

Game Log

Setup:

The first thing to notice here is that Ambassador dominates the board.

I am going to go ahead and make a quick note here, that it may look like Possession counters Ambassador. But that isn't really the case - generally, for Possession to work, you need to be able to play it pretty often, and if you skip Ambassador, you're not really going to be in a position to do that - and indeed, you will have trouble even getting to buy Possession. When you add in that the thin-deck Ambassador player can force her opponent to take an Ambassador anyway, the "counter" really looks like it falls apart, at least in the vast majority of circumstances.

Okay, having said that, getting thin with Ambassador tends to just be dominant. This board is a bit tricky, though, because there's not really much to do after you do get your thin deck. Still, you need to go for Ambassador, because there also isn't much to do against it anyway, and there are at least SOME support cards. If there were a good Big Money enabler, a la Vault or Embassy, you could consider skipping Ambassador here. But there isn't.

Okay,s o the next thing to notice is that ways to increase your hand-size are VERY scarce. On board, there is only Wishing Well. And then in the Black Market, you can get Minion, Masquerade, Vagrant, Native Village, Throne Room and Governor. That's it. And it's pretty slim pickings. Some of those are VERY conditional. Being able to increase your hand-size is absolutely massive, especially in Ambassador games, so you will want to go after this hard.

Let's talk a minute about Black Market here. It's possible to go for it - pulling a Masquerade or Governor or Goons can be very, very nice. But I don't like it here, at least early, because you really need to focus on getting to drawing your deck, and Black Market is pretty thorny when it comes to that. Realistically, you aren't going to be able to get to Governor or Goons quickly, so you would really be hoping for Masquerade. And then you have to ask the question, how much better is Masquerade than another Ambassador? It probably is some better. But you've also spent $3 to buy a terminal that doesn't draw anything, and you need to get lucky to rip the Masquerade off the top. Even if you do, having BM in your deck, I am not sure that you're actually ahead of where you would be if you'd just have other 3s instead.

So on a 4/3 opening here, you need to go for Ambassador, and then you have a choice. You could go Fishing Village, which isn't crazy, but I really think it isn't good here. What is it for? The answer has to be another Ambassador, in which case it's mostly just better to get that second Ambassador before the FV. Yes, you can definitely construct shuffles where it would be better, but things are more likely to not collide than to collide, and anyways, getting to play Ambassador on both turn 3 and 4 is a way bigger benefit than the Fishing Village will ever get you. You are much further ahead. So I think you need either that second Ambassador, or Wishing Well. I'm really not sure between the two, but I tend to lean slightly toward the second Ambassador - there's just more upside, I think.



Anyway, on to the actual game:

I get a 5/2 as it turns out, and go in for Ambassador/Hamlet. Hamlet is hardly going to do anything for me here, I figure, but it has to be better than nothing. My opponent opens Ambassador/Ambassador. And I'm already at a significant disadvantage, but the next draws tend to be more important than the opening draws, so I am certainly not out of it.

On turn 5, my opponent buys a Mining Village. I think this is already a pretty significant mistake. He already has a Fishing Village to let him play both Ambassadors. While Mining Village is by no means the worst card available, as a cantrip, and a card that makes it less likely for him to get terminal Ambassador collision, I just don't think it does all that much for his deck, really. I would be much more interested in starting on the Wishing Wells.

Nevertheless, my deck remains slightly worse than his for many turns, as it takes me a long time to get a Fishing Village, which relegates me to getting 2 an awful lot, whereas he can start to build a bit on 3s. By the end of my 15th turn (and I went second), our decks look like this:

As you can see, I have a little more junk than him, and on top of this, it's his turn, so he gets to hit me back harder before I do. Perhaps even more importantly, he has two Wishing Wells already. This is a very significant advantage, and I really ought to be just losing already.

However, on his turn 16, he does something which I believe is a bit rash: he buys a curse. This really is how you want to pound someone in many cases, but you really need to be well set up for it first, because you are adding junk to your deck, which, if it doesn't go well, can potentially backfire. Adding a third type of junk to the mix means that you are really making the game about slinging that junk back and forth (though largely, these games already are, to an even greater extent than people realize - perhaps more games on that in the future). You need to make sure you are going to win that fight; otherwise, you should have built more. I am still significantly behind, though, with quite a lot more junk than him.

Between his twenty-first turn and mine, our decks look like this:

The big thing to note here is that he has 7 Wishing Wells to my 3. That should allow him to maintain drawing his deck way better than mine, and he can even, with extreme care, slowly build his way up to getting Provinces. Meanwhile, I need to constantly be on vigilance about deck-size, and track my deck very well to make those Wishing Wells count. Fortunately, that isn't actually all that hard to do, and by playing the Wells late, and making wishes based on strategic considerations as much as probabilities, I can draw my deck pretty reliably. What I mean by that is, if I don't have more drawing cards behind, I can wish for a draw card. But if I do (say I drew one off the first part of the Well), then I can wish for a dead card, knowing that if I hit another draw card, I can be fine anyway; if I would wish for a draw card and the dead card is on top, it can be much worse. Of course, this needs to be balanced with raw probabilities.

The bigger thing to note, though, is that I can't really maintain this off of three wells if I need to 'go big' and contest on expensive cards, since the only way to GET to those expensive cards is by buying more stop card, as those are the only things to produce money. Given that, I need to win the game via the deck-size war. So I chip him back the Curse and the Estate and buy a third Ambassador. On his next turn, he returns the estate and ONE of the two curses he has, and buys a Black Market. I believe this is the key mistake in the game. I believe the best play would be to both return the second Curse as well and buy a third Ambassador of his own. I believe that he effectively can't lose the game at that point - it's not as though I can afford to not return the junk cards, as he could pump me full of coppers, at which point my deck would collapse, and he could win in many different ways. And if I do return junk to him, he can always do it at least as well, if not better. He can add a third Fishing Village and a fourth Ambassador and just pound me into submission. Or he can commence building up slowly at that point. In any case, I would basically have no way to win, given the Wishing Well split, as my deck just can't maintain very many cards. So I would just be stuck treading water, and he would have a long time to pick his spots, very safely. On the other hand, taking Black Market is probably also fine, if he returns both curses as well. He can build up, and he should be able to maintain his deck as fairly clean off of two Ambassadors. He could also keep a curse and gain the third Ambassador, which should be safe and allow him to pound me on deck-size at some point. The big point here is that trying to BOTH build up his economy and half-pound me into submission is biting off more than he can chew. I don't think it's actually doomed to fail (he at least should have some time to change his mind and flip back), but it's at least opening up this hole for me to have an advantage, which he didn't really need to do.

At this point, I want to stress that my opponent in the game is a very VERY good player, and has bested me more often than I have him. I certainly don't want to make it seem like the decision was stupid, or anything like that. I do think it was the wrong call, but it's really hard, really really tricky to make these decisions in the heat of a game, and even the best of players - with Mic certainly being in that small group - can make the wrong call, particularly in such a tricky situation as this.

He pulls a Governor out of the Black Market, but the third Ambassador makes pretty quick work of slamming him with curses, and he is unable to keep up. By turn 26, I have a forced win (though I missed it - it was actually Mic that pointed this out to me), and on turn 27, I empty Curse as the third pile, winning with a score of -2 to -3.