Combo of the Day: Upgrade + Fortress

I'm posting this one because I've seen it a few times in the last month or two, and people seem to be unaware of it.

It's pretty simple, and very fast. You just want to trash down as thin as possible, as fast as possible, pick up some Upgrades, a couple Fortresses, and if you can, some draw. Then, having drawn your deck, Upgrade your Fortress into Upgrade repeatedly, until the pile is gone. From there, you can either cash in for 6s, or continue on to other 5s. The important thing is to be very aware of what your opponent can do, because usually you aren't going to be able to finish until a turn after the Upgrades run. Golds are about the worst payoff you might go for, and even here it's enough cash to be quite decent. More often, there will be some pile that empties, or another spammable 5. The plan, usually, is to pile out the Duchies in one fell swoop, scoring 18-24 points, emptying 3 piles, and winning the game.

It's kind of hard to play this perfectly (or maybe I'm just bad at it), and it's pretty hard to play around. Yes, you need to be aware of what your opponents are doing, but honestly, you just don't have tons of counterplay besides trying to be faster.

Examples:

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151110/log.0.1447115920847.txt

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151108/log.0.1447013717412.txt

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151115/log.0.1447612360359.txt

Dominion: Treasure Map

Treasure Map is one of the most misunderstood cards in all Dominion. Often cited as the prime example of a card which going for can sometimes bring a weaker player a luck-based win even when it's not the optimal strategy, it is actually a card which is fairly high-skill, and which by its presence will lead the better player to win more often.

The Level Zero Strategy

The most basic thing people do with Treasure Map is buy two as fast as they can, maybe get a third to help them collide, buy some treasures, and then use the golds off the collision to rumble in for Provinces.

This is a bad strategy. A really bad strategy.

In fact, the optimal play with Treasure Map and no other cards on board barely defeats not getting Maps at all. If this were all that was going on for a given board, then it really would come down to luck in if the Map player collides fast enough. (On the other hand, that's not really much different than straight Big Money, where it's all about how well that money clumps together).

Fortunately, there is almost always something better available on the board. And the big point here is that even when the Map player collides immediately, on the vast majority of boards, the other strategy is STILL going to beat this naive one. There is just so much else you can be doing, and four Golds is not really enough to finish the game out without support.

The Level One Strategy

The next step is to add in cards to help your Maps line up with consistency, greatly accelerating when they collide and give you the pay-off. The classical combos here are Haven, Warehouse, and Chapel (though to be fair, Chapel tends to help other things more). This is way stronger than the level zero strategy, and has enough raw power to be more or less correct on a non-trivial, if still small, number of boards.

Four golds probably still isn't enough, but a key point for this strategy is that the helper card helps you to smooth out later draws as well - this is the classical purpose of Haven, if you notice, and one of the main roles of sifters - at least in money-based or "good stuff" decks.

Still, this strategy tends to not be terribly strong, because though it has some punch, it isn't anything special - just a decent version of Big Money, and not even a great one.

The Best Usage

All this might lead you to think that Treasure Map just isn't a very good card and that you can pretty much ignore it. For the most part, you would be right. But there really are some cases in which it can be key. I am taking about cost-caring trash-for-benefit cards a la Salvager and most especially, Bishop. In this case, Maps are basically a way to use 2 buys and $8 to get 4 6-cost cards of value to trash.

In order for this to work, you need a very potent engine - you're gaining 4 golds with this every turn, and what's more, you're putting them on top of your deck. You need a lot of drawing power in order to break through all those stop cards. This tends to be pretty slow to set up. But if you can get it going, this really is a lot of fuel. For this reason, Bishop really is the best combination - the Golds provide you with a huge source of points to overcome even a big deficit of green cards, and the player who is trying to buy victory is probably going to stall, trying to grab them all.

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.

A Tale of Traps

Game Log

Setup:

First of all, I want to say I don't actually think this game was played particularly well, by any stretch, by either player. Indeed, the reason I'm posting this is that there were a number of errors being made which I see as fairly common even for players who are pretty strong. As such, I'm going to refrain from posting any images here which would show my opponent's name, as the point really isn't to shame him, but rather to try to point out these pitfalls so that you, the reader, will be able to avoid them. Obviously, you can figure out who it is if you really want to.

Trap 1: University
The University trap is very easy to fall into. There are lots of good and shiny 5-cost cards, and you want lots of them, so you go for it. The problem is, this is incredibly slow. You have to buy a Potion, buy a University, and only then can you start getting those 5s to pour in. A player who just went straightforwardly for buying those 5s the old-fashioned way is just going to be 5s ahead for several shuffles, and particularly if those 5s have an effect of improving your deck's ability to build itself (as is often true), perhaps just indefinitely. On top of this, as a village, University is a Necropolis - and that's card-negative, generally not where you want to be. Given all this, in order to make University worth it, you usually want some plan to make the game go late (often extra points) and/or ways to see those reshuffles quickly (i.e. deck-thinning). You do have some of that here (Tunnel and Island give more points, Spice Merchant thins a bit, Embassy and Margrave can help you draw). But the draw is pretty weak - only Margrave can combine with University to actually increase your hand-size, and then you are not doing it in a very potent way - the draw power is equivalent to Village-Moat. Yeah. So I really don't believe in University or the Engine here.

Trap 2: Opening Potion
This trap is a bit tough, and perhaps I shouldn't call it a trap, because it's very often correct. The thought is 'if I want cards that cost 2p or 3p, I should open potion'. And because you typically want those cards as soon as possible, this is indeed most of the time correct. But there are lots of exceptions. And I think this is likely one of those exceptions - if you want to go for the engine, I think you want to open Spice Merchant and defer those Universities for a while, as getting your deck thinned and spinning a bit is more important than loading up on those 5-costs super-fast (and indeed, you aren't so much slower anyway, as you are more likely to be able to just buy some 5s). A good example of delayed potion happened in a game this morning on Adam Horton's stream which can be found here.

Trap 3: Tunnel
People often like to rush for Tunnel+Enabler, thinking they'll gain lots of golds and get way ahead. This can sometimes be good, but generally it's quite mediocre, even with fairly decent enablers. More importantly, in doing this, you're playing a deck that is more like a slog than anything else - it takes an awful long time for you to get a decent number of golds out of this, and in the meantime, you have added a nothing card to your deck (and this is even assuming you do hit your collisions pretty well). In the long run, you do have a gold-heavy, fairly robust deck, and some extra points to boot. So it is generally like a slog, and not necessarily a great one. Of course, there are other ways to play the card. What doesn't make sense, though, is trying to get this to work in an engine. You're adding lots of non-draw cards to your deck, which makes it exceptionally difficult to draw your deck. Of course, the enablers usually sift you, so you may well still be able to have some ability to draw your important cards, but the point still remains that as you increase the number of cards you have in your deck, you decrease the chances of getting everything you need to come together. In this game, your draw isn't great, and especially given your few villages and mostly needing Embassy over Margrave to enable, you're eventually turning yourself into something near Province-per-turn mode. And keep in mind, you were pretty slow to get there. This really lowers your ability to reap the benefits of an engine.

Trap 4: One Copper Trasher
I have to give credit here for pointing this one out to Stef, the longtime top player in the game. Here's the deal: usually, you only want one copy of a copper trasher (Moneylender or especially Spice Merchant, as here). This is because you're going to run out of fuel for them fairly quickly, and there's diminishing returns on these cards, as you get to trash a lot fewer cards per trasher with each successive one. However, in games where there is some trash-for-benefit card, getting the second one gets much, much better, and is very often the thing you want to do. Here, I was the player who overlooked this: I slam lots of silvers and only one Spice Merchant. This is fine, but given my Butcher strategy, getting the second SM just seems a good bit better.



As for how the actual board goes? Well, in the game, my SM+2 Butchers was fine enought o overcome the wonky kind-of-engine from my opponent. In general, though, I am not sure which way to turn between Margrave-based BM, Embassy-based BM (picking up tunnels at the right moment), or 2SM+1-3Butcher BM.