177ark
United States
California
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My group is new to Dominion and this last weekend a friend's wife just wiped the floor with us using what I have learned is called the Big Money strategy. Although it was more out of lack of interest than strategy on her part, none the less the realization was an eye opener for us all that we need to tighten up our strategies.
I've read this break down:
http://dominionstrategy.com/big-money/
I'm worried that interest in Dominion might be lost before we figure out any of the "advanced play" strategies on our own. Can anyone give tips or links to strategies to counter Big Money using the base game (no expansions)?
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Base game unfortunately is where Big Money is strongest, since it has some of the weakest Kingdom Cards. But the Big Four that can drastically change the entire texture of the game are Witch, Thief, Chapel, and Gardens; even a simple strategy with one of those will laugh at Big Money.
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Joe Conard
United States
Hillsboro
Oregon
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I'm still a Dominion newb and have only played the base game, but I do fine the best strategies involve buying a lot of treasure, but I don't think it is too hard to do better than big money with a few well placed actions.
I'm at a point in my strategy where I default to big money play augmented by a few actions. After all it is great to have all that money, but it is better to have all that money plus a smithy to get more money cards in your hand. So picking up the occasional smithy will be better than yet another silver. Same can be said for Library, or Adventurer. As well as some of the extra buy cards. So look at your kingdom and think If the other is doing big money only what one or two cards can I throw in the mix that could get me gold earlier or an extra province or two. Then I think you will start to see that money-only will not hold up against money-with-a-few-well-chosen-actions.
However, if you are like me you will then start piling on too many actions again and get yourself beat in short order.  So the discipline to keep up the treasure buying and only acquire a few actions to help out is very important.
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The "best" answer is to buy an expansion set. Even just one will go a long way towards knocking out Big Money. The unfortunate reality is that taken as a whole, the base set ultimately sacrifices strategic depth in exchange for accessibility.
If you aren't interested in spending more money, there isn't a whole lot you can do. You can definitely bias your card selection towards the base set's more game changing cards like Witch, Gardens and Chapel.
The other advice is to be patient. You've discovered the baseline is big money, so do what you can to beat it, even if you're only deviating from it slightly. Experiment with Big Money + one copy of X and see which X works best. Also, think carefully about your tactics besides just card choice. Even the outcome of a boring Big Money vs Big Money will often be influenced by more than just luck alone. Also note (and point out to your game group) that if you're playing anything close to Big Money, you've got no excuse for taking long turns. So your games should go pretty quickly as you experiment with variations on the basic Big Money.
Long story short, your best bet is to spice things up with an expansion, but I do think there's more you can get out of the base set.
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jack elfrink
United States
McKees Rocks
Pennsylvania
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Biggest help I got when first learning 'real' strategy in dominion is this forum post. http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/354729/analyzing-a-random-ca...
Not quite sure how just how "beginner" you are, but the one tip that really helps new players is to think in terms of strategy and not tactics. If you are doing a chapel strategy and in one hand you wind up with four coin, go ahead and buy the silver for three coin. Do not fall in to the trap of thinking "I should buy a Feast for four coin? If I only spend three coin then I am ~wasting~ one coin." Don't be tempted. Stick to the plan. Its ok to make short term "sacrifices" of one coin if it means that later on you will have a clean efficient smooth running deck.
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Christopher Pitts
United States
Aloha
OR
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kevincos wrote: The "best" answer is to buy an expansion set. Even just one will go a long way towards knocking out Big Money.
What's the best one for this?
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Dennison Milenkaya
United States
Washington
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cphpitts wrote: What's the best one for this?
In truth, all of them. But Perhaps Prosperity for the fact that you have over-powered cards and even bigger money to reach consistently, which doesn't happen with a bunch of Silvers and no Action cards.
Or maybe Hinterlands so that you can get that quicker return on investment from cards that have on-gain effects.
Or maybe Cornucopia since it rewards diversity in a deck and Big Money is not at all diverse.
But my gut reaction is to claim Alchemy since it has even more powerful cards that make crazy combos and easily out-pace any Big Money decks.
Still, Intrigue has a few cards in it that'll mess up Big Money fast--particularly the Attack cards since they tend to turn big Treasures into big wads of garbage.
Um, Seaside, unfortunately, has little to combat Big Money but Pirate Ship is totally able to do it, single-handedly. There's some other good ways to do it, too, but usually requiring more of a case-by-case scenario, being that they usually do basic effects but with longer-lasting Duration cards, of which Big Money doesn't take advantage.
So, yeah, all of them.
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Jeffrey Speer
United States
Moorhead
Minnesota
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Big money does win until you've played the game more.I've played a LOT of Dominion, it takes a bit to get past groupthink too.
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Sam hudson
United States
Portage
Michigan
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Big money still works though. I find that in most games I only buy cards that give exra cards. Most game I'd say I buy less that eight non treasure/victory cards. Once the Big Money cat is out of the bag the glory days of deck long turns is ova'.
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rcbevco wrote: Big money still works though. I find that in most games I only buy cards that give exra cards. Most game I'd say I buy less that eight non treasure/victory cards. Once the Big Money cat is out of the bag the glory days of deck long turns is ova'.
I regularly build draw-your-whole-deck decks against which Big Money wouldn't stand a chance. You've got to know what tableaux to do them in, mind.
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rcbevco wrote: Big money still works though. I find that in most games I only buy cards that give exra cards. Most game I'd say I buy less that eight non treasure/victory cards. Once the Big Money cat is out of the bag the glory days of deck long turns is ova'.
If you believe this to be true, then you could surmise that at the top-most levels of play, Big Money would be the default strategy.
Take a look at the Final round of the 2011 DominionStrategy.com Championship Tournament, here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/dominionstrategy#p/c/84B62606B97...
As was stated above, it takes a lot to get past the group think. Watch those videos and prepared to be awed at how seldom Silvers or even Golds are purchased.
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Jonathan C
United States
Iowa
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cphpitts wrote: kevincos wrote: The "best" answer is to buy an expansion set. Even just one will go a long way towards knocking out Big Money. What's the best one for this?
Probably Intrigue.
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Tim Stellmach
United States
Arlington
Massachusetts
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I'd agree that the next learning step (though far from the last) after discovering Big Money is actually choosing effective Big Money Plus strategies. Just a couple well-chosen kingdom cards (and that's a couple cards, not stacks) can significantly outperform Big Money.
It is not remotely necessary to buy an expansion to explore effective strategies beyond Big Money. Expansions will give you a greater selection of radically different strategies, but as mentioned, there are certainly several cards in the base set that will negate Big Money, and it there's no point in sinking money into more game-changing cards until you've explored the ones that are there.
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177ark
United States
California
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Thanks for all the tips!
You know, I never really saw Chapel as a terribly useful card, but I see what everyone is getting at with it's use.
I'll share these tips with my group and see what happens, I'm kind of sad that this could kill those big card combos I've come to love, but we'll see.
In the long run, I'll probably get an expansion sooner than I was hoping to, simply to keep interest strong before Big Money and "group thinking" take over.
And thanks for all the tips on expansions!
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Ben Bateson
United Kingdom
Ross-on-Wye
Owner of original 'crappy art' GtR and pleased about it.
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Ajere wrote: Thanks for all the tips!
You know, I never really saw Chapel as a terribly useful card, but I see what everyone is getting at with it's use.
We call that the 'Dominion Tipping Point'. Welcome to your new addiction!
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'The Completist'
United States
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Ajere wrote: I'll share this tips with my group and see what happens
NO! NO! NO! Don't share the tips with your group before hand! Implement new, unknown strategies during the game and grovel in their teary-eyed expressions when you crush them nearly extinguishing their gaming souls. Make them gasp for air as you smother their Duchies with Provinces. It's more fun that way.
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Hockey Mask wrote: NO! NO! NO! Don't share the tips with your group before hand! Implement new, unknown strategies during the game and grovel in their teary-eyed expressions when you crush them nearly extinguishing their gaming souls. Make them gasp for air as you smother their Duchies with Provinces. It's more fun that way.
In theory, but my experience when I started figuring out the effectiveness of simple strategies was pretty much the downfall of physical dominion for me. There is very little more tedious than waiting through 3 turns of "shanty town, pawn (pause to think), pawn (pause to think), shanty town, shanty town, mining village, pawn (pause to think), shanty town... buys shanty town". To be followed by my turn of "lay down treasures - buy silver". Having an improved win rate still did not really make this fun. In retrospect, I would have liked to do anything I could to get them up to speed faster.
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Hockey Mask wrote: Implement new, unknown strategies during the game and grovel in their teary-eyed expressions when you crush them nearly extinguishing their gaming souls.
Surely you mean revel instead of grovel. Nonetheless, a great suggestion.
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Chris Wood
United States
Wheaton
Illinois
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Take Villages and hang Woodcutters off of it like Christmas Tree ornaments. My wife uses that strategy, and she mopped the floor with me and my Big Money.
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177ark
United States
California
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Hockey Mask wrote: NO! NO! NO! Don't share the tips with your group before hand! Implement new, unknown strategies during the game and grovel in their teary-eyed expressions when you crush them nearly extinguishing their gaming souls. Make them gasp for air as you smother their Duchies with Provinces. It's more fun that way.
Oh, for as much as I would love to feed upon the tears of my defeated foes with all the vigor of a ravenous humming bird. Alas, if I were to break the spirits of the reluctantly participating significant others of the group, they would play their own underhand yet affective strategies of pouting a lip and condemn me to the a fate of... apples to apples. Or worse one of the 9 circles of Uno Hell! Why the hell are there so many different Uno games! And why would one person have them all! So, I'll play nice for now, share strategies and tips, let them get into the game gradually, enjoy it, get addicted, believe the game is fair and completely winnable by anyone, then, then I will topple their decks and laugh as they beat upon my ramparts with their bare hands, their tears mixing with the dust of their false hopes! And when they cry out for mercy I will say "no." For they WILL rue the day they ever made me play scene it twilight!! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!
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Myoman wrote: Take Villages and hang Woodcutters off of it like Christmas Tree ornaments. My wife uses that strategy, and she mopped the floor with me and my Big Money.
That makes no sense...
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Dennison Milenkaya
United States
Washington
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I'm pretty sure he meant that she arranges them in a triangle pattern.
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Mark Judd
United States
Mapleton
Utah
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FlatOnHisFace wrote: I'm pretty sure he meant that she arranges them in a triangle pattern.
But how does spamming Village/Woodcutter beat Big Money? Only way I see it being effective is if you are able to trim the junk out of your deck with something like Chapel. But Chapel/Big Money would probably still beat that.
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Dennison Milenkaya
United States
Washington
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Big Money + Chapel cannot acquire more than 6 points per turn. Village + Woodcutter can. Makes sense to me. But I suck at math.
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FlatOnHisFace wrote: Big Money + Chapel cannot acquire more than 6 points per turn. Village + Woodcutter can. Makes sense to me. But I suck at math.
Aside from the +Buys, Village + Woodcutter at the end of the day is just a really elaborate way of playing silvers. But like you said, sure, you can get more than 6 points per turn. But you can throw in just a single Woodcutter to do that. You're very unlikely to be seriously making use of multiple +buys, especially since village-woodcutter can't actually grow your hand. So if you played 2 Woodcutters for 2 +Buys, that's 4 coin and 3 more non-village cards left to play. Even assuming they're all golds, then you have 13 coin and 3 buys. So, even if you buy province-duchy, you're still wasting the second +buy. So spamming woodcutters off villages is slower and offers almost no advantage to just buying a single woodcutter or two and hoping they don't collide.
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