|
Andrew Hardin
United States
Bentonville
Arkansas
-
Introduction
The Chancellor/Silver opening is one I have begun to use somewhat regularly. I have developed my ideas as an extension of the ideas underlying the middling Big Money strategy (only buy Treasure and Provinces). As I have explored the power of the Chancellor card I have begun to find certain approaches in which this card can accelerate a deck strategy.
This article will attempt to describe the ideas behind this opening and how to use it to add another element to your Dominion game.
Main Idea One
One basic idea behind the Chancellor/Silver strategy is to focus on buying the 5-cost cards and Gold as often as possible. The 5-cost Action Cards are generally particularly strong and several are useful in developing highly successful strategies.
This is not to diminish the importance of 3 and 4 cost action cards. This strategy is focused mostly on trying to make sure you can buy the best cards you need as often as possible. But there is an emphasis in this strategy on getting 5 and 6 cost cards as quickly as possible (preferably Turn 3 and Turn 4).
Main Idea Two
The other basic idea behind this Chancellor card is to cycle your deck often. The Chancellor has the potential to effectively discard all but 5 of your cards at one time. The only rationale to buy Action Cards is to improve your deck. In theory your deck should be better each time you buy a new card. The obvious exception is when buying VP cards. After a VP buy your new deck is weaker. But if your remaining cards are even weaker you still would rather use the Chancellor ability. In this situation the goal of the Chancellor is to improve the odds of drawing high Treasure draws repeatedly by recycling them back in quickly.
Main Idea Three
The other big idea behind this strategy is that Treasure is good. This is particularly true of Gold but is also true for Silver. By focusing on hitting the 6 Coin barrier as often as possible this strategy attempts to buy Gold quickly and often. By immediately picking up 4 Coin on the first two turns the deck begins to accelerate quickly towards high Coin values.
Main Idea Four
Finally, the Chancellor is intended to dampen the problem of negative correlation. When the game begins your deck has a perfect negative correlation between Turn 1 and 2. That is why it barely matters if you draw 2 then 5 or 5 then 2. But you should note that after a big draw of 5 your next draw is a fairly weak 2.
After you buy these two cards you still have a high negative correlation. The actual correlation is -.71 between Turn 3 and 4. Put another way, if you draw high the first round you will draw low the second round most of the time.
Negative correlation is helpful after a bad draw but detrimental after a good draw. The Chancellor provides a way of removing this problem by immediately cycling the remainder of your deck. More importantly, it does so only when you decide to do so. You reduce the probability of bad draws but get to keep the probability of good draws. After reshuffling your new draw is still negatively correlated with your last draw, but to a lesser degree (you still tend to regress to the mean and draw average).
How does it work?
The easiest part is buying the cards. The Chancellor/Silver strategy does not work for a 5/2 opening split so we are specifically talking about 4/3 split games. I personally feel the Chancellor is just fine in those games too but they are a special case.
On Turn 1 and Turn 2 you buy Silver and the Chancellor. After buying your second card you will be drawing from the following deck:
7 Copper, 3 Estates, 1 Silver, 1 Chancellor.
Your average Treasure/Card is 0.916 and your average Coin per draw is 4.60. At this point you have improved your average draw from 3.5 Coin and 0.70 Treasure/Card.
If you only buy one +2 Coin card (Silver or any of the other Action Cards) you can have no better than 0.75 Treasure/Card. You would need to average 6.13 cards per draw to match. So this strategy competes with +Card strategies and has a better average than any non +Card strategy.
Your draws on Turn 3 and 4 have identical distributions, and both have the following probabilities of drawing X amount of Coin:
2 Coin - 2.65%
3 Coin - 15.0%
4 Coin - 29.2%
5 Coin - 31.8%
6 Coin - 16.8%
7 Coin - 4.4%
The probability of drawing at least 5 Coin each turn is 53.0%.
The probability of drawing at least 5 Coin on one of the turns is 91.2%
The probability of drawing at least 5 Coins or more on both turns is 14.8%
The probability of drawing at least 6 Coin each turn is 21.2%.
The probability of drawing at least 6 Coin either turn is 42.4%
So the strategy has a pretty high chance of getting a decent card on one of the two turns. The idea is to buy a 5 or 6 cost card if at all possible.
Using the Chancellor
The probability of having a Chancellor on Turn 3 is 41.667%, Turn 4 is 41.667% and Turn 5 is 16.667%. The earlier Chancellor is better and represents the biggest random element of this card.
Turn 3 Chancellor
In the happy circumstance you get the Chancellor on Turn 3 you have the following probability of Coin:
3 Coin - 2.1%
4 Coin - 19.3%
5 Coin - 38.1%
6 Coin - 29.6%
7 Coin - 10.6%
Put another way, you almost an 80% chance of getting a 5 or 6 cost card when you draw the Chancellor. Your odds of getting a Gold are nearly 40% in this case.
Overall, you have a 16.7% of getting a Gold on Turn 3 with the Chancellor. In roughly 1 in 6 of your games you will get this highly favorable result. You have a 15.9% chance of getting a 5 cost card on Turn 3 and the Chancellor, and your overall probability of getting this favorable setup is 32%.
You should almost always use the Chancellor if you draw 5 or more Coin. You have only a 17.8% chance of getting 5 or more in the next draw, and the Average Draw is 3.82. The quality of the cards remaining for Turn 5 have also decreased in value from an average of 1.83 to 1.53.
It is more borderline if your Chancellor came up with 4 or 3 Coin. In this situation your next draws are on average stronger than before. The exception is if you just added a Silver to your deck (often a good play), in which case it is still better to take the reshuffle. If you reshuffle after a poor draw on the Chancellor turn you still have the possibility of drawing the Chancellor again immediately (letting you increase your deck quality quickly).
Turn 4 Chancellor
The probabilities for Turn 4 are the same as Turn 3. But now you are a turn in and you might be wondering if it is worth using the Chancellor. If you drew the Chancellor it usually is.
After drawing the Chancellor you have only one Silver left to draw. The decision to reshuffle is essentially the same as Turn 3, but now you know if you have Silver for Turn 5. If you failed to draw Silver on Turn 3 or Turn 4 you are better using those cards if your last two cards are Silver and Copper. You should consider reshuffling if your last two are Copper (or Silver/Estate) and you should definitely reshuffle if one is an Estate and the other no better than Copper. In my view you should reshuffle if you bought a good enough card either turn.
Turn 5 Chancellor
It gets harder to enumerate at this point because you don't really know what you will have. But it can be noted that this is a bad draw and you will have to see. However, your Turn 5 draw has at least 1 of your good cards and potentially 3 of them.
For the most part I would suggest following the philosophy that if you just bought a good card you should reshuffle. You used up a Chancellor and you want another crack at that good card. Don't reshuffle if your draw is very poor (Chancellor and 2 Estates).
What should you do as the game goes on?
One of the nice aspects of this opening is you are getting a good shot at the best cards. The direction you go from this point on depends entirely on your strategy. The Chancellor is a helpful card to allow constant reshuffles that should be mixed in with your other activities.
Of the important 5 cost cards I have different views on these at this time:
Laboratory - I believe this card fits this strategy the best. The Laboratory is part of a +Card strategy that focuses on growing your deck and cycling your card. Each Laboratory effectively increases your hand size by 1 and cycles through 3 cards at once. As your deck size increases you become more and more likely to gain the benefit of your high Treasure/Card ratio. Provinces are well within your reach with this approach. It is not a bad strategy alone to simply buy 1 Chancellor, 1 Silver and then either Gold or Labs as often as possible.
Festival - This card continues the spirit of improving your Treasure but also provides the ability to use the Chancellor with other cards more often. With this card you have the option to pursue more complex strategies that require Action Cards. The +2 Coin and the extra buy are also helpful as part of a Province/Gardens strategy. In this strategy you don't focus so much on slamming all the Gardens at once so much as acquiring what you can, then using your high Treasure/Card ratio to suck up the Duchy cards. The Festivals give extra buys and can be mixed with Woodcutters to accelerate the strategy.
Market - This is a nice card. It increases your Coin by 1 while replacing itself. It can chain to produce some nice hands, and it gives back the Action. This is a good card to buy and can facilitate the same Gardens strategy mentioned above.
Mine - An interesting card to use with the Chancellor. The classic issue is the fact that you really want to draw the Mine, then the Chancellor and both on different hands. The Mine does have the very nice feature that it does directly improve your Treasure/Card ratio by removing those unwanted Copper. It isn't fast and I would recommend having a Festival or Village handy to make this really work.
Library - The lack of +Action makes this mix poorly with the Chancellor. The only compensation is you can discard the Chancellor if you draw it but then you lose the benefit of the Chancellor. Works well as part of the Festival/Library strategy after the Chancellor play. One important thing to note is that you can use the Chancellor power before the Library. This can be used to redraw the discard pile faster.
Witch - The Witch produces the Curse game. With Curses in the game your deck size tends to get very large and you can have very serious problems cycling. In this case the Chancellor can be a real boon. A Witch game is not a bad game for the Chancellor though you have to beware drawing dead. Unless the Chapel is in the game this is very much the kind of game where the Chancellor can really help since Curse decks really need help cycling cards after you buy Provinces.
Council Room - A very mixed bag with this strategy. You lose many of the nice aspects of the Chancellor but you cycle your cards more quickly. I hesitate to recommend this card because it does have a painful habit of really helping your opponents. You increase your effective size by 3, but you increase theirs by 1.
The 4 cost cards are more situational. I find the Spy to be a fine card as a 4 cost buy once you have enough Silver. The Spy chains and can help you control your deck cycle even more favorably. The other 4 cost cards outside of the Remodel and Throne Room really don't mesh well with the Chancellor. The Remodel can convert the Chancellor into a 5 cost card if you need. The Throne Room fits into this strategy since it is usually very nice to Throne Room a 5 cost Action Card. I don't mind the Moneylender since it is useful to trash the Copper but it really helps to have Festival/Village cards to keep that from being a constant problem. I personally recommend this strategy when you don't want to go with the 4-cost cards as much as the 5-cost cards.
The best 3 cost card to mix is either the Silver or the Village. I don't usually buy 2 Chancellor cards unless I strongly believe I can play both. Of the 2 cost cards the Cellar does mix okay with the Chancellor but the two cards do similar things so they mostly complement.
The Middle Game Chancellor
The Chancellor in the middle game is less directly useful than the beginning. Your deck should begin to experience less negative correlation as it grows. But it is important to recognize that you have a limited amount of Coin in your deck. If you have burned through most of the remaining Coin all the cards you have left are going to be useful mostly for their ability to get you that Coin again.
The Chancellor becomes useful in any situation where you have been buying a lot of good cards. This is usually after a buy of Gold or the purchase of a Province. If your deck has 15-17 Coin a Gold buy leaves it with 9-11 and a Province buy leaves it with 7-9. The Chancellor itself is 2 of your Coin so you will often be weakening your deck after you draw it.
The idea at this stage of the game is to keep the deck running heavily on Coin. You want to be buying the best cards instead of spending a turn buying a 2 or 3 cost card. What you are really hoping for is a chance to snag an early Province due to a lucky draw and then use the Chancellor to keep your deck running hot.
The Late Game Chancellor
The Chancellor deck is designed to get at the Provinces quickly. This is a speed deck that pushes to hit the Late Game quickly. You really should be trying to have a short Middle Game where you start buying cards. One of the strengths of the Chancellor is it lets you buy Provinces a little light.
What I mean by this is that in a normal deck if you buy a Province you have used up at least 8 Coin. You have two possible ways to sustain your pace. One, you can have enough Coin in your deck that you consistently draw 8 Coin even after you buy a Province. Two, you can cycle your deck quickly enough you put those cards back in play.
A Chancellor allows you to cycle your entire remaining cards after a Province buy. If you used up 8 of your 15 Coin you don't have to wait until you cycle your entire deck to get another Province buy.
The Chancellor in the late game is intended as a support card that cycles your deck everytime you make a big purchase. You either cycle the same turn or as soon as you get a Chancellor. You don't do this if your deck is basically even (you bought a Province and then drew poorly).
The Chancellor/Lab combination is particularly good for this. When you get the Lab you are drawing up your deck. You will often draw out a good portion of your deck and get to 8 Coin. At that point you play the Chancellor and buy a Province. You reshuffle and take your chances at doing it again.
The Chancellor Problem
The Chancellor has two weak points. One, it isn't very useful if you draw it late in the deck. Two, it can cause problems if you draw it with another Action Card that you want to use.
The first problem is one you have no control over. However, the Chancellor will be uniformly distributed throughout your deck. It is most likely to appear before the last 3rd of your deck. One thing to recognize is that this problem is the same for every Action Card. The worst draw in most games is to buy 2 Action Cards and have both of them on Turn 5. If that happens you simply are unlucky. But on average the Chancellor will appear evenly throughout your deck most games.
The second problem is tricky. The Chancellor does provide a very interesting option that other cards to not have here. You can always use the Chancellor and make a buy. Your Action Card will then be reshuffled and put back in the deck. This is a problem with any situation where you have two Action Cards and only one Action.
Final Thoughts
I hope some of you will read this article and try it for yourself. Give it a few tries since you may or may not be lucky. This is not the only type of deck I use the Chancellor with. I am actually rather fond of both Chancellor/Chapel and Chancellor/Remodel but those have somewhat unique features that have to be discussed differently.
One final point of strategy that I failed to mention earlier. One reason to use the Chancellor often is that when you do you put the Chancellor back into play to draw immediately (this is not true if you use the Chancellor and then a +Card). It is potentially possible to draw the Chancellor every round over and over. Because the power of the card is so useful in borderline situations I would recommend using the power anyway just to get another crack at the card.
For those of you who dislike this kind of deck I certainly understand. But I would say that Chancellor/Silver is one of the better strategies for getting Gold quickly. Of the 3/4 splits it is the only one that can consistently recycle your deck and use that Gold often. It is possible but unlikely to draw the Chancellor on Turn 3, 4 and 5 and end up buying a lot of good cards. I have had the Chancellor on Turn 3 and Turn 4 before and it gets into good cards very quickly.
- Lex
-
-
I have always liked the chancellor and will almost always include him as a one-of when he is available. I thank you for your articulate discussion. Hopefully this will convince the naysayers of its utility.
It's made sense to me. Do you want to draw your good purchases sooner? Then buy a Chancellor.
I would also think it is worth mentioning that Festival/Library, like lab, is also improved with a chancellor. Festival/Library after a fresh shuffle in late game get you all VPs? Well, then don't use the chancellor in the next turn or so since the rest of your deck is that much better and you can probably count on a province or two. If however, that Fest/Lib it nets all your gold, the sooner you can have them back in, the better.
-
Brandon Richards
United States
Salem
Oregon
-
If he is available in the game, he is always my first buy. Recently I played a four player on BSW and the other three players mocked me when I purchased the chancellor. Through the game, they all noticed I was the first to buy gold (two golds before anyone else managed one) and the first to buy a province and continue to purchase them.
One thing I do is stop recycling the deck as soon as I start buying provinces and either remodel the chancellor out or chapel him out. Usually I have enough better cards that I wouldn't use him anyway.
-
Andrew Hardin
United States
Bentonville
Arkansas
-
filovirus wrote: If he is available in the game, he is always my first buy. Recently I played a four player on BSW and the other three players mocked me when I purchased the chancellor. Through the game, they all noticed I was the first to buy gold (two golds before anyone else managed one) and the first to buy a province and continue to purchase them.
I buy the Chancellor more often than not now. I used to really worry about the loss of Action but the worst that can happen is you lose 2 Coin. That is unpleasant but if you get enough in return it is favorable.
filovirus wrote:
One thing I do is stop recycling the deck as soon as I start buying provinces and either remodel the chancellor out or chapel him out. Usually I have enough better cards that I wouldn't use him anyway.
It is a matter of preference for me that I continue using the Chancellor. I tend to be a bit light on Coin and need the ability at times. But with the Remodel in play I can certainly see replacing the card with a 5 cost card later.
- Lex
-
Dave G
United States
Illinois
-
I play Chancellor/Silver on a regular basis as well. If there's a Witch on the board and the cards are available, I'll occasionally start Chancellor/Spy in preparation. I think it's a totally viable starting option--not only do you frequently get to the 5 and 6 cost cards first, but you can kick them right back into your deck and turn them loose.
-
Andrew Hardin
United States
Bentonville
Arkansas
-
It is purely a matter of curiosity but I am wondering if anybody read this and tried the strategy.
If so, I am curious if you found the ideas useful or have any other comments.
- Lex
-
Dave G
United States
Illinois
-
I play it all the time. It's great for getting a couple of gold fast, but if you don't add a big draw at some point the chancellor gets buried too deep to do any good.
-
Andrew Hardin
United States
Bentonville
Arkansas
-
djgutierrez77 wrote: I play it all the time. It's great for getting a couple of gold fast, but if you don't add a big draw at some point the chancellor gets buried too deep to do any good.
Good point.
However, as your deck increases in size a lot of interesting things happen.
Take for example a 30 card deck:
a) Your 1 Chancellor is equally likely to be in any part of the deck.
b) If you have 2 Chancellor cards the location of the Chancellor will tend to be much more favorable (if the size was to increase infinitely the first card would follow a Beta(1,2) distribution in which the average location of the 1st card is 1/3rd of the deck).
c) If you only have 1 Chancellor you will tend to draw it rarely making the negative aspects of the card less of a problem.
d) The deck itself will be less negatively correlated in general, but the turns might be for this specific shuffle. You are less likely to need the Chancellor but when you do it could decide the game (you might be looking at 8 more cards with a total Coin of less than 5).
e) Unless you have the big draw cards as your deck increases in size it becomes less stable. You are always drawing essentially the same number of cards but you are losing the benefit of the finite population correction on the variance. Your draws will become more and more variable. The Chancellor is especially useful in a high variance deck (potentially worth having 2 just for this situation).
- Lex
-
Dave G
United States
Illinois
-
LexH wrote: djgutierrez77 wrote: I play it all the time. It's great for getting a couple of gold fast, but if you don't add a big draw at some point the chancellor gets buried too deep to do any good. Good point. However, as your deck increases in size a lot of interesting things happen. Take for example a 30 card deck: a) Your 1 Chancellor is equally likely to be in any part of the deck. b) If you have 2 Chancellor cards the location of the Chancellor will tend to be much more favorable (if the size was to increase infinitely the first card would follow a Beta(1,2) distribution in which the average location of the 1st card is 1/3rd of the deck). c) If you only have 1 Chancellor you will tend to draw it rarely making the negative aspects of the card less of a problem. d) The deck itself will be less negatively correlated in general, but the turns might be for this specific shuffle. You are less likely to need the Chancellor but when you do it could decide the game (you might be looking at 8 more cards with a total Coin of less than 5). e) Unless you have the big draw cards as your deck increases in size it becomes less stable. You are always drawing essentially the same number of cards but you are losing the benefit of the finite population correction on the variance. Your draws will become more and more variable. The Chancellor is especially useful in a high variance deck (potentially worth having 2 just for this situation). - Lex
Sorry, my eyes just glazed over and I passed out. I don't speak math. 
-
Andrew Hardin
United States
Bentonville
Arkansas
-
djgutierrez77 wrote: Sorry, my eyes just glazed over and I passed out. I don't speak math.
The challenge for me is that I want to make it clear there are clear mathematical reasons the Chancellor is useful.
The Chancellor is an easy card to knock. The power of the card is difficult to immediately comprehend. You can either use the card repeatedly and see the benefits for yourself or the math can attempt to explain with analysis what some people have determined intuitively. The difficult part for me is remembering to remove the 'tricky' and just get to the guts of it.
The use of the Chancellor late in the game is very hard to explain easily. At that point in the game players should usually be focused on buying VP cards and it is obvious that buying a VP cards adds a dead card into your deck. Players can naturally assume that it would be a bad thing to put that VP card back into play.
So the correct play is actually counter-intuitive and I find it very hard to show that without relying somewhat on mathematics.
The basic idea is that as you buy cards the Chancellor does lose value. The Chancellor is really important in helping you early in the game accelerate not just buying Gold but buying any card. The distinctive thing about the Chancellor/Silver opening is the probability of drawing 6 Coin is so much better than most alternatives. But the card still helps in improving the speed of acquiring the good 5-cost cards.
But as the game goes on the basic flavor of your deck changes. It becomes less stable and you start having situations where you will get wild variations between hands (sometimes drawing 3 Coin, sometimes drawing 11 Coin). The Chancellor helps avoid the negative consequences of drawing all your Coin early while you are faced with several turns of drawing crap. If you buy several Chancellor cards the probability of getting the Chancellor early increases considerably.
The easiest way to fight off the bad draws is to cycle your deck quickly. The best card for that by far is the beloved Chapel. With that card your deck goes from 10 cards to 12 cards and then drops down to 5-6. If your deck has 15 cards it is much more stable than 25. This is why that strategy can produce such fast games. To defeat a Chapel deck you have to use the consistency of the deck against itself. You attack it constantly, using cards like the Spy to weaken the draw.
The Chancellor is just a very specialized card for cycling your deck. It provides +2 Coin, giving it the nice property that anytime you play it your Coin is at least 2 (your almost certainly can buy something useful), and it can also instantly cycle ALL your remaining cards. There is no other card in the game that can cycle 20+ cards in one move.
As your deck grows in size the ability to toss 10+ cards at one time is the key late game use of the Chancellor. Players are generally pretty good at playing small decks but those large deck games are harder to play.
- Lex
-
Mateusz Nowak
Canada
Halifax
Nova Scotia
-
The Chancellor/Money Lender Opening
I've been experimenting with the Chancellor lately and he has quickly become one of my favourite action cards. Other than opening with Chancellor/Silver I've also started playing Chancellor/Money Lender when they're both in the same set. Yes, there is the possibility you will draw a hand with both these two cards in the same hand, allowing you to only play one of them, but I find that this isn't as bad as one would initially think.
Here are the possible scenarios with both cards in hand on turn 3:
1) Chancellor, Money Lender, Copper, Copper, Copper
2) Chancellor, Money Lender, Copper, Copper, Estate
3) Chancellor, Money Lender, Copper, Estate, Estate
4) Chancellor, Money Lender, Estate, Estate, Estate
In scenario 1, no matter which action card you play you will have a buying power of 5. The Chancellor can use his ability to get the newly acquired 5-point action card back into play faster. Money Lender will reduce your deck by 1 copper, but will not allow the new action card to show up any sooner. I think it's a clear choice in this instance. Use the Chancellor.
In scenario 2, no matter which action card you play you will have a buying power of 4. Just like above, the same principle applies. You want your 4-point action card, or silver (if that's what you're buying instead), to show up sooner, so play the Chancellor.
In scenario 3, no matter which action card you play you will have a buying power of 3. Same deal again. Buy a silver or 3-point action card and get in back into play sooner. Play the Chancellor.
In scenario 4, Money Lender doesn't even work, so you need to play the Chancellor for a buying power of 2. If you have the option to buy it, take a Cellar, ensuring that if you ever draw it again you can always use it to cycle through your deck by discarding any estates you may have in hand. Plus, since it allows you to play another action card after it, you'll have an opportunity to play either your Chancellor again or Money Lender. If Cellar isn't in play I'd purchase a Copper or opt out of buying. I'm not sure from a probability standpoint which option would lead to better outcomes in the future, but I'm leaning towards purchasing the copper anyway since it'll feed the Money Lender. In this case you should NOT play the Chancellor since you know your next draw will be a hand full of 5 copper.
I wish I remembered how to do the probability calculations necessary to figure out the probabilities of getting gold as soon as possible, but alas, high school was years ago. (If someone could re-enlighten me on the equations I'd be more than happy to do these calculations myself!)
Basically, my early game strategy with Chancellor/Money Lender is to use the Chancellor whenever he's in my hand. If the Money Lender is the only action card, then I use it to acquire treasure (hopefully gold!).
I'm curious from a mathematical standpoint how this opening compares with Chancellor/Silver. From the surface it looks very similar, since Money Lendering effectively gives you a one-time silver to use while at the same time trashing a copper and making your deck just a little smaller as to recycle cards sooner. The downside of Money Lender is that he's a dead card should you draw it with the Chancellor. Whereas in the Chancellor/Silver opening you want to draw them together, in this opening, you don't - but then again, as I pointed out, it's not really the end of the world should this happen.
Has anyone else tried opening with Chancellor/Money Lender?
-
Brandon Richards
United States
Salem
Oregon
-
Quote: Has anyone else tried opening with Chancellor/Money Lender?
Check out my geeklist with the Chancellor. I basically came to the same conclusion as you regarding Moneylender. Lately I have not been purchasing them together because they always seem to come up together.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/42534/item/942712#item...
-
Andrew Hardin
United States
Bentonville
Arkansas
-
filovirus wrote: Quote: Has anyone else tried opening with Chancellor/Money Lender? Check out my geeklist with the Chancellor. I basically came to the same conclusion as you regarding Moneylender. Lately I have not been purchasing them together because they always seem to come up together. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/42534/item/942712#item...
I think it is a weaker opening than Chancellor/Silver, but the probability of overlap is, IIRC, about 1 in 3. The problem is that when they do you really want to use both abilities at once.
All the +2 Coin cards except the Festival have that basic flaw and you have to adapt. Even the Militia suffers a bit from the problem.
The Chancellor/Moneylender makes more sense in a game with the Village or if the you feel the 3 and 4 Cost Action Cards are especially valuable this game. You can play the Chancellor instead of the Moneylender, reshuffle and you can use the village to remove the problems. Otherwise the loss of 2 Coin really effects the probabilities unfavorably. It become considerably more difficult to get a 5 or 6 cost card with this opening, so it focused more on the 3 and 4 cost cards.
- Lex
-
Matt Schoonmaker-Gates
United States
San Diego
California
-
This is an awesome article! Thank you for taking the time to write it. I especially appreciate the probabilities and other uses of mathematics to support the strategy. Thanks :-).
-
|
|
|
Posted Mon May 11, 2009 4:14 am
