34/07/09 - Dominion: Intrigue

On Friday evening me Leon and Tony, played a couple of games of Intrigue only Dominion (I only realised it was Intrigue only when Tony mentioned it afterwards.) We played an evolving setup, which included Duke and Harem in both games.

I lost the first, getting too carried away with trying to set up a Pawn + Conspirator deck (after using Steward to trash my Estates) that wasn't really effective. Tony had a more effective Conspirator deck, using Minion to generate income and new hands. But we both lost to Leon's simple plan of buying Duchies and Dukes - he had 6 Duchies and multiple Dukes.

In the second game Torturer was available (though Secret Chamber also appeared), and Tony fell into the Harem trap - buying Harem's from the outset over Gold. This might be a reasonable plan in a VERY attack heavy tableaux where winning scores are often miniscule (ie we had a game with Swindler, Thief, Bureaucrat and Witch with a winning score of 3), but here I think it hurt him. He set up a similar Minion deck to the last game, whilst I concentrated more on Torturer. Mining Village helped to chain Actions together, and with my Gold I was able to buy enough Provinces to win. Leon tried to win with Dukes again, but couldn't buy enough to win - by the end Tony and I were both Torturing him too frequently.

Intrigue only Dominion was quite interesting - some Intrigue cards really come more to life in this environment.