Mountain Pass Bidding Strategy (focus on self)
Jul 10, 2017 3:18:40 GMT -5
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Post by tracer on Jul 10, 2017 3:18:40 GMT -5
Mountain Pass Bidding Strategy (focus on self)
Okay, buy the Province, okay ... aach, something strange is happening. Oh, that thing is here. How annoying: a decision to make. Somebody said something about a standard bid. Was it 10 debt, 12, 17? Eh, 14 seems fine, I guess I’ll take it.
Clearly you don’t want this to be you in a moment of occasion. Maybe you would like to know that standard bid? It wouldn’t change much for you, you would still be bidding a guess. Rather than start with some number, start with a question:
Do I care?
Ideally, the answer will always be no - you will always be so far ahead, with such a better, more explosive deck, with such great other point sources, that those 8 points don’t mean a thing to you. And if this is the case, let them have their fun. If you took the Province, those points are probably worth about the same as a Province to you because that is exactly what you would be buying next turn, and if you didn’t, those points probably are worth close to nothing since points in such low quantities as 2 Provinces are exactly what you wouldn’t be buying next turn.
Alas, the world is often less than ideal, and sometimes you have to care. After all, 8 points is a fair number in a game that otherwise only has 80, of which only 48 come in conveniently large chunks that compare to those 8 which don’t even take up space in that deck which might not be taking many more points than that in a turn anyways. So sometimes you have to care because 8 points means something, and with caring comes another question:
Can my deck take it?
Or a question with opposite answers: if I don’t buy anything next turn, will I lose? A yes to this second question is a no to the first, and if that is the case, those 8 points are going to your opponent because you can’t afford to take on the debt which stops your building. However, since we have established that you do care about these points, you may want to look at slowing down your opponent with a small bid that you fully expect them to go over, but wouldn’t be the end of the world if you had to deal with it.
There are two versions of a yes answer to this question, the first being more extreme. If you are in a position where you do not need to buy cards to score enough and end the game, then your deck can take any bid and so you bid whatever it takes to get those points, which if you are bidding first is the maximum. This case is somewhat rare and is most often associated with Rebuild, but other remodelers and gainers can also create this situation where you have a limited number of turns left in which a Province buy might occur. The less extreme version leads to a final question:
How many turns is 8 points?
So now we have that you care about these points (since the decks are roughly the same and aren’t going to do crazy stuff), that you buy cards on your turns, and that you are ready to be spending these buys on points. So now you need to make a bid to win but not fall behind after winning.
If on single buys, 8 points is at least 1 and a half turns - a Province and something that is less points than a Duchy but doesn’t cost a buy, and with a deck that can consistently buy a Province competing against a deck that does the same, a full turn of output plus a full turn of output minus a Province buy is exactly what you should be bidding. As consistency decreases, the bids increase to the point of Provinces being rare, in which case 8 points is probably 3.5 turns (3 Duchies but if Provinces are rare, Duchies are not exactly guaranteed) or more, and so your bid should be about the same as you would produce in that many turns.
With multiple buys (or other gains), one should follow much the same procedure as in the single-buy case, keeping in mind that 8 points has little advantage over 6 points when the points are coming in chunks of 6 and 3, but carries a significant advantage if they are coming in chunks of 6 and 1, and so whether Mountain pass is like a Province or more than a Province depends on your opponent’s outputs, something already essential to know towards the ends of games with these features.
And that is really what all of this boils down to: Mountain Pass points are just like any other points because even though they may not come with a bad card, they come at a time when points take priority over worrying about putting bad cards in the deck, and if it is not time to be putting bad cards in the deck, putting good cards in takes priority over those points, just like in any other game of Dominion.
Of Note:
Okay, buy the Province, okay ... aach, something strange is happening. Oh, that thing is here. How annoying: a decision to make. Somebody said something about a standard bid. Was it 10 debt, 12, 17? Eh, 14 seems fine, I guess I’ll take it.
Clearly you don’t want this to be you in a moment of occasion. Maybe you would like to know that standard bid? It wouldn’t change much for you, you would still be bidding a guess. Rather than start with some number, start with a question:
Do I care?
Ideally, the answer will always be no - you will always be so far ahead, with such a better, more explosive deck, with such great other point sources, that those 8 points don’t mean a thing to you. And if this is the case, let them have their fun. If you took the Province, those points are probably worth about the same as a Province to you because that is exactly what you would be buying next turn, and if you didn’t, those points probably are worth close to nothing since points in such low quantities as 2 Provinces are exactly what you wouldn’t be buying next turn.
Alas, the world is often less than ideal, and sometimes you have to care. After all, 8 points is a fair number in a game that otherwise only has 80, of which only 48 come in conveniently large chunks that compare to those 8 which don’t even take up space in that deck which might not be taking many more points than that in a turn anyways. So sometimes you have to care because 8 points means something, and with caring comes another question:
Can my deck take it?
Or a question with opposite answers: if I don’t buy anything next turn, will I lose? A yes to this second question is a no to the first, and if that is the case, those 8 points are going to your opponent because you can’t afford to take on the debt which stops your building. However, since we have established that you do care about these points, you may want to look at slowing down your opponent with a small bid that you fully expect them to go over, but wouldn’t be the end of the world if you had to deal with it.
There are two versions of a yes answer to this question, the first being more extreme. If you are in a position where you do not need to buy cards to score enough and end the game, then your deck can take any bid and so you bid whatever it takes to get those points, which if you are bidding first is the maximum. This case is somewhat rare and is most often associated with Rebuild, but other remodelers and gainers can also create this situation where you have a limited number of turns left in which a Province buy might occur. The less extreme version leads to a final question:
How many turns is 8 points?
So now we have that you care about these points (since the decks are roughly the same and aren’t going to do crazy stuff), that you buy cards on your turns, and that you are ready to be spending these buys on points. So now you need to make a bid to win but not fall behind after winning.
If on single buys, 8 points is at least 1 and a half turns - a Province and something that is less points than a Duchy but doesn’t cost a buy, and with a deck that can consistently buy a Province competing against a deck that does the same, a full turn of output plus a full turn of output minus a Province buy is exactly what you should be bidding. As consistency decreases, the bids increase to the point of Provinces being rare, in which case 8 points is probably 3.5 turns (3 Duchies but if Provinces are rare, Duchies are not exactly guaranteed) or more, and so your bid should be about the same as you would produce in that many turns.
With multiple buys (or other gains), one should follow much the same procedure as in the single-buy case, keeping in mind that 8 points has little advantage over 6 points when the points are coming in chunks of 6 and 3, but carries a significant advantage if they are coming in chunks of 6 and 1, and so whether Mountain pass is like a Province or more than a Province depends on your opponent’s outputs, something already essential to know towards the ends of games with these features.
And that is really what all of this boils down to: Mountain Pass points are just like any other points because even though they may not come with a bad card, they come at a time when points take priority over worrying about putting bad cards in the deck, and if it is not time to be putting bad cards in the deck, putting good cards in takes priority over those points, just like in any other game of Dominion.
Of Note:
- This article assumes that you are not changing the timing of your first Province buy because of Mountain Pass. There is a reason this assumption is being made.
- I wish I could describe more how to evaluate your position relative to opponent in the earlier sections of this article, but I think this is mostly something that is gained from experience. An article about the topic may be in the future.
