Narrowing this list down to 10 from all your submissions (both from the nominations post and via email) was phenomenally difficult. Full disclosure, though: we omitted all the insane massive point turns, since that’s a whole ‘nother post, and once you’ve seen one King’s Court-Wharf-Bridge-extravaganza, you’ve mostly seen them all. But don’t think we don’t think those are awesome!
Anyway, here, in no particular order, are our favorite 10 games posted. And yes, there’s an Honorable Mention. Of course there’s an Honorable Mention, this coming from the site that specializes in six-card “top 5” lists.
Honorable Mention: The Little Coppersmith That Could
Yes, we promised there wouldn’t be any massive-point-turns games in this post, but we couldn’t help sharing this game, since it was made possible thanks to a card rarely featured in such mega-turn games…
The Too Much of a Good Thing Award
I’m just going to assume that this is the first time this has ever happened in Dominion.
The You Can Legitimately Blame Luck On This One Award
Man, if I ever run into an opponent who plays Witch on me seven turns in a row (from Turns 3-9) I would just resign, content in the knowledge that all my bad luck had been used up for the day.
The Mountebank? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Mountebank! Award
In a game where Curses, Coppers, and Worker’s Villages run out, Counting House / Copper emerges triumphant over two Mountebanking opponents.
The Denied! Award
There is no real way to do justice to this game except by simply linking to the last two turns. This might be the single greatest Dominion ending I have ever seen, something all of us have wished we could do..
The Benedict Arnold Award
If you often find yourself misclicking, I do not think Steward is the best card for you…
The Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory Award
…nor should you do too much clicking near the Curses. Eli Dupree accidentally bought a Curse on the last turn and lost by 1VP, and to make matters worse, he would have actually won on turns had he not bought the Curse.
The Province-At-All-Costs Award
Whereby BelZoness discovers a way to gain 8 Curses at once to end the game on piles.
The At Least He Didn’t Play a Lookout Award
As Jonah himself described it: “In which I appear to be suffering from short-term memory loss.”
The Lemmings Award
Wherein flanders and califax both accidentally back-to-back trash all their money, and are hilariously forced to start buying and Minting Coppers to recover.
The Kings Do Not Hold Court in Warehouses Award
Most of our submissions centered around how game-breakingly, pants-wettingly, mind-warpingly powerful King’s Court is. Unfortunately, as Ola found out, there is at least one Action card that works quite poorly with King’s Court …
The Confirming All Your Worst Lookout Fears Award
Usually people worry about Lookout much more than they rationally should. Rest assured, the absolute worst-case Lookout scenario has already happened, and it has happened to someone other than you. Unless you are PSGarak.
Dominion Strategy 
Great fun. I especially feel for PSGarak – I for one am a Lookout coward, and his experience just confirms my worst fears. On the plus side, for him to choose to trash a Colony must mean that all three of those cards were Colonies. And if you’ve got so many Colonies that they can show up in bunches, you’re probably well ahead. Or you are really really really unlucky.
Yes, I notice that PSGarak did in fact win that game, a few turns later.
I had that happen to an opponent with Provinces instead of Colonies. I remember I won 4 provinces to his 3.
gotta love that too much of a good thing game, the game ended on piles with chapel being one of them
Curses were another pile that ran out, but there were no Cursing attacks — rather, I bought one and then Ambassadored the last 6 of them at him on the final turn. 😀
This reminds me of the game in which I sent a colony instead of copper to my opponent via ambassador (and i was not possessed).
These games deserve the awards. I have wondered about the last one and … here it is (my worst case was a gold)
Nice games, great fun to read 🙂
My favourite is the Treasure Map / Wishing Well one. That’s just made of win.
@Lookout: I had the same but with Provinces.
I actually laughed out loud at my desk at work at the last 4… “The confirming all your worst lookout fears” is so funny… oh man that sucks… The short term memory loss one is hilarious as well.
Good stuff! Very well picked. I especially like the chapeling 4 chapels! That’s friggin classic… And the lemmings is almost unbelievable, was this staged? I’ve played one game ever where I saw my opponent accidentally trash a gold on mint, but for both to trash all their money back to back, wow!
“And the lemmings is almost unbelievable, was this staged?”
“Staged” in the sence of “prearranged”? No, it wasn’t – that’s for sure. I was player 2 und I have described the exact succession of events and the “chat log” in my original post:
Sure, you ‘ll make that mistake only once. But as the game progressed, King’s Court was available, but no virtual money – we only saw Mint’s first abilitiy and simply forgot about the trash. Pure greed for money – but very human I guess 😉
There are many things you can learn the hard way like
– play all cards except tactician so there is no card left to discard with tactician
– play village, then black market. There appears a card you want to buy, but you have to bring some more money in play to pay for it. Instead of playing a single gold and then a single silver I pressed this easy “play all$” button to bring in play all silvers and all golds. Only then I realized that my Mine was worthless now. Of course it would have been best to play the Mine first.
* Discarding 2 cards to Torturer when the Curses are out;
* Playing Warehouse when you have nothing left in your draw deck.
Of course, there are actual good reasons why one would do those things- say, if you have Library/Watchtower and some junk in your hand when you get Tortured; or if you want to specifically set up three cards for your next turn and you don’t need them now.
Warehouse followed up with a smaller draw effect lets you set up your next reshuffle if your deck is drawn out though.
He must have meant, “Nothing in my draw deck or my discard pile” (as when, for example, you have drawn your entire deck into your hand).
My no-prize for stupidity was when I played a Tactician, discarding my hand…
And then realized that I had Chapeled down to a 5 card deck.
I probably would have won that game if I hadn’t done that.
That would have been a very nice Isotropic moment 🙂
Something tells me that there might be a sequel of this this “Great Isotropic Moments, Vol I”-post, so there’s a chance to get it in there…
Playing Salvager *after* your stream of Bridges, so that your trashed Province only nets you $5 (still good enough to buy another Province, but I could have had $3 worth in arbitrage had I played them in the other order).
I learned bridge play order lessons with forge. I was going to forge 2 silver and an estate for a province, but I played the bridge first. And I didn’t realize my mistake until after I’d chosen both silver and the estate to forge. That and the prov I was going to buy were going to win the game for me. I lost. 😦
I’ve gone Black Market, hit ‘play all’ for +7 so I can get that Grand Market, and then whoops there were some Coppers in there.
I’ve done a lot of “missed Grand Market” opportunities because I’m so trained to click the “all money” button. Black Market and otherwise.
These are very entertaining. Thank you to all for sharing your agonies and ecstasies. However, I have a question on the game where Hoff played 7 witches in a row. How was he able to open turn 5 with playing a witch if at the end of turn 4 he had drawn 2 Estates, 1 Silver, and 2 Coppers? Where did the Witch come from?
His opponent played Vault. He discarded the 2 Estates and drew the Witch.
Thanks. I didn’t look close enough at the his opponent’s moves before that. I guess that is the bad thing about Vault. It can help you get to 6 quicker, but it can also help your opponent and then hurt you as was true in this case. I notice that wasn’t really mentioned in the best $5 non-attacks article. So is there ever a time when you should consider not using Vault?
Well, if you don’t use the discard-for-money ability of Vault, it’s an overpriced +2 Cards that also gives your opponent a benefit. The only circumstance I could see straight up not playing it, though, is if you already have $8 (or $11) in hand without using it. Otherwise, having bought it, and given that you have an Action which is otherwise not going to be used, in general the benefit to you is going to outweigh the benefit to your opponent.
Vault is very helpful in buying Grand Markets early game as you can thus discard your coppers and use that money to buy Grand Markets.
The benefit for the opponent isn’t that strong (compared to Bishop and Council Room). However, if your opponent is playing a massive +cards/+actions strategy that would require a specific few cards to get going, playing vault can make it easier for him to get those specific cards. If your opponent is going straight big money, then vault won’t help him that much.
Exactly as Epoch said. I thought I was lucky with my opponent’s Vault. Little did I realize that the luck was just beginning. For the play-by-play (since the game logs don’t show you when I drew which witch), see my comment on the nominations post: https://dominionstrategy.com/2011/04/04/accepting-submissions-for-great-isotropic-moments/#comment-1795
Thanks, theory. It’s such an honor to be recognized being in the luckiest game I’ve ever seen, as opposed to any play skill I might or might not have. 🙂
My favorite here is the “Mountebank? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Mountebank!” Award. Dealt 5/2 on a board with Mountebank (not to mention King’s Court and Grand Market), Neptune had the boldness to open Counting House/Copper(!!!).
The Steward in the Benedict Arnold Award is definitely the most disastrous misclick I’ve ever seen.
Neptune doesn’t just go for Counting House/Copper, he proceeds to buy Talismans, so that he can buy more Coppers.
That’s commitment to a strategy.
Talisman, haha. It seems like Neptune should have gotten more than one Worker’s Village for the +buy. With two players throwing Mountebanks around it wasn’t going to be hard for Counting House to give a lot more than $11.
Another great aspect of Neptune’s game: drg ends the game for the loss by King’s Courting a Mountebank, which empties the Copper pile.
Dank and I were laughing so hard at what he was doing we forgot to watch for the coppers running out. Not often you see someone forgoing mountebank with no curse trashing and no other cursing options.
I finally ran into the dreaded Ambassador-gets-pwned-by-Possession game. I gave livious one of my Ambassadors, but I could never find it on my turn to trash it with a Steward. He hit me for a Province, two Duchies at once, and this one:
— Your turn (possessed by livious) —
You play a Worker’s Village.
… (You reshuffle.)
… You draw a Silver and get +2 actions and +1 buy.
You play a Steward.
… You draw an Ambassador and a Worker’s Village.
You play a Worker’s Village.
… You draw a Copper and get +2 actions and +1 buy.
You play a Steward.
… You draw a Gold and a Possession.
You play an Ambassador.
… You reveal a Possession.
… You return 2 copies to the supply.
… livious gains a Possession.
Thank goodness it’s over.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201104/14/game-20110414-170942-86645abf.html.gz
I love the honourable mention, have always had a soft spot for coppersmith!
Oh I can so one-up that one 😀
I had a game ending with the $10 money coppers 8 Colony single turn buyout a full two turns sooner at turn 13.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110320-122139-300fb901.html#Argus-show-turn-13
awesome, ignoring bridge for apothe/ coppersmith
Denied!
It’s really, really important just to read the last two turns because re-reading my appalling play up until that golden moment really sickens me.
I noticed this when the article was first posted. We got even more than advertised. I ain’t complaining.
* Little Coppersmith
11. Too Much of a Good Thing
10. Blame Luck
9. Mountebank?
8. Denied!
7. Benedict Arnold
6. Snatching Defeat
5. Province-At-All-Costs
4. Didn’t Play a Lookout
3. Lemmings
2. Court in Warehouses
1. Worst Lookout Fears
the one misplay to rule them all and in the darkness bind them
— dominionation’s turn 10 —
dominionation draws 5 cards and gets +1 action and +1 buy from the Tactician.
dominionation plays a Vault.
… drawing 2 cards.
… discarding 3 Estates, 5 Coppers, and a Vault and getting +$9.
… aubergine discards nothing.
… joesena discards 2 cards and draws 1 card.
dominionation plays a Tactician.
… discarding the hand (1 card).
dominionation buys a Platinum.
(dominionation reshuffles.)
What was the misplay here? Looks like an excellent turn to me.
You will find the answer here:
(- play all cards except tactician so there is no card left to discard with tactician)
While vault/double tactician is really hard to beat in province only games it might be more interesting in colony games because without support you can’t get more than 8. Still province rush might be viable.
Note also that Platinum is not very useful in a vault/double tactician deck.
But he discarded a card. I’m not really sure I see the misplay either =/
You are right. I missread it. Otherwise it would have been:
“… but has no cards to discard.”
So it should be “without support you can’t get more than 9”.
Still I wouldn’t buy the Platinum here (it is discarded anyway in turn 15), but that is probably not the “mentioned misplay”. So waiting for the Original poster. Maybe he didn’t mean “misplay”.
Here is the game log:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110428-144534-c84c4304.html#dominionation-show-turn-10
Most likely they wished they had started buying Market/Conspirator/Mining Village on turn 10. The platinum did very little towards the eventual Conspirator+Vault chain–it was played on turn 11 (buying cards like the ones that could have been bought in turn 10), but then Vault-ed on 3 further turns. Not sure why it was discarded on the final turn, but they won nonetheless.
Or perhaps it was just the missed opportunity to get +$11 (or even 12 with second Vault) by foregoing another Tactician turn?
But yeah, still unsure what would qualify as an epic misplay, especially given that they won the game.
Obviously it depends what stage of the game we’re in, but had he discarded the Tactician and the other remaining card with the vault he would have had $11 for a Colony.
Recently I bought a Mint thinking it was a Mine.
Not realizing I had just lost 3 Coppers, I happily played the Mine with one Copper in hand. After the “You gain another WHAT?” experience it dawned on me.
here is a game, where, had I wanted to, and with sufficiently careful play, I could’ve gained 24 VPs every turn while giving my opponent 2 card hands (and eventually trashing nearly their entire deck) with King’s Court/Masquerade and no card to pass
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201106/16/game-20110616-130319-8499bb11.html
This probably doesn’t qualify, since it’s a megaturn ending, but I just had a game where I hit $64 in turn 13 to buy out all 8 Provinces. The only treasures I bought were a Quarry and a Loan as my opening cards. There was KC, Grand Market, Peddler, and Baron. I used the Loan to trash Coppers and Baron for the +$4 to get me up to GM and KC quickly, bought out the Peddlers, and then I hit the crazy turn where I hit all 6 of my KCs. At the end of my action chain I had $59. I played the Quarry and the Loan to get to $61, then I realized I had 3 Coppers and $64=8 x $8…
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201209/18/game-20120918-183854-e5e5e327.html