This is the third in a week-long series by WanderingWinder.  For the introduction and links to the other posts, click here.

Everyone always talks about there being two kinds of decks – Big Money and Engine. But I think there are really 5 general kinds of deck, and I want to talk about the 3rd most prevalent in this article – the Slog – which falls in place between Big Money and The Rush.

What characterizes the Slog?
There is no clear dividing line, but some rules of thumb are

• you cycle very slowly
• Copper is near- or above-average money density for most of the game
• you generally expect, if the game is well played, to get more points from Duchies than from Provinces.

Slogs tend not to be many people’s ideas of fun (so it’s probably good that they aren’t good nearly so often as engines or Big Money), as you spend many turns doing not a whole lot but playing 3 to 4ish cards a turn (including treasure!) and buying one thing. Now, this may sound a lot like Big Money to you, but for what I’d really call a slog, it’s more like “small money” – in a Big Money deck, your average hand cash generally goes up past $6; in a slog, it wouldn’t.

Why play a Slog?
Usually it’s because your opponent sort of forces you into it. The number one reason to play a slog is because your opponent is playing junking attacks on you – Cursers, particularly Ill Gotten Gains, Sea Hag, and Mountebank, or Ambassador (looters MAY have a similar effect, but I haven’t played enough Dark Ages to be sure). Noble Brigand can work similarly by giving you Copper and disincentivizing you from buying more expensive treasures. Now, these don’t necessarily doom you to a slog, particularly if there’s trashing (an Ambassador *war* isn’t a slog… until you lose or give up), a super-strong engine, or some way of dealing with the Curses. Or just enough money sitting around with something productive to do (a la Jack of All Trades, Trader, Watchtower).

The reason you’ll voluntarily go for a slog, usually, is certain alternate VP cards – namely, Gardens, Duke, and Silk Road. For each of these, if you can just load up on lots of stuff, even junky stuff like Copper, and just wait and drag the game on, you can actually have really good chances to rack up lots of points. Now, it’s important not to get this confused with a rush, like a Workshop/Gardens rush, which is more about getting three piles gone quickly. Slogs want the game to last many turns, in order to reap their long, large, slow benefits.

Fairgrounds can sort of reach into this category, but usually for Fairgrounds, you start out as at least a money deck, and you generally want at least one Province, and 6 for a long time, which is usually a bit more than ‘pure’ slogs can really muster.

Philosopher’s Stone, of course, also pushes you to a slog more or less all the time, but it is just not that good very often; with the right deck, though (say, against Mountebank in some situations, after Familiars trade Curses, or of course with Herbalist), it can really shine and say ‘slog it up’!

What’s good for Slogs?
Well, aside from the alternate victory cards and P-Stone mentioned above, the biggest things are cards that let you discard for benefit (like Vault, Horse Traders, Cellar), because if half your hand is junk anyway you may as well discard it and get some use out of it.  Sifters (a la Cartographer and Warehouse) are strong for largely the same reason. VP Chip cards like Monument are good, too, but they almost always help engines more if ever there’s a choice for one, and they can often help Big Money more as well. Cards giving +buy or gaining something are also useful, since at the very least you can use them to grab Coppers.  Thus, Silver-gainers are really great for this kind of deck – if Copper tends to be good, then we can imagine what Silver can do for you.

General interaction with opponents
Opponents’ hand-size attacks don’t hurt as much as with say a Big Money deck, because you usually have very pitch-able cards. And one might guess that penalties from opponents’ cards will often help, too – opponents’ Vaults are brilliant for you, as are the free Silvers from Embassy. (Compare to Bishop, though, which becomes stronger for your opponent since you have little interest in the trashing.)  Cursing and junking attacks obviously still hurt (well, not if the junk is a Copper), but this is greatly mitigated in comparison with basically every other deck type – which is why they lead you to slogs in the first place. What really hurts a slog player, though, and this is in contrast to most every other deck type, is trashing attacks. Swindler, Saboteur, Pirate Ship, Thief, all very poor cards in general, really crush you by eating your economy, leaving you with a deck too swamped to do ANYTHING.

Matchups

Against Big Money
Against Big Money, slogs can really shine. This is the best match-up, in the general case, for a slog deck. You largely make them try to buy out all the Provinces, or enough to overcome whatever you can put together off of the cheaper green, and they often just don’t have the longevity to do it. If they try to build up for a long time in order to have that longevity, the Slog player should either look to build up an insurmountable lead (i.e. via having a matrix of Duchies with Gardens, Silk roads, or Dukes; sometimes just Gardens; don’t try this against Colonies) or to get a lead and then end on three piles (you see this more in cursing games, where you can pile out Duchy+Curse and some other convenient card before they get enough Provinces). If going for the VP matrix route, you should make sure to build up your economy enough to be able to complete the matrix before stalling out, though you have to balance this out against your opponent’s ability to block some of your key card and deny you.

Against Engines
Engine is a very difficult match-up for the Slog, assuming that the engine is very viable at all. If the engine is very slow to come together, then the Slog player can hope to win by accumulating a VP matrix, though he usually has less time to do this than he would against a Big Money opponent (BM may beat engines to 4 Provinces, but very rarely will engine not be able to get all 8 of them faster). But the main weapon against engine players is the three pile ending – you can cut out their ability to build the engine as large as they want, in some cases, by threatening to be able to do this if they make piles too low, and this can help you GREATLY. If they DO continue to build to far, of course, you need to be able to look at that and be willing to potentially pass up more victory cards in order to try to secure the piling out before they can catch up to you.

Against Slogs (mirror)
In the Mirror, you want to get to your key cards pretty fast – for Dukes, this is Duchy, for silk road or gardens, it is those cards – much faster than you would in other match-ups. Whereas you need to build up a bit against a Big Money deck, here it’s almost all about winning that key split, which means you want to start in pretty soon. You want to wait as long as you can before starting, so that you have the longevity to continue fighting for 5-cost VP cards after the main fight is over, but NOT at the expense of the split itself, in most every situation, as those extra points usually don’t make up for a 2-card swing of your key card (or worse!). If you win the split, look to get to the three-pile ending as efficiently as possible – most often this is by pushing for it yourself, so that your opponent doesn’t have time to rebuild and go after Provinces or something, but sometimes this means to play it slow yourself, so that your superiority in the key card (which likely cues off having more cards in your deck, either total or of a specific type) can come through. If you lose the split, you need to judge whether you can possibly re-build and get enough expensive VP cards before the game ends to overcome your deficit, or more often to try to rush smaller green cards as fast as you can, to try to three pile ending where some luck might save you.

Against the Rush
This is another tough match-up. If it’s a poor rush, you can just grab enough VP early enough for them not to be able to end the game, and then you’ve basically won. Alternatively, if they are going for the same alt-VP card as you, if you can manage to hold your own on the split, you’re often able to outlast them on secondary VP cards (i.e. against a player who is going for a gardens rush, if you can hold off the split well enough, you can hope to come out ahead by being able to get more Duchies). Generally, though, a viable rush is going to own a slog pretty badly.

Against Combo
As is basically always the case, it depends on the combo. But generally this match-up is similar to the matchup with engine, only it tends to be worse, since a combo is more likely to be able to power straight through, is generally less prone to stalling, can build up more, and usually doesn’t have to worry as much about three pile endings.

This is the second in a week-long series by WanderingWinder.  For the introduction and links to the other posts, click here.

What characterizes Big Money?
Basically, it gets the bulk of its income from treasures bigger than copper, so silver, gold, platinum, fool’s gold, venture, etc. It also doesn’t cycle particularly quickly.

Why Big Money?
The type is pretty fast to get to a certain point. This is because it is extremely efficient. You don’t underbuy very significantly or very often, and your deck doesn’t have any ancillary or support cards. Everything is there directly to get you points or to be points.

How can I play Big Money?
Like Engines, there are a number of different types of Big Money deck.

Terminal Draw
https://dominionstrategy.com/2012/06/13/terminal-draw-big-money/

Terminal Non-draw
This is money and a few non-drawing terminal cards – more than you would get in a terminal draw Big Money deck, because they’re less likely to collide. The ancillary benefits the terminals provide improves on straight money, generally significantly enough at some point that you should buy a handful extra terminals, risking some collision. Particularly good cards here include Merchant Ship, Swindler, and Monument.

Engine Hybrid
You can start adding villages (typically you want them to be money-producing) to the terminal non-draw decks, and this doesn’t really make them an engine, without draw, but you end up playing a bunch of actions. Also, you will sometimes add a little nonterminal draw to the terminal non-draw money deck, and this can maintain a money feel. Do both, and you are creeping into engine territory. A weak dividing line is how often you will pass up gold for a cheaper component, though this isn’t foolproof.

Treasure Flood
Here, you gain a lot of treasure cards, usually silver via Jack of All Trades, Trader, Bureaucrat et al., but occasionally golds through treasure map, tunnel, or hoard.

General Considerations

• The Keys to Big Money: Money Density and Opportunity Cost
• Alternate VP is really bad for Big Money. It helps basically every other kind of deck more, largely by making the game longer.
• Other than terminal draw (which despises them), these decks readily accept some useful cantrips. Particularly Peddler-types.
• Other than treasure-flood-types, the biggest problem that these decks tend to run into is stalling – they run out of steam pretty readily. Courtyard, with its ability to smooth out draws, Embassy and Vault, with their ability to discard unneeded green without a problem (note that it’s the same group of cards that can shrug off terminal collision!) and wharf, because it’s wharf (and plays almost like an engine even in BM), are also decently resilient here – unsurprisingly, they also translate to Colony games decently well, which isn’t true of most any other BM variant. The on-gain ability of Mandarin is a big help against stalling as well.
• Trashing helps money decks, but not by a lot – unless it gives you some other benefit, it’s not worth the opportunity cost
• Scaling trash-for-benefit CAN do this, particularly if you can use it on Estate early. But the main point is that in the late game, it helps the stalling problem by for instance turning a Province into another Province (Remodel and Salvager can basically do this directly, Apprentice usually can as well).
• Noble Brigand usually kills you dead
• Handsize attacks are particularly brutal (especially against Silver-flooders) against Big Money, moreso than other deck types, as generally a money deck needs most of those cards. Ghost Ship is the biggest offender here.

Matchups

Against Slogs
Against a slog, you are generally going to have sustainability issues. Treasure-floods can do well, but otherwise you are going to need to get enough Provinces fast enough, and then contest their main VP source afterwards. This will meet with varying success based on the particular versions of each deck you’re playing, but in general it’s not so hot. On the plus side, this is one of the reasonably rare situations where all the VP chip cards really help you. Sometimes it’s also possible to plan ahead and just build a very sustainable deck to piledrive or gain a huge lead on Provinces quickly enough. But not often.

Against Rushes
Here, you need to get enough points out of your big VP card before they are able to end the game. This doesn’t happen all that often, but for some of the stronger BM versions, it certainly can. This is actually one of the better matchups for Big Money. If they green too early, they won’t be able to end, and you can amass enough points to overcome their max (typically this is 8 alt VP cards at 3-4 points each, so 4-5 Provinces most often, though with Estates, this will rise to 6 in a lot of cases – plan accordingly!). If you do this, you’re in good shape. Sometimes you can contest the last one or two of their alt-VP cards; if you can do this, it’s really good, as it cuts into their ability to win by hitting a new plateau or switching to slog. However, you need to be REALLY careful, because if you don’t have enough of a lead after doing this, you are helping them pile things out, which is their whole game plan.

Against Combo
Basically you usually have to either pre-empt their combo (a Province a turn is not so hot if you have the lead and they can’t buy Provinces because it will end the game) or end the game before it is set up. Whether you can do this is extremely game specific, but in general, it’s not a great shot. As always, also watch for three pile ending possibilities.

Against Engine
This is actually the best reason to go Big Money in a lot of cases. There are two main ways you can win.

One is to three pile them – know when you can apply pressure on this, and very often, go for it over smaller VP cards like Duchy or especially Estate. This is pretty rare if they know what they’re doing though, as you can’t gain stuff that quickly.

The primary way to win is by getting to 50% of the VP before they can. After this, you might really stall, but it won’t matter (unless they can attack it back out of you!). In practice, slightly below 50% is often fine, because you can cruise for the last point or two in a lot of cases, and sometimes even without 50%, they’re going to be unable to get enough without triggering a three pile ending first.

Of course, the major problems with this approach come when 50% is a LOT of points (or when they can slow you down a lot) – with Colonies, 50% is forever. Similarly with those alt-VP cards. Perhaps most important is the VP chips in Prosperity, which are either infinite or so close that it won’t matter. In these cases (and a few others), you are forced into pile-driving Provinces (or Colonies). If they are playing well, they WILL NOT HELP YOU unless absolutely forced to do so, so prepare to buy ALL of them from the start – the same is largely true when going for 50% of the VP, you want to plan your most efficient path to it from the start.

Against Big Money (mirror)
This is the part of Big Money which has best been studied, and which most of the stuff that’s out there covers. You need to have SOME trump on your opponent – in some cases, this is greater longevity (this is particularly true, for instance, in monument decks). In most cases, it turns into a rush for Provinces. It’s extremely difficult to get four more Duchies than your opponent and THEN get the last Province after that, so if you can get to five Provinces, you’re fairly well golden. The real trick can sometimes come in the race to four. In the mirror, you have to green fast, which means there isn’t a lot of longevity (excepting treasure floods), and not a ton of room to Duchy dance. But if you can get better longevity than your opponent and they can’t blitz out to a 5 Provinces early or anything, then you are good to go Duchy dancing, and try to win that way.

This is the first article in a week-long series by WanderingWinder, originally posted on the forum.

There are five fundamental deck types in Dominion.  Usually you see people paint it as a dichotomy between “Money” and “Engines”, defined by whether you use Treasures or Actions.  Which is fine as a high-level overview, but if you want to dig a little deeper, I believe that there are actually five different kinds of decks in Dominion:

• Big Money
• Slog
• Engine
• Rush
• Combo

Of course, every deck is different, and every particular kingdom is different. And there aren’t necessarily big bright dividing lines between all five deck types – indeed, I think every type fits fairly nicely ‘between’ two others, and at some point, the two can bleed into each other.  But the core concept still holds true: there are generally five big “ideas” from which good decks arise.

This introductory article provides a short introduction to each type, as well as how they fit together on a wheel. More detailed explanations of the different types, as well as what they like and dislike, and how they matchup against each other, will follow in the coming articles.

So let’s take you around the wheel, starting with Big Money, as that’s the first strategy that people tend to find and sometimes think of as a simple solution to the game.

Big Money decks are based on getting their economy from big treasures, typically heading very quickly to their share of Provinces. They are bounded by Slogs and Engines. What this means is that at one end of Big Money (I call it hybrids in the forthcoming article on the archetype), they start getting pretty similar to Engines – you are drawing some, and you are playing a decently high number of actions every turn. On the other end of Big Money, you are getting close to Slogs – the more time you spend buying little green cards, the more important ‘little’ treasures like copper are to your deck, the more like a Slog you are playing, and the quicker you are and more you are going off the bigger treasures, the more you are going BM.

Slogs are slower and generally lead to longer games. Treasures are generally bigger parts of your economy, but rarely do you build up to have any kind of consistency in being able to get something as expensive as a Province. They are between BM (as we’ve seen) and Rushes – this is because like a Rush, they want to get a big point load off of alternate Victory Cards (say, Gardens) a lot of the time. A Rush wants to get to that as soon as can be whereas Slogs want to make them as large as can be, but there is some middle-point where the distinction is not so clear.

Rushes seek to get the lead and end the game via three-pile ending as fast as possible. They are between Slogs and Combos – like many Combos, they are going for a quick run to winning the game off of their particular, highly specialized strategy, not paying tons of attention to what the opponent does other than watching out for three pile endings.

And Combos are based on some specific combination of cards which have specific and unique synergy, setting up to more or less just win the game once they are in place, if this happens quickly enough. They are between Rushes and Engines – like many Engines, a lot of combos look to have a massively massive hand of playing a bunch of cards and buying out everything to end the game, usually in come-from behind, very forceful and stylistic fashion.

Engines themselves are between Combo and Big Money, as we have seen. They look to cycle through their deck very quickly, playing a large portion of their cards with high frequency, using good cards to play roles, but generally in a modular fashion – i.e. there is something that lets you play extra actions, something that draws you cards, something to be a payload, etc.

I should make a quick note that by-and-large, this series is ignorant of Dark Ages, as I haven’t played with those cards very much (this shouldn’t change the typologies themselves, but it could provide good examples). It was also written basically with the 2-player version of the game expressly in mind. Adding in more players definitely changes the dynamics, and having only moderate experience there, I don’t feel like I have a ton of advice to give, though I will say that it tends to improve Big Money strategies across the board, can force you into Slogs more often, and ups the need for flexibility in general, amongst other differences.

Anyway, the first article in the series is on Big Money.