S66 C Champs Finals: arfarfarf vs. juniper.sona

[@juniper_sona]

(game 2 was really cool and sad it didn't survive in the video because I opened mountain village for higher upside that landed) game 3: I don't think grotto does all that much after you trash down and I was already behind arfarfarf because of the nuts early forge they got with the econ boost, so I felt I had to hope that their overtreasuring would enable them to dud while I built better but I think I took one too many golds with the prosper, in which case maybe I shouldn't have even bought prosper there. It's my feeling that arfarfarf underplayed their deck but that dud I got was lethal being already on my backfoot. the young witch i only took because they opened silver (which i was not a fan of) and i puzzled out their second turn hand and figured i might as well junk them while giving myself additional scouting opportunities to hit $7 for forge.

[@juniper_sona]

game 4: the only real way to megaturn with horn is to go for a native village thing because you're otherwise not really playing with anything beyond a 6 card hand. shanty town is awful at card draw not really working beyond the first play. if I was to replay this board I think I would have gone more for native village just because it can megaturn and that is probably the winning strategy here. a hand of exactly 6 horns is nice but it assumes you keep your handsize and there's no consistent way to do this and hit 8 uniques in play other than native village. first conspirator feels worse than vassal because it's unlikely I trigger the draw but with vassal I at least can scout the top of my deck for an action. I hated my conspirator buy and even considered vassal there but for some reason didn't get it. The taskmaster stuff I was doing earlier was just awful, I was gambling on hitting $5 and having economy forever afterwards.

[@juniper_sona]

game 5: i thought silver was okay (not great) here, i took it to hit Livery since I was pairing it with carpenter already (conclave is unusable on this board). Bonfiring makes it really hard to hit $5 and taking Well is a bit risky and also doesn't hit $5 very often. That was my thought process with my opening. Looking back I think I would have bonfired since Livery did so little for a long time and I can more quickly get carpenter loops going. That mistake put me into a massive hole. My wishes this game were dreadful and was too lazy to sit back and calculate what was in my deck. The courtier buy was just worse than Royal Carriage but already felt very behind and was going for more high variance stuff because of the awkward draws. for example on turn 8 I could have gotten two cards with carpenter using carriage and I think I had to just bonfire there already over getting the horse. I was on my back foot pretty hard but managed to steal this game with clever positioning with provinces and carpenters. arfarfarf only made it easier to go for this and overgreened enabling the steal. On the turn i single provinced (just for tempo pressure to set up stealing chances) I went for sleighs over the livery because sleighs can save my turn from duds with its react so it felt better to me

[@juniper_sona]

game 6 was just a total disaster

[@juniper_sona]

game 7: arfarfarf for some reason bought soothsayer over upgrade and from there i was in the driver's seat, can only assume they got fatigued from the match length and wouldn't have done that on the first game. I trash copper over estate because silvers are worse than nothing at that point and i want to thin down to do upgrade gain loops. i should have apprenticed the fool at multiple points early and not sure why i didn't. didn't like my securing of basilica points, i overestimated how much my deck could do with the silver bloat