Dominion strategies

(This is written for those who know the game Dominion - otherwise it will probably just sound confusing.)

I've played Dominion a lot of times now - 20-something in person, and a bunch on BrettSpielWelt. So much of the time, players (including me) have thought the Remodel card to not be a whole lot of use, but yesterday one of the players put it to good use.

Early in the game, he drew a Thief. I didn't want to get hosed by the Thief, so I decided to avoid collecting money and instead draw a bunch of Festivals. From turn to turn, I seemed to keep having enough money to buy Festivals. But as I went, he was starting to remodel one thing after another and was soon drawing Provinces. This had me nervous - I had never seen someone do that before. I knew I needed to hurry.

By now I had a small deck loaded with Festivals. I knew that I needed more card-drawing if I was going to have large enough sums of money each turn to buy Provinces. So I started buying up Council Rooms. On the last few rounds, I was able to lay down sets of Festivals and Council Rooms which gave me enough money and buys to purchase two items per turn. This turned out to secure my comeback. At scoring time, we were both sure he had won, but upon counting and recounting, I had pulled in 32 points to his 28, thanks to my Festival/Council Room combo. Still, on the next game, Remodel was available again, and my buddy was back to his Remodel strategy, sure it would work this time....