Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: LastFootnote on June 08, 2015, 02:59:20 pm
-
I knew that there would be some backlash in the community about Champion, but there seems to be way more than I expected. Maybe it's just a vocal minority. How do you feel about Champion? I'll post my opinions after I set up the poll.
-
Where is the backlash? I was also worried about/looking forward to this.
-
Where is the backlash? I was also worried about/looking forward to this.
I've seen it here and there casually mentioned around the site. Basically the argument is that it trivializes the game by removing a major portion of it. As you (jsh) know, I don't personally subscribe to that argument, but there it is.
-
I've been seeing backlash too. Mostly about how the limited actions are an important mechanic of Dominion, and Champion just removes that mechanic.
I definitely disagree. Maybe if you could get Champion right away, sure. But you can't, which means that you still need to carefully balance your terminals. You want enough that Champion really helps, but not too many that you're stalling out while waiting to get Champion. It's just a different balance than you normally have. Just like how games with villages need a different terminal balance than games without.
-
I think the poll needs and option that's anti-champion but not as strong as "it sucks". Or maybe just a rewording of that option. I'm not sure if the anti-champion people I've seen would go as far as to say "it sucks".
-
Champion is fine. I hate Warrior with a passion. If I could remove one card from the game forever, it would be Warrior.
-
I think the poll needs and option that's anti-champion but not as strong as "it sucks". Or maybe just a rewording of that option. I'm not sure if the anti-champion people I've seen would go as far as to say "it sucks".
Acknowledged. Option changed.
-
I did experience the worst-case scenario introducing someone to the card, where we were playing a 4-player game and she lost both of the Travellers she bought at the beginning to other people's Warriors. In the same round. She called it "the worst game of Dominion [she's] ever played."
Champion is silly but fun, and honestly I think the Peasant line might be more game-changing.
-
I don't think there really can be much backlash against Champion until more people have played with it. And, even those who have played with it (aside from play testers) most likely have only a handful of games with that card under their belt. Until, MF implements it, I don't think a majority of us have any right to judge the card.
-
I think it looks fun. It'll be nice giving all of the shitty terminals a chance to shine. I agree that Warrior looks dumb.
-
Warrior really ruins things once you have a Champion, because they can be played as Laboratories with a crazy attack. Once, I got seven Travellers in play and proceeded to sift through my opponent's deck, trashing his only Warrior.
-
Though "infinite actions" is part of what separates Dominion from the inferior deckbuilders, it's not actually why I dislike the card.
This is a tentative opinion. I have a very limited (5-10) set of games with the card. I'm worried that, like Tournament, it might be a "mini-game" that you're almost always forced to play, because the payoff/advantage along the way is so strong. Of course, I don't entirely dislike Tournament. Rather, I mostly just prefer other cards.
This could all be tempered by learning we're overvaluing the card, or that Champion is frequently beatable, or ultimately too slow, etc. Lots of caveats remain.
-
Champion isn't worth it at all on boards where you have the time for and access to villages and there are no crippling attacks by the time you would get it. Those boards aren't uncommon, and there are also going to be plenty of boards where it's just mediocre.
-
Champion isn't worth it at all on boards where you have the time for and access to villages and there are no crippling attacks by the time you would get it. Those boards aren't uncommon, and there are also going to be plenty of boards where it's just mediocre.
The problem is that the Page line includes Warrior, which isn't automatically a crippling attack but I imagine can get to be pretty strong if the Champion player goes uncontested.
-
I've played one game with Champion and it was OK. I agree that the bigger problem is Warrior's ability to slow down other players' attempts to get Champion.
-
Champion isn't worth it at all on boards where you have the time for and access to villages and there are no crippling attacks by the time you would get it. Those boards aren't uncommon, and there are also going to be plenty of boards where it's just mediocre.
The problem is that the Page line includes Warrior, which isn't automatically a crippling attack but I imagine can get to be pretty strong if the Champion player goes uncontested.
This.
Twice now someone tried to skip the Page line (admittedly, still Adventures novices), but that person's deck was gutted. It is surprisingly hard to build a deck that relies solely on $2- and $5+ cards. Sure, you could design a kingdom for it, but most boards need the $3-4.
The stacking of the attack really is painful sometimes. If I play a couple of Pages, then a Warrior (3 card trash sift), Warrior (4 card trash sift), Warrior (5), I've just gone through 12 of your cards and culled the backbone from your deck. Many trashers take a lot of work before they can outpace gaining, but if I can look through 10-12 cards of your deck every turn and trash all of the $3-4, not just one to three that I choose, then outpacing it gets rather difficult.
-
I quite like champion. Its fun, and if the board has no villages, or expensive villages, there is an interesting tension of when to start "overbuying" terminals. You want to set your self up to quickly transition to an engine, so a few cards with extra buys or gainers are great to grab a bunch of moats or whatnot just before you play your champion.
I agree though, warrior is unfun/swingy. If you warrior your opponents warrior early on, its really frustrating and back breaking in games where champion is critical. They also chain like crazy once you get a champion, so sometimes the first person to champion really wipes out the other players decks, but that feels a little more like a big dramatic deliberate part of the game. But if it happens early its more like "oops, look we just did the same thing but now you loose".
Overall both the traveler sets have been super fun. Chains of one person after the next playing treasure hunter are a little random but wacky and fun. 6 silver? OK... Peasant was lots of fun too, and much better for engines.
-
Champion is fine; why do people even complain about Champion? They can't all be the least game-changing card ever.
-
I love this sort of craziness, as long as it doesn't show up in every single game.
It's also a decent Diadem enabler, and we didn't yet have too many of those.
-
I voted that I'm reserving judgement until I've played with it, but it's just hard to believe that it isn't overpowered when you look at it. And I was tempted to nerf it for playing IRL before playing with it. So I want to hear from people who've played at least a few games with it (and warrior because it also looks way OP).
(PS: I just got my copy of adventures, but I don't think I want to use the Page line in my first few games.)
-
I think there are lot of cards in Adventures that are late-game strong, designed to just end the game fairly quickly. This is one of them.
-
I voted that I'm reserving judgement until I've played with it, but it's just hard to believe that it isn't overpowered when you look at it. And I was tempted to nerf it for playing IRL before playing with it. So I want to hear from people who've played at least a few games with it (and warrior because it also looks way OP).
(PS: I just got my copy of adventures, but I don't think I want to use the Page line in my first few games.)
"House ruling" a card before you've ever played with it, there is no freakin' way playtesting would let something like that out. "Power level" is different from "fun/interesting level", and I believe this thread is about the later.
-
I don't get complaints about Champion's infinite actions at all. It must just be a perceptual thing. There were people saying that a card could never cost $7, because that would break the game, as if 1) that card would be in every game from that point on, 2) you would always want it when you could have it, 3) when you did get to buy it the game would actually be worse. It's the same here. Page isn't in every game, in fact you almost never see it. When you do have it you don't just start the game with Champion in your deck. Once you have that Champion you don't just naturally have a deck full of terminals. You put work into getting Champion before the game ends, into having your deck function before you get it and yet having it pay off once you've got it.
And really. In Dominion, you can play one action on your turn, except, and then buy one card, except, and then discard everything, except, and draw a new hand of five, except. Treasures just make money, except, victory cards are dead, except. There's the cost in the corner, except, and the types on the bottom, except. You open with 3/4 or 4/3 or 2/5 or 5/2; the trash has cards that are out of the game now; there are 10 kingdom cards and 7 base cards; your deck starts out with 7 coppers and 3 estates.
Over and over I tried to find anything left that there was no exception for, and made the exception. You can't just make one game into every game, because you have a particular audience and there's what they like. There are no Dominion cards that require anagramming, for example. In the 90s I sometimes tried to stretch games that far, here now it turns into Scrabble, and well it's no good, you want to find a core to rally around, and then deviate from that while staying in the area. Anyway Champion fits neatly into the framework of Dominion, it is not anagramming. And I've played with it plenty and it's pretty sweet.
Now Warrior, I can understand complaining about how demoralizing it is to lose your Warrior to someone else's Warrior. It was not overlooked, it was discussed, it was a real concern. In the end most playtesters did not mind it and as you know I let it happen. Get more than one Page, that's my advice. Get cards that cycle through your deck faster, like Dungeon; Warrior can't kill your Hero, although it also hurts to not get to upgrade that shuffle. You may wish to avoid playing with Knights and Page/Peasant in the same game; every Knight attack is so terrifying.
-
I don't get complaints about Champion's infinite actions at all.
Is this "I don't understand why people complain" or "I haven't heard/gotten any complaints about it"?
-
Adam and I complained about it in testing. Clearly Adam never warmed up to it, but I'm balmy.
-
I don't get complaints about Champion's infinite actions at all.
Is this "I don't understand why people complain" or "I haven't heard/gotten any complaints about it"?
I don't understand them.
-
Imagine if we had the intended expansion order and there was a huge active Dominion community online when Possession was unveiled...
-
Imagine if we had the intended expansion order and there was a huge active Dominion community online when Possession was unveiled...
I'd be more stoked for a better Transmute.
-
Imagine if we had the intended expansion order and there was a huge active Dominion community online when Possession was unveiled...
I am imagining many years of happy games of full random online Dominion without Possession.
-
I think Champion is pretty underwhelming for how hyped it is, and I think a lot of us would all be on the same page if we could play on a simulator.
Infinite actions barely even matters. You're getting Champion usually at least turn 10, then you have to shuffle and play it. You can't exactly have a deck full of terminal actions with no villages before that point just waiting for Champion either, so you either have to build an engine with Villages that you later don't need or you have to wait to significantly build up until your Champion is nearly in play. In both cases, you're taking a significant opportunity cost in set-up time, which isn't always made up for.
Of course there are many games where Champion is phenomenal, but it's certainly not a must-play card and it's not "whomever goes with Champion wins" or even "whomever plays Champion first wins" on a lot of boards.
-
If a Warrior trashing Warrior makes you sad you could house-rule nerf Warrior to say "... and trashes it if it costs 3 or 4 and is not a Traveller." (or just not a Warrior)
I'm not planning on doing that, but i think it fixes a big Warrior complaint.
-
I don't know if it's the infinite actions or the infinite moat - or the combination - but I feel that Champion is like Tournament or Rebuild or Possession. You can't NOT go for it, and the first person to get there has a significant advantage (unless they do something stupid like forget to track their card variance for Fairgrounds (
and I'd never do that)). Today I trashed my opponents warrior with my own - in a Colony/Platinum game where getting that Hero was as much a boost as the Champion, and present a shuffle earlier.
(It might be mentioned that my husband is pretty unhyped about the whole Adventures new mechanics, with the opinion that more rules and tokens and doodads does not make a game better. Champion just added to the general mood.)
-
If a Warrior trashing Warrior makes you sad you could house-rule nerf Warrior to say "... and trashes it if it costs 3 or 4 and is not a Traveller." (or just not a Warrior)
I'm not planning on doing that, but i think it fixes a big Warrior complaint.
Warrior trashing Warrior is intentional. It's part of making Champion harder to get, along with making TH and Hero Treasure gainers.
-
If a Warrior trashing Warrior makes you sad you could house-rule nerf Warrior to say "... and trashes it if it costs 3 or 4 and is not a Traveller." (or just not a Warrior)
I'm not planning on doing that, but i think it fixes a big Warrior complaint.
Warrior trashing Warrior is intentional. It's part of making Champion harder to get, along with making TH and Hero Treasure gainers.
I wouldn't say it was intentional. Near the end of the playtest, I suggested perhaps changing it since losing your Treasure Hunter or Warrior to someone else's Warrior is incredibly damaging and demoralizing. Donald considered it but in the end it is as you see it. I don't think it's killing the game, and it was nice to preserve the rising costs of the Travellers (as opposed to having them cost $0*).
-
I don't know if it's the infinite actions or the infinite moat - or the combination - but I feel that Champion is like Tournament or Rebuild or Possession. You can't NOT go for it, and the first person to get there has a significant advantage
I don't think there's anything inherently bad about a must-have card, or a powerful card.
I don't know about Possession, but the issue with Rebuild (and to a lesser-extent Tournament) is that it becomes the entirety of the strategy.
Almost any game with Rebuild in it involves buying Rebuilds, buying Duchies and not a whole lot else.
Any game with Page in it may very well involve a race to upgrade to Champion, but that alone is not going to win you the game.
So, unlike with Rebuild, you still have a huge number of strategic options to explore.
I mean, sure, there's Warrior for terminal draw and treasures from Hero for payload, but their availability is severely limited.
What else are you going to play to turn your infinite actions into VPs?
It's not a question with only a single answer, so there's a lot of space for plenty of interesting and varied Page games.
-
I wouldn't say it was intentional. Near the end of the playtest, I suggested perhaps changing it since losing your Treasure Hunter or Warrior to someone else's Warrior is incredibly damaging and demoralizing. Donald considered it but in the end it is as you see it. I don't think it's killing the game, and it was nice to preserve the rising costs of the Travellers (as opposed to having them cost $0*).
I don't know what the permanent record shows, but in my memory my face looms larger. I personally had the experience of Warriors dying to other Warriors and considering if it was too demoralizing or what, in games irl. I felt like I was one of the few people who found it especially demoralizing. I didn't want to sour people on this awesome 5-card thing due to this one interaction. But most people irl and online did not have a problem with it.
Yes one approach would have been to make Travellers cost $0 but that wasn't as nice for other reasons. Warrior could have changed in some other way though.
-
When I saw this, I thought first to change the trashing condition : "...and trashes it if it isn't a traveller and costs $3 or $4". Also, add a Giant-like penalty for other revealed cards.
-
I wouldn't say it was intentional. Near the end of the playtest, I suggested perhaps changing it since losing your Treasure Hunter or Warrior to someone else's Warrior is incredibly damaging and demoralizing. Donald considered it but in the end it is as you see it. I don't think it's killing the game, and it was nice to preserve the rising costs of the Travellers (as opposed to having them cost $0*).
I don't know what the permanent record shows, but in my memory my face looms larger. I personally had the experience of Warriors dying to other Warriors and considering if it was too demoralizing or what, in games irl. I felt like I was one of the few people who found it especially demoralizing. I didn't want to sour people on this awesome 5-card thing due to this one interaction. But most people irl and online did not have a problem with it.
Yes one approach would have been to make Travellers cost $0 but that wasn't as nice for other reasons. Warrior could have changed in some other way though.
I was certainly not trying to say that I had discovered this interaction. I just have a strong memory of that being one of the last conversations we had about Adventures before it was finalized. I'd just had a game where one of the players had lost her Warrior to another Warrior and was just out of the running. I said, "Hey, should we change this?"
I am not trying to assign blame here. I'm just recounting stuff. If anything I feel guilty that I didn't stress-test Warrior; just buy all Pages and see if I could decimate opponents' decks with Warriors.
-
My irl group strongly dislikes the Page line, but it's not Champion's fault. By the time you get infinite actions, you've earned it, and besides it's cool.
That said, there's a lot of things about the sequence that, in combination, make it frustrating:
- I don't think Champion is mandatory. But, if you decide to race for Champion, then starting late is foolish. Also, losing your TH/Warriors is losing the game...
- So you have to buy multiple Pages, fast. Which means you have to opt in, early and hard. Before the game really shapes up, all your eggs are in this basket...
- But Warrior is random, really random! Which card(s) will she flip? Whose Warrior is shuffled near the top of their deck? Who drew their backup Pages as fuel for the Warrior? If sifters are on the table, we all see them- they just accelerate the random selection of the best Warrior.
(Side note: Even the number of Silvers gained by TH is random, and those could affect the outcome by burying your Warrior in Silvers or absorbing enemy Warrior hits. It goes both ways, but there are more wrenches in this engine than engine parts.)
Sometimes you lose a Dominion game through sheer bad luck. A mature person accepts this, and doesn't let it dampen their enjoyment of the game. But losing the Warrior battle doesn't just suck for the usual reasons:
- Now the victor has a Champion, so when the victim plays his Warriors who have straggled behind, they can't even hit back. Ouch!
- Now the victor has a Champion, so when she plays her whole deck every turn, it includes playing her backup Warriors, who continue to mutilate her already downtrodden victims.
- Travellers are a slow strategy. When you lose to a Page mirror, you are frequently in for >30 minutes of bitterness.
I've been a winner, loser, and bystander in a Warrior battle. In 1v1 I guess you just resign, but in 3+ the victim is stuck there, knowing they have lost, and with nothing to do for the rest of the game because their deck was shuffled in the wrong order and then ripped to shreds. It's not fun for anyone at the table.
-
I don't get complaints about Champion's infinite actions at all.
Is this "I don't understand why people complain" or "I haven't heard/gotten any complaints about it"?
I don't understand them.
(note all of this is from limit play at this point, just some early impressions)
You've managed to create the rare card game where luck is present and influences victory, but still leaves a lot of room for tactical play to offset "bad luck". Champion/Warrior deviates from that in a lot of the same ways that Possession, Remake, Swindler, or Smugglers does. Where cards fall in the deck on one or two particular shuffles can basically define who wins the game (e.g. Possession - do I hit 6P or 5P on my first turn or two after buying the Pot? Remake - do I draw my final estate into my hand and have to worry about having a dead Estate? Swindler - do you flip an estate or get a $5 curse? Smugglers - do I have Smugglers the hand the turn after they buy an Altar or the turn before?).
Warrior killing Warrior is very frustrating - you just lost a lot of build up AND the other guy just cleared the hurdle to get the "I don't need villages and don't care what you play" card. If you lose your Warrior (assuming it wasn't bad play earlier) there is little offsetting to be done. Maybe you will get lucky and flip my Champion or Hero ... but generally I'm going to not need to spend buys on villages a shuffle before you (and I can even plan for that), and any future Warriors start flipping an extra card.
When you play Champion say half a shuffle before the other guy can also be huge. That might mean that I get to trash 5 of your cards, and you get to do nothing to me. In 3er or 4er this can be just brutal
We've discussed house ruling Warrior to be like Knights, if she kills a Warrior, she also dies (even after Champion is out). This makes the Champion race useful, but no so much just one or two shuffles dominate the game. We haven't tried it yet, though.
And I do mean all this an complement, you've done such a phenomenally good job at making luck present but not dominating that it is much more a "higher bar" that makes me dislike Champion than something innately bad about the design.
-
I don't get complaints about Champion's infinite actions at all.
Is this "I don't understand why people complain" or "I haven't heard/gotten any complaints about it"?
I don't understand them.
(note all of this is from limit play at this point, just some early impressions)
You've managed to create the rare card game where luck is present and influences victory, but still leaves a lot of room for tactical play to offset "bad luck". Champion/Warrior deviates from that in a lot of the same ways that Possession, Remake, Swindler, or Smugglers does. Where cards fall in the deck on one or two particular shuffles can basically define who wins the game (e.g. Possession - do I hit 6P or 5P on my first turn or two after buying the Pot? Remake - do I draw my final estate into my hand and have to worry about having a dead Estate? Swindler - do you flip an estate or get a $5 curse? Smugglers - do I have Smugglers the hand the turn after they buy an Altar or the turn before?).
Warrior killing Warrior is very frustrating - you just lost a lot of build up AND the other guy just cleared the hurdle to get the "I don't need villages and don't care what you play" card. If you lose your Warrior (assuming it wasn't bad play earlier) there is little offsetting to be done. Maybe you will get lucky and flip my Champion or Hero ... but generally I'm going to not need to spend buys on villages a shuffle before you (and I can even plan for that), and any future Warriors start flipping an extra card.
When you play Champion say half a shuffle before the other guy can also be huge. That might mean that I get to trash 5 of your cards, and you get to do nothing to me. In 3er or 4er this can be just brutal
We've discussed house ruling Warrior to be like Knights, if she kills a Warrior, she also dies (even after Champion is out). This makes the Champion race useful, but no so much just one or two shuffles dominate the game. We haven't tried it yet, though.
And I do mean all this an complement, you've done such a phenomenally good job at making luck present but not dominating that it is much more a "higher bar" that makes me dislike Champion than something innately bad about the design.
It looks like you're replying to my post, but you aren't really. You're talking about Warrior. I already said I understand people not enjoying Warriors killing Travellers.
-
I am not trying to assign blame here. I'm just recounting stuff. If anything I feel guilty that I didn't stress-test Warrior; just buy all Pages and see if I could decimate opponents' decks with Warriors.
Ultimately of course it's me any which way. It was my call.
Anyway I still enjoy the Page line a lot, or else no doubt I would have changed it, one way or another. It was hard to say what % of normal non-playtester-type people would hate Warriors killing Warriors. The game can't be as timid as possible at every turn, desperate to not be hated, or else nothing in it will be loved either. And the cards can't all be infinitely wordy. Warrior was obv. fine except for that interaction; and that interaction was not clearly awful, it was a question. I would have just dodged it with the zero-space fix of making the cards cost $0, but having them go $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 was doing good work.
-
In testing I think I saw a Warrior get trashed one time. It's certainly annoying, but you can always get more Treasure Hunters to get Silver buffers. I don't think the Warrior threat is that bad. If it happens, well, you move on with life. Hopefully your deck has a B plan.
-
In testing I think I saw a Warrior get trashed one time. It's certainly annoying, but you can always get more Treasure Hunters to get Silver buffers. I don't think the Warrior threat is that bad. If it happens, well, you move on with life. Hopefully your deck has a B plan.
Yes, I am trying to think of it relative to your opponent's Sea Hag flipping over your Sea Hag on turn 4. It's not the end of the world, and occasionally you can come back to win.
-
If you lose your Warrior
Maybe you should have gotten more than one...
-
Maybe you should have gotten more than one...
We've seen it in about a dozen games so far. I like the card, but we did have one case of Warrior elimination. Of course, that player had two traveller sets going in their deck and it didn't have much of an effect. Even then, I don't see this as a problem with Champion but with forced trashing effects - which you have to admit can be devastating.
Ironically, Champion's effects don't stack well with itself. Oh the jokes write themselves.
My overall opinion remains similar to my initial one - it's a powerful effect hampered by how long\much effort it takes to get to the table. By the time it hits, critical early turns have already been lost to attacks and you've probably had to buy a village or two by now anyway.
-
Warrior really ruins things once you have a Champion, because they can be played as Laboratories with a crazy attack. Once, I got seven Travellers in play and proceeded to sift through my opponent's deck, trashing his only Warrior.
If you get Champion first, this attack is brutal, and on boards where Champion is on, you kind of need to do this, similar to Urchin.
-
Imagine if we had the intended expansion order and there was a huge active Dominion community online when Possession was unveiled...
I am imagining many years of happy games of full random online Dominion without Possession.
Possession really isn't that bad. Often times, you can avoid it, and if you are going for it, you're likely to lose anyways.
-
In multiplayer, I feel the traveller mechanic can be a bit political, because players can purposely not exchange their travellers to prevent others from getting them. This is more prominent with the Page line, due to Warrior and Champion.
-
If you lose your Warrior
Maybe you should have gotten more than one...
There's an odd number of Warriors, so somebody always gets an inherent (dis)advantage (except in 5er).
The Page line has had two key major shuffle moments whenever I've played it (and yes a couple of times I've bought nothing but Pages to start, draw a bit later): Warrior killing Warrior and Warrior flipping Champion(Hero)/Champion(Hero) being bottom decked.
Sometimes Champion doesn't matter at all, you can easily cycle your deck ... but those also seem to be the boards where Champion isn't worth the bother so much. When Champion is most worth getting it seems to be for stuff like taking a slow BM-esque board and warping it into a light speed super engine board. Flipping a Champion/Hero can be the functional equivalent of gaining 2 or 3 turns on your opponent. Worse, it can easily stack up where Champion/Warrior/Page can kill off a lot of cards really quickly. Worst case is something like pre-Champion you play maybe 7 cards. Post-Champion you snap up a few Smithies and play a not-fully-trashed deck every turn. Flipping Champion can easily mean that the unlucky guy has to wade through 4 turns before they can draw deck and by then the deck drawer can do A LOT of damage (or buy out many points)
Even when Warrior killing Warrior is completely averted (say you can easily manage to always have Lighthouse out), you still get some really swingy results based on when Champion gets played.
So yeah, the Dominion cards I most dislike are the ones that have very high variance, don't allow for a lot of tactical adaptation, and have very unique effects that make games very annoying when the game can come down to single shuffles.
Again, none of this is to say that the Page line are bad or anything. I, and the people I tend to play with IRL, don't like Possession, Swindler, or Rebuild in large part because one shuffle is so important. That's life. The fact that we have that luxury is just because Dominion is so well done that it tends to be the exception and not the rule.