Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Rules Questions => Topic started by: Drab Emordnilap on January 05, 2016, 11:46:04 pm

Title: Mission and Outpost
Post by: Drab Emordnilap on January 05, 2016, 11:46:04 pm
This came up at a tournament I was running:

If someone plays Outpost, and in the same turn buys Mission, what turns do they take and why?
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: Roadrunner7671 on January 05, 2016, 11:48:52 pm
Both? That makes sense to me, but I originally wanted to find a 'mind blown' emoji and post that here. So only use my answer if it's the only one.
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: GendoIkari on January 05, 2016, 11:50:47 pm
This came up at a tournament I was running:

If someone plays Outpost, and in the same turn buys Mission, what turns do they take and why?

At the end of their turn, they will draw only 3 cards instead of 5 (no matter what).

Then, 2 things are supposed to happen to them at the same time (Mission turn and Outpost turn), so they choose the order.

If they choose Mission turn first, then after Mission Turn, Outpost turn will fail to happen, because Outpost says that it cannot cause you to take a third turn.

If they choose Outpost turn first, then after Outpost turn, Mission turn WILL still happen, because Mission's restriction happens when you buy Mission, the "if the previous turn wasn't yours" was already satisfied.
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: liopoil on January 06, 2016, 12:33:09 am
darn so playing outpost on a mission turn doesn't work.
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: enfynet on January 06, 2016, 12:45:05 am
Right.

Although, I've often wondered how messy Mission gets without the Once Per Turn clause.
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: Erick648 on January 07, 2016, 06:09:11 pm
Although, I've often wondered how messy Mission gets without the Once Per Turn clause.

It's pretty horrific with Monument:
1. Build a deck that's guaranteed to generate $4 every turn (simply trashing your Estates/Shelters is sufficient if you don't add any stop cards other than your trasher and a single Monument) and contains at least one Monument.
2. Play Monument if it's in your hand; either way, play $4 and buy Mission.
3. Repeat #2 as many times as you can stand, gathering an unlimited number of VP tokens (remember, they're not component-limited).

What makes it worse is, unless there's some way to 3-pile, there's no way to actually end the game, meaning you have to eventually give a turn to your opponent.  If he can mirror before you can end the game, it eventually comes down to a test of patience.


Alternatively, if you can gain a VP lead without sacrificing your ability to always hit $4, use a single copy of a Workshop variant to very slowly pile out Copper, Silver, and any Action card that provides +1 Action and either +1 Card or +$1 (either of which ensures you still hit $4).


You can also use the infinite Mission strategy to try to get the perfect hand (although situations where this works are probably rarer than might be initially thought; connecting Treasure Maps is the first thing that comes to mind, but that probably wouldn't be as broken or slow as other situations).


Basically, the ability to take infinite turns as long as you always hit $4 makes things go really slowly as long as you can accomplish at least something productive with at least some of those turns (even if it's just reducing the Copper pile by 1 once per shuffle).  And that's assuming that people are playing to win legitimately; it gets even worse if someone just wants to stall until his opponent resigns.
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: markusin on January 07, 2016, 07:07:10 pm
^ Huh? You can't use the Mission effect unless the previous turn wasn't yours, as written on the card. Without Outpost, you can only have two turns in a row before your opponent gets a turn. There is no Infinite Mission strategy.
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: enfynet on January 07, 2016, 07:43:09 pm
^ Huh? You can't use the Mission effect unless the previous turn wasn't yours, as written on the card. Without Outpost, you can only have two turns in a row before your opponent gets a turn. There is no Infinite Mission strategy.
Right. You would need to finish a turn with enough money and buys to buy many multiple Missions.
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: markusin on January 07, 2016, 07:49:29 pm
^ Huh? You can't use the Mission effect unless the previous turn wasn't yours, as written on the card. Without Outpost, you can only have two turns in a row before your opponent gets a turn. There is no Infinite Mission strategy.
Right. You would need to finish a turn with enough money and buys to buy many multiple Missions.

You can't even do that. It says "Once per turn" at the start of the card text.
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: clb on January 07, 2016, 07:53:33 pm
I'm pretty sure he was describing the horrid mess that is possible, which prompts the "once per turn" and "if the previous turn wasn't yours" clauses.

Although, I've often wondered how messy Mission gets without the Once Per Turn clause.

It's pretty horrific with Monument:
1. Build a deck that's guaranteed to generate $4 every turn (simply trashing your Estates/Shelters is sufficient if you don't add any stop cards other than your trasher and a single Monument) and contains at least one Monument.
2. Play Monument if it's in your hand; either way, play $4 and buy Mission.
3. Repeat #2 as many times as you can stand, gathering an unlimited number of VP tokens (remember, they're not component-limited).
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: enfynet on January 07, 2016, 08:08:29 pm
^ Huh? You can't use the Mission effect unless the previous turn wasn't yours, as written on the card. Without Outpost, you can only have two turns in a row before your opponent gets a turn. There is no Infinite Mission strategy.
Right. You would need to finish a turn with enough money and buys to buy many multiple Missions.

You can't even do that. It says "Once per turn" at the start of the card text.

Yeah, the discussion branched off from here:

Although, I've often wondered how messy Mission gets without the Once Per Turn clause.
So leaving the "Previous Turn" statement in place, what kind of shenanigans could you come up without the Once Per Turn statement.
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: Erick648 on January 07, 2016, 09:22:50 pm
^ Huh? You can't use the Mission effect unless the previous turn wasn't yours, as written on the card. Without Outpost, you can only have two turns in a row before your opponent gets a turn. There is no Infinite Mission strategy.
Right. You would need to finish a turn with enough money and buys to buy many multiple Missions.

You can't even do that. It says "Once per turn" at the start of the card text.

Yeah, the discussion branched off from here:

Although, I've often wondered how messy Mission gets without the Once Per Turn clause.
So leaving the "Previous Turn" statement in place, what kind of shenanigans could you come up without the Once Per Turn statement.
Oops, misread which clause you were referring to.

In that case, there probably aren't as many potential abuses (especially since cost reduction doesn't work on Events), but it could still get bad if you had a deck that used a lot of Gainers and VP tokens and managed to buy it several times.  Best case scenario is probably something like you use a bunch of Gold/Plantinum to buy Missions, then slowly remodel it into Provinces/Colonies.  A Governor deck could probably get good use out of it (get Gold with Governors, use Governors to draw your deck and buy lots of Missions with the Gold, then use the Remodel function to pick up Provinces from your Gold on the Mission turns).  I can't think of any extreme scenarios offhand, but I can see why it would be more balanced with the limit. 

Not to mention that having to sit while your opponent takes several turns in a row (which would likely happen at low-level play even if the Mission-buyer had no way to capitalize off of those extra turns) is no fun.
Title: Re: Mission and Outpost
Post by: markusin on January 07, 2016, 09:49:13 pm
^ Huh? You can't use the Mission effect unless the previous turn wasn't yours, as written on the card. Without Outpost, you can only have two turns in a row before your opponent gets a turn. There is no Infinite Mission strategy.
Right. You would need to finish a turn with enough money and buys to buy many multiple Missions.

You can't even do that. It says "Once per turn" at the start of the card text.

Yeah, the discussion branched off from here:

Although, I've often wondered how messy Mission gets without the Once Per Turn clause.
So leaving the "Previous Turn" statement in place, what kind of shenanigans could you come up without the Once Per Turn statement.

Whoopsie. Carry on.

Well, without the once-per-turn clause, you can set up a bunch of turns to play a while bunch of Possessions.