Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Spiral Architect on October 25, 2012, 11:45:56 am
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Cornucopia seems like a pretty high-skill expansion, but the cards in themselves seem simple enough. Does it promote any kind of variance?
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I take it you haven't played a game with Tournament yet. ;)
Other than that, it is my second favorite expansion behind only Hinterlands. Cards like Menagerie, Horn of Plenty, Remake make for really awesome engine-style games that are quite high in terms of skill.
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Yes, it does indeed promote variance. In fact, the theme of the set is variety.
I don't think it's particularly complex, personally. Maybe Horn of Plenty is, but most of the cards are easy to grasp. The most complex sets are Dark Ages and Alchemy by far.
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Not only does Cornucopia promote variance, it rewards variance. Several cards--chiefly Menagerie, Horn of Plenty, and Harvest--perform more strongly when you have assembled a diverse deck.
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Not only does Cornucopia promote variance, it rewards variance. Several cards--chiefly Menagerie, Horn of Plenty, and Harvest--perform more strongly when you have assembled a diverse deck.
Fairgrounds
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Cornucopia is pretty cool, but I hate playing it IRL. First because, for a small set, it a lot of attack cards. Second and more importantly, there are a lot of special combos and strategies that new players get whopped with every time I play, so it's not so fun.
Examples are Horn of Plenty, Fairgrounds, and Hunting Party X.
When I'm playing with a randomizer, Cornucopia cards are usually the first to get vetoed.
Menagerie, Farming Village, and Remake are pretty awesome though!
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You may notice that as the expansions go along there's sort of an abandoning of the idea of being able to feasibly play each card as part of a physical deck, to viewing at as more of a computerized thing. So cards like Hunting Party are fairly simple, pretty awesome, and work fine in a computerized setting, but physically playing chains of Hunting Parties is a bitch. Reveal my hand, reveal cards, put card in hand, play HP, reveal hand, reveal cards, put card in hand, play HP...
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You may notice that as the expansions go along there's sort of an abandoning of the idea of being able to feasibly play each card as part of a physical deck, to viewing at as more of a computerized thing. So cards like Hunting Party are fairly simple, pretty awesome, and work fine in a computerized setting, but physically playing chains of Hunting Parties is a bitch. Reveal my hand, reveal cards, put card in hand, play HP, reveal hand, reveal cards, put card in hand, play HP...
I see it as the opposite! I was not initially concerned with cards taking too long to resolve. After Alchemy revealed that this could be an issue, I paid attention to it in later sets.
Hunting Party is easy: put your hand face up on the table.
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Cornucopia is excellent, simple and profound. My fav expansion by far. It's an advanced set in the sense that the cards are not easy to use really effectively.
But the effect of the cards are easy to understand (well, except tournament and horn of plenty).
Cornucopia is pretty cool, but I hate playing it IRL. First because, for a small set, it a lot of attack cards. Second and more importantly, there are a lot of special combos and strategies that new players get whopped with every time I play, so it's not so fun.
Examples are Horn of Plenty, Fairgrounds, and Hunting Party X.
When I'm playing with a randomizer, Cornucopia cards are usually the first to get vetoed.
Menagerie, Farming Village, and Remake are pretty awesome though!
I strongly, very strongly disagree. Perhaps there are a lot of attacks cards, but they aren't really scary (I'm an attack hater). The attack part on fortune teller is negligible, Jester is more like a gainer than an attack, and young witch always have bane. You also have a reaction (horse traders).
IRL, Horn of plenty is very fast to play. You only have count the actions in play ! And fairgrounds only matter at the end of the game.
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I just asked because we aren't the best dominion players around here, but I wanted to get another expansion and this one felt like it might work well. Not too many new cards to learn, but a lot of new things to do, you know?
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I just asked because we aren't the best dominion players around here, but I wanted to get another expansion and this one felt like it might work well. Not too many new cards to learn, but a lot of new things to do, you know?
It should be fine in that case. Really, any expansion adds plenty of depth to the game, Cornucopia being no exception. (It is also my favorite)
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You may notice that as the expansions go along there's sort of an abandoning of the idea of being able to feasibly play each card as part of a physical deck, to viewing at as more of a computerized thing. So cards like Hunting Party are fairly simple, pretty awesome, and work fine in a computerized setting, but physically playing chains of Hunting Parties is a bitch. Reveal my hand, reveal cards, put card in hand, play HP, reveal hand, reveal cards, put card in hand, play HP...
I see it as the opposite! I was not initially concerned with cards taking too long to resolve. After Alchemy revealed that this could be an issue, I paid attention to it in later sets.
Hunting Party is easy: put your hand face up on the table.
This has probably been mentioned somewhere in the secret histories that I just don't remember; but were there any cards that you abandoned only because they would take too long to resolve in real life?
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Also my favorite, hands down. Just got an IRL copy for my birthday. So happy. =)
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This has probably been mentioned somewhere in the secret histories that I just don't remember; but were there any cards that you abandoned only because they would take too long to resolve in real life?
Probably they are mostly mentioned in Secret Histories, yes. Generally slowness wouldn't be the only factor, and sometimes a card would change instead of dying. Hunting Party for example initially dug for two cards (rather than having +1 card).
Spies have been significant casualties. Dark Ages had a village that Spied every time you played an attack; play three of them and you are making three decisions per player per attack. So there's a card that just completely died due to speed; it was cute otherwise. There was a card that had everyone put a card from the supply into the trash at the start of the game; that was one of those decisions that's very slow because it's hard to see how to benefit from it. You keep trying to find a way to come out ahead. Wandering Minstrel initially dug for an action and left it on top; I changed it to looking at the top 3 in part to speed it up.
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I am a Cornucopia lover, myself. I don't always use the cards well, but I love the possibilities they create.
Not only does Cornucopia promote variance, it rewards variance. Several cards--chiefly Menagerie, Horn of Plenty, and Harvest--perform more strongly when you have assembled a diverse deck.
Fairgrounds
Given the deck's intention to create variance, it seems a little out of place that Hunting Party actively rewards very homogeneous decks. Hunting Party conflicts pretty highly with Menagerie (which is one of the iconic Cornucopia cards, IMO), but it does tend to help you to have lots of different cards in hand, which goes along well with some of the other diversity options (HoP, HT, others).
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IRL, Horn of plenty is very fast to play. You only have count the actions in play ! And fairgrounds only matter at the end of the game.
Treasures in play too ;)
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I think there is a lot of confusion between the words "variance" and "variety" in this thread, and only shark_bait got the distinction correct.
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Cornucopia is pretty cool, but I hate playing it IRL. First because, for a small set, it a lot of attack cards. Second and more importantly, there are a lot of special combos and strategies that new players get whopped with every time I play, so it's not so fun.
Examples are Horn of Plenty, Fairgrounds, and Hunting Party X.
When I'm playing with a randomizer, Cornucopia cards are usually the first to get vetoed.
Menagerie, Farming Village, and Remake are pretty awesome though!
Seconded. Some of the cards take wayyyyy to long.
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You may notice that as the expansions go along there's sort of an abandoning of the idea of being able to feasibly play each card as part of a physical deck, to viewing at as more of a computerized thing. So cards like Hunting Party are fairly simple, pretty awesome, and work fine in a computerized setting, but physically playing chains of Hunting Parties is a bitch. Reveal my hand, reveal cards, put card in hand, play HP, reveal hand, reveal cards, put card in hand, play HP...
I see it as the opposite! I was not initially concerned with cards taking too long to resolve. After Alchemy revealed that this could be an issue, I paid attention to it in later sets.
Hunting Party is easy: put your hand face up on the table.
Besides, Hunting Party is the best card in all of Dominion, IMHO!
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Got Cornucopia yesterday, and man is it a blast to play! Menagerie, Jester, and Tournament were all-stars.