Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: Drab Emordnilap on April 02, 2013, 11:44:39 am
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I finally convinced some friends to try this this weekend. What we played was, you sit opposite your partner. The only differences from normal Dominion are:
1) You combine VP with your partner at the end of the game to see which team wins.
2) Attack cards don't affect your partner (even if you would rather they did). It's like your partner has a Lighthouse in play on your turns.
And here's the one that makes it really neat:
3) Any time you would gain a card, your partner gains it instead, to the same place you would have gained it. (Pretend this works; it probably technically doesn't.)
I have no idea exactly what this does to the strategy to the game, which is why I'm excited to try it more. (We only played once; my partner got annoyed with me for opening Moneylender/Steward for him on an engine board.) Random note: You can build an engine that buys VP without the VP clogging the engine, but then the deck that buys parts for the engine loses value and can't buy parts anymore.
I think it's interesting, and if anyone else has ever tried it, I'd love to hear about it. For me, anything is better than 4 player Dominion. ._.
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I like that very much =) unfortunatly i almost never play with 4 people IRL.
This mode Opens new interesting strategys. E.G. play a mine trash a Copper and give your partner a 6 card hand with an extra silver.
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Omg that is seriously confusing.
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Omg that is seriously confusing.
What's confusing?
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Its gotta be broken.
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See my sleep deprived ramblings at http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=412.msg5431#msg5431 and a mini-revival of the concept at http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2659.msg42769#msg42769
It's worth a shot, and I haven't played it enough to make a good assessment on whether it's a good variant. In very abstract terms, it turns "snowball your own deck" into "snowball their deck so they can snowball your deck", and the result is that you have bigger delay between making a good deck and reaping the rewards from it.
If you don't have gainers, the game doesn't change too drastically. Strategy comes down to making sure your deck types are compatible. For instance, engine + pure BM is pretty bad, because the BM player can only buy one part a turn for the engine, which is usually not good enough to make the engine start.
If you have gainers, a lot of cards become pretty interesting. The balance becomes questionable though (for instance, it is theoretically possible to Swindler-pin).
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So just to clarify, when you buy an IGG, your opponent would still get a curse, right? But then that means that you end up getting it instead?
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So just to clarify, when you buy an IGG, your opponent would still get a curse, right? But then that means that you end up getting it instead?
Each opponent would get a curse, which their partner would gain instead. Remember it's a four player game.
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And you would get a cusre and your partner would get the IGG…but if your partner got the IGG then you would gain the curse forcing him to gain it.
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So just to clarify, when you buy an IGG, your opponent would still get a curse, right? But then that means that you end up getting it instead?
You, player A, are partnered with player C against players B and D.
A buys IGG. A would gain IGG, therefore C gains it instead.
C gained IGG, triggering it's ability. A, B, and D would gain a Curse, so instead C, D, and B gain a Curse.
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I see a potential problem/difference in the fact that you can green without affecting your deck. As soon as you have something going, your partner can stop gaining further cards and just wait (hopefully atacking the opponents) as you roll over every Province or Colony. If there is some good trasher and no attack, it seems that you can quickly get to a deck of $8 and 5 cards, and buy a Province every round while only fattening your partner's deck. It seems like having roles like this could be optimal in many boards.
I.e., your partner opens chapel/silver for you, then your partner buys silvers on t3/t4/t5 while you chapel down everything. You can probably start buying a Province per turn starting on turn 6 or 7, so you get to 6 Provinces by turn 11, which is pretty darn fast compared to single player BM+trashing strategies. Notice how faster the chapel game is when you can trash down while someone else builds the economy for you.
If there are engine possibilities, this could be even more extreme. Even adding one component at a time is pretty good if you can start greening early. Buy a couple of wharfs and then make your poor partner flood with green and coppers while buying villages/silvers/cheap virtual money for you, you will quickly draw your entire deck and keep doing so until the end.
In conclusion, both greening and trashing seem pretty different than in a regular game. Don't know if this is enough for it to be broken or anything, and even if it is, it would probably be exciting for at least a couple of games until the brokenness raises.
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I hadn't thought about the fact that one player could just stop buying cards. My main concern there would be if it ends up being optimal for one player to essentially stop playing after they've set up their partner's deck. Games where the winning move is not to play aren't very much fun for that player.
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I hadn't thought about the fact that one player could just stop buying cards. My main concern there would be if it ends up being optimal for one player to essentially stop playing after they've set up their partner's deck. Games where the winning move is not to play aren't very much fun for that player.
Well, you can always try to buy them more Silver or whatever other cheap piece helps them a little bit, but yes, it would be a secondary job. Notice that the player buying the green is not having the time of their life either, always saying "I buy a Province" is not precisely fun, at least the player with the incoming green gets to shuffle once in a while and get happy if they draw $3.
There is also minor adjustments like buy an Estate whenever your partner has enough Silver to have an edge, but is definitely not the best Dominion.
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At least games where one player has 5 cards and buys a Province every turn will end shortly thereafter.
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What about cache? If I buy a cache, my partner gains it, and then I gain the copper correct?
And by combine VP: Do you combine your decks or do you just combine the score of each deck. This is very different for all the alt VP cards.
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So just to clarify, when you buy an IGG, your opponent would still get a curse, right? But then that means that you end up getting it instead?
You, player A, are partnered with player C against players B and D.
A buys IGG. A would gain IGG, therefore C gains it instead.
C gained IGG, triggering it's ability. A, B, and D would gain a Curse, so instead C, D, and B gain a Curse.
Right, I had it backwards because you don't gain the IIG if you buy it. Mainly I was clarifying that even though attacks don't hurt your partner, IGG does still hurt your team because it isn't an "attack."
Also, there needs to be something in the rules to stop "when you would gain a card, your partner gains it instead" from simply being an infinite back-and-forth.... because I buy Silver; I would gain Silver so my partner gains it instead; then my partner would gain Silver so I gain it instead; then I....
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Also, there needs to be something in the rules to stop "when you would gain a card, your partner gains it instead" from simply being an infinite back-and-forth.... because I buy Silver; I would gain Silver so my partner gains it instead; then my partner would gain Silver so I gain it instead; then I....
And I would play without Trader, just to be safe.
EDIT: There is also strange things with Possession, Watchtower, Royal Seal, any on-gain hability.
Probably everything can be solved by just making the original player gain the card and then move it (without additional gaining, à la Masquerade) to the corresponding place in their teammate's area. Therefore, the player buying Border Village gains it and therefore chooses what else to gain, even though both cards are going to their teammate. And also, the original player can reveal Trader for Silver or Watchtower to change where the card is going, but the teammate getting the card can't, because they did not gain it.
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Getting tortured can really make you angry at your teammate. Torturer boards seem like the perfect board for the roles I was talking about, just take Curses for your teammate and they can discard their crappy hand anyway, so the guy with the good deck is basically immune (barring the -1 VP) to the attack, and therefore probably attacks the other team much more successfully.
About trying this, I see almost no harm in trying it with two players, each playing two decks (of course there is a little more info shared among the two teammates than with two different people, but is not too much information and it probably only makes a big difference in a couple of edge cases like Torturer or Masquerade decisions).
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Re: gaining back and forth infinitely: this is the situation I had in mind when I said "pretend this works". Here's a rule that's dirty but works -- when you would gain a non-snarfblat card, instead, it becomes a snarfblat card until someone gains it, and your partner gains it.
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Re: gaining back and forth infinitely: this is the situation I had in mind when I said "pretend this works". Here's a rule that's dirty but works -- when you would gain a non-snarfblat card, instead, it becomes a snarfblat card until someone gains it, and your partner gains it.
Ha, reminds me of the "Substance" keyword in Magic.
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Wanted to put this back in front of people; this is the only way we play 4 player Dominion now in my group, and I like it a lot. Some other clarifications we've decided on:
Any time a card says it affects "other players" (Embassy, Vault, etc), it means "opponents". Except Masquerade, because Masquerade is more fun if everyone gets to do it.
Attacks still don't affect your partner, even if you want them to (Spy and Oracle mostly).
Smugglers says "Gain a copy of a card costing up to $6 that the player to your left gained on his partner's last turn."
When you're gaining a card from your partner, it goes to the "correct" place. Nomad Camp goes on top of your partner's deck, Mine gains the treasure to their hand, etc.
Buying events is just like a regular game (If you buy Lost Arts, move your token, not your partner's), but if the event gains cards, your partner gains them as normal.
I'm looking at running a tournament for this in January; are there any other edge cases that there should be a rule for, one way or the other?
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Trader tennis? I buy something, partner gains it, partner reveals trader, I gain a silver, I reveal trader, partner gains silver, etc.
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Tournament says "Each player" not a reference to an "other player", so if you want the functionality to be similar to Vault you should make that clear. (It's not hard to find a case where a partner would want to reveal a province to block his buddy's Tournament. Since Tournament doesn't let you opt out of the draw if you have a Province in hand yourself that seems against the spirit of the card in the spirit of doubles. But it's more important that you have some clear consistent ruling)
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At one point I thought about designing some fan cards that would only do something in team Dominion. I never had time to refine the ideas, though.
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Getting close to needing to finalize things; here's the current rules document. Anything glaringly missing (besides the tournament specific information [rounds, pairings, times, etc]; this document is just rules)?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E-zzJhdSWd2yPuzwwWKYh5_117krcNO09sadpoTVPrc/edit?usp=sharing
The text of the document, copied and pasted (so probably going to lose some formatting):
PARTNERSHIP DOMINION
[XXX]TOURNAMENT ORG
Set up the game by the standard Dominion rules for four players, with the following exceptions:
--Partnership Dominion is played in two teams of two players each.
--Players are seated directly across from their partner, so that turns alternate between teams.
--A team’s score is the combined score of the two players on that team. The team with the higher score wins the game.
--Use only 20 Curse cards, instead of 30.
--Use only 20 Ruin cards, instead of 30 (if applicable).
--After selecting the kingdom, you may privately discuss strategy with your partner. Once the game begins, however, all communication is public -- for example, you may tell all players what is in your hand, but you can’t whisper this information to your partner.
Play the game by the standard Dominion rules for four players, with the following exceptions:
--Whenever you would gain a card, instead, your partner gains that card. If you would be gaining that card to somewhere other than your discard pile, your partner gains it to the appropriate place.
--Cards that use the phrase “Each other player” or “Another player” refer only to opponents.
--Cards that use the phrase “Each player” still refer to each player in the game.
A walkthrough of the steps of the buy phase, including the differences for Partnership Dominion:
First, play any number of treasures and spend any number of Coin Tokens.
Add the values of the treasures played and Coin Tokens spent to any $ you produced during your Action Phase to determine how much $ you have to spend.
You may buy a card (or event), resolving any "when you buy" effects.
Resolve any "when you would gain" effects.
Your partner gains that card and resolves any "when you gain" effects.
If you have +Buy, go back to step 3.
A note about Events:
--Events aren't cards; you don't gain them. If they would make you gain a card, your partner gains that card, but otherwise, they work normally. (Seaway places your +Buy token, but your partner ends up gaining the card, for example.)
Individual card clarifications:
Border Village: if you would gain Border Village, your partner ends up gaining it, and chooses a cheaper card for you to end up gaining from Border Village.
Cache: if you would gain Cache, your partner gains it, and you therefore end up gaining the two Coppers.
Champion: If you're immune to an attack that would have you gain a card (such as Witch), you end up protecting your partner. You can still end up gaining the curse your partner would have gained, if they’re not immune to the attack.
Death Cart: If you would gain Death Cart, your partner ends up gaining it, and you end up gaining the two Ruins.
Doctor: The player who buys and overpays for the card gets the overpay effect, not the person who ends up gaining it.
Duchess: When you gain a Duchy (that your partner would have gained), you may choose to gain a Duchess, which your partner will end up gaining.
Explorer: The person playing Explorer has the opportunity to reveal a Province, not their partner gaining the Silver (or Gold).
Fortress: Putting fortress into your hand after trashing it isn't "gaining" it, so you’ll have it in your hand, not your partner.
Haggler: Your partner ends up gaining both the bought card and the haggled card.
Herald: See Doctor.
Hoard: When you buy a Victory card, your partner ends up gaining the Victory card and the Gold.
Ironworks: The person playing ironworks gets the appropriate bonus, even though their partner is gaining the card.
Lighthouse: See Champion.
Masquerade: All four players pass cards as normal.
Masterpiece: When you buy Masterpiece, your partner ends up gaining all the cards: the cards from the overpay ability, plus Masterpiece itself.
Moat: See Champion.
Mountebank: When an opponent plays Mountebank, either you discard a Curse, or your partner ends up gaining the Curse and Copper.
Oracle: Unlike most Attacks, this card affects all players, including your partner. (See the "Each player" rule.)
Page: Exchanging a card doesn't count as "gaining" it.
Peasant: See Page.
Possession: On a turn created by a Possession you played, cards that would be gained by the (possessed) active player (your left-hand opponent) end up being gained by your partner.
Saboteur: Players make decisions clockwise from the active player. If player A plays Saboteur, when player B trashes a card and gains one costing 2 less (to their partner D), player D could end up trashing the newly gained card.
Royal Seal: See ERRATA.
Scrying Pool: See Oracle.
Smugglers: See ERRATA.
Spy: See Oracle.
Stonemason: See Masterpiece.
Summon: See ERRATA.
Swindler: Players make decisions clockwise from the active player. If player A plays Swindler, when player B trashes a card and gains one costing the same (to their partner D), player D could end up trashing the newly gained card.
Talisman: Your partner gets both the card you bought, and the copy.
Torturer: Players make decisions clockwise from the active player. If player A plays Torturer, and player B chooses "gain a curse" into player D's hand, player D can choose "discard 2 cards" and discard the Curse and one other card.
Tournament: When you play Tournament, each player may reveal a Province, including your partner. Your partner revealing a Province will have the same result as an opponent revealing a Province, however -- you won’t get +1 Card, +$1, and neither you nor your partner will gain a Prize for your partner's Province.
Trader: If you would gain a card (and therefore have your partner gain the card), you may reveal Trader. If you do, your partner gains a Silver instead of the card you would have gained. Either way, your partner can't then reveal Trader; "would gain" already happened on your end.
Traveling Fair: See ERRATA.
Treasure Hunter: See ERRATA.
Trusty Steed: If you choose the fourth option, your partner will gain the 4 Silvers, but you'll put your deck into your discard pile.
Watchtower: The player who ends up gaining the card has the opportunity to reveal Watchtower to trash or topdeck it, since this happens after the card is fully gained.
ERRATA:
These cards require errata to function under the rules of Partnership Dominion. Replace the appropriate text with the listed text below.
Royal Seal: ERRATA: "While this is in play, when your partner gains a card, he may put that card on top of his deck."
Smugglers: ERRATA. "Gain a card costing up to $6 that the player to your left gained on his partner's last turn."
Summon: ERRATA: "Gain an Action card costing up to $4. Your partner sets it aside. If he does, then at the start of his next turn, he plays it."
Traveling Fair: ERRATA: "When your partner gains a card this turn, he may put it on top of his deck."
Treasure Hunter: ERRATA: "Gain a silver per card the player to your left gained on his partner's last turn."
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I've played this once, but I'll suggest next time I play with 4 we try this. The rules look good to me, the only thing I do differently is you can discuss strategy before the game begins, but once the game starts you can't tell your partner what you're going to do on your turn or what to buy you. Granted, I've only played this way once, but it added an element of tension and making sure you know both decks well and have a well thought out strategy from the start
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What we played was, you sit opposite your partner. The only differences from normal Dominion are:
1) You combine VP with your partner at the end of the game to see which team wins.
2) Attack cards don't affect your partner (even if you would rather they did). It's like your partner has a Lighthouse in play on your turns.
And here's the one that makes it really neat:
3) Any time you would gain a card, your partner gains it instead, to the same place you would have gained it. (Pretend this works; it probably technically doesn't.)
Just coming here to say that my 4-player group played some games with similar rules. Beforehand, I didn't think to come look and see if there were already rules proposed, but with our variation, #3 was instead
3) Any time you would buy a non-Victory card, your partner gains it instead, to the same place you would have gained it.
By only sending bought cards across the table instead of all gained cards, it helps some of the confusion around gaining rules, and it adds a little more variation in that your deck is doing some things for you and some for your partner. By having your deck keep the Victory cards it buys, you can't just have the good deck keep singing while the other takes all the dead cards. I think this might help with some of the difficulties raised in this thread.
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I think it'd be fine to limit the additional rules to:
1 Attack cards you play do not affect your partner
2 You add up VP at the end.
So IGG, Raid & Noble Brigand are a tad worse, but whatever. Saves all that rules issues.
I admit the ability to have your partner gain your cards is fun, though. Maybe you can still have that fun by creating specific cards? I mean, it won't pay to have them actually printed, but it'd make a nice thought experiment. Here we go:
Collaboratory, 5$, Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Your partner draws a card.
Coworkshop, 3$, Action
Your partner gains a card costing up to 4$. (Yes, I'm aware this is basically the OP rules implemented on per-card basis)
Strategist, 5$, Action-Duration
Discard your hand. If you discard any cards this way, at the start of your partner's turn, they get +5 Cards, +1 Action, +1 Buy
Baroness, 4$, Action
Choose one:
+2$;
Your partner gains a Duchy.
Penduler, 5$, Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1$
Put this in your partner's discard pile.
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I mean, it won't pay to have them actually printed, but it'd make a nice thought experiment.
Seems like a good idea to me. I wouldn't mind a whole expansion designed just for playing with partners, and I would print it off because I play lots of 4-player games.
The pricing of cards like this gets interesting. You have Collaboratory listed at $5 which is the same as Laboratory. Should it cost $4 because it has a delayed payoff like Caravan?
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Should it cost $4 because it has a delayed payoff like Caravan?
I have absolutely no idea. Worth noting, it's also vulnerable to discard attacks.
Maybe it could give +1 Buy to the player themselves?
I'll just throw in a few more:
Conman, Action, 3$
Either you gain a Copper or your partner does, your choice.
Either you gain a card costing up to 6$ or your partner does, your choice.
Dealer, Action, 4$
+1 Action
Your partner may reveal a card costing up to 6$ from their hand. Gain a copy of it.
Maverick, Action 4$
Your partner may reveal an Action card from their hand. Choose one:
+1 Action;
Play this as if it was the revealed card and this is that card until it leaves play.
(Edit: This probably shouldn't cost more than 4$ compared to BoM...)
Steeple, Action, 2$
Draw cards until you have 6 in hand.
Your partner may trash a card from their hand.
Wagons, Action, 4$
+1 Card
+2 Actions
Your partner may gain a Silver.
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So I know this isn't well balanced yet, but I mocked up some of the above just in case anybody cares. (Click to enlarge)
(http://i.imgur.com/kfOrZ3Q.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/jsRsgmf.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/ZdRcLx0.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/7dAoIl6.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/qLlYeV3.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/lcSQ7oF.jpg)
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My IRL play group has independently came up with and played our own bughouse dominion variant before as well.
Our rules were a bit different:
We play with two separate games; each game has one player from each team.
When you gain a card, only you resolve the when-gain effects, and then if the card is still yours, you move it to the corresponding location of your partner in their game. Your partner does not "gain" the card and does not trigger any when gain effects. (i.e., if you gain a card, then reveal watchtower to topdeck it, you would move it to the top of your partner's deck. Your partner cannot reveal a watchtower in response to you gaining a card, even though their deck will recieve the card.)
Your team's score is the product, not sum, of your individual scores. This means that the "one player eats all the green, the other player builds an engine to buy it" strategy does not work, and if the boards have very unequal scoring potential, you must focus on both.
Both games play simultaneously, in order to speed things up. However, you can never be taking a turn at the same time as your partner, so the turns of the games stay in sync. At the beginning of the game, we arbitrarily designate one of the games to have "timing priority", so if there is a race condition, or both active players want to stall, the active player in the game with timing priority decides the order of events.
The game ends if either game's end condition is met.
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Another one:
(http://i.imgur.com/dr2bK7I.jpg)
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I like Investment, but it seems better than Gold, so I feel like it ought to cost more.
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"okay who wants to be the VP mule"
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"okay who wants to be the VP mule"
I guess it makes more sense when you multiply partner's VP. But yeah, it's still a problem. Also, it just occured to me that if both partners go negative they actually have more points than a positive-negative team. Uh, so I guess I prefer the sum version for now.
I like Investment, but it seems better than Gold, so I feel like it ought to cost more.
It probably is, although it's not that rare 5$s are better than Gold. Maybe if it was a nonterminal Action? That would also make it more likely you have to pass a card with this version (becuase unlike a Treasure you can't play it last).
Of course the alternative is to make it optional and have it give you +2$. Like, I don't know, a lot of other Treasures for 5$. Which doesn't mean it's a bad idea, as obviously there's a reason so many 5$-Treasures are like this.
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How bout this?
(http://i.imgur.com/L61QqBD.jpg)
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Yes, I like this one better.
I agree that a silver+ version would work at $5. It's not so much that $5 cards shouldn't compete with Gold, just that they shouldn't be strictly better. Since passing might not always be a good thing in every situation, it's not strictly better in this case, but it just seemed too close.
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Your team's score is the product, not sum, of your individual scores. This means that the "one player eats all the green, the other player builds an engine to buy it" strategy does not work, and if the boards have very unequal scoring potential, you must focus on both.
Yet another formulation that might be better, might be worse, who knows: each team's score is the lower of the two players' scores. If one player has 1 and their partner has 200, their team's score is 1.
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I kinda feel that adding VP is still the best way to represent it. Maybe not the most flashed out, maybe not even the most accurate(?). But it's the easiest one. For example, I don't have to track who of us got more points. It's just, a Province is worth 6 for us, let me pick up one of that. Probably some people would prefer that meta game of optimizing two decks, but honestly, you already got that for many alt VP cards.
Also, I forgot to post this idea from the German forums:
Fisherman, Action-Reaction-Team, 3$
+1 Card
+1 Action
Your partner may discard a card for you to get +1$.
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At the start of your partner's Buy phase, you may discard this from your hand for them to get +1$.
Similar concept, but slightly different:
Fisherwoman, Action-Duration-Team, 3$
+1 Action
Now and at the start of your next turn: +1$
At the start of your partner's next turn, they get +1$
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Bad co-op idea. Also, if you are 4 guys you wanna play a 4 player game and not Dominion.
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Just occured to me that you can actually use this as a way to give more experienced players a handicap. Let two (or more) players team up against one more experienced player. The less experienced players get the advantage of their attacks not hitting each other (and they can possibly use the above partner cards which aren't available to the solo player). Obviously you have to divide team scores by member count, but it might actually be a fun option for some of the "my family doesn't play against me since I visit fds" people among us.
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Bad co-op idea. Also, if you are 4 guys you wanna play a 4 player game and not Dominion.
I play 4-player Dominion all the time and have tremendous fun doing so. Partner variants could also mitigate some of the things people don't like about 3+ player Dominion. But hey, play what you like.
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Bad co-op idea. Also, if you are 4 guys you wanna play a 4 player game and not Dominion.
I play 4-player Dominion all the time and have tremendous fun doing so. Partner variants could also mitigate some of the things people don't like about 3+ player Dominion. But hey, play what you like.
Well, good luck trying to build an engine with an average of 2.5 villages. Also, junkers are uber-powerful in 4P games.
But hey, play what you like.