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1

Dominion Articles / Re: fast start with tournament into rebuild

« on: December 19, 2012, 11:42:39 am »

Hmm, I don't know about that mega-turn ending. From my experience Duchies are often the bottleneck in Rebuild games. They are usually gone first and then there's no point in Duchy gainers any more.

That's totally true.  Getting the Duchies out of the game is also a great defense against an opponent running a Rebuild.  If you see your opponent buying estates and you know they're going to become duchies, reduce the duchies to zero and those estates become nothings.  I also encountered how awesome Counts can be for getting all the Duchies.  Count doesn't do much to reduce other pile sizes though, but Tourney Rebuild helps you focus on Provinces.  The thing is Tourney Province is a pretty swingy setup to begin with, the kind of thing that "snowballs," so anything that gives you the edge in the snowballing is really beneficial.  But if your opponent is doing the same thing you might as well consider it to be a really fast, really boring game that depends completely on luck. I almost want to give myself a -1 now that I realize that this is a swingy luck based combo at heart.

2

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Winning the Curse War

« on: December 19, 2012, 11:34:41 am »

Also know which cursers are better.  If young witch, mountebank and witch are all out, don't buy a young witch at four, and pass up the witch for a mountebank at five.

I disagree with this. Young Witch will often be the correct opening (if the Bane is weak) because getting curses in your opponent's deck fast is important. Whether to open YW will be depend highly on what the Bane is. The Mountebank vs. Witch question isn't clear-cut either, since the Witch player can often win the curse split because of the built in moat on Mountebank. I don't know what the general conclusion on Witch vs. Mountebank is, but I'm sure it isn't "always buy Mountebank".

Yes, good points here too.  I have to admit that I have fallen into the camp of thinking that Yw is bad just because it usually is.  But if the bane is completely undesirable, then it definitely gets stronger.

3

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Winning the Curse War

« on: December 19, 2012, 11:30:12 am »

If there are no better reasons for buying a potion, just find a way around your opponents familiar strategy.  It will be faster.

Yeah, this is only true sometimes. If there is a strong trasher on the board like remake, sure, don't open potion, but even then in many cases I might pick up the potion later (especially with remake, as I can later turn it into a $5). Familiar is hated because it is swingy, but also because it is strong, so you often can't ignore it.

There are exceptions, and you should definitely look for them. Trader is pretty good at combating familiar. Jack is too fast for familiar, at least without some very strong support. But don't assume that you can always "find your way around" familiar either.

One final thing to remember is that familiar is a much better engine card than a money card, because it is a cantrip. Because it doesn't give you any money, BM+familiar is fairly weak. So if you are thinking of "finding your way around" familiar, check if its more of a money board or an engine board. The worse the engine on the board, or the stronger the money cards on the board, the more likely you are to be able to skip familiar.

I agree.  I guess the main thing I was trying to say is it's not always about splitting the curses.  Sometimes there's another way.

4

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Winning the Curse War

« on: December 19, 2012, 09:29:22 am »

All of the above is true, but there is another way.  Only in certain situations, but sometimes you can just ignore the curser completely.  If you have a heavy trasher and a Tfb that doesn't care about cost, you can get all of your starting junk out of the way and then every curse your opponent hands you is a $5 card.  For instance, if you open double forager in a game with mountebank, you will be guaranteed cards to trash.  This is just a really simple example, but it can get more complex.

Sometimes it's awesome to see your opponent trying to sea hag you and you have a very trim deck that draws itself and a trash for benefit that doesn't care about cost.  They're feeding you good cards!  This is rare, but it's important to note that usually the best defense against cursers is to curse back, and sometimes the best defense is to do something else entirely, but either way, you best trash your curses!  If you can't trash your curses, there can still be other ways.

In general if your opponent is going heavy on cursers and you know you won't win the curse split you have to look at what he's missing out on by buying these cursers.  Venture is a great way to overcome a no +action no +buy game with cursers because venture doesn't care how purple and green your deck is.  Upgrade can be an okay way too, but only with other support.  Rebuild is a great option.  It doesn't get rid of your curses, but it does improve every other worthless card in your deck.  Pretty much any alt VP can handle curses better than a straight buy-all-the-provinces strategy. 

Ambassador?  Sometimes even with no cursers you will want to actually BUY a curse in an ambassador game.

In general, when combating curses, know what's in your deck, think of creative ways to either remove the curses from your deck, turn them into something useful, or give them back to the guy that gave them to you.  If you can't do any of those things, then just buy those cursers and hope for the shuffle luck/first player advantage. 

Also know which cursers are better.  If young witch, mountebank and witch are all out, don't buy a young witch at four, and pass up the witch for a mountebank at five.  And above all, don't fall into the trap of buying a potion just to get a familiar.  If there are no better reasons for buying a potion, just find a way around your opponents familiar strategy.  It will be faster.

I'm not an expert, but I play an insane amount of dominion.  These are my opinions.

5

Dominion Articles / Re: fast start with tournament into rebuild

« on: December 19, 2012, 08:25:46 am »

I generally only take Trusty Steed, Followers and Princess, but I think if you wanted to run this pure you could only take Followers and every other time take a Duchy and prioritize buys as Province, Rebuild, but only 2, and after that always Duchy, and then Tournament and anything less, estate, and this would be very powerful and fast. As long as you open with one silver so you can get those two rebuilds before your deck goes totally green.  Maybe 3 rebuilds.

6

Dominion Articles / fast start with tournament into rebuild

« on: December 19, 2012, 08:10:36 am »

Okay, you can't open with both tournament and rebuild, but if you open tournament/silver and use your first two turns at five or better to buy rebuilds, all your four turns to buy tournament, and anything less than four to buy either cantrips or nothing at all, you can hit the prizes really fast and have a running start at the provinces that will be over probably before you even get to use some of the prizes. 

I have no simulator data or anything, but this seems like a good overall concept.  As always, it depends on what else is out there, but if tournament is the obvious choice and the prizes will matter, I think getting two rebuilds as early as possible is a good idea. 

7

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Grand Market and Quarry

« on: December 05, 2012, 08:36:39 am »

Most games I've seen with quarry gm end up piling out.

Yeah, the trick I think is to know when to start grabbing vp.  Because if you just Quarry/GM/Trash, etc., you can easily get distracted into trying to set up 33 pt turns and then your opponent buys one colony and empties three cheap piles (or two if GM is already empty, and if it's 3p, it probably is) in one turn and you're toast.  This happens to me frequently and now when I see GM on the board I always have to check myself.

8

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko is offensive to actual fans of Dominion

« on: December 04, 2012, 09:00:30 am »

I'm impressed with the community's ability to quash a troll, hard.  S/he never had a chance.

I'm still curious about those traffic circles.  Or are they roundabouts?... It's all very complicated you see.

9

Goko Dominion Online / Re: At Long Last Done Has Been Renamed

« on: December 04, 2012, 08:52:46 am »

I was stoked to click "End Actions," but I couldn't play the tutorial.  It just kept loading forever. 

10

Dominion: Guilds Previews / Re: Looking to the future: The Guilds

« on: November 28, 2012, 09:45:00 am »

I'm sure DXV is the most amused of all of us.  If I were him I'd have a very hard time reading all this and not saying things like "You are so CLOSE.... but no, it's not like that at all."

I would be deeply disappointed if Guilds didn't have some kind of new mechanic in it though.  I think it's safe to say, based on the fact that Base was released first, it probably doesn't have any new tokens or mats or any kind of platinum/colony type additions.  I do really like the idea that it might have some kind of permanent effect options, and I think that it would be really cool if there were guilds you could become a member of by meeting some kind of requirement (like trashing a province, as was mentioned a few posts back), and that being a member of a guild would give you some kind of bonus that wasn't dependent on there being a lot of cards from Guilds in the kingdom.

Time will make fools of us all, I suspect. 

Well, time and Donald.

11

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Barge

« on: November 28, 2012, 09:18:45 am »

I still want to work this out, because I like the idea of a trasher that must trash itself to be played.  But as you pointed out One Armed Man, that means you're guaranteed $5 per hand.  So it should itself probably cost more than that.  Like a lot.  Like $7.  That means that in order to buy it at all, you have to have a deck that doesn't have a lot of junk in it, and then you wouldn't want to play it or buy it.

If it cost $5 then you might want it, and you might want to pay for it, but you'd be very selective about when you played it because you'd want all your junk in one hand because buying this card multiple times would absolutely be a waste of time and money and your opponent would have all 8 provinces before you had any kind of economy. 

At $3 you can buy two of them at open, and that would be insanity.  Like you said, way too strong and I don't even think swingy is the right word.  It's just too strong.  At $4 we finally have a situation where you open with it (I was unaware of the award winning Barge card, so for now I will call this card unnamed) and a silver or equivalent, and it only guarantees you one turn at $5 which many openers do, and it only trashes (effectively) four cards.  Like Chapel 

The reaction part I still like, because if you're buying this for the action then it hopefully finds a curse from that Witch to trash, and if you're buying it for the reaction it only guarantees you a five card hand one of which is this card, which you don't want to play if you want to keep it as a reaction.

12

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Barge

« on: November 28, 2012, 09:02:50 am »

Yeah.  I'm not very good at fan cards. 

I should probably stick to trying to understand the cards that actually exist.

13

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Barge

« on: November 28, 2012, 08:58:11 am »

Actually, I think $3 is fair.  And thinking about it further, I like that this is a very good reaction to hand-size reducers.  Most namely Torturer.  Because you always start your hand with 5 cards, even if you discard down to nothing, which you would do if you had a lot of junk, and if you have a lot of junk, you want to have a Barge.

14

Variants and Fan Cards / Barge

« on: November 28, 2012, 08:46:55 am »

$3 Action/Reaction

Trash this card along with any number of cards from your hand.  +$ equal to the number of cards trashed, including this one.

_______________

When another player plays an attack you may reveal this from your hand.  If you do, set this aside from your hand and discard any number of cards from your hand. At the beginning of your next turn put this card back in your hand, and +1 card per card discarded.

My biggest issue with this is how to price it.  I don't know if I've priced it too low, or too high.  Especially since for the action effect you have to trash it.  The reaction was kind of an afterthought but the spirit of it was that this is obviously only useful in games where you have a deck full of junk, and that usually happens when you're getting attacked a lot.  But since it is really also only useful when you can get big hand sizes with a lot of junk, maybe $3 is too high?  $2?

Edit: Properly give the card a category: Action/Reaction

15

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Price This Card

« on: November 28, 2012, 08:31:31 am »

I voted $5 because it obviously has to cost less than bank as it gives your deck less value than bank.  If you play it by itself it gives $0.  But at $6 it competes with gold and creates a high degree of AP.  At $5 it seems like you're getting a deal (like Contraband or Cache), but can also be a pretty worthless card in certain hands (like Contraband or Cache).  I kinda think those are the two best cards to compare this to, in terms of how to value it.  The only $6 treasure that isn't gold is used to put gold in your deck as you green (Hoard, in case you missed it).

Edit: Obviously Cache is pretty good no matter what hand it ends up in.  What I meant is that it doesn't add that much value to your deck because it also throws copper in there.  And also Hoard isn't the only $6 treasure that isn't gold.  There's Harem. I should probably proofread before posting instead of posting all willy-nilly and then obsessively nit-picking my own post and editing the hell out of it.

16

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Shapeshifter

« on: November 28, 2012, 08:22:48 am »

So -$1 is probably not right.  Or maybe $5 is not the right cost.  But I like the idea of changing what cards are available to buy during the game. How about this:

$4 Action

+$1

Trash this card.  If you bought an action card this turn, remove the remaining supply of that action card and replace it with a supply of equal number from the randomizer set.

The randomizer set would be face down and you would replace it with whatever card was on top.  In the instance of it being a victory card, you would replace it with the full number available for that game, regardless of how many cards were in the pile that was replaced.  I fully realize that this is probably swingy and hard to implement IRL.  But, again, I like the idea of changing the kingdom in mid game, and if there is a more optimal way to implement this idea that will still be *balanced*, I'd be stoked to hear ideas. 

But maybe this is a boring idea to everybody but me.

17

Variants and Fan Cards / Shapeshifter

« on: November 27, 2012, 09:00:45 am »

Shapeshifter

Action 5$

-1$

If you buy an action card this turn you may replace that action card pile from the supply with a pile of the same number of cards from the randomizer set. 

______________

Setup:  Put ten cards from your randomizers (at random) to the side.  This is the randomizer set.

---------------------------

I don't know if it's clear from the way I wrote the text, but if you play a Shapeshifter and buy, for instance, a Familiar, you will have to have $4P in hand.  And then you may remove the entire pile of 9 remaining Familiars from the board.  Then you choose one card from a randomly selected group of ten randomizers (which are all face down to any player who has not played a Shapeshifter), and put 9 copies of it where the Familiars used to be.

IDK.  This is my first fan card.   

18

Rules Questions / Re: Market Square and on-trash effects

« on: November 27, 2012, 08:17:26 am »

You know, I think you're right Lespeutere. You choose to reveal before you draw, so I don't think you can reveal again after you draw...

Sometimes I enjoy bizzare thought experiments about Dominion more than the (usually) more mundane realities of playing the game.

19

Dominion: Guilds Previews / Re: Looking to the future: The Guilds

« on: November 27, 2012, 07:12:30 am »

Davio, I was actually thinking that the guilds would work with cards that weren't from Guilds, so like, Action cards would be part of a guild and treasure cards would be part of a guild, etc., and that Guilds the expansion would include a new type of card and it would be a guild too.  And by meeting some requirement to become a member of a guild you would then gain some kind of bonus for playing cards of that guild type, or in the case of victory cards, get a vp bonus for being a member of that guild. 

The thing is, most Kingdoms are almost exclusively action cards, so the action guild would be pre......etty desirable.

20

Dominion Articles / Re: Beggar

« on: November 27, 2012, 07:03:58 am »

I just played a game on goko against a bot (because multiplayer still isn't fun on goko and sometimes I actually enjoy playing against a robot, and goko's robots aren't that bad, even compared to Androminion's, which are also not terrible.  For bots), with these cards

Beggar, Loan, Lookout, Workshop, Bishop, Feodum, Island, Contraband, Treasury, Nobles

The copper pile ran out way earlier than I would have thought.  My basic strategy, because I opened 5-2, was to open contraband/beggar.  I figured that was essentially two golds.  One that puts three coppers in my deck and one that wouldn't let me buy gold.  But when I hit six on turn three with the contraband in play i bought a nobles.  The thing the bot never caught onto, and which a real person would have, is that in a deck with a lot of copper, the plus three cards nobles gives you is essentially a gold.  So I bought out the Nobles, and then suddenly copper was gone (I bought more beggars when I couldn't afford Nobles, or Duchies once the Nobles were gone and I wasn't seeing my Contraband very often), and the game three piled on coppers, Nobles, and Duchies. 

I was surprised at how well this worked, and I don't think I would have tried it if not for this article. 

I also wouldn't be surprised if someone had a strategy on this board that would beat it very fast (my game took 27 turns, and I know that isn't fast).  I was most surprised that coppers actually ran out, and that it happened in less than 25 turns (the bot also bought a beggar, for some reason), and that it didn't feel at all like a slog.  I was buying victory points the whole time, and had 4 Provinces (which probably contributed to the game taking 27 turns, as I should have focused on the three piles I wanted to drain; but since copper surprised me, I didn't realize I was going to end on three piles).

21

Rules Questions / Re: Market Square and on-trash effects

« on: November 27, 2012, 06:26:42 am »

I'm having trouble completely making sense of your post, and I don't think it's entirely your fault as this is a fairly complex question.  I think you're saying that if you trash the cultist and have only one card to draw, but reveal a market square from your hand before you draw, you will draw three cards, one of which is a market square, and your question is can you reveal that market square again, right?

Man.  I think so. 

Congratulations on your obscure edge case scenario.  +2 internets if this actually happened in a real game you played.

Edit: I'm specifically referring to lespeutere's post above.

22

Dominion: Guilds Previews / Re: Looking to the future: The Guilds

« on: November 27, 2012, 05:56:08 am »

I'm a bit late to this thread, but wanted to chime in because I too have been sorta tortured by my attempts to imagine what Guilds is all about with nothing to go by but its title. 

I imagined at first that there would be guilds based around existing card types.  Because Dominion only has a few groups of card types that are definitively labelled on the cards (action, victory, treasure, reaction, duration, looter... I think that's it, but I don't want to look it up) I imagined that the guilds would be based around this, like Labor guild, Banker guild, Prospector's guild, etc., and I know that if this is the case Donald has better names for these guilds than I do.  But if that IS the case, then I kind of think that there will be guilds cards of a single copy each (if my list of card types is complete then it only needs one more card type to reach seven, which could theoretically be a new card type introduced in guilds), and either all are out or none.  And I kinda think they will have a permanent effect.  I know most of this has been postulated in previous posts.  I don't want to take credit for it, but to those of you who have made these predictions, I agree with you. 

So, this thing comes out in spring, right?  That's a long time to speculate.  By the time it comes out I imagine this community will have designed an entire fan expansion based on our collective theories about the real one.

P.S. I love the Tulip Farm card idea.  I would love to see how this plays in real life.  You obviously don't want to buy the last one unless you don't have any or are just trying to destroy the other player's strategy, but you also don't want to let your opponent have only one or two. 

23

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: November 20, 2012, 08:27:50 am »

24

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens

« on: November 17, 2012, 09:09:54 am »

I think the thing he's trying to say is that when you start seeing hands with more than one Talisman, and you're draining the sage and Talisman piles very quickly, a surprise shift into buying Gardens wouldn't be hard and could catch your opponent in a situation where they start greening too early and muddy their deck.  The Sages would catch your Gardens though, and you'd suffer as well.

It might not be an "always go for this combo when these three cards are in the Kingdom" thing, but it's an idea to consider, I think. 

There's probably going to be a faster way out there, but

say it with me

it depends on the kingdom!

25

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Taking a Break

« on: November 15, 2012, 10:52:24 am »

I meant no offense.  I do understand how the metric can be a nice personal challenge for yourself in a game you enjoy playing, a drive to excel.  I dunno, I guess I was just trying to say that it is a really good idea to step back and look at the larger picture of what it actually means to you in your life, and Davio has eloquently expressed his experience with that.  I was more or less trying to echo that and it was probably unnecessary.  The reality is I've never approached the upper echelon of rank, so for me it's never been that kind of problem, and I've always viewed online dominion as a realm to try out crazy things, since you get to play a lot of games quickly (at least while iso is still up), and as a kind of practice for irl games.

And I guess I also feel that all this resentment toward goko (for which I am also responsible in multiple posts) and the sort of pre-separation anxiety we all have about the impending loss of isotropic (I've stopped playing on there simply because I'd rather decide to than wake up one day and not be able to log on), has sort of made us bitter and angry and sad.  And the fact is, it's a game.  An amazing expansive game with insane possibilities and has given us endless analysis and strategy to ponder, but it's a game.  It might be helpful for all of us to remember that, and because I think that's pretty much all Davio was trying to say, I apologize for pooping on this thread.