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Messages - biopower

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1
Dominion Articles / Re: Fool's Gold + Chapel
« on: February 07, 2012, 12:08:17 am »
I haven't thought about comparing Smithy/FG versus Smithy/Big money.  I suspect that Smithy/big money is faster.

I think a viable fool's gold strategy needs some strong trashing... but maybe only Chapel will do. 
Another way may be to have trashing, with some type of +buy and some type of draw your entire deck engine.  But even then I feel that this card is going to live up to its name.

iirc FG beats BM, so it wouldn't surprise me that Smithy/FG beats Smithy/BM.

2
Dominion General Discussion / Opening Inn?
« on: January 28, 2012, 02:40:05 am »
Given a 5/2 start, you can use the first $5 buy on an Inn and shuffle it into the deck. Then, there's a 5/6 probability that you'll draw the Inn turn 2. If you do, then your 2nd turn is guaranteed to be $3 (you draw the last card, reshuffle and discard two estates, leaving you with a hand of 3 copper and 1 estate) and your 3rd turn is likely to be a $5 (there are 4 Copper is your draw pile so depending on what you bought with the $3, it's probably around a 50% to hit $5 or better).

Is it usually worth it to open Inn in the hopes of getting really good opening cards? Or, would you just take the $5/2 instead of hoping for the $5/3/5?

3
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Play $5, buy a feast
« on: January 12, 2012, 03:30:28 am »
This thread has a number of answers.

4
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: My Fan Expansion
« on: January 09, 2012, 03:55:11 am »
If you play a Beggar and the opponent picks the Curse pile, you've effectively wasted a $2 buy on a self-cursing action...

5
An infinite loop exists in Forgery if Forgery is itself the card on the mat. It is possible to play a Forgery continually by always picking to play the card on the mat every time you must play a Forgery.

6
Isn't there an expansion where the -vp chips are called sins? If so, would I be able to use the same name for simplicity sake?

Yes, a quick google reveals this, although some of the images for the cards seem to be in German.

7
General Discussion / Demographics of F.DS
« on: December 30, 2011, 04:42:52 pm »
A comment in the thread about recorded Isotropic games and horrible American accents led me to wonder, where do all of our players come from? I don't want anything more specific than country of residence, as I just want an idea how diverse we are.

I'll go first: I'm an Asian that lives in the US.

8
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Any news on the iphone app?
« on: December 29, 2011, 10:46:55 pm »
I couldn't bother to read the whole thing, i'm lazy. what was the ruling?

Sweet and short answer from this thread.

So the final final answer is that if I Ironworks an X and then reveal trader and gain a Silver instead, I get no bonus; and if I use Ironworks while Possessing someone, I also get no bonus? Is that right?
Yes.

9
Game Reports / Re: Successful Mint Opening - thanks to Duchess
« on: December 28, 2011, 04:36:17 pm »
I think Mint opening is strong with any $2 cost that gives money. The fact that Duchess gives 2 instead of 1 seems like it would be great for it. But even just Mint/Pawn seems pretty strong.

Mint/Pawn is worse than Mint/Curse on councilroom. Although, now that I look at Councilroom data, Mandarin/Mint seems like an extremely interesting opening; it's probably one of the few times two mediocre openings actually work out well together.

10
Dominion General Discussion / Re: stockpiling on trash for benefit cards
« on: December 28, 2011, 04:29:50 pm »
I tried hammering Remake to trash up into Ill-Gotten Gains today, but it didn't work out, just too slow really. I think I probably played it wrong too though.

Spamming Remake in general is usually too slow; Just like how Remodel reduces your handsize to 3 after playing it (which is a reason why Remodel is slow), Remake reduces it to 2, which makes it much harder to buy good cards, esp. $5 cards.

11
Dominion General Discussion / Re: DominionStrategy YouTube channel
« on: December 28, 2011, 04:23:59 pm »
Hmm. I guess I still want to say this. I don't mind being broadcasted. Nevertheless, I feel WW should at least inform me he is doing this when we played, and he didn't. What do you guys think?

Given that iso logs are publicly available, and people post them all over this forum anyway, what difference does it make if it's in real-time with commentary?

If you actually watch WW's videos, the difference is obvious. (e.g. WW's deliberation on his second embargo in the first game is not something you'd probably see in a log, even with written commentary).

12
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Handicap alternative?
« on: December 28, 2011, 04:47:33 am »
That's actually in the original handicap thread, and it's (at time of this post) the last suggestion of the thread. It seems like a fairly good method too.

13
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Mulligans in Dominion?
« on: December 28, 2011, 03:22:51 am »
You can only mulligan after the first reshuffle and you can only mulligan once during clean-up, going down from 5 to 4 cards.

It's called Minion.

That's a rather shallow way of thinking about mulligans because the only similarity to Minion is in its discard effect. The strength of Minion lies in its ability to both generate money and cycle, letting you get to the other minions for more money. A mulligan won't generate money and will cycle much less than minions will.

It's not even that similar to being attacked by a Minion, because you are forced to discard. A mulligan gives you the choice to discard, which gives you much greater flexibility in determining whether a hand of 4 upcoming cards will be better than the current 5-card hand.

14
Dominion General Discussion / Re: DominionStrategy YouTube channel
« on: December 28, 2011, 03:02:31 am »
It's still probably a nice show of etiquette to ask beforehand; it certainly doesn't hurt to ask.

15
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Quadratic cards
« on: December 27, 2011, 04:30:17 am »
Labs by themselves aren't quadratic.  But if they provide the plus cards that enables you to stack a bunch of Banks, Bridges, or Goons, are they quadratic by credit?

As much as I hate the slippery slope argument, it also means that practically every engine card is quadratic by credit. If everything gets the quadratic-by-credit designation, the designation becomes meaningless.

16
Help! / Re: Did I play well, or luck out?
« on: December 27, 2011, 01:40:06 am »
Double Jack beats Familiars. You could probably win by rushing Provinces while your opponent slows down for Potion costing cards, especially in the absence of +Buy. I recently played this game, where the Double Jack player beat the Familiar player, even though he took 9 Curses by turn 12.

If your opponent is cursing you, Possession will probably be weak if you're both greening and getting cursed. Especially since two piles are likely to be out, (Great Halls and Curses), filling your deck with Silver and buying lots of green (Great Halls/Duchies, maybe a Province if possible) will probably end the game before the opponent can do anything interesting.

17
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Quadratic cards
« on: December 27, 2011, 01:33:53 am »
To continue on cherdano: One Swindler is a minor annoyance.  Two Swindlers are disgustingly frustrating, particularly if paired with something like Spy or Oracle.  I don't have actual math for this one.  But beyond the most simplistic of cards, like Market or Woodcutter, most of them, and most combinations of them, have non-linear effects.  One Laboratory is nice.  Two Laboratories are twice as nice.  But three or more can mean you're drawing your entire deck every turn, which is more than twice as nice.  The same effect can be achieved with a combination of Villages and +3 Card cards, especially if backed up by Schemes to ensure that your starting hand isn't left to luck.  Again, I couldn't really quantify this, but spamming a great card or building a great combo is qualitatively exponentially better than just one of the card.

I don't think Swindlers are actually quadratic: they are annoying, but you can't quite quantify "twice as frustrating". Laboratories certainly aren't quadratic (each extra Lab played after the first only increases your handsize by 1). They're probably much worse because after drawing your deck, extra labs give you no benefit.

I'm pretty sure we're talking about cards which qualitatively give quadratic effects. It's precisely because you can't quantify "twice as nice" that saying "qualitatively exponentially better" seems oxymoronic. It also might simply be untrue, as Gold is a great card; BM is probably not exponentially better, even qualitatively.

18
Feedback / Re: Serious Analysis
« on: December 26, 2011, 06:56:04 pm »

19
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
« on: December 22, 2011, 12:43:34 am »
All right: My worst:
Trader
Oasis
Highway
Inn
Scheme
Ill Gotten Gains
Crossroads
Noble Brigand
Haggler
Smithy

I'd totally want to do some Haggler + Highway here, but given that I suck so bad at all these cards, perhaps Smithy Big Money is the way to go, possibly shifting to push IGG if the opponent goes that way.

I feel like going Traders + IGG would be strong on this board, as Traders can help block some of the cursing the opponents do, and trashing an IGG for 5 Silvers feels fairly strong. Traders are also really good for Duchy rushing, although I'm sure you can pick up a couple Provinces with a deck full of Silver.

I don't know whether picking up a Haggler is good here though: I feel like Haggler + Highway is a Nombo because there are no buys, and you can't pick up anything extra if you buy from a $0 pile. Highway also doesn't let you pick up anything you couldn't already have picked up from Haggler. I'm also unsure about Smithy Big Money because of the presence of Noble Brigand.

Traders + IGG is also probably weak to Noble Brigand, but probably your deck is so full of silver that losing a couple won't hurt too much compared to the cursing attack.

20
Game Reports / Re: Awesome combo or luckiest draw ever?
« on: December 19, 2011, 08:14:14 pm »
I can not make it happen with Festival/Quarry/Crossroads, nor with Festival/Quarry/Crossroads/Silk Road.  I mean, I can't even REMOTELY make it happen.  Like, not just "no double Province back-to-back turns by turn 14," I mean, "no Provinces by turn 16."

Maybe I'm deeply misplaying it?

I'm finding that the +Card of Shanty Town is actually fairy important, because when I tested it, it seemed very easy to activate, only failing when 2 shanty Towns were in hand. However, by that point Crossroads would usually draw a ridiculous amount, so only using them for Actions was all right. I can hit double province turns, but not until long after Turn 14. If the opponent distracts himself with Possession, I can see the combo being successful. Then again, it really is a 4 card combo (Shanty Town + Crossroads + Quarry + Buy) so you're probably not going to ever see it.

21
Dominion General Discussion / Re: is consulting a simulator cheating?
« on: December 15, 2011, 10:51:20 pm »
Also, the whole "there's no morality, just what the community says" thing is really, really wrong. There is indeed objective morality.

This probably applies.

22
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Card Names
« on: December 15, 2011, 02:47:55 am »
Transmogrify - I know we have Transmute, but who doesn't love Calvin and Hobbes?

23
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Trader/Steward opening
« on: December 15, 2011, 02:35:43 am »
But what if you were trashing Coppers (not Estates) with Steward, then using it for +2 Cards later on?

Point 1 still holds, in that it's much harder to be able to trash 2 Coppers because you're much less likely to draw them together with the Steward with the Silver in the deck. Point 2 only sometimes holds, because you're probably going to have 2 silver left in hand after trashing, which is enough for another silver, same as the combo. Point 3 doesn't hold anymore but you're either not going to be able to trash effectively or not have a lot of silver. If you don't have a lot of silver, your Trader's been useless whereas if you can't trash with Steward, it becomes a Moat or terminal Silver, neither of which are amazing.

24
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Trader/Steward opening
« on: December 14, 2011, 11:26:29 pm »
Trader and Steward pretty much antisynergize apart from when you manage to get them to collide because
  • In a deck flooded with silver, it's harder to match up two bad cards to trash with the Steward
  • In a deck flooded with silver, it's harder to match up Trader and Steward to get the combo off
  • Trashing estates with Steward means less silver you otherwise would've gained by using Trader to trash.

25
Game Reports / Re: Vineyard/ Haggler - not as good as it sounds
« on: December 14, 2011, 07:46:35 pm »
I feel like Haggler/Vineyards would be spectacular if there were good actions in the $2-$4 range. Border Village enables 3 piling even faster so buying Vineyards earlier and quickly was probably key. You don't really have to play any Hagglers to be able to buy Vineyards, so if you stuck to your strategy and bought a few Vineyards before spamming the Hagglers for a 3pile, the win probably would've been easy.

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