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Messages - Sharajat

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I'll deny horseshit undos, but I've even allowed someone to undo wishing well to play a Ratcatcher with the understanding he wouldn't change his wish (he didn't).  On the other hand, maybe I've just played enough MTG to not get too miffed if someone denies them.  That game has much less takebacks acceptable in competitive play.  Like, don't make mistakes.  I feel like the rigor of not making mistakes makes you a better player.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards
« on: March 09, 2018, 01:36:47 pm »
Most of these don't need to be fixed.  That being said:

Duchess: $2 for each duchy in hand
Masterpiece: Costs $2
Bureaucrat: Puts a card from their hand on top of their deck if they have 5 or more cards in hand
Mandarin: You may put a card from your hand on top of your deck.
Transmute: Treasure, gain an action costing up to $4. 

Easy fix:

Cache: Make it cost $4
Mine: Make it cost $4
Royal Seal: Make it cost $4

They're all $5s that are fine at $4. 

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Other Games / Re: Dominion clones
« on: February 09, 2018, 07:02:48 pm »
Ascension:  This game has a horrid snowball problem, where if you happen to hit a "breakpoint" hand at the right time to purchase a card you get an insane advantage.  Which might be okay, except that there's no way to control what's out.  So one player might hit $8 and have a few mediocre cards to buy, while the next player with $8 gets a card that's basically a cantrip Hunting Grounds.  That's the drawback of the entire "middle market" mechanic.  With no VP cards, buying expensive cards (With both currencies) is your entire endgame, so the rich tend to get richer, and the poor end up in the gutter.  Like monopoly, but with more shuffling. 

Star Realms:  So if you just make this a VP race, it's basically non-interactive outside of stations.  It actually has considerably lower interaction than Dominion.  A lot of the center row flaws of Ascension, but the card design is so overwhelmingly bland it is more balanced, but far less interesting. 

Thunderstone: So what if Dominion had random events that could do things like "reveal the top 5 cards of your deck, trash all actions that cost $5 or more there"?  Wait, that'd be horrible, you say?  Well now there's a gazillion action types, so you need "heroes" to play "weapons" and "rations" to give heroes the strength to use "weapons" and "light" to reduce the strength of the monsters and... oh god what an absolute clusterfuck. 

Nightfall: Innovative mechanic I like where you need to chain actions, but a lot of time it feels incredibly random.  Like you get a 50/50 to leave yellow or green up for your opponent (based on the cards you know are in their deck) and you guess wrong and they can go off.  Or the weird way you get your own private reserve of cards.   Good playtesting might have made something out of this, but good playtesting it doesn't have.

Eminent Domain: A cool mix of race for the galaxy and dominion.  It's definitely a "one more turn" game where you are just always so close when the game ends.  The expansions added a lot too, with a variety of ways to win.  It's actually very hard to compare to Dominion due to the tableau, it compares better to Race for the Galaxy - I find I like it much more than race, as the deckbuilding adds to the phase picking in a neat way.

Tanto Cuore: So Market and Silver cost the same.  Other than that, Dominion clone with nothing to recommend for it, and artwork that guarantees it's an embarrassment.

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Lurker/Necromancer

Don't know if this has been mentioned, but Lurkers can snag Zombies from the Trash, and trash cards for Necromancer to play.  The two of them can create some pretty complex interactions.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The swingiest card ever
« on: July 24, 2017, 04:03:13 pm »
Really?  Because I'll offer an incredibly weak, incredibly swingy card: Saboteur.
Saboteur is not so much weak as it is terribroken; it flips from "so weak it should be ignored" to "so strong it dominates the board" very quickly depending on how often you can play it. (Once per turn is probably about the tipping point.)

Also it isn't very swingy, in moneyish boards odds that it helps you are astronomical. You would rather buy duchy. Even if sab hits province that opponents changes into duchy its same vp swing as buying duchy.

In engines where you play multiple sabs skill is deciding factor. What really matters is to get engine operational fast and play more sabs than opponent buys. Before that one could relatively easily replace engine components. It doesn't matter much what those sabs hit as you need to reduce opponent deck until it collapses.

However in games where it's a bad buy because it can't be King's Courted (and lets face it that's 90% of the times it was a passable buy) and yet both players still buy it then the game would often come down to a straight coin flip. 

In short it's swingy AND awful, and we don't care it is swingy because it's awful.  Swingy strong cards (Familiar, Chapel) are the cards that draw our attention.  But the bad swingy card was still swingy (Tribute and Harvest are two more swingy cards that aren't great - Harvest in particular rises to only 'pretty good' if you're consistently high rolling)

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Game Reports / Re: Dear My Opponent: I am Sorry
« on: July 21, 2017, 01:39:13 pm »
Dear my opponent: I'm sorry you got $2P three times in a row in a familiar game where I got $3P every time.  That's just not fair.  Thank you for conceding before closing the browser in disgust.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The swingiest card ever
« on: July 09, 2017, 04:37:42 pm »

Mint can also be very swingy if one player gets a 5/2 start and there other cards that support a Mint opening.

But there are very few cards that do - basically only Fool's Gold and $2- cards that guarantee a $3-4 turn on the second shuffle, i.e. Poor House and Secret Chamber (RIP).
(Baker and Borrow don't count here because they remove the swinginess of the opening.)
I think Alms deserves special mention.

That being said I think Alms deserves special mention for basically making 5/2 hands insanely good always, but Mint>Alms (Salvager) just feels brutally unfair.

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My opponent's Sea Hag hit my Sea Hag twice.  There was no trashing on the board.

I didn't win that one.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The swingiest card ever
« on: July 05, 2017, 11:02:49 am »
Really?  Because I'll offer an incredibly weak, incredibly swingy card: Saboteur.  Trashing provinces with sab while your opponent's sabs hit silver is the difference between winning and losing in the late game - if both players go Sab.  Chances are if one player goes Sab and one doesn't, the Sab player just loses anyway because god that card is bad. 

And despite being enormously swingy it's not even on this list. 

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.
« on: June 28, 2017, 04:29:20 pm »
Did you ever consider to make another deckbuilding game respectively a game (like Mage Knight, Core Worlds, etc.) which features deckbuilding as one among other mechanisms?
In fact Kingdom Builder and Temporum both started out as deckbuilding games.

If you could visit another timeline (sorry I can't resist) what design decision would you change for those two?

I'm asking because even though I enjoy Temporum and Kingdom Builder, I always felt like they were just missing a little something compared to Dominion.  Which has to be a little annoying come to think of it, like a band where everyone loves their first album.  And they're like "dude, I poured my heart and soul into this last album, it's technically brilliant, dude you can hear me miss a chord 1:12 into the third song on  that first album just stop venerating it so much!"

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There was a board where the only cards that cost less than $5 were Silk Road and Cellar, so I opened Silver/Silver.

12
Not the rarest event, but obnoxiously perfect shuffle luck in a Tournament-Inheritance board, I felt compelled to apologize the moment this happened:

Turn 3
F plays a Tournament.
F draws a Copper.
F plays a Silver and 4 Coppers.
F buys an Inheritance.
F inherits a Tournament.
F draws 2 Coppers and 3 Estates.
F takes 2 VP from Baths.

Turn 4 - Formerly O
F plays an Estate.
F draws a Copper.
F plays an Estate.
F shuffles their deck.
F draws a Copper.
F plays an Estate.
F draws a Copper.
F plays 5 Coppers.
F buys and gains a Province.
F shuffles their deck.
F draws 2 Coppers, a Silver, a Province and a Tournament.

Game #4686358

I sympathy cringed for your opponent.  That's a real Kodak moment of salt for the bad luck shrine.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Playing Vassal
« on: June 28, 2017, 12:17:55 pm »
How has no one mentioned Golem, the OG "hold my beer" card on whether you get another action.

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Not revealing a Moat: Thief and Pirate Ship spring to mind immediately. 
Not revealing a Province when an opponent plays Tournament: Your opponent has five cards in hand, one card left in their deck, and has two terminals and a Diplomat in their deck with no other sources of +2 Action.
Not revealing Horse Traders to a discard attack when discarding won't help you: Your hand is Fishing Village, Horse Traders, Library, Vassal, Copper, and you have a Fishing Village in play.  Your opponent plays Urchin.  You want to avoid drawing so that you can vassal the top card and see if you want to discard it/play it.
Playing an Outpost on an Outpost turn Peddler, Teacher (token on Outpost), Conspirator, Emporium, et al.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The swingiest card ever
« on: June 28, 2017, 09:54:41 am »

Mint can also be very swingy if one player gets a 5/2 start and there other cards that support a Mint opening.

But there are very few cards that do - basically only Fool's Gold and $2- cards that guarantee a $3-4 turn on the second shuffle, i.e. Poor House and Secret Chamber (RIP).
(Baker and Borrow don't count here because they remove the swinginess of the opening.)

Worst of those is definitely Alms.  5/2 Mint/Alms-Remake is a disgusting, disgusting thing. 

Actually Alms is pretty degenerate with 5/2s.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Trashing vs. Buying
« on: June 27, 2017, 10:44:26 am »
Related question: I'd love to see the games where the winning player purposefully gained more than one Chapel (not counting Landmark effects such as Obelisk). Is it ever something other than a case of desperation by the losing player?

The link is lost to the mists of Goko, but I remember a game where my opponent opened Chapel/Saboteur and Sabbed my Chapel. 

Unsurprisingly I won that.

Saboteur can't hit Chapel.
Huh, I distinctly remember something like that happening.  But you're right.

Maybe it was Swindler instead? Turning a Chapel into an Estate is worse than if Saboteur could hit it.

That would make sense.  I distinctly remember he opened Sab+Chapel and I bought at least 2 chapels that game, and it went on forever.   That doesn't mean Swindler wasn't out though (Swindler+Chapel is an actual good opening since you don't get much mileage out of that Silver if you draw it with chapel anyway).  This was back in the Goko era when animations took a while to play out.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Trashing vs. Buying
« on: June 26, 2017, 06:26:54 pm »
Related question: I'd love to see the games where the winning player purposefully gained more than one Chapel (not counting Landmark effects such as Obelisk). Is it ever something other than a case of desperation by the losing player?

The link is lost to the mists of Goko, but I remember a game where my opponent opened Chapel/Saboteur and Sabbed my Chapel. 

Unsurprisingly I won that.

Saboteur can't hit Chapel.
Huh, I distinctly remember something like that happening.  But you're right.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The swingiest card ever
« on: June 26, 2017, 05:20:30 pm »
Treasure Map.  It's thematic, it's a luckfest.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Trashing vs. Buying
« on: June 22, 2017, 07:08:21 pm »
Related question: I'd love to see the games where the winning player purposefully gained more than one Chapel (not counting Landmark effects such as Obelisk). Is it ever something other than a case of desperation by the losing player?

The link is lost to the mists of Goko, but I remember a game where my opponent opened Chapel/Saboteur and Sabbed my Chapel. 

Unsurprisingly I won that.

20
You know I think you've missed the king of bend-over-going-in-dry here, that moment where long to grab the deck and pitch it straight at your opponent, force feed him cardboard while he chokes.  That horrific moment when your opponent plays Page->Warrior.  And you have a Warrior.  And it's not in your hand, and it's in your deck, and you know, you just know, you just know what's in the top two cards.  It's your own fucking Warrior, who will not be joining you on this magical adventure.  Nor will the next Warrior, because she's taking a trip to trashville too.  Meanwhile your opponent is assembling his engine of terminal actions because why the fuck not, you haven't even PLAYED a goddamn Warrior this game, nor will you ever, because two are in the trash and three are in their deck, smirking at you. 

And you just have to sit back and ask "what drooling neanderthal at Rio Grande smashed their club on the keyboard and accidentally copied text from the 'cards too stupid to be put in Dominion' file into Warrior's textbox?" Because man, the worst possible thing that could happen in a "chain these actions together to win the game" card would be for some stupid attack to trash one in the middle of the chain.  That would just be awful!  So let's print it on the middle card of the chain!  Then we'll make the end card of the chain make you immune to that effect so that if life kicks you in the balls once, it'll kick you in the balls if you try to get up again! 

Fucking Page line.

21
Windfall is pretty brilliant with heavy trashing when Gold are payloads, and I find myself evaluating it like that.  Like say you have Market, Wishing Well, Windfall and something like Remake or Steward.  I'll get a bunch of wells and markets and then plan on windfalling for golds at some point to get massive amounts of money.  Gold isn't a terrible payload.  My picks

Raid:  I think the ideal scenario for this is you have a Feodum deck and you play like 4/5 silvers and then gain 4/5 silvers and give out the -1 card token.  Which would be better than gaining a Province I guess?  Maybe if you have a Storyteller/Feodum deck you can leverage some sort of Storyteller megaturn to gain a bajillion Silvers?  Then you could combo it with Tower to gain a bajillion points?  Seems a bit magical christmasland, and you're deep in the woods of 3/4 card combos.

Annex: If a player would end the game in a tie, they may instead win.  Also something something something. 

Pilgrimage: If you can't find a less painful way to flip your journey token this is usually dead.  I've used it in engine decks with Ranger to rapidly gain extra engine components really quickly, but outside of that I find myself using it rarely.  At most I buy it on an awkward $4 turn then flip it for some cards later, but often it's just dead as a doornail.

NB: Quest is strong.  It turns attack or any draw into golds.  Even something stupid like Courtyard or Moat can get you a gold guaranteed on reshuffle, which often is worth it (aside: I think Moat is starting to get decent, since +2 cards isn't as bad as it used to be).  I think the "two curse" option throws people since it's so easy to see it as an anti-curse event and it's not good in that role.  If it were just "discard an attack or 6 cards" people would realize that those are the two interesting modes.

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Artificer+Highway

After five highways artificers are free.  That lets you play one to gain an artificer to the top of the deck.  Then you can just pile out the artificers, filling your deck with really good cantrips and potentially ending the game on the spot. 

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