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1

Introductions / Darn, why didn't I introduce myself sooner

« on: October 30, 2012, 09:29:10 am »

I'm PenPen! Sorry that it took a while before I properly introduced myself. I just jumped into the card design contest while it was going on and well...somehow only got to write this now. My bad.

A little bit about myself, I currently live in Hong Kong and is now fully employed as a salesperson. I am actually born in HK, but spent some years studying in the US for high school and university. I got a degree majoring in geography, which I think nobody would expect for some guy coming over from Asia to study abroad (also a great trivia question for people to guess)!

I was an avid video gamer (still plays video games), but as I'm getting up in the ages I slowly shifted my entertainment focus from the vidya to the board. I blame Sanguosha and Settlers of Catan (even though I never seriously dabbled in the latter) for starting my interest in board games. I moved through a few more board games before settling on Dominion. Not counting Monopoly from years ago, Power Grid was the first one I got after rediscovering board games, then Pandemic and its expansion, and eventually caught on Dominion. This all happened in almost 2 years ago.

Before this, during my high school days I had a not-tourney-serious interest in Magic: TG, and I had a real obsession to the awesome card Lord of the Pit, which I mostly built totally stupid decks around that card just to see it devour my other creatures (Sadistic Glee came along and it probably made the deck slightly more legit). That was fun.

To tie this above paragraph with Dominion, I originally found both similar in its execution, but Dominion doesn't burn my money as quick as M:TG, and I bought the base set as a result. Obviously the jury is still out on which is burning my money faster because I now also have Intrigue and Seaside, but I still think Dominion is still a better investment by far!

This is not a particularly proud moment but I currently do have a copy of a bootleg Chinese base set of Dominion, which someone bought for me (that makes 2 base sets, but in different languages). I think the only thing I like over the current box is that it uses a magnetic flap thing to hold the box. If you guys are interested I can show some pictures of that, I suppose (if not violating any forum rules)!

In the video games side I prefer playing strategy games (especially building sims) and fighting games (and some modern arcade games). I loved SimCity 2000 and its sequels, dabbled in Cities in Motion quite a bit, and enjoyed Civ 4. If you count the footy management sim Championship Manager and Football Manager, I'm also a great fan of it, managing teams well over 10 seasons at times. But my main interest is still in fighting games - particularly the King of Fighters series, which was pretty big in Asia and especially Hong Kong (not as much now). I couldn't get into Street Fighter however. I also to some degree played BlazBlue and Persona 4 Arena.

Currently I'm playing Guild Wars 2 as the first MMO I've played in a while. The last one was Ragnarok Online when it was out in the US. And the one before that was Ultima Online. It makes me feel old mentioning that. Maybe I should stop.

So anyway, hopefully I am able to contribute a bit more to this forum and continue to learn about strategies and bettering my Dominion-fu!

2

Game Reports / What's the best strategy for this?

« on: October 20, 2012, 02:00:16 am »

Was playing this game on Androminion for a few times but was a little confused perhaps on what's the best way to tackle this. I tried to do a Native Village + Bridge BM combo but it's not running smoothly even though I did win. Tried to go for the Duke-Duchy cards instead in another game but it was pretty inefficient as well and I lost pretty badly.

3

Variants and Fan Cards / PenPen's Contest Submissions - Review and Revise

« on: October 10, 2012, 09:32:54 am »

Over the past few weeks/months it's been a great time and lots of fun in designing different types of cards for the mini-set contest. I've started submitting my designs starting from challenge #9, and I find myself thinking up different cards for the contest while my mind isn't occupied (e.g. at work).

I'd love to keep making up new cards but I'd need to take a look at my old cards first and see what I can do to improve them.  Obviously I'm still comparatively green to a lot of guys in here when it comes to familiarity and card design balance, but I'd like to sometime make a fan expansion that's not called "Weirdness in a box" or something similar. So anyway, here's the cards I made for the contest as they were, originally:

From challenge #9: Non-terminal silver

Scammer
$6 - Action-Attack
+$2
Each other player trashes a Treasure card from his hand. He then gains a Treasure card costing at most $3 less than it (cost of gained card must be no lower than $0), and may choose to put it in his hand. Otherwise he reveals his hand with no Treasure cards.

From challenge #10: Potion card

Red Stone
$5P - Action
Trash this card. Discard a Potion from your hand.
If you do both, trash a card from your hand, then gain a card of any cost.

From challenge #11: Dual-type card

Bronzeworks
$3 - Victory-Reaction
Worth 2 VP if you have the most Copper cards in your deck compared to other players (a tie for most would qualify as well).
--
When you would gain a card, you may reveal this from your hand. If you do, instead, gain a Copper. You may discard this card to put the Copper into your hand.

From challenge #12: Non-terminal draw

Theorist
$4 - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
All players reveal a card from his hand. If all players revealed a Treasure card, +1 Card for all (including you) and +$1 for you. Otherwise, all players gain a Copper, putting it into his hand (including you).

From challenge #13: One-shot card

Investment
$4 - Treasure
Worth $2
Trash this card. Gain a Silver, and the player to your right gains a Gold.
--
When you would gain this, the player to your left gains this card instead, and only that player can gain this card.
--
(Rules clarification: The player to the left cannot have the player to HIS left gain this card, he is the sole person gaining the card. Reactions to card gains apply in this situation however, e.g. Watchtower. When this card is played, the original buyer of this card will gain the Gold, and the "player to the left" gains the Silver.)

From challenge #14: Self-synergizing card

Samurai
$5 - Action-Attack-Reaction
+1 Card
Each other player discards a card.
You may return up to two Samurai tokens to its supply. Each other player discards an additional card per token returned.
Gain a Samurai token.
--
When another player plays an Attack card, you may return a Samurai token to its supply and discard this, then at the start of your next turn, +1 Card. You may instead trash this card if you do not return a Samurai token to its supply, if you do, gain a Samurai token.
If you do either, you are unaffected by that Attack.

From challenge #15: $2 card

Abandoned Village
$2 - Action
+2 Actions
+1 Buy
Discard any number of Curse cards. +1 Card per Curse card discarded.
--
When you gain this, gain a Curse.

From challenge #16: Treasure card

Mortgage
$3 - Treasure
Set aside a Victory card from your hand. This card is worth half the cost of that card (rounded up) in $, otherwise this is worth $0.
--
During your buy phase, you may buy any set aside Victory card at half its cost (rounded up) in $, you do not need to play this card to buy it.
--
When the game ends, any Victory cards that are still set aside by this card are not returned to your deck.
--
(Rules clarification: Getting back the Victory card works like buying it from supply, it uses a buy and you put it into the discard pile. You can just buy any Victory card you choose, provided that you can afford it and have enough buys. You can use multiple buys to gain as many Victory cards. You can put Vineyard aside, but it'll give you $0, and you can buy it back at $0.)

From challenge #17: +buy

Poseur
$2 - Action
+1 Buy
All players (including you) reveal a card from their hand. All cards revealed this way cost $1 less this turn, but not less than $0.
--
If you did not buy any copies of the revealed cards, you may put this card on top of your deck.

From challenge #18: Reaction card

Village Idiot
$2 - Action-Reaction
+2 Actions
--
When another player plays a card with the wording "+2 Actions" you may set this card aside from your hand. If you do, at the start of your next turn, return this card to your hand and +1 Card.

I'm going to take a look at these cards and try to revise them at maybe a card or two at a time and considerations etc. Feel free to comment on how absurd it was (a lot of them were pretty crazy and convoluted), and what you would recommend and whatnot. Cheers!

4

Dominion General Discussion / Opening a 2/5...what if there's no $2 card other than Estate?

« on: September 12, 2012, 09:26:25 am »

This is probably asked countless times, but I don't see this being asked recently...so...

Let's say I play a game and drew only 2 coppers with my hand in my first turn. But there's no $2 cards to buy except for an Estate or a Copper (or a Curse, but you'd be really stupid to buy that in a normal game).

So at this point, I wouldn't get the Estate unless I'm really going for Barons, since I should have a better chance of getting better VP cards in the next few turns.

Maybe a Copper would be fine at this point, which is better than doing nothing? It does increase the chance of drawing more coins, but it also does slightly hurt you in mid to late game.

I don't think not drawing anything would be the most popular choice, but early on, you're basically choosing between two cards that won't help much in the next few turns. So it's still viable but I probably would cringe if I went for this.

I think I'd take the Copper unless I'm really dead set on going with Barons in my deck.

5

Game Reports / Screw you, I got Torturing Bazaars

« on: September 10, 2012, 01:21:36 pm »

Not anything to really gloat about but I played Androminion today (yes, laugh at me) and focused my energies on getting Bazaars and Torturers (and some Islands just to unclog my deck a bit) with this game. The AI players kept playing Thief (among other stuff) to thin out my deck from monies but eventually I survived. It also ran really well at times, I think I actually drew the whole deck in some turns, just that Thief actually did hamper my deck near the end. Below is the endgame.

I also think the AI is prone to take the Curses if they have 1 card or less. So at least I'm getting better, but I really can't measure against the best players yet. Work in progress.

6

Variants and Fan Cards / Team-based Dominion?

« on: September 04, 2012, 09:34:31 am »

An idea flashed in my head. Is it possible to play Dominion as a team game?

It can work like bridge where paired players are seated facing each other and the team that gets the most VP would win.

There would be the problem of team synergy because in Dominion there's not many cards that would give benefits to another person. Attack cards will need to be redefined...we can make the "each other players" part as "players in opposing teams" as a workaround. Generally I think this would work decently.

Perhaps for buys or gains, you can use your turn to buy/gain cards for your teammate, but I'd imagine this would create a special deck that only focuses on doing BM or simply a thinned-out deck where it'll buy an automatic Province for the team each turn (and buying for your teammate so your deck wouldn't be any thicker), while the teammate can probably stack up on other things (and weird things like one player only having money and another one full of action and victory cards).

There would be differing strategies and new dynamics on a team-based game. But rules need to be fleshed out...thoughts?

7

Dominion General Discussion / Dice Tower Reviews Dark Ages

« on: August 29, 2012, 10:51:33 am »

Tom Vasel reviews the expansion and I don't think he likes it too much? I dunno (he puts it mid-rank for expansions). I wonder if the waiting for other players to finish their turn thing is an issue...anyone has any experience yet?

8

Variants and Fan Cards / My other non-terminal draw card

« on: August 28, 2012, 11:09:01 am »

Initially I had two ideas for the non-terminal draw contest. One was the game theory card that I submitted (and failed), and another was this one below.
---------------------
Production Line
$4 - Action

+1 Card
+1 Action
While this is in play, every Action card played during this turn gets +1 Card (not including this).

This card can only be played once per turn.
---------------------

I had a few concerns - I don't want TR or KC or whatever "play card xN" card to touch this. That'd seriously mess up this card's features and makes things much more complex, so I had to put a restriction that only one instance of this card can be played. I wasn't sure about the cost (I think $4 seems low), but I'm not good with costing tbh. There's probably some unforeseen side-effects that would pop up with this card since it pretty much affects all action cards.

What do you guys think?

9

Rules Questions / Minion and Reaction card

« on: August 23, 2012, 08:35:37 am »

I'd just want to clarify - let's say I have a Minion and another player has a Moat. I play Minion, and the wording on the Moat says "When another player plays an Attack card, you may reveal this from your hand." So this actually means that the Moat can be shown before I make a choice for Minion?

If that's the case as the Minion player I would actually have the luxury of making a choice based on whether other player(s) used their reaction cards (if the situation permits obviously).

10

Variants and Fan Cards / Cursed Village

« on: August 08, 2012, 10:52:15 am »

I was lurking at the forums during the Village contest and I joined the forums a little too late - and it's past now!

Anyway I had this idea running in my head, where you can utilize curse cards to help your village:

Cursed Village
$2
Action

+1 Card
+2 Action

Discard any number of Curse cards. +$1 per Curse card discarded.
----
When you gain this, gain a Curse card.

Ideas/Feedback would be appreciated.

11

Dominion General Discussion / Easing Casual Players into Intrigue

« on: July 31, 2012, 01:21:59 pm »

So I recently bought Intrigue and put it at my friend's place (the base set had a quite positive reaction to my mostly-casual friends). I took my own copy of the base cards from his home back to mine so I can try it out with my parents and see how they responded (result: pretty good) with the base set (on the recommended first game setup).

Anyway back to my question. I played Intrigue with my friend, and we played a few games. Some cards that require choices came up, like Pawn, Steward, Minion etc. Some more complex cards also appeared, like Bridge. My friend and I played it pretty well, that's because I like to play games, and he can understand the wordy cards well and can formulate a strategy around it (like...getting lots of Saboteurs on his first game and did little to ruin my Duchy-Duke deck on his first try).

After a few games he asked me how we should introduce these cards to our more casual friends who liked the base game, mostly because they don't prefer to use their brains too much. Since the base set is prolly not going to be with Intrigue for a bit, I'm thinking of making a starting kingdom set with Intrigue only cards.

My initial thought is to leave out the choice cards, but maybe put one that doesn't require too much thinking time (Nobles maybe). I suppose I would also throw in an attack card or two from the set, and Secret Chamber too (only because it's the only Reaction card in here). Add Mining Village because it's...vanilla Village plus. I think Coppersmith and Masquerade would be fun cards to be around. Courtyard too. Maybe a slightly more complex card, like Ironworks or Tribute. Or an alternate Victory with Duke for additional variance.

I'd want to avoid Torturer at least until they're more familiar with the game (or put it very far behind).

So maybe this one below:
$2: Courtyard, Secret Chamber
$3: Masquerade, Swindler
$4: Coppersmith, Mining Village, Ironworks
$5: Duke, Tribute
$6: Nobles

Thoughts (or an alt setup)? I think this would work well except for the fact that the whole deck doesn't have additional buys to show the benefit of buying multiple things in a turn. Maybe I should sub Ironworks or Tribute with Baron, but Baron needs to work with Estates...