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1

Variants and Fan Cards / Card idea: Errand Boy

« on: May 09, 2018, 07:37:47 pm »

Errand Boy
$4 - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
---
Setup: Each player secretly chooses their +1 Action, +1 Buy or +$1 token to place on this pile. (When you play a card from this pile, you first get that bonus.)

Should be balanced enough at $4? Gives you what you need (as long as what you need isn't draw or trashing - the first makes the card hard to price, and the second makes it harder to describe succintly). I suppose you could also have the players choose in turn order, if that makes much of a difference?

2

Rules Questions / Strange things with Necromancer and Overlord

« on: March 23, 2018, 12:05:54 am »

After reading this post, I started wondering two things:

1. Does the card played by Necromancer get turned over when it's chosen, or after it finishes being played? (My guess is the latter)
2. Does an Overlord being played from the trash stay an Overlord (since it's not in play), or does it get stuck as the card it was played at (since it never leaves play)?

Because depending on how those resolve, then you could do this:

I have two Necromancers in hand. There is an Overlord in the trash, and a Throne Room in the supply. I play the first Necromancer, using it to play the Overlord. I choose to play the Overlord as Throne Room, using it to play the second Necromancer twice. The Overlord is still an Overlord (depending on the ruling for (2)) and is still face-up (depending on the ruling for (1)), so I can choose to use the Necromancer to play it again, potentially picking another card in the supply.  When that's done, I turn the Overlord face-down, so I can't use the second play of the Throned Necromancer to play it again.

3

Dominion General Discussion / Substrings in card names

« on: November 24, 2017, 01:27:21 am »

I've started looking for the minimal unique substrings in card names - in other words, what's the smallest set of consecutive letters that uniquely defines a card? I'm looking across all names of cards and card-shaped-things in the game (I'm debating whether to include both "Knights" and all the individual Knights, and I am counting split piles only as separate cards), ignoring punctuation (including spaces) and here are some of the interesting results so far (going alphabetically, I'm just finished the ones starting with "E", and where I give a substring it's the first one of that length in the card's name):

• Every letter of the alphabet is used in at least two names, so a single letter will never be sufficient to define a card.
• Several cards have minimum substrings of length 2 - for example, Bandit Ford (TF), Crypt (YP), Duke (UK), but 3 is usually the minumum.
• The longest minimum substring I've found so far is 5, which is Cursed Village (RSEDV), because it shares so much of its name with both Curse and Blessed Village.
• Of the 122 cards I've looked at, 9 cards have names that are completely contained in another card's name, and hence they have no unique substring.

4

Dominion General Discussion / Silly boards you got from randomisers

« on: August 16, 2017, 02:34:01 am »

This is an opportunity to show off some of the odder board you wind up with when you go full random. The all-Attack boards, the just-needs-one-card boards, the silly-useless-but-fun-combo boards, the Scout-is-actually-good-here boards, you name it.

I wanted to knock off a quick bot game, and here's what the system offered me:
Fishing Village, Philosopher's Stone, Fortress, Plaza, Worker's Village, Rebuild, Royal Seal, Upgrade, Hoard, Forge [Potion, Colony]

To summarise - 4 villages, 3 Kingdom treasures (plus 2 non-standard basic treasures), and 3 trash-for-benefits (of which only one is terminal).

5

Game Reports / A fun lunchtime board

« on: June 29, 2016, 12:37:49 am »

Code: [Select]

Ratcatcher, Stonemason, Feodum, Nomad Camp, Plaza, Silk Road, Thief, Inn, Royal Carriage, Trading Post
This is a 3p game I just played at lunchtime, and it was pretty neat. I think the key cards are Feodum and Stonemason, although Thief can shift things in a lot of directions. My broad plan at the start was to use Stonemason to turn $5s into Feoda and Feoda into 5 Silvers apiece, and aim to grab lots of Feoda and Silk Roads. For various reasons, my strategy ran a bit slow, and I wound up throwing a lot of random junk into the mix, and my final turn boiled down to "Lunchtime is ending and I *think* I'm doing pretty well, so Stonemason a Plaza for two Silvers, call Royal Carriage to do that again, play two Silvers, buy Stonemason and overpay to get the last Stonemason and Ratcatcher to three pile, and end up winning by only 3 points over the guy who got 3 Provinces".

6

Puzzles and Challenges / How special can a card be?

« on: June 09, 2016, 01:10:05 am »

Including Empires, what is the most "special" a pile of cards can be? By special I mean it has the most things you need to remember about it, possibly marked with tokens of some kind. For example, the best I can get is:

Duchess
* Built-in on-buy-Duchy trigger
* (Embargo token) On-buy trigger
* (Young Witch) Is the Bane card
* (Defiled Shrine) On-gain trigger
* (Adventures Events) On-play trigger x4
* (Ferry) Price is modified
* (Plan) On-buy trigger
* (Tax) On-buy trigger
* (Obelisk) Worth VP

I know it's a bit vague, especially around whether various Landmarks count if they look at multiple piles of cards, but can anyone beat it?

7

Variants and Fan Cards / A pile-control Event idea

« on: May 03, 2016, 02:43:35 am »

Does this make sense as an idea? Is it balanceable?

?
$? - Event
Once per turn: When you buy this, you may overpay. If you do, choose a non-empty Supply pile costing the amount you overpaid and remove it from the Supply until the start of your next turn.

The idea being that you can pay to make a certain card unavailable for purchase (along with other tricks), but you have to pay the card's cost to do so. For the sake of not making it completely stupid, I would rule that you ignore that pile completely for the purpose of checking game-end conditions, meaning that making the Provinces disappear doesn't end the game immediately. The non-empty pile is mainly so you aren't expected to remember how much a card costs, but it has other effects. I would mostly anticipate this being used to try to control endgame to an extent, especially where PPR or a similar effect is in play or when you think your opponent is about to megaturn and you're only a turn away from your own.

8

Rules Questions / Mint + Talisman

« on: April 12, 2016, 08:54:15 pm »

The "Other Rules clarifications" section on the wiki page for Mint starts with this:

• If you buy a Mint with treasures such as Talisman or Quarry, the bonus from those cards is no longer applicable after they are trashed, but they still do apply to Mint.

Can somone confirm or deny my slightly different interpretation that I put on the talk page?

Technically, if you reduced Mint's cost then bought one with a Talisman in play, wouldn't you have the choice of whether to gain the second Mint then trash the treasures, or trash the treasures first thus meaning you don't get a second Mint? As opposed to Royal Seal, which since it reacts to the gain, would be in the trash by the time it should be doing its thing so you cannot topdeck Mint using it.

(Whizkid agrees, but I'd like to get a third opinion for safety's sake.)

9

Variants and Fan Cards / Harvest Queen (a Cornucopian TR)

« on: October 18, 2015, 11:51:16 pm »

The other discussion about TR variants reminded me that, way back in 2013, I submitted a card to LastFootNote's Cornucopia design contest that made it to the finals (with some help from LFN himself, since he liked the idea of the original version but not the implementation, and gave some feedback that greatly improved it). Here's the card:

Harvest Queen
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Set aside any number of differently named Action cards from your hand. Play them in any order.

For completeness, I'll also mention the winner of the contest, which used a very similar idea but different execution:

Storyteller
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+1 Card. If this is the first time you played a Storyteller this turn, +1 Action.
While this is in play, when you play an Action card that you don't already have a copy of in play, +1 Action.

Clarification: The first Storyteller you play only gives you +1 Action, not +2 Actions, because it wasn't in play when you played it.

And, of course, there's also now Champion, which does the same kind of thing but doesn't need to be played every turn and doesn't care about how unique said cards are (but is also a lot harder to acquire).

The feedback for Harvest Queen was, to summarise, that it's pretty neat but probably a bit weak. While I don't disagree, I think that it has potential to be somewhat devastating in the right kind of engine. Unfortunately, I don't have a regular Dominion group so I have no chance to playtest it to tweak it. Does anyone have any thoughts on where this card sits, power-wise, and how it might be improved? Is it just a case of making it $4 or do there need to be some bonuses involved?

10

Dominion General Discussion / Most confusing combination?

« on: September 02, 2015, 09:44:57 pm »

What is the combination of two or three cards that has potential for causing the greatest headaches when resolving? I will put forward Golem + Royal Carriage as my candidate for two cards, and Golem + Royal Carriage + Herald for three, given that you can cause Golem to play the Royal Carriage plus another action, then call the Royal Carriage to play the same Golem *again*, potentially creating a chain for as long as the Golems find more Royal Carriages (and throw in Herald for the possibility that you may wind up automatically playing *more* Golems).

Honourable mention to Procession + Hireling (+ Graverobber/Rogue) for creating an ongoing effect at the start of each of your turns, despite there being no cards in play to remind you of it.

11

Variants and Fan Cards / Battle of Wits 2

« on: August 11, 2015, 12:54:17 am »

An alternative to the other idea(s):

Battle of Wits
Action - $5
Flip your Journey token over (it starts face up). If it's face down, +$2. If it's face up, then:
Each other player secretly flips their Journey token to a side of their choice. For each player, guess whether their token is face down or face up. If you are correct, they gain a Curse.

12

Variants and Fan Cards / A remodelling Treasure with funky cost

« on: July 19, 2015, 08:48:54 pm »

Treasure - $3
$0
Trash a card from your hand or in play. Gain a card costing exactly $2 more than it.
---
This costs $1 more for every 2 Coppers you have in play.

The idea started from thinking about alternative costs or buy restrictions, in the same vein as Peddler or Grand Market. I had the idea of "This costs $1 more for every Copper you have in play", but I realised that that becomes almost as bad as a straight Grand Market restriction for about 80% of cases. But $1 for every 2 Copper isn't so bad, and if its initial price is $3 then you can buy it for 5 Copper so it's still a potential opener.

Then I thought "So what could such a card actually do?" and I thought about how the cost-increaser is kind of neat for buying Farmlands, so I realised that it would be a nice self-synergy if it could do the remodelling itself - but that requires it to be a Treasure, to guarantee having Copper in play when you use it. Using it to trash cards in play is mostly so you can trash it to yourself, but you could also pull a trick like trashing a Copper in play to make it easier to buy another copy of it.

I'm not 100% attached to the specific wording of the effect - if it does a straight Remodel it can't really cost $3 even with the restriction, but it could probably do "up to $1 more" or "exactly $1 more" without too much difficulty.

13

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Crazy Adventures Tricks (probably not combos)

« on: April 23, 2015, 08:27:13 am »

I've noticed a couple of things that the Adventures cards let you do that will almost certainly not win you the game, but the fact that they're possible amuses me no end.

You can call a Royal Carriage after playing a Caravan Guard via its Reaction effect. You can even call a Coin of the Realm, although it won't do much.

At the start of your turn, you can call a few Ratcatchers to clear out all the junk in your hand, followed by a Guide so that you actually have cards in hand to play. It's a bit like using a Minion or a Draw-to-X after some non-terminal trashing like Upgrade.

14

Solo Challenges / The big build-up

« on: March 19, 2015, 08:55:43 am »

A challenge to gain cards in incremental costs! In the fewest turns you can manage, do the following in order:

1. Play a Workshop to gain a Feast.
2. Play a Feast, gaining a Horn of Plenty.
3. Play a Horn of Plenty in order to gain a Farmlands.
4. Buy a second Farmlands, trashing a card to get a Forge.
5. Finally, play Forge and trash sufficient cards to gain a Province.

You may buy or otherwise gain any other cards you may need (and you can specify the rest of the kingdom however you want). Also, you don't need to ensure that the card you gain in one step is the same one you use in the following step or anything.

PM me logs, I'll keep things open for a couple of weeks.

15

Puzzles and Challenges / Set puzzles (aka Zendominion)

« on: February 10, 2015, 12:07:27 am »

I was going to put this in Easy Puzzles, but then I suspect they're not actually that easy.

1. The effects "+1 Card", "+$1", "discard a card", "trash a card from your hand", "gain a Curse" are in the set. The effects "+1 Buy", "+1 Action", "take a coin token", "gain a Curse" are not in the set. What is a rule that describes the set?

2. The effects "+1 Action", "+1 Buy", "+$1" are in the set. The effect "+1 Card" is not in the set. What is a rule that describes the set?

3. The cards Border Village, Grand Market, Ironworks, Goons, Stables are in the set. The cards Young Witch, Envoy, Merchant Guild, Oracle are not in the set. What is a rule that describes the set?

(The third one in particular is quite tricky, so in the style of Zendo, I will allow people to ask whether a particular card is in the set or not.)

16

Dominion General Discussion / Princing the Prizes

« on: June 16, 2014, 07:49:17 pm »

This is for you, LFN.

At first I thought this thread said, "Princing the Prizes".

So generally I think Princing Prizes is not going to be a thing, since it involves having already bought Tournament and Province, and succesfully collided them, and then spending another $8 on Prince at some point, and having *that* collide with the Prize (or maybe you Butchered your Province into a Prince - interesting ...). By which time, your opponent has grabbed two Prizes of her own and moved onto emptying the Provinces. However, which Prizes are worth Princing should you get the opportunity?

Diadem, obviously not.
Followers, almost certainly, and that's going to make the game crazily quick after that point.
Trusty Steed, also almost certainly. It would probably also be the one time its Silver gaining could be fast enough to make for a decent Feodum strategy.
Princess, yes unless you're trying some tricksy TfB strategy.
Bag of Gold ... eh? Maybe not so much, since your engine already has a decent source of cash if you've gotten this far, so Golds probably aren't so great unless they're TfB fodder.

So the order of preference for Princing Prizes probably primarily preserves the preferred permutation (sorry, once I got to "Princing Prizes" I knew I had to keep going).

17

Dominion League / Re: Standings & Results thread

« on: June 07, 2014, 04:33:00 am »

Damn, you beat me by seconds.

18

Tournaments and Events / Rant about the failure of local tournaments

« on: April 07, 2014, 12:06:36 am »

Apparently there is some kind of Australian board game tournament thing run every year, with qualifiers in most of the capital cities along the eastern states. Most years they have Settlers, Dominion and Carcassonne, and there's some variation into what other games they run (recently Ticket to Ride, but it looks like they've done Memoir '44 and Alhambra previously too). Except, looking at the results for ACT, they generally manage to get the requisite 12 entrants for Settlers and nothing else. This year, Settlers has hit its minimum of 12, while Ticket to Ride sits at 7 and Carc and Dominion both have a single entrant.

I want to enter, but (a) it's run at a place that's about half an hour's bus ride away from me, (b) apparently games are played as 4p base set only which is not the most exciting set-up, and (c) if the tournament doesn't run, I can either get a refund less booking fee (i.e. I lost a couple of dollars and a bus fare for nothing) or I can transfer to the other tournament running that day, which is Settlers, which I don't really feel like playing competitively.

Why can't 10 other Dominion players magically appear to enter the tournament so I can sign up and know it'll run?</rant>

19

Variants and Fan Cards / Environment cards

« on: March 26, 2014, 01:43:04 am »

I don't think I've seen this particular idea proposed, although it resembles some other ideas as well as borrowing from similar concepts in CCGs. The Environment cards (I don't like the name, but we'll start with it) are, like Knights, a stack of 10 unique cards with different names and effects, and their order would be randomised at the start of a game. Environment cards would have a few things in common:

1. Rather than being cards you add to your deck, they go straight into play when gained and don't get discarded from play.
2. Only one Environment card can be in play at a time.
3. All Environment card have a "while this is in play" effect, usually affecting everyone.

So, where not specified, Environment cards have the sole type "Environment" and card text that includes "When you gain this, put it into play. Do not discard this card during Clean-up. When another Environment card comes into play, trash this card." I haven't worked out how to avoid the issues caused by cards like Watchtower other than to rule that they can't target Environment cards.

The Environment cards could include (costs not listed because I don't know how much they should cost, and names definitely open to alternatives):

Free Market
While this is in play, at the start of each player's turn (including yours), he gets +1 Buy. When you buy this, +$1 +1 Buy.

Metropolis
While this is in play, cards cost $1 less, but not less than $0.

Co-operative
While this is in play, at the start of each player's turn (including yours), he gets +1 Action. At the start of your turn, +1 Card.

Inflation
While this is in play, Copper produces $1 extra when played.

Mulligan
While this is in play, at the start of each player's turn (including yours), he may discard his hand. If he does, he gets +4 Cards.
Rules clarification: You may choose to resolve this along with other start-of-turn effects like Duration cards in any order, but you must resolve the whole discard-and-draw effect before resolving any other effects.

20

Puzzles and Challenges / Edge Case Me

« on: December 12, 2013, 08:24:17 pm »

The rules are simple: Present a situation which you would almost never do, and let others come up with edge cases where the move is a valid one. In general, assume that you are playing a normal game of Dominion and trying to win.

Additional hard mode rules: Provide an edge case to someone else's edge case.

To start, I offer the following:

• Open Silver/Throne Room
• Play the only Tournament in your deck, with a Province in hand that you don't reveal.

21

Mini-Set Design Contest / Mini-Set Contest: Bold predictions

« on: August 28, 2013, 02:06:13 am »

Just what is likely to show up in this contest? Post your predictions about entries, voting, trends, winning cards, whatever here.

I predict:

• that despite entering a card in every round, I will win only one. And it will be the card I put the least amount of thought into.
• that approximately a third of the entries for Intrigue will be designed with the aim, or at least with an intent, of making Scout occasionally playable/even more ridiculously overpowered.
• that one of the winning cards will have a base cost of $1.
• that the Base round(s) will have the fewest entries, and either Guilds or Dark Ages the most.
• that at least three of entries, and one of the winning cards, will be an edge-caser's wet dream.

22

Puzzles and Challenges / First Guilds puzzle

« on: June 03, 2013, 08:11:39 pm »

With the first spoiler of a Guild card, it looks like even people who won't be buying the set or playing on Goko can have some fun with puzzles. So here's the first one:

Using any cards that are currently known, construct a Kingdom or subset thereof, including Baker, in which the optimal openings are 4/4 and 2/6 (or 6/2). If not optimal, then at least let there be a strong argument for doing so.

A couple of thoughts I have already:
Squire, Altar, Sea Hag and one other good $4, maybe Caravan?
Chapel, Border Village, a terminal and a non-terminal $4? Probably borderline (although perhaps with Smithy as one of the $4s)?

23

Puzzles and Challenges / Puzzles with (probably) multiple answers

« on: May 07, 2013, 09:41:58 pm »

This is a bit of an overlap with a few other threads, but I'm creating this thread to be for puzzles where it isn't about finding the one true solution, but instead trying to find as many different solutions as possible - but potentially harder situations than in the "easy puzzles" thread.

Let's start with this:
At the start of your Buy phase, you have 1 Buy and have played your Treasures, giving you at least $8. But the amount of coins you have will affect your decision on whether to buy a Province or a Gold. Why?

24

Goko Dominion Online / An anti-climactic end to Base Act I

« on: April 08, 2013, 07:45:38 pm »

I've just been faffing around with the Base Adventures, not playing them particularly well, and I got to the Finale of Act I. I was doing ok, had managed to avoid getting a lot of Curses thanks to a Moat that turned up at the right time, bought one Province but knew I needed a second ...

... then "Grandmother" bought an Estate. The last Estate, after Curses and Villages had already disappeared. Bringing her up to 6 points, on par with me and Maiden Marie, when she had gone first. So I scored a shared victory with MM, on 6 points, when there was plenty of time for someone to eke out a proper win.

http://dominionlogs.goko.com//20130408/log.505fb44f0cf2dfcf7c289d67.1365464458747.txt

25

Puzzles and Challenges / More states?

« on: March 05, 2013, 06:56:09 pm »

So which state is missing from this list?

Alabama
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Delaware
Georgia
Hawaii
Indiana
Louisiana
Maine
Massachusetts
Michigan
Missouri
Nebraska
Oregon
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin

The hint being two territories that also broadly meet the criteria for inclusion: Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands