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1

Variants and Fan Cards / For fun & giggles

« on: March 19, 2018, 06:00:32 pm »

We leave the real & balanced cards to Master Donald... these cards we just made for fun & giggles! We drew them on cardboard and to play with them, assigned a real card that was sort of like-looking to be that card. Translations from German below. (We own 4 extensions, sorry if a name or such of an existing card is repeated.)



Tax Collector
Take 1 card each (random and unseen) from the hand of all
other players to your own hand.
+1 Action
Cost: 5 - Action - Attack

Goldmine
Take 1 Gold to your hand and gain 1 Gold.
Everyone else gets 1 Gold to their deck.
Cost: 5 - Action

Firestorm
Every other player trashes 2 of their hand cards.
They draw 1 card from their deck.
Cost: 4 - Action - Attack

Reward
All other players together decide on 2 cards to give to you from the stock
(of cost 3 or higher each, but no Victory cards). You put them to your hand.
Cost: 4 - Action

Good Fairy
+ 2 Cards
+ 1 Action
The other player who first shouts "Good Fairy" after this card is played
gains 1 Gold. You gain 1 Gold. (Whenever someone shouts Good Fairy
when none is played, they gain a Curse.)
Cost: 4 - Action

Word of advice: Good Fairy and Reward made us laugh a lot. Reward, because it can be used for something that doesn't help the other person, and also because it initiates a discussion among the other players. I also wanted to add a touch of cooperative or helpful play as one of us sometimes gets into fights. Good Fairy on the other hand is just generally funny (and sometimes requires an extra round or decision if both shout at the same time). One reason for introducing Good Fairy is to punish the absent-minded or those who do something else when it's not their turn!

Caveat: Try not to use Goldmine and Good Fairy in the same game... the Gold stock will be empty soon! Though that too caused giggles...

2

Dominion General Discussion / German translation not always optimal

« on: February 03, 2018, 12:45:48 pm »

It is probably already known that translations can introduce errors or ambuiguities. The German translation of Dominion too, while being good and fun, falls into that sub-optimal territory. (I would play in English, but not everyone I'm with understands it fluently.)

As a random example, the card Menagerie in Germany says something along the lines of "If you have cards with different names in your hand, + 3 Cards, otherwise +1 Cards". This is quite ambiguous: it could mean you only need *some* cards to be different, not all. And what happens if you only hold 1 hand, would that qualify for "holding cards with different names" -- it seems not, as one doesn't even have multiple cards! (The guide book makes this issue clearer in German, by the way.)

Now take the English original. The sentence simply is: "Reveal your hand. If there are no duplicate cards in it, +3 Cards. Otherwise, +1 Card." Boom. Absolutely crystal clear and easy to understand, no room for misunderstandings.

Or take what German Dominion World points out on their homepage's January news, where they say a part of the German second edition of the base game includes a printing error which has the Mine card read to trash an "action card" from the hand, when it should read "treasure"...

Other translation decisions are not directly ambiguous or introducing misunderstandings, but simply lack the direct clarity of the original. For instance, "Victory" cards are translated to just "Points". The more proper German translation would be either "Sieg" (Victory) or "Siegpunkte" (Victory points), a word used in other games, so it's not even uncommon.

I guess my rant ends here, and thanks for one of the best games in the world! I'm saying this as an owner of a huge collection of Spiel des Jahres games, but Dominion stands out as probably the one we play most often, including the extensions...

3

Rules Questions / Hunting Party: Can I postpone the +1 action until drawing cards?

« on: February 03, 2018, 05:42:02 am »

Hi! We have a question in regards to the card Hunting Party. Its first action is +1 Card, its second is +1 Action, and its third is an instruction that lets you gain new cards into your hand. So our question: Can the +1 Action be "held" and used on a new card one gains through the putting of extra cards into your hand, if an action is drawn?

It seems the Dominion base rules suggest to always apply instructions in order, which may mean that +1 Action would need to be done immediately, and thus cannot be done on the extra cards one would only draw in an instruction following it. But we felt maybe as Hunting Party is a 5 gold high-value card, it is intended that one can apply the +1 also to an extra action drawn with it. (Or maybe it can only be "held" if one cannot follow the instruction at first as one doesn't have an action card in deck, before drawing more?)

A similar question applies to the card Farming Village. We are unfortunately left with the German instructions, which might add some extra translation confusion at times (though it seems well-translated). We also checked the Wiki on this card but are still not 100% certain. Thanks!