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1

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: In which Sarah king's courts a golem

« on: January 03, 2012, 11:57:17 am »

Both solutions (Swindler when it drains the last Province and last Colony, Transmute when it drains the Transmute pile) appear to be correct, though the latter is of course a little more satisfyingly clever and seems closer to what must have been intended given the original hand. Am I missing something?

2

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Feature Request: Timer

« on: January 03, 2012, 11:53:11 am »

And yes, it would mean that a strategy of buying up Pawns, Hamlets, and Scrying Pools would come back to bite you, but that's kind of the point.

If that's the point, I'm 100% against this idea. Optional schmoptional, unless I can set some permanent setting on my account that says "never ever ever ever ever let somebody propose a game to me with this setting for fear I might accidentally accept it".

3

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Feature Request: Make resigning easier

« on: January 02, 2012, 06:19:41 pm »

I don't think clicking "exit" causes you to resign. Pretty sure the opponent still has to wait for the timeout. In any case (back when I was most recently playing) I had a lot of people disappear on me and force me to wait for the timeout... though who knows whether any of them were actually clicking "exit".

4

General Discussion / Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.

« on: January 02, 2012, 12:15:06 pm »

I was only proposing that you should answer nitpicking with nitpicking...

And I'm proposing that your counter-counter-nitpicking was just wrong

5

General Discussion / Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.

« on: January 02, 2012, 11:49:05 am »

Which, on the other hand, is also not really correct because you are only talking about a card that symbolizes a Platinum...

We're really disappearing down the rabbit hole of pointless minutiae at this point... but when I say "Platinum" in the context of Dominion it's a proper noun that refers to a member of a specific card class - which class comprises multiple copies of the Platinum card.

6

General Discussion / Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.

« on: January 02, 2012, 11:34:34 am »

The difference is that "moose" is a count noun whose plural really is "moose". You wouldn't say, "How many goose are blocking the road?" You'd use the actual plural: "geese". "Platinum", on the other hand, is a mass noun in common speech and AFAIK doesn't have an accepted plural.

Any time you're using a count noun in the plural, you need to use the plural form. Since "platinum" doesn't normally have a plural, in a technical context (like Dominion) where we might want to use it as a count noun, I'd expect to pluralize it in the standard way: by adding an "s". Same way you'd pluralize another proper noun from outside standard usage, like a surname. But those wishing to avoid offending any stodgy grammarians anywhere might be advised to use something like "copies of Platinum".

7

General Discussion / Re: PC/console gaming

« on: January 02, 2012, 11:14:06 am »

I just finished Bastion yesterday and started Dungeons of Dredmor.

Bastion is very pretty and has awesome music, and the narration hook is fun. The story didn't wow me as much as a friend promised, and the gameplay is a bit stodgy. Not a bad game if you want to kill 10 hours on the cheap, but not great either.

Dungeons of Dredmor seems like a good intro to Roguelikes. I'm not too far into it. I kind of wish it didn't have the option of reloading saves, since I'm relying on that heavily now - my current character has died 3 or 4 times on the first 2 dungeon levels. I may reroll soon and click the "permadeath" option from now on.

8

General Discussion / Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.

« on: January 02, 2012, 11:05:18 am »

Well, in common speech "platinum" is basically never used as a count noun. I suppose you might pluralize it if you were talking about different shades of the color platinum? Though I'd expect "shades of platinum" for that.

In Dominion I'd be strongly inclined to use "Platinums" to refer to multiple instances of the "Platinum" card, as a shorthand for the probably less controversial "instances of Platinum" or "copies of Platinum". You could ask "How much Platinum do you have in your deck?" but that doesn't sit well with me since we're really talking about a count rather than an amount of a mass noun. Certainly I would feel wrong responding with "I have 5 Platinum" - 5 is a count!

9

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is it too early to speculate on the Spring 2012 expansion?

« on: December 30, 2011, 10:04:39 pm »

The only remotely balanced solution I've seen for cards that want to be overpowered for their cost is to give negative VP chips each time the card is played. I think there's some good design space available there, actually.

10

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Any news on the iphone app?

« on: December 28, 2011, 09:35:08 pm »

There are several known bugs on isotropic. There are legitimately difficult subtleties like, what exactly happens when I play Outpost when it won't give me another turn? or Tactician when I have no cards in hand? or I react to Ironworks's gain event with Trader?

Anyway, I'm with theory: it's ludicrous to complain about bugs and missing features in an app that doesn't even exist yet.

11

Dominion General Discussion / Re: My love and hate relationship with Dominion

« on: December 28, 2011, 09:27:58 pm »

Choosing your opening split is a bad rule, full stop. Bootstrapping to $5 when it's important to do so is a critical element of opening strategy. Now forcing everyone to have the same (randomized) opening split, that's a fine house rule IMO.

12

Other Games / Re: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?

« on: December 28, 2011, 09:24:30 pm »

Anyone picked up the Star Trek Deck Building game yet? I don't have high hopes, but I'm such a Trekkie I might buy it anyway... unless you all tell me it really sucks.

Some local folks played it and basically said it completely sucked. Like, not only did they think it was super capricious (hey, you drew the card that lets you establish a runaway lead through no merit of your own, good job!) but they complained that the thematic element was a mess. Like you might be a Federation captain but then enemy characters join your crew randomly, or another Federation ship blows you up for no reason, or whatever.

13

Other Games / Re: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?

« on: December 28, 2011, 09:38:29 am »

A Few Acres of Snow still ain't been fixed

Eminent Domain is really good though. I played a lot of it at BGG.Con and a bunch since then too. For how brazenly it copies mechanics from Race for the Galaxy + Glory to Rome + Dominion it ended up being a surprisingly excellent game.

14

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is it too early to speculate on the Spring 2012 expansion?

« on: December 27, 2011, 11:44:27 pm »

If I remember correctly, Donald X (and feel free to correct me!) doesn't like to make one-shot cards, because a lot of people hate one-shot cards, apparently.  There are still only three, being one each in each of the first three sets.

There are three one-shots in Seaside alone. (Embargo, Island, Treasure Map.)

True.  Forgot about the latter two.  Still no more one-shots after Seaside.

I mean, did you miss where I said "optional" and mentioned Mining Village?

15

News and Announcements / Re: New to Dominion

« on: December 27, 2011, 05:34:27 pm »

I think somebody who is truly new to Dominion can learn a lot from the base game even after discovering Big Money, by trying to work out incremental improvements on it (like adding a Witch or a Smithy). Though certainly, I agree that viable true engines are very few and far between on boards limited to the base set, assuming there is at least one expert-level player at the table who is well versed in Big Money variants.

16

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is it too early to speculate on the Spring 2012 expansion?

« on: December 27, 2011, 04:31:13 pm »

I would love to see more VP chip cards (or Duration cards, though Donald has been pretty unequivocal in stating there will never be any more), but I would guess chances are slim. They'd have to put another set of VP tokens in the box, since each expansion comes with the bits that are required for that expansion - so that you're only required to own that expansion plus one of the stand-alone sets.

Let's see if I can rampantly speculate on a mechanic that might be a focus for a future expansion.... How about, goal cards? (OK, I had already guessed that wrong for Cornucopia.) Powerful, optional one-shots? (Like Mining Village.) Tokens that can be accumulated and used later for basic stuff like +Buy or +Action? Negative coinage on powerful attack cards?

17

Feedback / Re: Serious Analysis

« on: December 27, 2011, 09:45:47 am »

But you know, you're totally the best moral judge, O great guided, so you're right, I was unbecoming.

You had me pretty much convinced of your sincerity about the other things you were saying until this point. Too bad.

18

Feedback / Re: Serious Analysis

« on: December 26, 2011, 10:34:05 pm »

I appreciate your assessment.

In all seriousness, step back a moment and consider: This is a thread to complain about how people are clicking a button to compliment some posts but not affording you what you feel is your compliment-button-clicking due for other, different posts. "Unbecoming" is putting it rather charitably.

19

Dominion FAQ / Re: Dominion Lingo Dictionary

« on: December 26, 2011, 10:28:01 pm »

So does this make Tournament a cantrip? Even when the effect of +draw is negated?

Tournament serves as a cantrip precisely when nobody else reveals a Province.

If you are not comfortable with the "play of a card" classification scheme I described (which I thought was pretty clear), and you want to talk about classifying cards (rather than plays of cards) as cantrips, then Tournament as a card is not a cantrip.

20

Feedback / Re: Serious Analysis

« on: December 26, 2011, 07:34:13 pm »

Hey look, an unbecoming sour grapes thread.

21

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Quadratic cards

« on: December 26, 2011, 11:26:47 am »

Yeah, this is absolutely quadratic: "s(s+v)/4 - ((s+v)mod4)/4 + V"

If you start with those 3 Estates and just buy Silk Roads, the first 4 give you 4 VP total, the next 4 give you 12 VP total, and the next 4 give you 20 VP total.

22

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: December 26, 2011, 12:31:40 am »

img-Hamlet

Whether 'tis Nobles in the Mine to suffer the Spies and Swindlers of outrageous Fortune Tellers, or to take up Moat against a Sea of Hags, and by Reacting end them?

23

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: One card - big money

« on: December 25, 2011, 01:51:28 am »

Er, isn't the answer Pirate Ship, where a single play is basically worth up to (roughly) the total number of treasure cards in the supply + opening coppers + black market + diadem, minus however many you need to leave around to prevent three-piling?

I find it likely that this exceeds the theoretical maximum for Vault or Bank. You can set up a Kingdom consisting of nothing but Pirate Ship and 9 Treasure cards, plus Potion and Platinum, and you don't need to build a giant draw engine that burns through a bunch of cards to effect the drawing that is needed for Vault or Bank. I sincerely doubt you can do better with Diadem even if you limit the Supply of basic treasures to the cards in the Base set, but I'd have to do the math on how a big KC/TR chain would play out. The Diadem solution will want Black Market: put Young Witch in the BM deck to get an 11th pile, get Tournament out of the BM deck (instead of wasting a whole pile on it), and pull a single Crossroads and any other spare Villages that aren't already Kingdom piles out of the BM deck too..

24

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Province / Colony Games

« on: December 25, 2011, 01:30:28 am »

Engines are almost never viable and BM/X reigns supreme.

Yeah OK buddy.

25

Dominion FAQ / Re: Dominion Lingo Dictionary

« on: December 25, 2011, 01:21:31 am »

Lots of people use the word cantrip; however, there's variation in what exactly they mean by it.

Any play of a card whose effects include (at least) +1 Card +1 Action is a cantrip. Any play of a card that does not include +1 Card +1 Action is not a cantrip. Anyone who is using a different definition of "cantrip" in Dominion is (IMO) utterly full of it

Yes, this means Village is a cantrip. Yes, that's OK. No, I don't find it remotely understandable or coherent that some people have difficulty with the idea of Village being a cantrip. Yes, it's also a "Village" (a term with a much looser definition, sometimes so broad as to encompass any and all cards that ever give +2 Actions); it can be both.