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Messages - inverseParanoid

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1
Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Video Etiquette?
« on: June 30, 2012, 05:19:22 am »
I say, since it's a special event, it's definitely OK to record. If the person really has a problem, then they can temporarily change their Iso name to give them some form of anonymity. And maybe, out of respect, WW can refrain from making comments on his/her play.

The point is that there are many things that can be done to give this person the bulk of what they want without depriving all the rest of us of a wonderful resource.

2
Dominion World Masters / Re: DominionStrategy Qualifying Day Results
« on: June 27, 2012, 11:26:06 pm »
LOL... as if you guys are playing for world series champion!
Haha, it went all the way to sudden death game 13. He won with the home field advantage. Though he might have still won if I went 1st. I just never play bishop games that well. Though, I had a slight chance to force a tie on the final turn.


3
Dominion World Masters / Re: DominionStrategy Qualifying Day Results
« on: June 27, 2012, 10:09:05 pm »
I see WW has been reading my mind.

Edit: ...which means I need to actually post the topic which has been sitting as an open tab in FF for two days.

Actually, I created the format, but WW loved it.

4
Dominion World Masters / Re: DominionStrategy Qualifying Day Results
« on: June 27, 2012, 10:02:44 pm »
WW and I are currently playing our playoff. We're tied 3-3 through 6. Here's what we decided on top of identical hands, point counter, no veto:

Quote
Best of six where we switch who goes first every game and if one person finishes up two games or more, it's over. If not we play two game sets until someone finishes a set up two games overall. At the end of game 12, whoever has the better record wins (i.e. you no longer need to win by two games, even going 6-5-1 would win you the playoff). If it's still a tie, we go into sudden death where the next person to win a game outright wins the playoff.

Home field advantage equalizer:
Starting with game 13, the person who went first for the odd numbered games (we'll call them the home team) will have an advantage since they'll get to go first during the first sudden death game. A potential (slightly complicated) way to help equalize this would be to state that if after games 7 or 9, if the road team (the person going 1st during even numbered games) has a two game lead, he wins. This will only come into effect if there's a tie, but the road team could conceivably win 4-2-1, 5-3-1 having played the majority of the games going 2nd. Without this equalizer in effect, the home team would still get to play game 8 or 10 going second with a chance to win and force two new games.

EDIT: WW chose to go first, so he has home field advantage. I'm OK with 2nd since I created the crazy format to begin with, and I like the idea of having a "home game" in reserve going into game 6,8,10,12.

5
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/22/game-20120622-043301-4fb54d55.html

Final turn saw me with a VP lead, 11 buys and 23 money but the cheapest stack to buy out costing 27 in total.  Until a flash of inspiration hit me.  I feel pretty good about this one given his Pirate ship hit my Gold on turn 7.

Couldn't you have bought 8 estates for $16?

You are indeed correct.  Well, don't I feel stupid now.

Well, the point is that you found a solution that won you the game right then and there, when all the other options seem to lead to uncertain conclusions (i.e. you not winning the game right now and potentially losing later). And it doesn't matter if you win by 18 more points or not, since the only thing that counts is the win. Plus you also started a pretty cool thread.

So you could argue that buying out the curses was a BETTER solution than buying out the estates. Since they both led to you winning the game, but the curses option also gifted the F.DS community with this thread. :)

6
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/22/game-20120622-043301-4fb54d55.html

Final turn saw me with a VP lead, 11 buys and 23 money but the cheapest stack to buy out costing 27 in total.  Until a flash of inspiration hit me.  I feel pretty good about this one given his Pirate ship hit my Gold on turn 7.

Couldn't you have bought 8 estates for $16?

7
Dominion World Masters / Re: DominionStrategy Qualifying Day Results
« on: June 27, 2012, 01:07:05 am »
But the big thing is, what's the deal/rules/restriction/stuff for the playoff?

Well Personman and HiWay2Hello played there's best of 5 with the same settings (point tracker, no veto, identical hands).

I had miscounted earlier, and HiWay2Hello and I actually tied in our pod. Therefore, we played a playoff series, best of 5, which I just won 3-0.

Here are the logs:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/25/game-20120625-182615-58e75e40.html

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/25/game-20120625-183707-ab00565d.html

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/25/game-20120625-190438-95e390a9.html

The third in particular might be of some interest to someone, since it was a prime example of my pet strategy, which a few old timers might recall me whining about rather a lot back in the day :P I do apologize to HiWay2Hello for making em sit through those turns...

8
Dominion World Masters / Re: DominionStrategy Qualifying Day Results
« on: June 26, 2012, 10:19:00 pm »
DAY 2

Game 1: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/26/game-20120626-180022-98f59c03.html
paddyodoors 47
inverseParanoid 45
grant0 43
Dylz 34

Game 2: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/26/game-20120626-182332-5b026144.html
inverseParanoid 34
Dylz 27
paddyodoors 20
grant0 10


Game 3: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/26/game-20120626-184259-0d8bafbc.html
inverseParanoid 37
grant0 31
paddyodoors 22
Dylz 16

Game 4: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/26/game-20120626-190642-14f184ef.html
paddyodoors 50
inverseParanoid 36
Dylz 27
grant0 26

Totals:
inverseParanoid (2-1-1-2): 20 points
paddyodoors (1-3-3-1): 16 points
Dylz (4-2-4-3): 6 points
grant0 (3-4-2-4): 6 points

9
Would it be possible to have two different versions of the card and just let people pick and print whichever one they like best?
Done
Cool. OP updated with to include both versions. :)

10
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: 3 Actions that let Silver Shine
« on: June 25, 2012, 11:26:18 pm »
It would be a very strong card at 4. Not many cards can give you +2 cards, +actions for 4 except for Caravan (delayed), Spice Merchant (requires trashing), Menagerie (another special case), Shanty Town (another special case), Warehouse (discard). The natural problem is the ease of "gaining" 4 cost cards.
So what are your thoughts on rewarding the +actions per silver before drawing +2 cards? Wouldn't that put it more on par with some of those other cards?

11
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: 3 Actions that let Silver Shine
« on: June 25, 2012, 08:50:15 pm »
Whitesmith is really interesting.  I agree that $4 is probably fine for it, since, as you say, it's a Lab that only works in money games, where Labs aren't as useful anyway.   The question is, is it better than Silver for such a game?  If not, you'd simply never buy it.

As written, this card looks a little OP at $4. For one, you get to draw two cards and then get +1 action per silver card. So, in standard hands, only 1 in 6 cards has to be a silver for it to stop you from drawing dead, making it a whole lot more viable for engines since you'd only need a handful of silvers to create a self-sustaining whitesmith chain.

And if there are any +cards cards available, drawing your whole deck will be much easier. Imagine whitesmith + (any +3 cards card) + (any powerful terminal). With any luck (and most dueling engine games would swing on that luck), whitesmith chains will build up mass actions, and then your draw cards will ensure a full deck, and then you can spam bridge or goons or whatever else you have.

Or imagine you start a hand with KC + whitesmith and no silver. With any other KC + terminal you'd be drawing dead, but with whitesmith, all you need is one of your next 6 cards to be a silver and you can wreak more havoc.

If you truly want this to be a card that works best with BM and doesn't mesh so well with engines, then I think you ought to change it so that you get one +action per silver BEFORE you draw you cards. But then you run into the problem that rinkworks was talking about, where it's just too particular to sync well with a lot of strategies.

12
That's because it's just a concept, to see if inverseParanoid likes that better than the current image.
Would it be possible to have two different versions of the card and just let people pick and print whichever one they like best?

There's no real reason to have a unified version of the card at this stage, and letting people have what they want sounds better to me than forcing them to conform to one person's taste.

I can even update the OP to show both versions.

13
It is really motivating to have such quick and productive collaboration on this forum: from card idea, to critiquing, to wording, to playtesting, to searching for possible images, to a final card image design in a matter of days. The result: an interesting and good-looking Ghost Town card.
It was great working with you!

Quote
I will be printing out this and many other cards that have been made in the past week and adding them to my ever-heavier variant card Dominion box for play during my upcoming vacation.
Cool, let us know how it goes!

14
Personally, I would have gone for one with multiple buildings, but it's your card, your call. Fonts are fixed up. I could not find photo credit for this picture, just a wikipedia username. If you ever do want a different photo, let me know, they are pretty easy to swap out.

If you want to make a mock up of the multiple building one for us to see, maybe it will look much better in context. I'm definitely open to new picture ideas, I just loved the beat up nature of the building currently in use. And I've always envisioned it as being able to see the ghost town from a distance.

Quote
Now that the card is complete, I have updated my post to include the hi-res card (click the image.) You may want update your first post with this.
Done. Thanks!

EDIT: If you feel inspired, do you think you could center the image so that there's an equal amount of "white space" (i.e. open sky) on both sides? No big deal either way. And thanks for all your work!

15
I'll add that image and fix the font soon, I have been pretty busy recently. Thanar and I have been a card making duo as of late. He provides the excellent images, I make the card. I was hoping that would give him a laugh.

If I had to pick an image to go with right now, this one would be my vote.



16
Also, depending on how you define "any time" you could potentially TR/KC a Tactician and restoring a Ghost Town to your hand between each play to double/triple the Tactician. Still, there are many OP combos in Dominion, some more powerful than this.

Wow, that is kind of OP. I guess you have to have the ghost towns already drawn and set aside to pull this off. Although KC + tact + ghost town games would be pretty crazy. 2 Tacts, a few ghost towns, and a few KCs would make it pretty easy to draw at least 20 cards every turn.

17
I did a bit more searching for usable images (i.e. Creative Commons license that allows derivative works with attribution) from the ghost town in Bodie, CA (one of the most iconic in the U.S.) and came up with these possibilities:

I think I like this one the best out of that bunch: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcookfisher/2481964464/

Maybe we could look for an animated version of a ghost town. Something with translucent buildings could look pretty cool. And it might be able to bridge the gap between medieval and old west.

18
So you could potentially add this card to your hand AFTER you play a tactician, play it, draw a lab and then play another tactician if you draw it with the lab?

This is correct, though it's not as easy as it may seem to play two tacts in a single turn. You'd probably need a strong card drawing engine and some luck to find another tact organically (as you mentioned in your example). Or you'd just need to draw two out into your hand and then top deck one with mandarin or courtyard. But even that's tough because you'd have to draw enough cards to expose both tacts. So you'd need a thin deck or some added drawing power at a minimum.

Or if you're planning to play two tacts per turn operation would require 4 tacticians and at least one ghost town and at least one deck topper (courtyard/mandarin). So for that setup to be profitable, you'd need to have vault, secret chamber, or a lot of action +coin cards, since you'd be discarding your whole deck with the tacts, anyway.

So while ghost town could make for a very powerful engine, it would take a lot of extra setting up than your standard single tact or double tact strategies. I would think that the most viable way it'd play out is as a hybrid of sorts, where you buy two or three tacts and plan to usually only play one per turn, but occasionally find a way to get a second.

Either way, as rinkworks said, it's probably more fun to allow this rare interaction than it is to write difficult language to try to make it impossible. The bottom line is that Ghost Town adds for a lot of interesting possibilities, and things to take into account that will keep us on our toes every time it comes up.

19
Most dominion cards are based on quasi-medieval themes, so that's why I included some European images, which are generally made of stone. These might be better termed ghost villages (the term that seems to be used for them online).

Ah, I didn't even think about keeping with the quasi-medieval theme. I scanned the card list and found that the only other card that seems to not fit the medieval time period is fool's gold. Which oddly enough was also a term coined in the late 1800s (often connect with mining operations). :)

So we do have precedent to go with a more modern look, unless we find an exceptionally good medieval themed pic.

20
Golem + Ghost Town

Quote
Golem: Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 2 Action cards other than Golem Cards. Discard the other cards, then play the Action cards in either order.

With that above description of Golem, it sounds like you wouldn't be able to set Ghost Town aside when Golem triggers it, because you never technically drew it and Golem explicitly instructs you to play it.

Am I correct about this interpretation?

21
Thanks Thanar!

I actually googled your name because I had no idea what the text in the picture meant, and thought Thanar might have been some fancy word for image or fan art.

I guess I was thinking of something more old and wooden. Like an abandoned town from the American Old West. Or really, anything with just a barren, dessert background that reinforces the idea of "deserted." This image here looks exceptionally good to me, but it's "All Rights Reserved."

Or something like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RobsartHospital.jpg


I'm definitely flexible around what the final image will look like though, so please feel free to continue offering suggestions for how it should look and why. While I have a decent aesthetic eye, it's probably not nearly as well honed as the great Thanar's :)

A Note on Wood vs. Stone
When I see an abandoned stone city, I imagine people having lived there for hundreds of years, only finally abandoning the place they called home as the culture that kept them there reaches extinction. Abandoned wooden structures, on the other hand, have a fleeting feel to them. They may have sprung up overnight in response to a gold sighting that never panned out, or as an outpost along a popular trail that was later supplanted by more modern means of travel. It's this transitory nature that Ghost Town seems to embody most. The moment you draw it, it's out of your hand. The moment it's back in your hand, it's already in play.


22
It's still a reaction.  Tunnel is a card that reacts to being discarded.  This is a card that reacts to being drawn.  If the text space allows it, you should probably say "reveal and set aside" instead of just "set aside".

Oooo, thanks for that clarification eHalcyon!

Pokemon7452: If you feel like changing the picture to "reveal and set aside" it'd be much appreciated!

Err, actually, I take that back.  Horse Traders just says "set aside", so I guess the "reveal" is implied.  My bad!

But you don't set aside cards from Horse Traders until you actually play them. With this card you set it aside without playing it, so the "reveal" language does help I think.

EDIT: Oh, I see. It doesn't say "reveal and set aside" in its REACTION description. I mixed up discard (its play function) with set aside (its reaction function).

23
It's still a reaction.  Tunnel is a card that reacts to being discarded.  This is a card that reacts to being drawn.  If the text space allows it, you should probably say "reveal and set aside" instead of just "set aside".

Oooo, thanks for that clarification eHalcyon!

Pokemon7452: If you feel like changing the picture to "reveal and set aside" it'd be much appreciated!

EDIT: Nevermind. I think it's fine as is unless someone else can raise a good reason to add the "reveal and" part.

24
I can't wait to play with this one


Ahhh! That looks awesome!

One question. As worded, is the card still a reaction card? Or is it just a regular action card with special instructions? I guess it "reacts" to you drawing a card...

EDIT: Added this picture to the OP!

25
As I was saying in another thread, adding complicated wording just to stop you from doing something rare and cool does two bad things at once.  Why NOT allow this trick?  It's only possible when both cards are in the same game, which would be a minority of games with either card, and even then can't activate the combo without drawing two Tacticians AND Ghost Town in the same hand.  That's a non-trivial amount of money to spend to get the cards, and a non-trivial amount of work to line them up properly.  Seems to me you ought to be able to do it.

Crazier things are possible:  Golems + 1 Counting House + Tunnels?  Any number of KC-Scheme tricks?

You're right that multiple tacticians in one turn would be hard to pull off. Essentially you'd have to play your tact, and then draw another one somehow with only your set-aside ghost towns to start you off. This would be very hard to do without a +cards card to potentially draw to. And it would probably be optimal to just play this as more of a single tact (or single tact per turn), unless some serious trashing occurs. And you still need to buy treasure cards to have any buying power.

I divided the 17 cards that Ghost Town would affect into 4 categories, based on estimated impact they'd have when paired with GT. (Note: All percentages are based on there being Ghost Town + 162 kingdom cards available (which is base + all current expansions + promo).

Tier 1 (probability of a Ghost Town game including one or more Tier 1 cards: 15.85%)
Minion
Library
Watchtower

Tier 2 (probability of GT game including one or more Tier 1 or Tier 2 cards: 41.02%)
Ghost ship
Goons
Margrave
Militia
Tactician

Tier 3 (probability of GT game including one or more cards Tier 3 or better: 53.83%)
Hunting Party
Jack of All Trades
Menagerie
Shanty town
Torturer
(Note: I debated including Jack in Tier 2 but I think the silvers can get in the way of a Jack engine which isn't that good in the first place since it only draws to 5 cards anyway.)

Tier 4 (probability of GT game including one or more cards Tier 4 or better: 64.11%)
Tournament (Followers)
Horse Traders
Young Witch
Masquerade

That seems to be a pretty good level of interactivity. And it would mean that in approximately 50% of games Ghost Town would be better than the other four $4 villages (Farming Village, Mining Village, Walled Village, Worker's Village), and in 50% of games it would not. Making it of relatively equal value overall.

I think the final phrasing would be: "When you draw this card, you may set it aside. At any time during your action phase, you may return it to your hand. Discard any unreturned Ghost Towns during your clean-up phase."

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