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1

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Top 100 Games: People's Choice @ Tom Vasel

« on: November 10, 2012, 07:38:51 am »

In order of preference:
03. Agricola 10/10
10. Power Grid 9/10
01. Dominion 9/10
02. 7 Wonders 8/10
09. Race for the Galaxy 8/10
08. Small World 7/10
07. Settlers of Catan 7/10
06. Carcassonne 6/10
04. Ticket To Ride 6/10
05. Pandemic 5/10

Also, I really don't understand the whole Small World not being political thing. Whenever I've played it it has always been super political. People were making alliances, backstabbing one another, agreeing to team up on someone who was a threat, not attacking a certain player because they were afraid of repercussions. Personally I'm not a big fan of that type of gameplay, otherwise Small World would probably be ranked higher.

2

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The kingdom is your top 10 favorite cards.

« on: August 14, 2012, 11:05:04 am »

$6P Possession
$5 Apprentice
$5 Governor
$5 Tactician
$4P Golem
$4 Bishop
$4 Bridge
$4 Jack of All Trades
$4 Tournament
$3 Masquerade

With 4/3: Silver/Masquerade (despite the Possession being on the board..it will be easy enough to dispose of the Masquerade later)
With 5/2: Governor/Nothing (attempt to rush for the first Province as fast as possible)

3

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Most FUN Cards EVER

« on: August 14, 2012, 06:15:08 am »

The cards I find most fun are Golem, Governor, Masquerade, Tournament, Tactician and (controversially?) Possession.

I'm not sure what cards my main group of friends enjoy most, though they seem to love Moat due to that little surge of joy you get when someone plays an attack and you get to reveal that it didn't touch you at all. "Moat lol". Masquerade has received a..rather negative response..

4

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Part 2!

« on: July 10, 2012, 10:58:23 am »

My submission doesn't seem to be on the list :/ I sent the message to submit the card I designed, but it isn't appearing in my Sent Items folder. I was really happy with the cards I'd made, too..

5

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Part 1!

« on: July 10, 2012, 07:55:55 am »

Disappointed by the low placement of Lucky Coin. For me it was the Peddler-variant suggestion which would most dramatically impact how we approach the kingdom, and it's just a really fascinating card generally.

Also, apparently I gave Luddites 3 of its 4 points. I just really love the sense of paranoia it would cause: do you buy from the untouched pile risking getting a curse in the process? The psychological effect sounds really interesting.

That said, I'm happy with the two winners. Congrats to those that designed them!

6

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Lucky Coin

« on: July 10, 2012, 07:42:50 am »

This was my favourite of the Peddler variant suggestions. I wanted to see cards that really changed how we approach the game, and this does it perfectly. I always loved how Black Market lets you play treasure in the middle of the turn - because that effect causes you to reassess everything you understood about turn structure and how it applies to the cards - but of course the rest of the Black Market card, namely the black market pile itself, is horrible. So it's great to have that effect in a different and far more interesting card.

7

Dominion General Discussion / Re: One Trick Pony

« on: July 06, 2012, 06:52:27 am »

Island: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111208-112048-33bd9972.html

We were both fighting for IGGs and ended up with a 50-50 split, but he was trying to scoop up Duchies whereas I bought an Island whenever I had $4.

8

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Complete list of Things that are better than Isotropic

« on: July 04, 2012, 07:10:36 pm »

I can't understand why anyone would want to play a good board game or card game on the computer instead of in real life O.o One of the major appeals of tabletop stuffs to me is the tactile aspect: in Dominion's case picking up cards when you buy them, putting down cards to make action trees when playing actions in an engine, picking up victory point tokens or trade route tokens for the mats, seeing and feeling your deck grow as the game progresses. All of that is just SO much more satisfying than clicking on some screen with a mouse. Similarly there's actually tension when using cards like Golem because the results aren't instantaneous: you have to reveal cards from your deck one at a time, whereas on isotropic you get shown the results of the Golem instantly which is nowhere near as fun as cycling through your deck one card at a time wondering what will be next, hoping you'll hit that Torturer or dodge that Bishop.

The only reasons I play on isotropic are for the challenge, because I don't own all the expansions and because I can't play often enough in real life due to others not being as interested in tabletop stuff as I am. But in every other possible way I can think of real life Dominion is preferable to isotropic (well, except Philosopher's Stone ).

9

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2012 Ed.2: $3 cards

« on: July 04, 2012, 04:43:46 pm »

I'm pretty much completely in agreement with the order so far. One exception: Black Market. I hate that card, but yeah, I was the person who gave it a #6.. I'll admit that in retrospect I may have overrated it by a couple spots, but it really is just game-breaking far too often. Scoop up a curser when there's no good ones on the board? Scoop up a trasher when there's no good ones on the board? And even if you don't scoop up those cards, you can still often get some neat stuff from it, and it's always a terminal silver at absolute least. And then there's the one bit about it I really like (and wish would be included on a better designed card): how allowing you to play treasure before the buy phase synchronises with cards like Menagerie, Watchtower, Library, Tactician etc.

10

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Tournament alternative

« on: July 03, 2012, 06:11:39 pm »

I have something along these lines in the expansion I'm designing.

Duel
$? (still need to decide on a cost)
Action-Duration
+1 action
You may look at the top three cards of your deck, discard as many as you wish and then return the rest to the top in any order.
At the start of your next turn starting with you and going clockwise around the table players state whether they intend to take part in the duel.
Once everyone has stated their intentions, all players that intend to take part in the duel reveal their hand.
Total up the costs of the cards in each hand. Add 2 to the value of the hand of anyone who has a Duel in play and add a further 3 to the value of the hand of the person who played this copy of Duel.
Whoever revealed the most valuable hand gains a Duel prize. Whoever revealed the least valuable hand gains a curse. All players who revealed their hands discard their hand and draw 5 cards.

I really like the mechanic. It functions kind of like a duel, and you're sacrificing good hands for shots at winning a prize, or sacrificing bad hands at the risk of gaining a curse.

11

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which Cards are the least fun?

« on: July 03, 2012, 06:04:11 pm »

Anyway, the cards I find the least fun are:

Philosopher's Stone = Counting your deck and discard pile is a nuisance
Smugglers = I find it very unsatisfying for the reason mentioned earlier in the topic: you notice when a great card is copied from you, but it doesn't leave that great an impression when you copy a great card for once.
Black Market = HORRIBLE! Way too swingy, but more importantly it singlehandedly makes planning worth very little because you can't plan with the rest of the Kingdom in mind because you don't know what all the the Kingdom will even be!
Grand Market = Whoever gets the first one is normally in a substantially better position to pick up more of them, whilst the person who keeps getting bad draws (which is VERY easy to do when you're trying to push for Grand Market) has basically lost. Seeing this card in the Kingdom normally makes me cringe..
Treasure Map = Way to swingy.
Fool's Gold = Creates the most boring games ever in 2 player..
Farmland = I'll be honest, I'm just useless with this card. It's a personal thing I have to work past
Familiar = Way too swingy.

12

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which Cards are the least fun?

« on: July 03, 2012, 05:54:49 pm »

Tournament is one of my five favourite cards. I really don't find it all that luck-based at all. And spamming Tournaments is often a bad idea: going for silvers instead will often help you push to a Province faster, and the more Tournaments you buy the more rubbish you have clogging up your hands once your opponent starts scooping up Provinces. The Tournament race is one of the most interesting things in Dominion, and the aftermath is pretty fascinating too due to Tournament being crippled in the late game. And then there are times where you can ignore Tournament and let your opponent waste their time on it whilst you do more important things.

For what it's worth, all these cards that people hate are in my Top 25 cards; Governor, Masquerade, Tournament, Possession (with the stipulation that I only adore it in 2 player because it horribly imbalances 3+ player games), Jack of All Trades, Mountebank, Minion, Saboteur, Haggler. I find them all so fun!

13

Dominion General Discussion / Re: THE Dominion Card List(s) 2.0: $2 cards posted

« on: July 02, 2012, 04:58:03 pm »

Secret Chamber vs Duchess.. put it this way..

I have never played a game in which Duchess has played a significant role in the outcome. On the other hand, a couple days ago I played a vicious Pirate Ship 3 player game where there was very, very little virtual money available and no trashing available: Secret Chamber was pretty much essential to winning in order that you could protect your money and stop the Pirate Ships from getting too strong (and sacrificing Copper if you knew the other player was likely to be hit this turn anyway because they hadn't revealed a Secret Chamber).

Duchess is occasionally slightly useful, whereas in a few rare scenarios Secret Chamber is good and even rarer almost essential (though yeah, it's a bad card). I count a card that is good 3% of the time as better than a card that is marginally better than meh 15% of the time (making up these stats, but you know what I mean..).

14

Dominion General Discussion / Re: THE Dominion Card List(s) 2.0: $2 cards posted

« on: July 02, 2012, 04:33:41 pm »

Native Village is obscenely low. I had it ranked #3 (behind Hamlet and Chapel), but honestly I'd be tempted to give it the top spot next time we do this just because of how versatile it is as an engine enabler, as something that combos with hand-size based drawers, as a big turn creator and as something which has its own strategy dedicated to it (namely shoving all your rubbish on the Native Village mat via things that let you see/reorganise the top of your deck and attacks like Ghost Ship and Rabble). I have built up so, so much love for this card these past few days.

And I'll confess, I do probably overrate Chapel. Chapel was for many players the first time we made a big strategic leap in Dominion, so it leaves quite a strong impression, but I probably don't buy it often enough for it to deserve the #1 position on my list.

The only major difference between this list and my own was the Native Village ranking. Everything else seems fair

15

Variants and Fan Cards / No Money Game

« on: June 28, 2012, 05:36:19 pm »

This is a variant a couple friends and I played when we were messing around a couple weeks back. I thought I'd share it here to hear your thoughts.

You start the game with 7 copper and 3 estates as normal. From that point on though you cannot gain any treasure cards (obviously alternative treasure cards such as Bank, Quarry etc aren't included in the Kingdom). If you would ever gain a treasure card that treasure card is immediately trashed (so you could remodel a copper in to a copper and you would immediately trash the copper you gained from using the remodel).

Obviously this is a very silly idea for a variant, but we found it fun if incredibly slow-paced (only one player managed to buy a province with the cards we had on the table, everyone else just resorted to buying duchies after a certain point). It leads to some weird morphings of cards (Mine effectively turns in to a very slow way to trash your copper and nothing else, Mountebank becomes far weaker than Witch, Counting House is..well, yeah..).

Thoughts?

16

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Best Designed Card

« on: June 26, 2012, 12:38:41 pm »

Wow. I consider two of these cards (IGG and Masquerade) terribly dull and dominant in 50% of the games they show up in, and would consider them cards I *dislike*.

Yeah, +1 to this comment! I'm very surprised to see that much love for IGG. In game terms, I consider it the epitome of a card whose rules design has made the game less fun. IGG-rush is a low skill strategy, yet its almost always dominant when IGG is present.

For my own part, I'll add +1 vote for another unpopular card, but one which I like a lot:

Possession!

Great art, thematically feels like what it represents (you are taking control of them as if they were your puppet, mwahahaha!). Rules wise its surprisingly satisfying, in that its not an auto-grab if its present, but its presence always affects how you strategise for a given kingdom.

I adore Possession - it's in my ten favourite cards, because of how much having it in the kingdom completely redefines the game - but it's horribly designed in at least one major respect: it's only fair in 2-player. I refuse to use it in 3+ player games because it emphasises turn order to a ludicrously high extent in a way that no other card, not even something like Tribute or Masquerade, really does.

17

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Best Designed Card

« on: June 25, 2012, 08:27:38 am »

Lets go for..
+1 for Masquerade
+1 for Golem

I'm tempted to go for Governor too, but I'm not sure how thematically appropriate it is.