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1

Game Reports / Re: Venture vs. Witch always wins?

« on: June 20, 2015, 03:16:11 pm »

Watchtower Silver will always get you a Witch into the next shuffle, unless the last two cards in your deck are Watchtower and money AND you get an unlucky 4/4 instead of 5/3. It's slightly better than double Silver for hitting 5, because you only care about one of your buys (Watchtower) missing the shuffle.

Courtyard Silver is just as likely to get you a Witch in your next two turns, but less likely to get one into your next shuffle: if the Courtyard is in your second hand, you're causing another (small) shuffle, delaying the Witch by a turn on average.

I'm not making a statement about what's the best opening on this board, just clearing up the debate about what gets you a Witch more often.

2

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A synergy from my first Adventures session

« on: June 05, 2015, 04:57:35 pm »

Ferry only applies to Action cards.  You can't put the -$2 token on Province.

RIP cool synergy. I was actually wondering that after the game, if we had missed something like that. Thanks for clearing it up.

3

Dominion General Discussion / A synergy from my first Adventures session

« on: June 05, 2015, 04:53:08 pm »

I haven't really paid any attention to the Adventures strategy talk, so I suppose this is probably already well known, but I came across a combination of cards that seemed to work very well together. The basic combo was Duplicate + Ferry, and I added a few other things to make it run a bit better. The idea was just to buy Silvers for a while (I actually got an Amulet to gain Silvers, but I think this may have been a mistake), then pick up a couple Duplicates, and put a Ferry on the Province pile. Then to get multi-Province turns, you just need to spike $6 on occasion. It's big money with no Golds!

This plan was helped along a bit by Scouting Party, to sift through the junk in my next hand, and Wine Merchant, to help me get $6 with my crummy deck: I didn't mind paying the $2 on off-turns to discard him, since $2 was sometimes all I had after Scouting! I didn't count the turns, but I seemed to have 5 Provinces quite early, and wasn't slowed down enough that I was worried about an engine coming from behind while I finished them off.

4

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Events will have normal (non-randomizer) card backs due to missprint

« on: April 09, 2015, 05:18:46 pm »

Doesn't everyone just use an app to randomize anyway?  Even shuffling 100 cards back when there were only 3 expansions was a chore and a half.

The guy I know who has all the cards just carries them in one case, not sorted in any particular order, so that you can just grab 10 from wherever and end up with a perfectly fine kingdom. Even easier than using an app (as I used to do). Not as truly random, of course, since I imagine the cards near the front and back of each row get used less, but good enough.

5

Rules Questions / Re: Possession + X

« on: March 24, 2015, 03:04:42 pm »

While possessing an opponent, can you buy Mandarin to have them top deck all treasures to give them a dead hand?

While not possessing an opponent, can you buy Mandarin and top-deck all your treasures to give yourself a bad hand?

6

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Many newbie questions Smugglers/Jack/Militia/HT/Minion/Forge

« on: March 17, 2015, 08:33:52 pm »

I think this is just Jack + Minion.

Aren't Minion and Jack kind of cross-purposes, though?  Jack fills your deck with Silver, whereas Minion wants to get most of its money from other Minions.

The deck I would play is Jack + BM, with Minion as "a slightly better Silver for $5". If you draw it in hand with a Jack, you can get the $2 and a card, making it vaguely like a Grand Market. If you draw it without a Jack (or with insufficient money, or whatever), you can mulligan for a better 4-card hand. If you play Jack, drawing Minion, it's worse than Silver, of course, but on average that will happen less than the other scenarios.

7

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Many newbie questions Smugglers/Jack/HT/Minion/Forge

« on: March 17, 2015, 08:31:16 pm »

The only fast engine card here is HoP, but there is no way to increase hand size beyond 5.

Horse Traders.

Horse Traders only helps you get your hand size above 5 if you're counting the excess Horse Traders you'll be unable to play anyway. It doesn't help you get a bunch of cards in play for HoP, which is what matters in the context you're talking about.

8

Game Reports / Re: Do you know boards that produce long games?

« on: March 10, 2015, 07:01:33 pm »

I just went digging through my own games, and the longest one I ever played was 43 turns!

Code: [Select]

Tunnel, Wishing Well, Advisor, Death Cart, Scavenger, Bazaar, Duke, Ghost Ship, Highway, Witch
Looking at it though, I don't see that it has to be this long. Ghost Ship, Witch, and Duke will all lead to slow games, but even so it only went as long as it did because my opponent let me have all the Duchies and Dukes and tried to piledrive Provinces instead.

9

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Log Search Engine

« on: March 09, 2015, 01:58:38 pm »

So is the log search permanently down, or just temporarily down?

Working fine for me at this very moment. Are you going to some old URL instead of to gokosalvager.com?

10

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fewest number of turns

« on: February 28, 2015, 06:45:32 pm »

You might enjoy this post I made last year about the fastest games I could find in the gokosalvager database: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11060.0

11

Other Games / Re: Getting good at Race for the Galaxy

« on: February 26, 2015, 05:27:33 pm »

I think you can play with them on or off.  They add flavor to the game but it sucks when someone's hand and start sends them down a path that lets them pick up the goals anyway.  (4+ Dev goal + GalDev, I'm looking at you.)

What goals are we talking about? Some sort of variant?

Goals are an official mechanic of RftG introduced in the first expansion (Gathering Storm).

Does this variant reduce luck and/or is used in tournaments?  I'm interested to know if our luck vs skill discuss is encountering this crosstalk; I've only played the base game.

Most card games are a lot more skill-based than they appear to a new player. A new player doesn't really know what to do, but he does stuff that seems good to him, and sometimes he gets good cards and wins. But usually he loses, and since he can't see what his opponents are doing that is better, he concludes that it's just bad luck when he loses. You see this in poker, you see it in Dominion, it's really everywhere: beginners blame luck when they lose, and then Mic Qsenoch or Stef stop in to say "actually here are ten errors you made that all led to your loss". I'm no RftG expert, but I'm quite confident that someone who regularly wins 70-player tournaments can exercise a lot more skill than I can even in just the base game, without any of the goals.

Edit: That is, I'm arguing that you think Dominion is more skill-based and less luck-based than Race because you understand Dominion better. Someone who's studied Race as much as you've studied Dominion will surely disagree. Probably there is some difference, and one game has a larger luck factor than the other, but I doubt it's really that large.

12

Other Games / Re: Prismata

« on: February 26, 2015, 03:45:20 pm »

Of course. It's just much rarer than the bloodrager case. You can't really rush redeemers, because there's no time to get the tech and the absorb before the opponent gets attack.

I haven't been playing much the last few weeks, but my one game with Redeemer I was able to get value out of Redeemer: I bought it when Crash's only attackers were two Deadeyes, and I had an Infusion Grid to absorb. So if he actually clicked his Deadeyes (as he wanted to) I'd get to absorb three of the Gauss Charges. Instead, he attacked with them. In a sense, of course, this was me buying Redeemer when my opponent had four damage, and therefore "bad value", but it was four damage he didn't want to use: it sorta turned my WE into DD, while also getting me 3 attack.

13

Other Games / Re: Prismata

« on: February 26, 2015, 01:03:18 pm »

I have trouble gauging when Redeemer is a good choice. Here's the thing, the 4 extra attack for your opponent from the gauss charges mean that you will have to buy extra defense one turn earlier. That defense is not only expensive, which means building up little or no pressure on the turn you build the defense, but it's also a huge warning sign for your opponent, who can react accordingly (eg., profit from the temporary reprieve to build up a lot of pressure, and deny your redeemer build, putting you severely behind).

If you build engineers to counter the gauss charges, the total cost of your Redeemer is 16GGB. It doesn't compare very favourably to the other 3 attack units in the game (Asteri cannon, Drake, Omega Splitter, Cynestra)

So, redeemer seems sort of a tough sell without good support (mainly Chieftains and Antima Comet, I think, or as a counter to periodic attackers). Anyone else with a differing opinion?

Redeemer is the flip side of Bloodrager: you buy it when the Gauss Charges mostly don't matter anyway, e.g. when your opponent has 0 attack and you have a Wall up or similar. If the 4 Gauss Charge are actually dealing 4 damage to you it's pretty poor value.

14

Other Games / Re: Prismata

« on: February 25, 2015, 05:32:42 pm »

http://play.prismata.net/?r=KqjJP-P6+vv

How did I lose this game? Do you not have to destroy frontline units to win?

Iceblades are really bad against mass green, because their main draw is the massive freeze: $7BR for one damage is not efficient at all. If your opponent's damage has 5HP, they can afford to allow breaches. Especially with Gauss Fabricator, they can keep building damage even if you breach their Drones.

The other draw of mass Iceblades is that they have a ton of health, so it takes a lot of investment from your opponent to kill any of your damage. Mixing in a Militia and a couple Tarsiers weakens the Iceblade all-in, because now you have to defend these squishy units as well, instead of relying on the sturdy Iceblades to fend for themselves.

Of course, there are other ways to play Iceblade than to just rush for a million of them, but in this game it looked like your plan was to rush for a million of them, so I think the Tarsier/Militia were wrong, and your opponent's commitment to green should tell you that Iceblades won't work anyway. On turn 5, when he buys conduits 2 and 3, I would give up on the Iceblade plan and just try to push through with Tarsiers, which is generally enough pressure to demolish a Gauss Fabricator rush. Certainly every Iceblade after the first should have been something else (Tarsier+Drone? Shredder+whatever?), because your opponent is clearly never building any more defense, so you are getting terrible value for your money.

I appreciate the feedback, but he only had 5 Gauss Cannons at the end and that's not enough to kill an Iceblade. I don't understand how it wasn't literally impossible for me to lose at that point, and how I ended up losing anyway.

Oh yeah, indeed at the end there you have a win locked in. I didn't watch to the end because you said you lost, and I stopped when things seemed to be going downhill. If it's a loss in your gamelog I imagine it's because you got disconnected and your opponent claimed victory.

15

Other Games / Re: Prismata

« on: February 25, 2015, 04:55:19 pm »

http://play.prismata.net/?r=KqjJP-P6+vv

How did I lose this game? Do you not have to destroy frontline units to win?

Iceblades are really bad against mass green, because their main draw is the massive freeze: $7BR for one damage is not efficient at all. If your opponent's damage has 5HP, they can afford to allow breaches. Especially with Gauss Fabricator, they can keep building damage even if you breach their Drones.

The other draw of mass Iceblades is that they have a ton of health, so it takes a lot of investment from your opponent to kill any of your damage. Mixing in a Militia and a couple Tarsiers weakens the Iceblade all-in, because now you have to defend these squishy units as well, instead of relying on the sturdy Iceblades to fend for themselves.

Of course, there are other ways to play Iceblade than to just rush for a million of them, but in this game it looked like your plan was to rush for a million of them, so I think the Tarsier/Militia were wrong, and your opponent's commitment to green should tell you that Iceblades won't work anyway. On turn 5, when he buys conduits 2 and 3, I would give up on the Iceblade plan and just try to push through with Tarsiers, which is generally enough pressure to demolish a Gauss Fabricator rush. Certainly every Iceblade after the first should have been something else (Tarsier+Drone? Shredder+whatever?), because your opponent is clearly never building any more defense, so you are getting terrible value for your money.

16

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Best Dominion Moments 2015

« on: February 21, 2015, 02:49:36 pm »

Nicely done. Note that it was game over on T2 when your opponent opened with a potion.

Yeah...that was problematic. And then having an opponent spin the deck twice with Golem when there were no actions to reveal...ouch.

Now I understand the relative lack of draw here, and it seems weird to critique an approach that won by 240 points, but is Golem really a good idea here at all? If you buy Silver over potion, any time you buy Golem you could have bought Goons (or Gold, I guess) instead and quite possibly a Grand Market. And since the name of the game here is KCing cantrips and playing anything you happen to draw, holding a Potion has to hurt your chances to hit $7 at least some of the time early.

Yeah I agree, Golem is getting in the way more than helping: the engine here is fueled by Kinging Kings and Kinging GMs; any Golem that you play takes two actions out of your potential "play three times" pool and plays them only once instead. It's especially bad if you Golem into a King's Court, because then it only gets to play one tripled action instead of three.

17

Other Games / Re: Prismata

« on: February 17, 2015, 11:33:23 am »

Opponent opens two Drones. I open Drone, Doomed Drone, Engineer. Opponent resigns.

What was up with that?

I would guess, external factor. Called in to work/oven on fire/baby woke up/etc.

I knew they buffed Doomed Drone, but I didn't realize it could do that.

18

Game Reports / Re: Very fast quarry game

« on: February 14, 2015, 01:32:02 am »

You might enjoy this post I made last year about the fastest games I could find in the gokosalvager database: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11060.0

19

Rules Questions / Re: a few questions about Prince

« on: February 13, 2015, 04:43:08 am »

If you have lots of Princed cards (or duration cards, from Dominion:Seaside), you can choose the order, and it can be different every turn.

Yes, the prince stays out, it never returns to your deck, even if it stops doing anything. Princes (and princed cards) do return to your deck at the end of the game, so they count towards Gardens/Fairgrounds/Vineyards etc.

The reason this is the case is that the N Princes all tell you to play a card at the start of your turn, and none of them tell you the order. Thus, the general rule of "when you have to do N things at the same time, you may choose the order to do them in" applies. From this, you can extrapolate that Durations are the same: if you have two Caravans in play, and a Princed Secret Chamber, you could choose to resolve one Caravan, then Secret Chamber all your cards away, then the second Caravan. Likewise with set-aside Horse Traders, as mentioned earlier in this thread.

20

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Infinite stalemate game

« on: February 09, 2015, 03:05:19 pm »

Don't know if it was already mentioned, but couldn't a stalemate situation arise where:

• 2-player game
• No Colonies
• Opponents are tied in VP
• There is 1 Estate, 1 Duchy, 1 Province, and 10 curses left
• There are no sources of alt-VP
• There is no way to trash cards from your deck
• Embargos have been TR'd/KC'd to the point where there are 2 Embargo tokens on the Estate pile, 4 on the Duchy, 7 on the Province, and at least 1 on all other supply piles

Certainly this is possible. Note though that there are more conditions needed. For example (and this is probably still incomplete):

• Nobody has, or can get, a Watchtower
• Border Village, HoP, Feast, other non-buy gainers are not in the supply
• Cursing attacks such as Witch and IGG are not available.

21

Game Reports / Re: Sloggiest board I ever saw

« on: February 09, 2015, 02:05:27 pm »

Played in Androminion, so no log

Can't you log your games in Androminion? I certainly can. It's not neceaarily the typical format (i don't know anything about that), but i know it's possible.

I guess you can. I left that option turned off because I don't need most games logged. I just want the ability to say like, "Please put the log for the game I just played into my paste buffer". Saving them all forever seems overkill.

22

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: DOMINION ADVENTURES LEEKS

« on: February 08, 2015, 03:33:59 am »

I just noticed that on http://riograndegames.com/Game/1285-Dominion-Adventures I got a "you may be interested in..." link to Balloon Cup:



Subtle confirmation of jsh's leek about the Hot Air Balloon card in the new expansion?

23

Game Reports / Re: Sloggiest board I ever saw

« on: February 07, 2015, 02:54:10 pm »

I think the players will make the game they want here. They could let the deck grow and use cartographers with philosopher's stones to buy provinces. They could trash down with lookouts and build a regular hunting party deck. They could use farmland to trash curses for estates and then focus on silk roads. I don't actually see 6 point fairgrounds as a priority and I don't see it as the worst slog ever.

I think with both Fairgrounds and Silk Road, there is too much slog-oriented alt VP to just go for Hunting Party BM, especially with Hag putting Curses into your deck.

24

Game Reports / Sloggiest board I ever saw

« on: February 07, 2015, 05:23:41 am »

Played in Androminion, so no log, but the kingdom was: (Provinces, Estates) Vineyard, Lookout, Philosopher's Stone, Swindler, Sea Hag, Silk Road, Cartographer, Hunting Party, Fairgrounds, Farmland.

After opening Sea Hag / Lookout (for cycling) I grab a Potion, planning for Philosopher's Stone to be my only real way of hitting $6 later on. Then I assemble my 15 uniques, and just buy whatever green I can afford every turn until the end of the game (only one Province though, of course). My one Vineyard was worth a comical total of one point; I kinda expected more, since usually getting 6-point Fairgrounds involves buying at least 8 actions, but not today.

The deck did a great job at what it was supposed to do (buy many mid-range green cards), but it felt terribly low-powered compared to the usual engine or even big money: every time I played Cartographer it was like "Uh, this deck is garbage, discard all four of those please."

25

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: How to make good Dominion live streams

« on: February 06, 2015, 08:39:36 pm »

Trump, a well-established and popular Hearthstone streamer, posted a video today, Trump's Streaming 101

His advice is generic enough that it applies pretty well to Dominion, and I think there's a lot of good stuff there. I had done a lot of research into live streams as they pertain to speedrunning so a good amount of what he says is covered in this thread, but there's one particular item that he talks about that I think is worth mentioning:

Opportunity: this may be the critical thing Dominion lacks in terms of gaining popularity both as a legitimate online game and as something that people want to watch streams of. When Dominion Online was first released back in the FunSockets days, it crashed and burned. That was the big chance for people to stream the game, mostly because if someone is thinking about buying the game, watching a stream is a great way to help them decide.

Given how things turned out, with them going back into beta testing and the PR badness, it's probably best that people weren't streaming the game at that time. But we may have another chance:

Let's be super-optimistic and say that Making Fun will have a new, snazzy, awesome working version of Dominion Online around the time Adventures is released. I'd be really surprised if they didn't make a PR push of some kind to get more people to sign up, and this may be the best opportunity Dominion Online has to make its mark in the streaming world.

How can we be ready for that? Well I'm not positive, but if you're looking at an opportunity to not only make your own personal stream better but get Dominion Online out there as a more legitimate game that has a larger fan base, we're coming up on it. If you're ready, you're going to get a nice big piece of the pie 

And you'll have the largest slice. c:

Making Fun has to roll out some promotional thing. If they don't, their acquiring of Dominion Online will have been dumb. So Adam is right, prepare, because the game you're streaming will likely get more popular pretty soon here.

We should put this comment in a museum somewhere, as the first time when someone on the forums has ever said "Making Fun [or Goko] has a choice between a good option and a dumb option, so of course they'll do the good one."