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1

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #182: I Choose Nothing

« on: March 28, 2023, 08:12:33 am »

Kings feast: A throne room where you can make it become a Kings court by giving each other player a copy of the played Action card.

Kings feast - $5 - Action

You may play an Action card from your hand twice. You may give each other player a copy of that card. If all other players got a copy, replay the Action card.

A concern of mine is that a infinite loop may be possible with this, is that the case?

edited it so the kingscourt effect only triggers if all other players got a copy of the throned card

At best it's a Kings Court for you, so I don't think an infinite loop is possible, except for the ones KC already enables itself.
What do you mean by "give"? Does the copy come from your hand or the supply? I assume the latter, otherwise the card would be extremely weak.

2

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #180: Pay the Iron Price

« on: March 03, 2023, 04:44:09 am »

Two cards doing similar things! I think they're mostly balanced but in games with lots of attacks Usurper might be too good.

I think Usurper may already be too strong on its own as you can trigger its second effect just by buying another copy of it yourself (until the pile is empty, but by then you'll have gained dozens of Loots).
Compared to Cutthroat, it gives an extra Throne Room after fulfilling their respective gain condition, which is a huge advantage.

Blood Crown is better than Platinum when you can play another Loot or a Gold with it, or a Grand Market+Throne Room when playing an Attack with it in your Action phase. But it might be fine since you wont always have such a collision.

3

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #176 - Game Changer

« on: February 02, 2023, 01:16:35 pm »

Local stable $4
Action
+1 action
Play up to 3 treasure.  +1 card per treasure played this way
-
In games using this, whenever an player gains an victory card, they gain an copper.



Might look strong, but it is an conditional libary, with some potential upside.

I'd say it is a conditional double Lab, since it's nonterminal (unlike Library). So it seems very strong to me...

4

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #175 - Super Expensive

« on: January 20, 2023, 07:25:04 am »

Gentrification
Project
$12

Set aside a non-Victory Action card from the supply next to this and place your project cube on it.
_______________________________________________________________________________
When scoring +2VP per card you have from that pile.


Notes
- Not happy with the wording regarding the scoring but I am trying to imply that if this is put on a split pile all cards in that pile score 2 points each.
- The non victory clause is to prevent a player claiming the Castles pile by setting aside one that is also an action.
- I am a bit unsure of the pricing for this. For the number of points it can potentially score without adding cards that clog your deck it needs to be expensive. I feel it has to be more then Colony but other than that I am not sure.

I don't think this is really worth the price. You need a LOT of cards from a given pile to justify spending $12 on it imo.

In the common case where a 10-card pile runs out, you'll get 10 VP if you split the pile 5-5 (so it's a marginally more expensive Colony that doesn't give you a dead card in your deck), or 12 VP if you win the split 6-4. (I suppose the set-aside card also gives 2 VP?) In either case, you have to buy Gentrification before the pile has emptied.

So I think this is competitively priced if you tie or win any Action pile split.

The best-case scenario is setting aside Rats -  you'll rapidly get 40 VP. 

5

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Plunder is online

« on: December 28, 2022, 04:31:18 pm »

That was my precisely my point. Actions are not the „standard“ while Treasures are some weird funky edge case that need any rationale. Especially not in an expansion with a lot of Treasures.

You make it sound like a complete coincidence that every other card that works the same as an action or a treasure has been an action so far. Clearly actions are some sort of default; or at least they always have been until now.

Ain’t just me dude. The designer himself said in the other thread that there was no deeper meaning, no fine-tuning or whatever behind converting an Action into a Treasure. Also pure coincidence that Shaman did not end up as a Treasure.

Has he said that? Previously Donald clearly stated that only specific cards should be Treasures:

Treasures should make money; I made an exception for a card that wanted to be played in the buy phase. They should feel like treasures - they make money, or, there's Horn of Plenty again, gain cards.

6

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Plunder is online

« on: December 21, 2022, 06:27:28 am »

It's interesting that in games with Looting, you just don't ever buy Gold.

Well, maybe sometimes there is no Loots left, or there are only Endless Chalices left.

Hammer can also be worse than Gold when you don't want any (more) $4- cards.

7

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Plunder is online

« on: December 21, 2022, 06:18:47 am »

It's interesting that in games with Looting, you just don't ever buy Gold. Technically in games with Delve you don't ever buy Silver either, but at least there you still get Silver.

It's similar to Wedding, which also makes buying a Gold practically obsolete (paying 1 debt extra for 1 VP is a real bargain) , but Wedding does still gain the Gold.

8

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #172: Trait Me Right

« on: December 20, 2022, 02:49:06 pm »

Warm
Trait
At the end of your Buy phase, if you have at least $4 unspent, gain a Warm card.

This is likely overpowered with a $6+ card - you could effectively "buy" a Warm King's court or Grand Market for only $4, without even using up a buy.
It's also clearly better than Cheap with any $6+ card, but underwhelming with a card costing $3 or less...

9

Dominion General Discussion / Re: * Plunder Previews #4: Next Time *

« on: December 15, 2022, 01:56:52 pm »

Does Inherited work from the top of the pile first, or are we all starting with a Fortune this game?

No, you all get a Gladiator. Except in a 6 player game, then the last Player is the lucky one :-)

Is that the actual rule for Inherited split piles? Seems very unfair at least with Glad./Fortune, almost game over before turn 1...

10

Dominion General Discussion / Re: * Plunder Previews #3: Loot *

« on: December 14, 2022, 03:28:04 pm »

For my money Dominion has all the randomness it needs in the shuffle. Cards like Castles and Tournament are my least favourite, introducing unnecessary randomness by giving players different opportunities by (mostly) pure chance. Loot looks to have the same problem, tho hopefully in a less swingy way as the loots are more similar to each other than, say, Princess and Followers.

I think it would have been better to take the most interesting 2 or 3 loots and make each of them a regular treasure.

I suppose it can be game-deciding to get e.g. an early Prize Goat on a board with no other trashing. In rare cases, it's possible to gain a Loot turn 1: e.g. buy Wealthy Village with 3 Coppers and 2 Heirlooms...

I'm surprised that Cheap exists: If most kingdom cards are designed to be as cheap as possible without breaking things, making a card still cheaper unconditionally should be problematic. Especially when it turns a strong $5 card like Witch into a $4...

11

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #171: Gains Upon Gains

« on: December 14, 2022, 01:15:55 pm »

Extra gaining as penalty as opposed to reward.

Another possible way to neatly balance what you can gain with this would be "costing up to $7" (or up to $6). You notably miss out on cards like Platinum and Prince (and King's Court if you go for up to $6). I think that is an acceptable compromise.

Nah, that is broken with cost reduction.

I don't think so. If Province's cost is reduced to $4 or less with stacked cost reduction, Summoner is no better than Workshop in gaining Provinces. If Province's cost is reduced to exactly $5, Summoner is still clearly worse than a $5 gainer like Altar. And a cost reduction to $6 or $7 would make gaining a Duchy preferable to gaining a Province plus two or three curses in most cases.

There's 10 Curses in a 2 player game. The first and second Province come with 4, the third with the last two, and the fourth through eighth are free. I don't know if it's too much of a rush to try and gain all eight this way, but I'd still rather avoid winning off eight plays of this.

The possibility of the curse pile running out is  independent from cost reduction.

You'd have to gain the entire Province pile in one turn together with the entire curse pile - otherwise the opponent will happily gain the remaining "curse-free" Provinces with their own Summoners.
KC-KC-3 Summoners would manage it, but it's as hard to pull of as the equivalent KC-KC-3 Bridges.

12

Dominion General Discussion / Re: * Plunder Previews #2: Durations & Traits *

« on: December 14, 2022, 02:51:05 am »

Are you able to use two Traits in the same Kingdom? I'm guessing you are, since you didn't specify in your post

I suppose so, since I had an online game with two Traits yesterday.

13

Dominion General Discussion / Re: * Plunder Previews #1: Treasures & Events *

« on: December 12, 2022, 02:38:11 pm »

Maestrom enables a semi-pin in which you can limit your opponent to owning just 4 cards.  Have them draw up their deck using Council Room and then buy Maestrom a bunch of times.

In principle this could work, but even with 10 CRs played they usually won't have drawn their entire deck. Also, with $40 and 10 buys to spare, you can usually just win the game instead of pinning your opponent.

14

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #171: Gains Upon Gains

« on: December 11, 2022, 07:05:26 pm »

Extra gaining as penalty as opposed to reward.

Another possible way to neatly balance what you can gain with this would be "costing up to $7" (or up to $6). You notably miss out on cards like Platinum and Prince (and King's Court if you go for up to $6). I think that is an acceptable compromise.

Nah, that is broken with cost reduction.

I don't think so. If Province's cost is reduced to $4 or less with stacked cost reduction, Summoner is no better than Workshop in gaining Provinces. If Province's cost is reduced to exactly $5, Summoner is still clearly worse than a $5 gainer like Altar. And a cost reduction to $6 or $7 would make gaining a Duchy preferable to gaining a Province plus two or three curses in most cases.

15

Dominion General Discussion / Re: REQ: Largest Kingdom board setup combination (Max:61 Different Named cards?)

« on: November 29, 2022, 04:43:33 pm »

Nah, make the mouse card Fool. That adds an heirloom to your hand and Will-o-Wisp to the non-supply piles.

Even better, use Page for Mouse and add another split kingdom pile instead of the Page pile, increasing the number of cards you can have in your deck from 69 to 72 (not counting the ungainable Mouse card Page itself).

You can't get anything else from the Page line with Mouse Page.

Oh right, exchanging doesn't work when there's no Page pile.

So if the goal is to get the highest number of different cards into your deck, Jack Rudd's suggestion of using Fool would be the best, getting you to 71 cards.

(Trade Route as Mouse doesn't help to give you extra cards because by the usual rules, Colony/Platinum can only be included if one of the 10 kingdom card piles is from Prosperity.)

16

Dominion General Discussion / Re: REQ: Largest Kingdom board setup combination (Max:61 Different Named cards?)

« on: November 29, 2022, 11:51:29 am »

Nah, make the mouse card Fool. That adds an heirloom to your hand and Will-o-Wisp to the non-supply piles.

Even better, use Page for Mouse and add another split kingdom pile instead of the Page pile, increasing the number of cards you can have in your deck from 69 to 72 (not counting the ungainable Mouse card Page itself).

17

Dominion General Discussion / Re: REQ: Largest Kingdom board setup combination (Max:61 Different Named cards?)

« on: November 28, 2022, 05:32:59 am »

Amazing so many new sets since I posted this
Has anyone tried to determine the 'largest' number of cards that are allowed without playing a variant, and have
Black Market have the recommended minimum (or all in the setup?)

Without Black Market, you can now improve GendoIkari's 2017 list by replacing Urchin and #8-10 from his list by four Allies split piles, for 7 more cards, and add Horse through an Event like Ride. So we go from 61 to 69 cards (plus two Landscapes).

18

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #169: I Am Not Throwing Away My [One-]Shot

« on: November 21, 2022, 12:59:04 pm »

Hero's Demise 4$
+2 cards
+2 actions
If you have 3 or more unused Actions (Actions, not Action cards), set this aside and trash it at the start of clean-up.

Its a Lost City that punishes you for being the village idiot. The additional draw compared to village helps you finding your terminal. It sets itself aside to prevent the mining village problem of forgetting the additional actions. The name is of course a play on tragic hero, who mirrors this to a degree. Feedback would be highly appreciated!

It's a great idea, but I wonder if it may be too strong - the first copy played each turn has no trashing risk at all^* and is therefore a must-buy at $4, as good as Lab and Vanillage combined. And usually you'll be happy to buy enough terminals so that you can play all of your HD's without trashing them (barring bad shuffle luck).

For comparison, Tragic Hero has a weaker penalty, but it wouldn't be overpowered even if it had no penalty at all (it would still be worse than Margrave).

*At least if you play it before any other village - but I'd usually not want any other villages anyway when this is available.

19

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Don't let your opponent do something.

« on: October 31, 2022, 05:22:00 pm »

(How) can I retrieve the game log given the game number?

Checking now, this game won't actually reload, there's an "internal error" bug when I try to do it, but in other cases:

You can't get a text log really, but if you have a subscription you can create a table, load old game, put in the game number and use Load from End.

I see, thanks for the info. I was wondering how you got started with Cavalry instead of Port, but I've now figured it out myself (buy Caravan, Butterfly into Guildmaster twice, assuming you have at least 5 Coppers among your first 7 cards).

If I've calculated correctly, buying all Estates, Provinces, Silvers and Importers and playing all basic Treasures leaves you with only $278-$230=$48, so there's many cases where you can't empty the supply without further support:
 - at least one 8 debt card or Possession is in the supply
 - a $7+ Action card is in the supply, but no $6 Action
 - Platinum/Colony
 - at least two $3 kingdom card other than Importer are in the supply (and no $2 Actions)
 - four or more $2-$3 kingdom cards other than Importer are in the supply
 - 2 or more Potion cost cards are in the supply

and a few other combinations.

But either of Bridge, another stackable cost reducer, Nomads or Training would take care of all cases except the last one. (With Bridge, you can use the whole $278 to buy the debt cards, except in the extremely unlikely case of all 4 pure debt cards being present.)

Overlord is fine actually since you only have to pay for 9 of them and they can give you $3 back, and the Potion part isn't correct (you could even have 3 and be fine if it's Vineyard / SP / Apo, it all just depends on the costs in coins). I didn't try to list it all because it's not clean.

How do you buy out 2 or more potion-cost piles (at least 18 cards, even if one of them is Vineyard) with only 16 Potions? There's no way to replay treasures in this kingdom AFAICS. Even if the potion-cost cards have consecutive $ costs, using Butterfly doesn't save you any potion - e.g. with SP and Apo., you need to buy SP 20 times to empty both piles (butterflying it 10 times), so you'd have to pay 20 P (and $40) total.

You're right about Overlord; playing each of them as a terminal gold gives you back $30, so they only cost you a net $72-$30=$42 (plus 8 debt that you never repay). It's fine as long as you don't have to pay extra for any other kingdom card.

20

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Don't let your opponent do something.

« on: October 30, 2022, 04:57:54 pm »

(How) can I retrieve the game log given the game number?

Checking now, this game won't actually reload, there's an "internal error" bug when I try to do it, but in other cases:

You can't get a text log really, but if you have a subscription you can create a table, load old game, put in the game number and use Load from End.

I see, thanks for the info. I was wondering how you got started with Cavalry instead of Port, but I've now figured it out myself (buy Caravan, Butterfly into Guildmaster twice, assuming you have at least 5 Coppers among your first 7 cards).

If I've calculated correctly, buying all Estates, Provinces, Silvers and Importers and playing all basic Treasures leaves you with only $278-$230=$48, so there's many cases where you can't empty the supply without further support:
 - at least one 8 debt card or Possession is in the supply
 - a $7+ Action card is in the supply, but no $6 Action
 - Platinum/Colony
 - at least two $3 kingdom card other than Importer are in the supply (and no $2 Actions)
 - four or more $2-$3 kingdom cards other than Importer are in the supply
 - 2 or more Potion cost cards are in the supply

and a few other combinations.

But either of Bridge, another stackable cost reducer, Nomads or Training would take care of all cases except the last one. (With Bridge, you can use the whole $278 to buy the debt cards, except in the extremely unlikely case of all 4 pure debt cards being present.)

21

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Don't let your opponent do something.

« on: October 30, 2022, 01:36:32 pm »

The Province pileout with any $5 gainer + $6 action + $7 action instead of Livery is sort of cute too.

Indeed. I think you might be able to empty the whole supply if you also add Seaway (putting the +Buy token on Port) and a kingdom card costing $4+ that gives you the buy for it.

Actually, just adding Forum and a cost reducer like Bridge to the OP's kingdom suffices to empty the supply, as you can gain Forum and return it to the supply infinitely often for unlimited +Buys. So that's an 8-card combo to empty the supply on turn 1 (with probability 50%, as you need to draw at least 4 Coppers).

No. 6-card combo to empty the Supply on turn 1 (with probability 11/24). Use Cavalry instead of Port.

This one also doesn't require a correct implementation of Livery/City-state, so it can be done on dominion.games (#110411165), don't ask me why I clicked through all that.

(How) can I retrieve the game log given the game number?

22

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Don't let your opponent do something.

« on: October 28, 2022, 07:34:41 am »

The Province pileout with any $5 gainer + $6 action + $7 action instead of Livery is sort of cute too.

Indeed. I think you might be able to empty the whole supply if you also add Seaway (putting the +Buy token on Port) and a kingdom card costing $4+ that gives you the buy for it.

Actually, just adding Forum and a cost reducer like Bridge to the OP's kingdom suffices to empty the supply, as you can gain Forum and return it to the supply infinitely often for unlimited +Buys. So that's an 8-card combo to empty the supply on turn 1 (with probability 50%, as you need to draw at least 4 Coppers).

23

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #166: Who still cares about buying?

« on: October 28, 2022, 07:07:06 am »

I don't think that's inevitable. Collection/Stampede could easily have been avoided. And there is nothing in the game the is quite so bad.

The only way Collection+Stampede could have been avoided is if Collection was given a different ability, such as "when you gain an Action card from the supply" or "the first time you gain an Action card this turn".  What I said still holds true: if Collection should have been changed to avoid the interaction with Stampede, then we've effectively blacklisted abilities that trigger "whenever you gain a [Action] card" because it interacts poorly with one card printed years before.  I think it's inevitable that these situations will pop up more and more because cards with never-before-seen abilities keep getting printed.

I ultimately feel like the Collection+Stampede issue is one that largely solves itself.  Players curate the kingdoms they play with; if they decide it's overpowered, they can simply not put Collection and Stampede in the same kingdom.  Even if they opt for zero curation and go completely random every single time, that's only a tiny fraction of games that result in broken outcomes.  By my calculations, even if a kingdom is made exclusively of random cards from Prosperity and Menagerie (and follows the recommended layout of ten supply piles and two landscape cards), Collection and Stampede will both be in the kingdom only once every 110 games on average.  I think that's an acceptable rate of non-games.  Add any other sets and the odds get even lower.

I would actually agree with you if this was just a single bad interaction with Stampede, but it's not. It interacts badly with multiple Horse gainers (at least those that gain Horses during the buy phase: Livery, Supplies in particular, Ride to a lesser extent, honorary mention for Cavalry). If there are 3 cards with bad interactions, that is sufficient grounds for me to modify a card.

Agreed. Also, while "when you gain an Action card from the supply" is technically a different ability, it doesn't make a difference in 90% of kingdoms. There are only two kingdom cards (Devil's Workshop, Exorcist), one heirloom (Magic Lamp) and no events that regularly gain a non-supply pile other than Horse in the buy phase or later (Night phase/clean-up). Combinations of Collection with both phase shenanigans like Villa and non-supply gainers are an order of magnitude rarer still in random kingdoms.

So the main effect of restricting Collection to supply cards would be to remove the risk of stalemates with Horse gainers.

I don't really understand why Collection was allowed to work with Horses, while on the other hand  Hoard has the much more restrictive (and IMO confusing) "when you gain, if you bought it", and Bonfire was significantly nerfed just to prevent a hypothetical infinite loop that practically never comes up in randomized kingdoms.

24

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #166: Who still cares about buying?

« on: October 25, 2022, 10:24:13 am »

I think the below-the-line effect is rather neat, an interesting way to deal with the prompt.
But the top is a problem. You just need 4 of those and then you probably have enough sifting to ensure that you can play all of them each turn and buy a Province. This is too powerful I think.

That's a fair critique.  Do you think I should have gone with my second instinct and made it an Oasis effect?  Or maybe even gone with my first instinct and made it a Peddler?

One thing is that I'm not super convinced this need the "if you bought it" restriction, it would be fine as an on-gain effect. Well maybe it would be a bit too good with stuff like Experiment. Oh and Horses. Ok never mind, I convinced myself that you actually need a restriction. Then this is just good.

I mean, Collection gets you the same effect when you gain any Action that turn.  I don't see how a significantly more narrow version of the same effect would be too broken.

Collection can also lead to stalemates with Stampede for that exact reason though.

The wiki has a quote from Donald X. saying that they printed Collection fully aware that it interacted well with Stampede, having decided that it wasn't a deal-breaker.  If that's the official ruling on the Collection effect, I don't see how a significantly more narrow version of the effect wouldn't get a pass.

If Symposium didn't have the "if you bought it" restriction, it wouldn't be "strictly more narrow" than Collection:
Collection being a Treasure means it can only give you VPs for Actions gained in your buy phase - not for Actions gained in your Action phase with Workshops, Remodels etc. (in the absence of Villa or other "return to Action phase" cards).

Symposium might still be fine without the restriction, though - I don't think it would be worse than Collection+Stampede, though that does not say much...

FWIW, "unrestricted Symposium"+Stampede would "only" give 15 VP per turn if you play 3 Symposia, a Horse and 2 Gold each turn, while Collection-Stampede gives 50 VP.

25

Solo Challenges / Re: Empty the Supply on turn 1 without spending an Action

« on: October 23, 2022, 05:57:26 pm »

Empty the Supply on turn 1.  My solution does not spend any Actions.

Supply: Stonemason, Importer, Cavalry, Guildmaster, Livery, Pooka
Landscapes: Way of the Butterfly, City-state
Starting Hand: 4 Coppers, 1 Cursed Gold

play 4 Coppers
play a Cursed Gold
gain a Curse
buy a Stonemason, overpaying $5
- gain a Stonemason
--- gain a Livery
----- spend 2 Favors to play it
--- gain a Guildmaster
----- spend 2 Favors to play it
----- gain a Horseä
------- +1 Favor
------- spend 2 Favors to play it(as Butterfly)
--------- return it to gain a Cavalry
----------- +1 Favor
buy a Guildmaster
- gain a Guildmaster
--- +1 Favor
--- spend 2 Favors to play it

Now we can gain any Action cards to play them immediately.
And we have a Horse to gain.
Butterfly it to pile out cards!

How do you get all the supply cards costing at most $3, and all Provinces?

Gaining and Butterflying Cavalry repeatedly should give you unlimited +Buys, but you only have $60 from 10 Guildmasters and Livery played as themselves. That's not enough to buy 8 Provinces, 8 Estates and 60 Stonemasons (Butterflying 10 of them into Importers and 40 into Silvers), and Butterfly'ing Horses only gets you cards in the price range $4 to $6 with the given kingdom.

I think you need to also require a Looter, Poor House, a $6 Action and a $7 Action in the kingdom, so that Butterfly's "Upgrading" can reach all price points for free. Then you only have to buy all the $0 cards and can Butterfly the Ruins to get all $3- cards in the supply. Fortunately there's exactly four free kingdom card spaces still available. :-)