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Messages - tastor

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Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« on: November 18, 2017, 01:14:15 pm »
All this talk of Tragic Hero and nobody pointed out that Necromancers love Tragic Heroes: they trash themselves and then when played from the grave they still create their own payload (since there's no "if you did" clause on the trash -> treasure gain).

I agree though that they are harder to use than just a Smithy, but there's some potentially interesting tricks up its sleeve. And the plus buy means you can typically replenish them (especially since the first Village -> TH chain won't trigger the reaction, so you'll usually retain one and only lose them after a megaturn)

Silver/Night Watchman guarantees $5 on turn 3. Potion/Night Watchman guarantees $3P on turn 3.
You just blew my mind. Night Watchman just went up in value for me.

Yesterday I discarded a Tunnel at the end of turn 2 using Night Watchman.

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Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« on: November 16, 2017, 05:13:58 pm »
Oh hey, I still haven't quite internalized that Night cards are extra-super-special-non-terminal, in that you can't draw them dead.

I would get a Monastery in ~100% of my Smithy/BM games for this reason.

Oh absolutely. I feel like my entire morning was looking at cards and thinking: "Den of Sin...why is this worth $5 when it's just half of a Wharf?...ohhhh because it can't be drawn dead!"

It's kind of amusing having the same revelation repeatedly.

Quote
So something like Chapel > Steward, Remake > Monastery > Temple, Trading Post?

Hrmmm yeah that seems a good initial estimate.

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Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« on: November 16, 2017, 03:25:35 pm »
The strength of Changeling will obviously be highly kingdom-dependent, more so than your average card. I think it'll synergize well with Silver gainers—Lucky Coin and Masterpiece spring to mind.

Yeah I was curious what the use cases for this aspect was. Noticed right away the Lucky Coin synergy (mostly cause I quickly get sick of LC gaining me silvers) but wondering if there is some other fancy stuff you can do with it. Trader is another interesting one: turn the junk card you're getting into a silver into a Changeling.

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Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« on: November 16, 2017, 03:18:02 pm »
Monastery will obviously be really strong. It only costs 2; It is essentially non-terminal, and it can trash coppers that are IN PLAY. Obviously, this is not quite as good as chapel, but it can really do some work I think.
This is not obvious to me.

Trashing is most valuable early. Number of cards gained per turn is low early and high mid-to-late game. The effect of getting to play the copper you trash is roughly comparable to the +$1 from Forager, another non-terminal trasher—unless you can play and then trash multiple Coppers.

I think the best case is something like "play Ironworks to gain a card, buy a card for $3 and trash two Coppers". That's a pretty strong turn 12 to 15 3 or 4 turn, but it's also somewhat unlikely. More likely is something like Monastery, Estate, 3xCopper. Here you buy a card for $3 and trash an Estate; a Salvager or Moneylender would've let you hit $5 (but they also cost more).

I think it'll be a pretty decent trasher; probably somewhere between the better single-card trashers and the weaker multi-card trashers, which is... just exactly among the top ~25% of trashers? Maybe?

I think with most Night cards the non-terminal nature is a big plus. You can open Monastery/terminal and not have to worry about collisions. And the fact that you can trash a copper in play means you aren't forced into those awkward decisions of buying a better card earlier or trashing a copper or two. These two properties also keep it relevant into the mid-game where you can play GSSC and buy a Province and trash the copper you played, or do a big terminal draw and still trash stuff.

I'd mostly agree with your placement, although I think it could easily be on par or better than the weaker multi-trashers, depending on the kingdom of course.

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Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Dominion: Nocturne Text Spoiler
« on: November 16, 2017, 09:34:15 am »
Quote
Bard
Types: Action, Fate
+$2. Receive a Boon.
Bard seems both weak and uninteresting. If it was the only terminal action that gave coin(s) and a Boon, this would be easier to forgive, but with Sacred Grove and Tracker in the set it feels very uninspired as well.

Yeah, absolutely ditto, especially since SG and Tracker are both better and more interesting in contrast. It would have been cool if it did something different and unique with the Boon pile. Off the top of my head "Look at the top 2 cards of the Boon deck. Receive one." seems more powerful but not ridiculously so for a $4 terminal.

Ah, so it does. I had forgotten. So it's an almost strictly worse version of a card I rarely use. Okay then.

Well it can be played without actions left and you gain it to hand; I'd give that at least equal status. Also the opening mixups it enables are potentially cool.

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I think he was more specifically responding to Awaculus' theoretical "Gain a cheaper card that shares a type with it. If you didn't, gain a Curse." wording. As in: it would suck to do that with something like Royal Blacksmith.

Under either wording, Curse doesn't fulfill the "shares a type with it" clause anyway, so the point is moot.

7
just wondering how that village will play with night cards since you will have a lot of dead cards in hand b4 the night phase
it seems weird that Donald would put in a card that discourages the other cards in the set

Don't think it discourages them so much as they just don't directly combo. But then, neither does big draw which is your usual go to combo with a village. You still get the actions and the first one you play on an ordinary turn will draw 2 cards which isn't anything to sneeze at.

For that matter, though, any village is already redundant with Night cards because you don't need those extra actions in the first place. They are definitely a shift in the usual engine paradigm.

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In all the cases mentioned, I have some way to respond. I can buy a Harem. I can take advantage of the Arena. I can increase by draw to compensate for the extra curses or ruins in my hand. I have nothing with in my control to directly compensate for Misery.

In a game I just played, I had a one Province lead. I had more than enough money to buy the last Province. My opponent played a Vampire which gave me Envious. He bought a Duchy on that turn and I couldn't buy any points on mine. My opponent was able to buy the last Province on his next turn.  That win did not come through smart play on my opponent's part or an error on mine. It was just dumb luck. I'd been leading throughout the game the my opponent was not far behind. I new I had more money and more draw than my opponent. Based on that, I bought that second to the last Province rather than a Duchy as I would when I'm not sure if I could buy the last one on my next turn.

Maybe with more play they'll grow on my but right now I feel like Hexes just introduce too much luck into the game.

I mean, that is unlucky and I feel for you, but it sounds like you were tied before you bought that second to last (your fourth) Province, so it could have just as easily meant that you drew 3 or 4 Provinces on that last turn and been in the exact same situation where your opponent bought a Duchy and then a Province to win. Which would also be super unlucky but not out of the scope of the game as it stands.

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Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #5: Exorcist, Pixie, Vampire
« on: October 27, 2017, 04:18:44 pm »
As I stated before, the characteristic of a Traveller card was that it can be exchanged into another card. But now that characteristic is shared by non-Traveller cards too. So what is a Traveller now? I know, it's a card that needs to remind you that it can be exchanged!

Cards that could be exchanged for other cards were in Dominion as of Dark Ages. Travellers are cards that upgrade over multiple turns, and have the option of upgrading at the end of a turn they were played (other exchangers just have clauses on when they can/must exchange)

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The implied cost of $1 for a Boon here makes sense, but I don't know if it translates to Hexes -- at least not in the case of Skulk.

What would be the appropriate cost for this card?

Lumberjack
+1 Buy
When you gain this, gain a Gold

No less than $3. No matter how bad a card comes with the Gold, a $2 cost would enable Gold to be picked up too cheaply for decks that can easily trash the junk card it comes with.

Also, more importantly, the "implied cost of $1" is for a single Boon when you gain Blessed Village.

I'm not sure how I'd rate those individual abilities but then again I think that's always a fallacy in Dominion because context matters. Secret Chamber was such a poor card that it got cut from Dominion, yet you add +2 cards and take away the reaction and you have a $5 so powerful it had to come with a penalty, which would make the implied cost of +2 cards north of $3.

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Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Bonus Preview #5: Necromancer
« on: October 27, 2017, 03:11:00 pm »
Yes! Agreed! You can, indeed, know what's in the trash, and therefore know you don't want to play Necromancer.

My point is that there are circumstances in which you can end up unable to avoid playing Necromancer. Not common circumstances, but circumstances nonetheless. Hence my surprise that its effect isn't optional.

Well sure, but cut out the middle man: you can already Golem or Herald a Rats directly and it might suck for you. There's already plenty of cards that you might hit with Golem or whatever and be forced to mandatorily play, why not give every card a "may" clause, or just give Golem/Herald/Vassal that clause?

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From the games I have played, it looks like the luck factor introduced by Boons and Hexes is negligible next to all the luck that already existed in Dominion to begin with.

This is exactly my feeling on the matter. Even from the base set you already had the experience of "I play Witch and my opponent Moats, my opponent plays Witch when I don't have my Moat. I dead draw a Village and Witch with my Witch, my opponent plays Village and two Witches." I don't see Hexes being significantly different in that regard, except that the overt randomness makes it seem worse when it doesn't work out.

I also think implementation is a huge factor: e.g. you're often buying Blessed Village for a village anyway so paying an extra $1 for a random bonus doesn't rankle you, you might be buying Skulk because it's the only +buy and, hey, free Gold! etc.

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Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Dominion: Nocturne announced!
« on: August 03, 2017, 06:34:36 pm »
Wild guess for Hexes. We already have Curse and Ruins and Donald had previously cut Confusion for being redundant. Assuming it is another negative card that goes in your deck (which isn't even certain), it has to hurt you in a unique way which is tricky because we already have negative VP and weak actions, and just another dead card would be redundant at this point. My guess is it's like a curse but you can play it for some negative effect (like discard a card, or -1$) and then trash it to get rid of it.

I guess it could also be similar to an event, like a status that you have on you that has rules to remove, although this seems like it would be too close to the tokens from Adventures.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The swingiest card ever
« on: June 27, 2017, 12:45:48 am »
Tournament is an example of the second. Maybe you draw it with Province, maybe you don't; it's a big difference. This makes it feel like it's all about luck, even though the card actually favors the better player.

Totally anecdotal but last night I played a game where my opponent opened tournament/silver and then played tournament/silver + 4 coppers to buy inheritance to play on silver, then he bought a Province the next turn and immediately started buying up more provinces and winning prizes.

That doesn't mean I voted Tournament, cause I think it's less about a specific card and more (like in this instance) about combinations that push that swinginess. I've played games where I got Champion first then kept making my opponent discard his with Warrior while doing other attacks, but this is obviously dependent on what attacks/cards are in play that make Champion both worthwhile to pursue and snowball if you get it first and start spamming terminals.

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Previews #5: Events
« on: May 13, 2016, 12:39:19 pm »
Dominate really seems crazy. Previously, $16 and an extra buy would get you 12 points. In any game that has Dominate, you'll never (edge case blah blah) buy 2 Provinces on a turn.

I feel like you can make almost the exact same point about Colony though, right? Prior to Colony, a $13 turn with an extra buy got you 9 victory points, but with Colony you got 10 for $11 without needing an extra buy. It was also better to gain a Colony and a Duchy than 2 Provinces for the same cost. Colony will show up in a lot more games than Dominate if you're going full random though, and there is still the edge case of buying 2 Provinces to end the game.

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Previews #4: Landmarks
« on: May 12, 2016, 12:54:55 pm »
These might be my favorite thing in Dominion yet. Events can shake up the game but it depends on the Kingdom and if there are synergies and even then a certain Event can usually just act like a one shot Action you get immediately. These seem like they have the potential to take basically any setup and inject different win conditions and strategies which changes how you view every other card. Genius.

Also, trying to keep track of the math in my head:

60 VP symbols reported from teasers
4 kingdom cards with VP tokens showing a total of 7 VP symbols + Donald reported 9 total kingdom cards with VP tokens = at least 12 VP symbols here
5 Landmarks shown with 6 VP symbols shown + 21 total Landmarks = at least 22 VP symbols here
City Quarter has a VP symbol in the art which I am counting

So so far 35 of the 60 VP symbols have been accounted for, meaning 25 VP symbols left to distribute among the remaining 5 kingdom cards, 16 landmarks and any other silly places they might show up.

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Previews #3: VP Tokens
« on: May 11, 2016, 12:37:47 pm »
On these three cards we see only 5 vp symbols. We were promised 60. So there's really soooo much more

Yeah, presumably each "Gathering" card has 3-ish symbols (one for any VP it might gain itself, one referring to where it places VP tokens and another to clarify that you gain the VP tokens when buying that pile). And then the events and landmarks. So yeah 55 more symbols, that's...wow.

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Previews #3: VP Tokens
« on: May 11, 2016, 12:28:26 pm »
There was a lot you could do with VP tokens, and I did a lot with them. Nine of the kingdom card piles use them, and then there are all those Landmarks and Events.

Holy smokes that is a ton of VP tokens!  :o

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Teasers!
« on: May 10, 2016, 12:46:07 pm »
Someone did this for the Adventures previews. I don't think anyone's done it here yet. As of the Split piles preview we've seen:
10/76 pieces of card art.
0/60 VP symbols. (Maybe one in the City Quarter art)
5/16 red hexagons.
0/10 uses of "Setup." Probably some of them are on the split pile randomizers
0/2 Duration cards.
1/2 ways to trash cards from the Supply.
No Action-Treasure card.
No Event costing $14.
A way to double your money.
No way to bid.

I think this is correct.

I'm going to assume that the VP symbol in City Quarter counts because that is still a lot of VP tokens.

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Previews #2: Split Piles
« on: May 10, 2016, 12:14:11 pm »
Isn't Rocks just strictly worse than Copper?

Without context maybe. Obviously it gains you Silvers and the idea is that you are loading your Catapault which is the first 5 cards of that stack. So it is a card that you will want to trash to Catapault because it gives you a Silver and your opponent a Curse and a discard.

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Previews #1: Debt
« on: May 09, 2016, 06:35:21 pm »
I think capital will end up being a bad card. Above stash/contraband, but still bad.

Capital/Herbalist with a Princed Scheme buys a Province every turn.
How?

Well more accurately it will get you $7 each turn but it is hard to imagine not being able to get another $1 from the 3 other cards you draw plus the extra one from Prince playing Scheme each turn.

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Teasers!
« on: May 06, 2016, 02:20:42 pm »
The bidding thing - this is one of the aspects of Empires that I'm not too fond of. Something I love about Dominion is how equal AND isolated the play is. Sure there are attacks and stuff, but everyone has access to exactly the same things. And there's no direct competition for resources other than pile control. So there are parts of Empires that get rid of that, and bidding is one of them.

I know I just need to wait until it's released before making any judgments, but that sounds really bad.  I'm imagining a scenario where I begin my turn intending to gain card X, but fail to because I get outbid for it.  Unless I am in control of if/when bidding occurs on my turn, I just don't know if I'd care for that.

Yeah but I highly doubt that is what it is going to be, although obviously I don't have the information. The entirety of Dominion thus far has been designed towards eliminating politics and that kind of bidding war seems like it would lead to it ("don't let Bob win that bid! he is already winning!" etc)

But even if it is it will likely only be on a few cards or events and you can always just not play with those cards. Like Donald always says (roughly) "there need to be hated cards if there are going to be loved cards"; some people may like the bidding and some may hate it but there are plenty of cards to play with if you hate it!

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Teasers!
« on: May 06, 2016, 02:15:03 pm »
Hmm?  I mean it doesn't have to be 'played as an Action' or 'played as a Treasure' as different things.  It's just played, as both an Action and a Treasure, whether or not you play it in your Action phase or your Buy phase.

Hah yeah sorry I was agreeing with you. I was trying to think through the other scenarios where "you can't make an action-treasure because it would matter when you play it" actually mattered and was coming up blank. I agree that just being a treasure that you could play during your action or buy phase works fine.

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Teasers!
« on: May 06, 2016, 01:50:01 pm »
Sorry, I've missed or forgotten that discussion; what's wrong with it just being played as both?  It's an Action-Treasure, so when you played it, you played an Action, and you played a Treasure.

Yeah I'm not sure I get it either. It is obviously an issue for things like Tactician but in that case you can't play anything after Tac hits the table since you have to discard your remaining hand. I can't think of another card where it would matter what order you played it, something like Conspirator is already checking the order and the effect happens at that point, Bank likewise worries about the order you play treasures but, again, not in a way where "do you remember if you played this as a treasure or an action?" would matter. There are plenty of decision cards like Pawn and Nobles where you have to track the choice you've made and those aren't a huge problem either.

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Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Teasers!
« on: May 06, 2016, 11:47:00 am »

- 60 VP symbols.

Only 16 cards don't have VP symbols ;D. I'm assuming bishop would be counted as 2, so it's more likely only about 30 of the cards have VP symbols.

I was thinking he is being clever and there are 6 kingdom cards with VP symbols on them, 10 cards in each pile for a total of 60. Or yeah, there are a lot of cards with double (maybe even triple?) VP symbols on them. Maybe a Victory card that also gives you VP tokens? And then don't forget the new events, those could have ways to directly buy VP tokens from the pile.

Jeez 60 is still a ton though if we're talking about symbols on unique cards.

Quote
- 2 Duration cards.

Yes! I was scared adventures would be the last of them. Probably they refer to new tokens, or they would have been in adventures.

I was thinking one of these has to be VP token based. Maybe like a reverse Swamp Hag? While it's out and people buy stuff, you get a VP token per card bought.

Man I love VP tokens though, really looking forward to the previews next week.

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