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1

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Two posible rule variations

« on: Today at 01:02:29 am »

Sorry but both ideas are utterly horrible. Imposing random restrictions on Action order makes engines less viable and making all Kingdoms into quasi Silk Road Games does not match the spirit of Dominion which is that every Kingdom is different.

If you like non-Province focused games, you can simply use alt VPs like Duke or Shepherd that support Estate and Duchy strategies instead of imposing buying order restrictions that lead to eternal slogs that are anything but „strategic“ and are certainly no fun.

2

Dominion Articles / Re: Menagerie Hot Takes

« on: Today at 12:56:31 am »

You claimed that Kingdoms without Smithy variants are rare and that does not match my experience.
Otter is pretty brilliant precisely because the presence of draw or no draw changes the entire Kingdom. It is thus a far more significant Way than many others.

3

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 09, 2020, 06:55:25 am »

I am not so sure. If there is a trasher or some other crucial card, you might very well open with that.

4

Dominion Articles / Re: Menagerie Hot Takes

« on: August 09, 2020, 03:42:07 am »

I have recently played a Colony game with Oracle. Colony, as in Platinum is fairly dominating. Yet Oracle was absolutely essential to win.
So I find the notion that cards that net draw only 1 card are somehow bad or wrong for engine play quite dubious.

5

Dominion Articles / Re: Menagerie Hot Takes

« on: August 08, 2020, 05:11:07 am »

The last batch of hot takes is short because there isn't a lot to say about the Ways. In general, they make double Action openings better.

Butterfly: fancy but eh, outside of weird costs like Animal Fair.

Camel: Also generally uninspuring in my experience.

Chameleon: Now we're getting somewhere. Very useful and very tricky to play with. The obvious combos are cards like Poor House, but another benefit is playing a +$ card for +Cards when you know that you will draw into the same amount of money, getting through your shuffles faster. Rewards the better skilled player a lot. In a Chameleon game you can build more than you normally would, because all excess draw can be turned into +$, and it's more likely that the Kingdom has draw to make it worth building, because Chameleon turns some actions into draw cards. Long story short, it's good and I think it's pretty fun.

Frog: You don't have to Frog every leftover action you have. Sometimes you should just let it go.

Goat: Goating away an Estate is deceptively useful early on.

Horse: horse. Good for Hail Mary plays.

Mole: Tricky to find a good use for it, but can really help you cycle.

Monkey: Random +buy is random +buy

Mouse: Depends entirely on the set-aside Action, but if the set-Aside action is good, you can get away with some incredibly heinous buys. The Mouse action is your floor, so you can buy cards with high-ceiling low-floor (like Baron, for example), and play them as Mouse if the draws don't line up with the high-ceiling outcome.

Mule: I have literally never played with this.

Otter: I usually don't find a use for Otter, it's pretty easy to find something better to do with your actions, but sometimes you just gotta draw.

Owl: Draw-to-X is bad in general, outside of effects like Cursed Village, but a conditional draw-to-X can be nice because you only use the draw-to-X option if it's going to be good for you.

Ox: If this is the only +Actions source, you're sad. You really want a better village than Necropolis, but sometimes Necropolis is good enough.

Pig: Pretty good

Rat: A lot harder to find a good time to play it than I expected. Having a treasure to discard is easy. Passing up the Action play this turn is hard - the cards you most want to Rats are the cards you most want to play. That being said, I think you do play as Rat 1-3 times in most games.

Seal: I really like Seal. The topdeck effect is great, and unlike Tracker, it doesn't have to be a terminal sitting in your deck. Is it as powerful as Chameleon? Absolutely not, but it's still fun.

Sheep: lol terminal silver. I mean, it's still good at smoothing out bad luck on hitting price points.

Squirrel: Using this as the centerpiece of your draw is possible, but hard and I wouldn't recommend it on most boards. You may be reminded of Enchantress, but remember Enchantress comes with an attack, the card is much worse without the attack.

Turtle: Turtle-Bridge is the notable megaturn, but in general Turtle is very useful. Turtling cantrips to get a +Actions source and turtling draw cards to get +Cards at the start of your turn comes up the most.

Worm: Enables Estate pileouts much more easily, especially when players are playing as Worm just because they have the spare actions. Watch out for that.

I basically disagree with everything here. Otter is absolutely essential in Kingdoms without draw, Mule deals very well with terminal collision, Monkey is also essential if there is no extra Buy (it can literally make an engine viable) and Horse is an obvious way to get of unneeded Actions or use cheap Actions as one shots.

6

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 07, 2020, 12:51:42 am »

A simple project for this week. Strong sifter, but it lowers your handsize.

Not only is this really really good, but also will take way too long to resolve.
For reference, playing warehouse twice gives +6, discard six, so this is almost as good as a free double warehouse each turn

Warehouse net draws 2, not 3; two Warehouses thus reduce handsome by 2.

7

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 06, 2020, 02:16:46 pm »

At $7 always KC as there is a small chance that KC duds in the situation you described.

8

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 06, 2020, 01:29:07 pm »

No. You cannot do KC-KC with this which is why it is weaker than KC.

9

Dominion Articles / Re: Menagerie Hot Takes

« on: August 05, 2020, 05:10:06 pm »

I tend to agree but not on non-terminals. Once a Supply pile is empty, Paddock is weaker than the non-Horse equivalent (Lab plus DoublePeddler) would be.

10

Dominion Articles / Re: Menagerie Hot Takes

« on: August 05, 2020, 02:24:37 pm »

Yeah, it is not like there is no skill involved with Sanctuary. It is also far from obvious how many Sanctuaries you want as that depends on the draw, trashing and alt+VP power of the Kingdom.

Not to mention that "drawing your deck" situations in which Sanctuary supposedly becomes braindead because you can repeat the same turn over and over again is less likely to occur precisely because the presence of a Sanctuary in your deck decreases the value of (over)drawing (to compensate for soon-to-come green).

11

Dominion Articles / Re: Menagerie Hot Takes

« on: August 05, 2020, 06:31:59 am »

This is only the case with Sanctuary. Bounty Hunter is not monotonous due to the one, post first Province spike (and thus also changes the Evaluation of Duchies) and Banish is obviously anything but straightforward.

12

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 05, 2020, 01:24:25 am »

A Cornucopia Woodcutter which I have used for some time. Seems crazy at first, but surprisingly it rarely yields more than 3 Coins. But in the right circumstances (Black Market or Villa are obvious combos), it can become huge.

13

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 04, 2020, 04:59:24 pm »

I think this could get away with costing $6 (or $7 but certainly not $8) as it is unable to chain which is arguably the strongest part of King's Court.

Royal Carriage costs more than Throne Room. The situation is the same here, except that this costs more than King's Court. That's the benchmark I'll base my pricing on.

Well, I disagree. KC-KC is so much better than TR-TR that it is anything but clear that the Royal Carriage > TR notion holds when applied to KC.

14

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 04, 2020, 12:41:58 am »

You will mostly gain $5s with this, not Golds.
In Kingdoms without decent cheap cards, it is nearly as good as Artisan.

15

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 03, 2020, 12:56:47 pm »

Bequest (Event, $0)

Once per game: +$5, +1 Buy.

A Free Platinum! When will you use yours?

Well, if there are junkers or trashers you will definitely use it in the opening.

16

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 03, 2020, 12:15:02 pm »

Art School
cost $4 - Action
Gain a card costing up to $6.
Each other player may gain a card costing up to $3.

I like this but fear that there are too many Kingdoms without decent $2s and $3s. And when there are, the crazy piling could make Art School too centralizing.

17

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 02, 2020, 04:38:41 am »

All that is true. But you totally ignore that we talked about Gold gainers, i.e. cards that are SIMILAR. Here the power level is always proportional to the price which is why a vanilla Gold gainer would require a price between Bandit and Leprechaun just like vanilla village needs a price between Native and Walled Village.

18

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 01, 2020, 05:46:35 pm »

My point is that Leprechaun is first and above all a Gold gainer. The Hex is a downside, the Wish is an upside. The latter matters more but you get the Hex more often than the Wish.

So Leprechaun basically tells us that a vanilla Gold gainer is too good for $3. Bandit says, it is too weak at $5. So we get $4 as the correct price.

Cards that cost 3$ aren't weaker than cards that cost 4$. Weirdly, they're probably stronger.

Yeah, Village is totally stronger than Walled Village and Oasis is totally stronger than Poacher ...

19

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 01, 2020, 05:02:22 pm »

I've never bought Leprechaun without intending to gain wishes, I believe.

Leprechaun misfires far more often than it hits and I have witnessed better players than me open with Leprechaun and win.

Well, since buying Leprechaun is evidence for a good deck, the "only one player bought it" statistics don't work here. The statistics for people who open with it look quite bad (silver/leprechaun openings have a 47% winrate) but the sample sizes are smaller.

I don't think I've ever opened Leprechaun, though I have seen my opponents do it a bunch.

I don’t see the relevance of these statistics. My point is that Leprechaun is first and above all a Gold gainer. The Hex is a downside, the Wish is an upside. The latter matters more but you get the Hex more often than the Wish.

So Leprechaun basically tells us that a vanilla Gold gainer is too good for $3. Bandit says, it is too weak at $5. So we get $4 as the correct price.

The question is whether it is a weak or good $4 and how much the two extras of Apiary interact with that. I think that it the vanilla gainer would be a slightly weakish $4, but that the two extras of Apiary more than make up for that.

20

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 01, 2020, 04:48:21 pm »

If you flood your deck with Honey, you’ve mostly gained a ton of Silver.

No. You have gained a bunch of ton of Gold+.

You seem to be confused about how the game works: you can spend Coffers before you buy anything, i.e. you can play a Honey and then immediately spend the Coffers independent of whether you played a Honey before or not. You can also first spend the Coffers you got in a previous turn before you play Honey.
There is no downside at all, Honey is strictly better than Gold (ignoring the aforementioned edge cases like Gamble, Venture and Black Market).

21

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 01, 2020, 08:25:08 am »

I've never bought Leprechaun without intending to gain wishes, I believe.

Leprechaun misfires far more often than it hits and I have witnessed better players than me open with Leprechaun and win.

I totally agree that gaining any stop card should be viewed critically. But Honey is better than Gold, money decks do still exist and +1 Villager and +1 Buy is a decent secondary option.

22

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 01, 2020, 07:23:19 am »

Bandit and Leprechaun indicate that a Gold gainer is a $4. That is why I am fairly certain that the card, being better than a pure Gold gainer in two respects, is overpowered.

23

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 01, 2020, 06:52:13 am »

A Gold+ gainer for 4 with an extra option is nonetheless a bit too strong.

24

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 01, 2020, 04:00:25 am »

Honey 2.0 is not necessarily weaker than the first version. This is now a Gold plus (except for Black Market, Gamble and Venture) as you can always immediately spend the Coffers.

25

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Just Some Random Cards: #56 - Crossroads Demon

« on: August 01, 2020, 02:49:09 am »

The problem of a lack of clause is that a player who can consistently trigger this plays alone once he does. I don’t think that this is fun or any good.

I agree that result is unwanted. If the card proved to do that, I'd probably kill it altogether. If it did it once in a blue moon, I might be fine with it. This game already does ridiculous things (emptying the Provinces on turn one shouldn't be possible, yet it is), so my goal here is for 1 extra turn to be the 97% case, 2 extra turns to be the 2% case, and anything more less than 1%.

Well, you need a Silver gainer and and some thing like Treasure Trove so you are totally right, it is tricky to consistently use this. But if you can, the game becomes a solo game and that simply sucks.

There is a reason no official card creates a path towards quasi player elimination. That is not a feature that Dominion, or any decent modern boardgame in general, wants to have.