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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Strategy Blog Returns!
« on: September 18, 2017, 08:08:28 pm »
Thief should be removed from the list of Base Dominion cards.
This article is primarily aimed at newer players right? I think this is a great opportunity to bring up the "First Game Engine" because of the lessons it teaches us about Gold.
https://dominionstrategy.com/2012/07/30/building-the-first-game-engine/
The way Geronimoo suggested to get an early Gold or two before switching to Markets really stuck to me. Gold being a bouncing board to help you afford the more expensive engine pieces seemed like a great insight. And then you could even Remodel the Gold into Province for that final push to victory.
Then the "First Game" simulator challenge came to be, and it was like, "Yo, why are you buying Gold when you can just use Mine to build up to Gold instead while you buy more Markets and engine parts?". With 2nd Edition Base and Intrigue introducing Bandit and Courtier, it feels more and more like you can improve efficiency by using Action Cards to gain Gold as payload to match your engine's growth, and perhaps even use the $6 cost price point of Gold to Remodel/Replace them into Province as you gain Gold.
This is kind of how I've come to understand Gold. It doesn't feel great to buy them at $6, but Gold becomes an asset if you can find more efficient and better timed ways of gaining it. I think it's good that you bring this up in your article. Indeed, it's easy to gain too many Golds for your own good even if you aren't spending a costly buy on them.
I would mention how the low cost and uncompetitive price point of Silver, in addition to the abundance of available gainers for it, often makes it better payload / economy on boards where you do resort to Treasure economy.
You should absolutely mention the value of Gold in a moneyish strategyI will work on integrating your comments over the weekend/early next week for the next draft. This is helpful.
The fewer cards you play on your turn, the better gold tends to be.This is a great pithy rule of thumb; I will find a place to add it.
You can find plenty of examples of opponents buying Gold when they shouldn't on Burning Skull's How to Base Dominion series. You're going to have a much harder time finding top players incorrectly invest in Gold while building an engine.Thanks. Yes, this is what I was looking for. Not necessarily two top players against eachother, just commentary by a top player. I was considering the final game of the League championship match this season since Rabid bought a Gold and SCSN and Mic both went "NO!" in the commentary, but that situation was complicated and Gold was not the primary focus.
On a related note, I encourage Beyond Awesome (or delegate) to comb through the last 3-4 years of articles and feature the best ones on the blog. There's no need to start from scratch. I'm sure the community would be willing to help you identify the gems.
QuoteHow about something like "Card A costs more than Card B if Card B's cost is a subset of Card A's cost, for example [examples])"?
That's much better than what I had.
Not that I disagree, but I think that would only sound more clear to the people that wouldn't have a problem understanding how costs work in the first place?
Yeah, that's also my concern. Didn't GendoIkari make a picture explaining costs once? I haven't been able to track it down but I was planning on using that instead of trying to explain it with words.
This looks nice!
But I'm confused about the Bridge Troll example. Usually, you still want to spread them out as much as possible: For the megaturn, it's ideal to play 4 on turn X-1 and 4 on turn X rather than all on turn X as it minimizes the number of +actions needed.
It might be worth pointing out the extra importance of consistency for the non-stacking effects of Haunted Woods, Lighthouse, Enchantress.
* Estate as Crossroads can never give +Actions, because Estate keeps its name. When you play an Estate, it can never be "the first time you played Crossroads this turn". For similar reasons, Estate as Treasure Map doesn't work.
Wow, I actually learned something.A "gotcha" scenario is one where someone tricks someone. They "gotcha". Not a good connotation with little known rules-pedantry. Maybe reword? (Awaclus hat off.)
Hey, that's not something that I would say.
How about something like "Card A costs more than Card B if Card B's cost is a subset of Card A's cost, for example [examples])"?
"gotcha" scenarios
order matter.order matters.
$4P > $3P > $3, and 8 debt > 4 debt, and $3P is not comparable to $4. This isn't a very tricky rule
Band of Misfits / Overlord + Conspirator
When you play Band of Misfits as another action card, it counts as two action plays for Conspirator. The first action is the Band of Misfits, and the second is the card you copy.
Yes, this means that if all 3 are in the Kingdom, you can play Overlord as Band of Misfits as Conspirator for your first action, and the Conspirator will be activated. Let me know if this ever happens to you.
Durations are great at creating consistent decks because their effects are spread over multiple turns. You don’t need to start every hand with a Village in order to have extra actions every turn, for instance, you only need to start every other turn with a Fishing Village in hand. That smoothing effect lets decks “kick off” easier and leads to fewer dead turns.
Minor nitpick: you might not need to start any turn with Fishing Village. You could have two, playing one a turn whenever you happen to draw it.
Durations are great at creating consistent decks because their effects are spread over multiple turns. For instance, consider using Village versus Fishing Village to supply extra actions for a deck. With Village, in order to have extra actions on a given turn, you need to play a Village, and often, that means starting with one in your hand. With Fishing Village, you could play a Village on that turn or have played one at any point the previous turn in order to have extra actions. That it usually easier to accomplish and lets decks “kick off” easier, leading to fewer dead turns.
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=17545.0
BA is now in charge.
This is one of the reasons why Duration cards can tend to lump up even when you are trying to play a consistent number of them each turn.
Aren't they less likely to lump up (collide)?
Start by creating a backlog of articles that are ready to be published and a really easy pace -- one article per week, for example (all of the numbers here are just examples, they can be adjusted easily). Once you have enough content for three months, you start publishing. If you ever don't have enough content for one more month in reserve, slow down the pace. If you ever have enough content for 4 months (and have maintained that amount/pace for X time), speed up the pace. Let the creation of articles dictate the pace of the blog and start with expectations very low. If it ever becomes unsustainable, you'll get plenty of advance notice because you've capped the rate at which the backlog gets smaller, so there's this built-in time to solicit new articles and have them created at a relaxed pace so that they're actually good, as opposed to "oh crap I need to write another article by tomorrow" so I throw something together that really isn't good.
This model is something sustainable. However it's something I can't implement as just a content creator, I would need to be in a position where I can control the flow of when things get published. Well I guess now that I've shared this idea anyone can do it but honestly, was this going to happen before I shared it here? Stuff like this is why I need to be involved at the level I'm asking for, and I have a lot more...
Third, I think there should be some sort of process for the community to submit content - perhaps a thread describing expectations for content and how to submit.
maintaining the domain, etc. including covering the costs associated with that.
What I want is a more appropriate platform than my personal blog and reddit for publishing Dominion content where people can see it, since neither of those platforms are very good. The dominionstrategy blog is probably the best thing out there, provided it would be properly maintained.
The thing is, the blog is very useful. You're an irl person, you're looking for a way to beat your friend, so you look up "Dominion board game strategy" and boom, Dominion Strategy has all the keywords already.... Anything is better than it sitting there doing nothing.
I'd give wero control of the blog.
You know if this changeover happens in a timely fashion, the front page could have Nocturne previews.
Beyond Awesome had a similar idea, but more of me being a co-runner with himself. He has quite a few ideas about doing podcasts and game commentaries. I guess my idea would be a bit more prosaic - I was thinking of having two weekly posts: one aimed at newer players (which I could write myself), and one aimed at expert players (which I would not be comfortable writing, mainly as I've found expert players tend to say my expert advice is bad), which could be a rotating guest post.
Ideas for new player posts:
-basic strategic concepts (why is it good to trash, how do I engine)
-individual card articles
-Let's Explore [expansion of the week] - go through a set's themes and mechanics, what's interesting about it, the impact it's had, why you should add it to your collection, etc.
Well, I cannot speak for others, but I would also be interested in writing the occasional beginner's article. I think I would have been doing so over the last couple years if the blog had been active.
More expansions came out. Cards got more complicated.
The natural question is: can we bring the Golden Age back? Well, what is the Golden Age? Is it the concentration of Dominion discussion in a single place? Is it the rapid production of content? I think those are elements of it, but the most important one is the experience of the new player. Can we make it easier for new players to get into the game, and grow the Dominion community?
I think that the answer is yes, but it's going to require explaining a bunch more Dominion theory.