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51

Game Reports / Re: Semi-Golden Deck

« on: March 06, 2013, 08:33:23 am »

But all-in-all, your luck was pretty atrocious, while mine was pretty good.

I probably would have done better by thinking more about deck tracking, though. Lookout is one of those cards where you really benefit from that.

52

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Redemption: A Set of Expansion Cards

« on: March 05, 2013, 01:55:55 pm »

Skipping some that had separate threads...

Confessor
$2 - Treasure
Worth $1
+2 Actions
---
While this is in play, you may trash up to two Curses.

+Action makes no sense on a Treasure card, since it is too late in your turn to do anything with the actions. The only effect this has is to increase the value of Diadem by $2.

You cannot just have "while this is in play, you may" on a card, because the card is constantly in play and its effect triggers indefinitely. Existing cards that have "while this is in play" follow it up immediately with ", when you <do X>" so that there is a set trigger condition. (e.g., Goons gives you VP "while this is in play", but only "when you buy a card").

You presumably want the effect to trigger once for each Confessor you play in your Buy phase. That is spelled "when you play this, you may trash up to two Curses from your hand" (it's important to specify sources and destinations of cards, except for buying and gaining).

Helping Hand
$3 - Action-Victory
Reveal your hand.  If you have no Treasure cards or only one Copper, gain a Gold and put it into your hand.
---
Worth 2VP

This could be really powerful. I assume you used Tunnel as a reference point for pricing this. I'm not sure that "if you have no Treasure cards or only one Copper" is as hard to arrange as "when you discard this other than during your cleanup phase". Also you're getting the money in hand, which is a huge difference. But then, this is a terminal Action, and when you get that money in hand, you still only have at most $4 in hand. The other obvious comparison is to Explorer; this is much cheaper and also worth VP, but it can't get you Silver and its Gold is harder to get. I can see this doing some interesting things in engines (although it can't be TRd/KCd).

Patron of Arts
$5 - Treasure
Worth $0
---
When you buy a card, you may gain a card costing up to $5 that has a different color banner than any cards gained this turn.

"Banner colour" is a weird criterion. Usually you talk about card types instead. Also, some cards have multiple colours in the banner. And I have no idea how the card name relates to the card effect.

Pied Piper
$3 - Action-Attack
+1 Card
+1 Buy
Each other player discards the top card from his deck.  You gain +$1 for each Treasure discarded in this way.

This isn't an Attack, for the same reason Tribute isn't. I suspect it scales too well in multi-player games. Again I have no idea how the card name relates to the card effect. (I kinda expect a card named "Pied Piper" to have an obvious synergy with Rats...)

Sculptor
$4 - Action
+$2
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck.  Put two of them into your hand, discard the others.

+2 Cards and +$2 is already (a) a not ordinarily done combination; (b) really strong. And this is that, plus some sifting.

During the set design contest, the following card was put forward: "+2 Cards, +$2, Discard 2 cards." It got few votes because it was pretty bland. Its author priced it at $5, and people were talking about how this is actually the proper price for such a card because the effect is very powerful. The combination of coin and sifting is very easy to underestimate; it's huge in BM decks.

Cudgel
$5 - Action-Attack
+2 Cards
+$2
Each other player draws one card, then chooses one: Discard two cards, trash a Treasure that is not a Copper, or gain a Curse.

The vanilla bonus here is quite a lot. See notes on Sculptor. I think that already makes a viable $5 card.

The attack is interesting (like Torturer, but with more options, and with the Curse not going in hand), but the combination is far too much.

Savoyard
$3 - Treasure
Worth $1
---
When this is in play, it is worth an additional $1 for each other Savoyard you have in play.

So... like Bank, but it only considers other copies of itself, instead of all Treasure. The strange thing is that while Bank is a $7 card, this is actually really really weak; if you line up three of them, then they're still only as good as the three Silvers you could have bought instead. Compared to Fool's Gold, this is dead in the water. And honestly I think Fool's Gold already has this design space pretty well covered. Although, if you made the vanilla bonus $2 and bumped the cost to $5, I might start thinking about it more seriously...

53

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Inventor: Action Card

« on: March 05, 2013, 01:32:07 pm »

I think you instead want something like:

----

Trash a card from your hand. Discard a card.

If you did trash a card and discard a card, do this twice: gain an Action card from the Supply and play it. At the beginning of your cleanup phase, return any cards thus gained to the Supply.

----

This still has some weird interactions, though. (like, I *think* that with Trader, you'd just get two Silvers, and you would indeed get to keep them.)

54

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Shepherd: Action-Victory Card

« on: March 05, 2013, 01:27:44 pm »

"You may... any number of" is redundant, since 0 is a number.

55

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Ale House: Action Card

« on: March 05, 2013, 01:25:19 pm »

Making it about the same as Stables , right?

Stables is: you discard a treasure, and get +1 Action and +3 Cards.

This is: you discard a treasure, then you get +1 Action and +3 Cards, *then you also get 1 card worth of sifting* (i.e. you draw 4 cards instead of 3, and then put one back on the bottom of the deck).

That's like, strictly better, and significantly so.

56

Game Reports / Re: Another ridiculous 3 pile ending

« on: March 05, 2013, 12:45:57 pm »

Watchtower is really not much of a draw card, not when your villages are non-disappearing, anyway.

57

Game Reports / Re: Semi-Golden Deck

« on: March 05, 2013, 12:44:27 pm »

Hi there

When I said that, I'd missed that you also grabbed Lookout on open - thought it was Bishop/Silver for some reason.

Usually quite strong trashing is needed to make this sort of thing work - Chapel is traditional, and Steward is workable. I guess there are other strategies to pursue here instead, like Merchant Ship/BM or Navigator/BM, but they're really not very interesting. That makes trying for the Golden Deck seem more attractive, simply because there isn't a good draw card. (Anyone know offhand how fast Navigator/BM or Merchant Ship/BM are?)

Anyway, an actual Golden Deck is a 5-card deck, so getting too much Silver becomes a liability... I'm not sure what's optimal when the actual 5-card setup is unfeasible, though. I actually ended up with quite a bit of Silver because I wasn't making hands that could get anything I'd rather have. (Must remember that passing a $3 or $4 buy is always an option!) The GH purchase is of course to power up the Trade Route, but that's probably still bad with so little engine potential on board.

And yeah, Venture worked out great for you - nice way to take advantage of the Copper trashing. Did I miss any opportunities to buy Venture?

58

Game Reports / How the heck did I catch up?

« on: March 05, 2013, 12:37:21 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/05/game-20130305-093414-73164de3.html

I overlooked Warehouse/TM on this board because of the potential to build an Alchemist stack and because IGG looked interesting. I ended up staying the course, but instead of playing the classic IGG rush, I just gave him a bunch of those curses and then started trying to pick up Provinces as well as Bishop points.

Everything about this seems wrong - he ought to be able to trash the Curses I give him on my Bishops; the IGGs are only $1 in my hand; I only have time to get a fairly small Alchemist stack going and then I rely on a couple of Warehouses to find my Potion. Meanwhile, he seems to choke really hard despite the four early Golds.

Am I crazy for trying this? Can I switch to any other meaningful strategy once I've missed the combo and chosen this opening?

59

Game Reports / Re: Smart Engine-Building Saves Me After I Lose the Grand Market Split 7-3

« on: March 04, 2013, 10:47:51 am »

Sometimes GM is just not that great, and a lack of (a) enablers like Quarry or Vault (I mean, Baron isn't horrible, but you still kinda need to line it up with an Estate and a Silver); (b) trashing are definitely counter-indications to trying to grab GMs aggressively. There are a few interesting engine pieces here, but it seems really tricky especially with Oracle and ST as the only draw. But it's still got to be better than just mixing GMs into a BM strategy.

I wonder if Fortune Teller is a worthwhile attack here? It has a tiny synergy with Oracle I suppose... like, if opponent reveals Platinum and Estate, you can have him discard, and then hit with FT so that he still has green in the next hand anyway. But it comes at Oracle opportunity cost, and the draw is really scarce. Hmm.

60

Game Reports / Re: Discussion on Scrying Pool/University

« on: March 04, 2013, 10:40:51 am »

Well, obviously, when you can already draw your deck with SP, you'd rather have another University or two to gain you more Action cards.

Edge case: decks with Secret Chamber or Vault that can benefit from over-drawing. (Also, this tends to be the situation later on in the game, where getting a University instead will matter less even if it's "obviously better" - since there will be fewer opportunities to play it. For that matter, another SP is better insurance against bad shuffle luck than an extra University later on.)

With a trasher that hurts your economy (like Trade Route), I prefer the University at first over SP. $5 Actions favor University; an abundance of +buy and cheaper Actions favors SP (though I'd still probably want a University at some point).

I would say that there's at least one cheaper Action that favours University as well - i.e. Watchtower, because of the whole disappearing-village/draw-to-n thing (not to mention gain/topdeck/draw immediately). Maybe someone can think of others?

It's funny, I actually just played a game with all these ingredients... should have posted it here instead of starting a new thread

61

Game Reports / SP/Vault... with some mixins.

« on: March 04, 2013, 10:34:13 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/04/game-20130304-072442-a0004cab.html

Bazaar, Cache, Colony, Fairgrounds, Navigator, Platinum, Potion, Royal Seal, Scrying Pool, Trade Route, University, Vault, and Watchtower

Watchtower is apparently quite compatible with this sort of engine (since you can control your handsize most of the time), Bazaar is a great Village for it because of the +coin, and Trade Route enabled progressive light trashing of starting cards while also providing a necessary +Buy. I also grabbed one University early on because it didn't seem like too much of an opportunity cost, and pulling in a steady (if slow) stream of Bazaars seemed like a good idea.

I suspect I ought to gain a second Watchtower later on, but the opponent getting 4 of them seems excessive. My opponent got a lot more nice engine pieces, but really just builds the engine too slowly (trying for more than one +Buy to get a triple-Colony turn or whatever just seems unrealistic here) and loses the crucial SP split while grabbing more of everything else. Actually I suspect he was going for something focused on Vault-University-Watchtower, and only competed on SP at all because more Universities would have been wasted... ? University-Watchtower is a pretty good combination in general, but I don't think there's any way for a deck focused on that to beat out the SP engine.

I actually grabbed the early Navigator more because I initially figured Fairgrounds might be viable; but then I realized there was really no point - it would not become hard to make a lot of coin, while +Buy would be scarce.

62

Help! / Re: King's Court takes over...

« on: March 03, 2013, 05:07:25 am »

My rule of thumb on boards with both KC and Expand is: get 1 KC, then 1 Expand, then KCs only after that. It's pretty mindless, but it seems to work well in practice.

I guess one counter-indication to this approach is when there are no viable $4s (to expand into KC).

63

Help! / Re: I knew this was a Fairgrounds board, but why couldn't I make it work?

« on: March 03, 2013, 04:35:38 am »

See, I thought I needed Silver to race to 6, to get Nobles... :/

64

Game Reports / Simple Monument engine went better than expected

« on: March 02, 2013, 03:22:28 pm »

and beat out an Alchemist stack:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/02/game-20130302-025502-a3b87a38.html

I felt like Chapel really couldn't be ignored, and that trying to build the Alchemist stack would then become redundant - Potion/Chapel can miss $3p easily (or you could draw Potion-Copper x 3-Chapel which is also annoying), and the Alchemists are only as useful as the cards they can repeatedly draw for you. That said, part way in I started to get really nervous: it seemed like he'd be able to attack me with Margrave consistently, and I felt like I didn't really have strong enough draw to line up a significant number of Monuments each turn. But then I realized that, while generally the Margrave attack is no good played more than once a turn (since you basically give the opponent free filtering), versus an Alchemist stack it's actually quite good, since the second attack is likely to draw yet another Alchemist and make him discard it. And if he plays "defensively" against this by not topdecking more than three Alchemists, it's still not bad. Meanwhile, discards were not that painful for me a lot of the time, since I had the Chapel and/or green in hand a fair amount of the time.

Looking back on it, I probably should have gotten more than the two Margraves... I will say though, it was really satisfying making it work with plain old vanilla Village and no fun enablers like TR/KC, card gainers, etc.

Would it be better to build the engine a bit more, maybe try for $16 in total economy? The $11 I had allowed me to pick up surplus Villages as insurance against drawing things dead, but I wonder how much of a difference it made. Would my opponent be better off with Silver/Potion instead?

65

Help! / I knew this was a Fairgrounds board, but why couldn't I make it work?

« on: March 02, 2013, 08:07:49 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/02/game-20130302-050435-08dba0f7.html

It seems like he just kept getting tons more cycling early, even as he built a much bigger deck, while my Ironworks might as well have never existed. 46 points in 12 turns is also just ridiculous in and of itself...

(I'm also starting to really hate Envoy.)

66

Help! / Same game plan loses Curses 8-2? Just... what.

« on: March 01, 2013, 11:00:19 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/01/game-20130301-075538-1fe6d424.html

We both open ST-Potion in the hope of using the ST for cycling and as a pseudo-Lab early to help hit $3p for Familiars, as well as to have them later to activate Conspirators. Neither of us ends up taking any money, instead looking to Conspirators for virtual coin, with Tactician to make some big hands and make stuff happen. He didn't buy Lighthouse until turn 10 when it was all he could afford. Yet somehow I kept missing $5 for quite some time, lost the curse split 8-2 on what were otherwise similar decks, and then he seemingly was able to put together a doubletac engine for a little bit in the middle.

I just... don't even know.

67

Game Reports / In which Embargo is primarily a source of coin

« on: March 01, 2013, 06:05:26 am »

... in a University/Watchtower engine (one of my favourites btw).

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/01/game-20130301-025616-8d381596.html

Usually I suppose I'd try to set up some kind of cursing engine with multiple Ambassadors but I guess I'm not up to my usual sadistic form. If there had been +Buy then I would definitely have made a more serious attempt at Vineyards... but the approach I settled on seemed a lot more fun somehow, gaining and top-decking Embargoes in order to draw them and trash them just for the coin and reliably hit 8 (actually, reliably hit more like 11 or so, but I digress).

68

Game Reports / Is Doubletac/Vault really this good?

« on: March 01, 2013, 04:34:34 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/01/game-20130301-005910-27666e7a.html

Obviously my opponent didn't really put up any resistance, but I'm wondering just how lucky I had to get for a result like this, or if the engine is really supposed to work this well. Normally I seem to have trouble getting doubletac engines up and running quickly, so I'd only consider them on a board where I could open with an attack like Militia and then build something more complicated. But maybe it's exactly because I'm trying to build more complicated things that I can't do it quickly? This engine seems to not mind extra Treasures - I used to figure you needed some light trashing in order to connect the Tacs consistently, but apparently this way of thinking is all wrong. Instead you want a bit of extra treasure so that you have insurance when you don't connect (and thus can fall back on the vault->gold->province approach).

I'm guessing there really isn't anything better without villages? Is Singletac/Bank competitive? How about Ghost Ship/BM?

69

Variants and Fan Cards / War Chest

« on: February 28, 2013, 05:10:19 am »

Another take on the "investing" idea, influenced by Pirate Ship.

War Chest - Treasure - $5?

When you play this, choose one: put a Treasure from your hand onto your War Chest mat; or +1 Buy.
Then, this is worth $1 for each Treasure on your War Chest mat.

70

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reversing cards

« on: February 28, 2013, 05:06:10 am »

Nevah

+2 Cards
+1 Action

Set this card aside. At the beginning of your next turn, discard this from play and discard a card from your hand.

71

Help! / Re: How did he keep drawing his one Gold?

« on: February 27, 2013, 10:36:33 am »

I was originally expecting Cities to empty and to benefit from the extra buy, but then the next thing I knew he was hitting 8 while I still wasn't buying Cities.

72

Help! / How did he keep drawing his one Gold?

« on: February 27, 2013, 10:10:54 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201302/27/game-20130227-070825-fc7ff980.html

And how come he keeps sab'ing me with all the early Lighthouse buys? And how did those hits actually seem to matter? And how is it that he seems to have way more drawing power when I'm the one who actually picked up a Rabble?

73

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Random city question

« on: February 03, 2013, 10:42:18 am »

"unpowered", "powered" and "over 9000".

74

Help! / Aargh.

« on: February 03, 2013, 10:38:02 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201302/03/game-20130203-073328-f2f5062b.html

I got him into a City trap (he must have expected me to compete, but only Curses could run out, and he didn't get terminals besides one GS, so the 3 Cities he did buy were basically just delayed-activation Labs) and set up a Torturer chain quickly, but it hardly seemed to matter since he had no trouble lining up his Bishops (and mine?) to get rid of Curses almost as quickly as he accepted them. But more irritating was how effective his one GS seemed to be later on. I built up much better economy, but I never got to double-Province, and Bishop->Gold couldn't really catch up for me. It felt as if my Curses had simply fueled his Bishop engine.

75

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Greatest Dominion moments 2013

« on: February 02, 2013, 02:57:26 pm »

Not in the internet, but in real-life (yes there exists a Dominion in real-life ;-)):

There was Chapel and Bishop on the board, so I was going for a Golden Deck. My opponent bought a Tribute and didn't understand, why I only revealed one card. Than he understood, what I was doing...

Heh, I've had that happen on iso. "Why isn't my tribute working?" "I have only 5 cards in my deck" "... oh."