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76

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Trash feodum

« on: October 09, 2012, 10:17:36 pm »

Even if you ARE playing Feodum for points (and especially if your opponent is not; which fortunately they sort of have to telegraph) trashing it for the Silver can often make sense. If you expect a 6-2 split then trashing one Feodum is worth 5VP minus the value of the trashed card. That's probably a positive shift even before you factor in the value of the Silver itself, and whatever other benefit you might have gotten from the card that trashed the Feodum, either of which can well be worth points in the end.

77

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Urchin/Mercenary Strategy

« on: September 24, 2012, 07:44:56 pm »

It looks like nobody has a really strong idea, which makes me feel a lot better about posting mine.

The first thing I notice is it surprisingly doesn't seem to play nicely with most other attack abilities in and of themselves. It doesn't stack with most discard attacks, while Cursers and deck inspectors just give them garbage that they're happy to discard, nullifying Urchin almost entirely and Mercenary to some extent. Knights/Swindler/Saboteur likewise raise the proportional number of junk cards, I suppose. Torturer and Mountebank might be interesting exceptions because of the mindgames over whether or not to discard a Curse.

But what the attacks might do is slow the game down enough that you can get Mercenaries and use their trashing effectively. Mercenary trashing has the potential to be blazing fast, combining the raw thinning power of Remake with the deceptively valuable cycling of Masquerade. And although it doesn't toss you Silver or other assorted valuables like Remake, it DOES grant buying power that few other trashers can match. It's very luck-dependent, and maybe it craps out eventually*, but in the beginning I think it ought to be worth something like 3 coins in a deck with heavy Treasure (or with enough +Actions not to draw your Actions dead). I mean we're talking 2 coins plus Cellaring 2 cards, which ought to be worth at least one more coin on average. (Imagine that you're getting +$1 for each of the cards you trashed and it's almost comparable to Vault, if you like.) All that AND trashing AND an attack! The catch is perhaps that you should be ready to trash the occasional mid-value card, especially if you don't have any good way to increase your hand size and find the real garbage. But hey, you wouldn't mind Expanding a Silver to a Gold if it came down to it, would you? So maybe you just chuck that Silver to keep the Mercenaries chugging as long as possible!

So that's my thinking. I almost feel like, why even bother building an early economy, if this is worth so much money? I'd be interested to try wild stuff like going straight for 2 Sea Hags and a pile of Urchins (buying Urchin over Silver), just enough to make my opponent miserable before rapidly grinding down to a thin deck of expensive power cards. (Of course, it depends whether or not an engine of that description is available! Or maybe you can actually load up on Gold this way but I'm not quite THAT optimistic about Mercenary just yet.)

_{*Does anyone else feel that Dark Ages is really slanted toward decks that wreck themselves at the end? Save up a bunch of Spoils for one big Province rush. Trash all your good cards for their on-trash benefits. Death Cart, Procession, Counterfeit, Beggar. I guess it's the flip side of the "upgrading" theme: this set favors rapid changes in deck composition and the greening phase is certainly an example, but not one that I've seen many people discussing.}

78

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Challenge #15: $2 Card!

« on: September 19, 2012, 11:20:20 am »

Surfin' Safari
$2 - Action
Discard an Estate and a Treasure from your hand; if you do, gain a Treasure card costing less than a Gold to your hand.
--
When you buy this, gain an Estate.

I don't like the "Less than a Gold" line. I think that if you can reduce everything's cost, you should be able to get the gold. Also, I don't want to gain extra estates. This reminds me of a Tunnel that only combines with one card.

You could split the difference with "costing at most $3 more than this," so it takes three Highways to get there. But looking at it this way it does seem unneccessarily difficult. Highway decks don't like having all these Treasures/Estates. And Highway+Surfin' Safari is a four-card combo (although the Treasure part is quite easy), which is not much helped by a constant influx of Silvers or whatever you're gaining from SS. Village+Bridge+SS is a FIVE card combo. Maybe you really have earned your Gold at this point?

79

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Challenge #16: Treasure Card!

« on: September 17, 2012, 10:01:49 pm »

Shouldn't Strawberry Fields have a mat?

Please Please Me
$5 - Treasure
Worth $1
When you play this, it's worth an additional $1 per Estate missing from its Supply pile.

Hard to judge, but might be too strong.  Strategy is to load up on these and start draining Estates (even better with Baron, Watchtower).  Soon enough, all that junk doesn't matter because just one of these is enough to get you to Province, maybe even Colony -- especially with more than 2 players.

I think equal opportunity fixes this balance issue, but makes the card less valuable because one player can't afford to buy out Estates to make Please Please Mes more valuable because the other player will simply buy them himself and get the same benefit but without the clogging Estates. Since the person trying to make Please Please Mes more valuable will always be in a worse spot than the player simply mooching off the other, no one will buy this card.

Yeah, it's the same issue Trade Route and Forager have. How do they get away with it? Well they both only cost $3, and they both give +Buy. Forager offers some weak benefit (light trashing) to the first player who commits to it. (TR trashes too but you don't necessarily commit to TR by buying one right off the bat). Trade Route mainly shines in games where people WANT to buy a bunch of Victory cards for unrelated reasons. Anyway I don't see how Please Please Me has anything to recommend it in this regard.

Walrus
$3 - Treasure
Worth $1
Place a Copper from your hand or the Copper supply on any non-empty supply pile.
--
When a player gains a card other than Copper from a supply pile, he gains all Coppers on that supply pile, as well.
--
(Rules clarification: You may place Coppers on the Copper supply pile. When a Copper is placed on a supply pile other than the Copper pile, place it horizontally so that the card names and costs below show.)

I'm really not sure about this. It's in that twilight zone of deck thinners where it's bad enough to ruin your hands, but not strong enough to make up for it with a thin deck later. I mean hell, either you get rid of a Copper (so it's -$1 as well as +$1) or else you don't (and it's +$1). It's like Loan if you had to choose between the $1 or the trashing! Minus deck cycling!

The attack seems quite weak: less nasty than a Ruins and very likely to take effect one shuffle later than if you'd just handed them a Copper. And in multiplayer it is going to be just awful since each Copper can only go to one person and the other guys get off scot free. So that's pretty worthless and also highly political if you do play it.

80

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Challenge #15: $2 Card!

« on: September 17, 2012, 05:59:21 pm »

Another +2 Actions, +1 Buy.  I still think these concepts compare too well to Hamlet even without the extra bonus effect.  Maybe that's incorrect of me.

I don't think this is right. The point of Hamlet is that you usually don't need both options, so you don't have to use them. You usually wind up discarding only one card (sometimes none), and "Best four out of five cards" is generally a lot better than "Four random cards."

Plus, blindly loading up on these will kill your deck, unlike Hamlet which is a cantrip at worst. And there's the cycling thing too.

That's not necessarily an endorsement of any specific card though.

Marcella
$2 - Action
+2 Actions
+1 Buy
Discard any number of Curse cards. +1 Card per Curse card discarded.
--
When you gain this, gain a Curse.

See above, but I think the opposite of eHalcyon: I think it's at best it's a less interesting Hamlet, and likely a weaker one, which the Curse doesn't help. Countering Curses is all good fun but still it won't be any stronger than it was before. Is there a big unexplored design space for engines with a basically weak +Actions component which can just barely withstand Cursing attacks? I don't know.

Darlin'
$2 - Action-Reaction
Trash two cards from your hand.
--
When you would gain a card, you may discard this. If you do, instead gain a card costing exactly $1 more.

I'm assuming this follows the same rules as Trader: for instance that if there is no card at that price point then you just don't gain anything.

This seems like it would need a lot of playtesting but it looks fun. Ironworks/Darlin' gets you into University territory very quickly, and Darlin' trashing helps set up the combo.

I'm also not sure it is a $3 card; I think it compares reasonably well to Steward given that it stops using up a terminal slot when you're done trashing.

California Girls
$2 - Action-Reaction
+$2
You may place your [This Card] token onto any supply pile.
--
When another player plays the card your [This Card] token is on, you may reveal and discard this card. If you do, gain a Silver, putting it into your hand.

Almost certainly this needs to be Kingdom cards only, or it just becomes a nonterminal Explorer (okay, without the Gold gain, but still that's WAY too strong for $2. Maybe it's in that Chapel zone where it's too strong to be a $5?) Even if you do restrict it, in many games that's what's going to happen.

I agree the token placement is not all that interesting of a decision, but I'm not sure that matters as long as the decision to buy this card is interesting.

Together Again
$2 - Action
+2 Cards
+2 Actions
+2 Buys
Return this card to the supply.

I'm not sure but I think I disagree with eHalcyon here. If you always use your extra Buys to replenish your Together Agains then you're using up your extra card and more (since most decks don't have an average card value of $2, and if they do, it probably means you already have an engine built). So you might just wind up treading water. Could be wrong.

Wild Honey
$2 - Action-Reaction
+2 Actions
When you discard this from your deck, you may reveal it. If you do, put it in your hand.

I find bare +2 Actions really boring so I'm biased, but this seems much too narrow for me. Maybe someone can name some interesting combos?

I might like it better if it were "When you discard this from your deck, you may reveal it. If you do, +1 Action," so suddenly you have Harvest becoming nonterminal and maybe some other weird stuff like that. But then that breaks the interaction with opponents' attacks.

Caroline
$2 - Action
If you have no other cards in play you may discard your hand. If you do, gain a card costing up to 6.

I agree this looks overpowered.

Cotton Fields
$2 - Action
Choose one: Gain an Estate; or Gain a Spoils.

Of course the Estate option is there to make it relevant in the endgame. It might not be important enough to bother having though. I have no idea whether it's balanced, have to play with Spoils more.

81

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Challenge #15: $2 Card!

« on: September 17, 2012, 05:07:26 pm »

I don't get Sail-On. So when you buy it it goes into play for the Duration effect? And the second option is to gain another copy next turn (which I presume doesn't give you another opportunity to get these effects, since those are on-buy not on-gain)?

82

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Knights!

« on: September 12, 2012, 01:30:45 am »

In the Catacombs vs. Embassy discussion, I think it's easy to forget that Embassy simply isn't very good at drawing huge hands/drawing your whole deck, especially without heavy trashing. (And its filtering powers are somewhat wasted on that goal anyhow.) Sometimes that doesn't matter much, which is why we all love Embassy (and Hamlet), but other times it does. Catacombs has the draw power of a Smithy: enough to get that job done, which is probably its biggest advantage in this contest.

83

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Alchemy and Dark Ages

« on: September 04, 2012, 06:02:59 pm »

(How long until people who haven't played DA aren't allowed to toss their wild speculation into every thread? It's not because I don't WANT to play it... )

Anyway, here are things I want to try:

Rats/Vineyard rush

Transmute/Feodum (edit: Actually, Transmute might go well with a lot of these Actions that want to be trashed, especially Cultists, Ruins, and Rats, for quick Duchy rushes? I suppose it'll still be the weakest TfB around, but damn it, I'm excited to get to use it.)

Herbalist/Counterfeit actually might not be a bad opener either, for fast and efficient Copper trashing.

84

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Bandit Camp

« on: September 02, 2012, 04:15:57 pm »

My take is that you play your Spoils once per shuffle, and also play the Bandit Camp once
per shuffle to replace it. At any given point you'll generally have one Spoils in your deck per Bandit Camp in your deck. So very roughly BC is comparable to getting a free Gold with your purchase of Village. (That's something even Border Village isn't capable of, and BC is cheaper than BV to boot!) The only major caveat is that you don't actually get the Spoils as an on-gain effect like BV: you have to wait an extra shuffle to get it.

This ignores the possibility that your BC misses the reshuffle at some point. But really that's basically the same as if your imaginary Gold missed a reshuffle (albeit slightly more common, because Villages miss more shuffles than Golds, and it's possible for BC to miss the very first shuffle delaying your very first Spoils turn). So I don't think the analogy really breaks down at this point. Of course you couldn't care less if your Spoils itself "misses the reshuffle," so there's still only one card to worry about in this respect.

The other thing this overlooks is that you always have the option to avoid playing your Spoils and accumulate multiple copies. I'm not sure how important this is, but of course if we assume good play, having the option can only make it stronger on average!

Conclusion: good card.

85

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things

« on: September 02, 2012, 02:59:19 pm »

So, you think +1 Card is worth it?

Well, if you're going to trash your estates, turning them to rats first gives you extra cards twice. When you turn you estates to rats, you get to draw another card instead. When you trash your rats, you draw an extra card.

Basically, that means that buying the rats gives you a total of 6 extra cards in the early game (three if you count the hand-space the rat takes up against it), just for trashing your estates. Later on, when coppers are no longer good cards, you can swap them with your rats (which take up space in your hand, but no more than they did back when they were estates).

3 is the appropriate number to look at here, not 6. You could for instance buy one Caravan to get those three extra +Cards without worrying about hitting the Rats+trasher combo. You'll probably get them sooner and with a lot less hassle. Also the cards you draw will be higher quality because none of them will be Rats (which you might not even get to play, if your trasher is a terminal).

You also seem to be assuming you can immediately Rats the Estates and wait until later for the Copper; if it doesn't work out this way, then there is some damage to your buying power that has to be taken into account.

With shelters, it gets slightly better as your overgrown estate gives you another card, for a total of +7 cards for buying the rats, plus another card when you trash the original rat.

Overgrown Estate gives you a card whether you use Rats or not; it seems like a wash? I guess it gives you that card a little sooner, assuming (as in your post) that you didn't open with your real trasher because it costs $5.

86

Dominion Articles / Re: Why Squire Is So Good

« on: September 02, 2012, 01:56:16 pm »

How is Squire a lousy source of + actions? Okay, it doesn't draw a card, but for $2 that's to be expected. It does give coin though.

I mean, you could say the same of Copper; for $0 its mediocrity is to be expected. But of course that's not a good reason to buy it.

In any decent deck, the card you draw from Village is expected to be worth more than the $1 you get from Squire; and if this is an engine deck you're hoping to chain-draw, it could be worth a LOT more. When you're all but strictly worse than vanilla Village, you are pretty objectively a lousy source of +Actions.

The cost doesn't really seem to help: Village is cheap and easy to load up on too, but that doesn't stop it from being weak. I'll grant that if you're content to use the +Buy from Squire, there actually is a significant difference between $2 and $3 here, but still I don't know.

Nobles is weak because it costs $6.  It competes with Gold an strong $5 cards.  Squire is flexible, gives you what you need, and is cheap.  The price makes a big difference.

Take away the VP and Nobles wouldn't even be close to worth $5. It takes two of them to match one Lab, for god's sake. It's strictly better than Smithy so $4 isn't really a fair price, but even $2P seems high to me on most boards. Obviously bringing it down to $3 makes it ridiculously strong; but compare it to having $3 Smithies with Village available, and honestly it doesn't sound that much stronger to me. The Smithy effect is where the value is.

So it seems to me that the flexibility between a $4 card draw effect (Smithy) and a sub-$2 village effect bumps you up to...basically still a $4 card. In Squire's case you have the flexibility between an Action and a Buy option, either of which would independently be about appropriate to a $2 card (but that card would be extremely situational so it's better this way.) So by this admittedly dubious type of argument, I have to imagine the combination of the two bumps it up to a modest $3 value at best. Fine, Squire is well worth the $2, but I don't see how it's some unbelievable powerhouse.

Now add in the Silver gain and/or the on-trash power and now we're talking. I'm not averse to thinking you can do great things with Squire; just the particular argument that the Action and Buy powers alone make it a spectacular engine enabler.

87

Dominion Articles / Re: Why Squire Is So Good

« on: September 02, 2012, 12:53:34 am »

Yeah I haven't played with Squire (or any DA) but at the risk of selling it short, it reminds me of Nobles.

Your engine needs +Action, +Cards, and +Buy. Nobles is a truly lousy source of +Actions and a merely average source of +Cards. Its flexibility doesn't save it from being very weak as the primary basis for an engine (and not just because of its cost). Squire is a source of +Action and +Buy and both options look weak compared to common alternatives (namely Village and Woodcutter). Why should its flexibility save it where Nobles' doesn't? Correct me if I'm wrong but this I don't understand.

Of course Nobles is a good support card for an already-existing engine (gaining VP while still pitching in) and Squire might be too. If you have a spare Buy you're happy to snag one; if you have the chance to trash it for an Attack you're happy to do that too. Easy come, easy go?

88

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Death Cart

« on: August 31, 2012, 07:54:18 pm »

Is it stating the obvious too much to ask about obvious combos like Ironworks/Develop/other cards that can supply plenty of Actions? Should you even bother to Ironworks Ironworks or go straight into Ironworking Death Carts?

What else is decent for providing Death Cart food (including more Death Carts)? Maybe even Talisman? This is probably silly to focus on but I'd consider playing it with Contraband. The extra buy means no shortage of little cantrips or more Death Carts or whatever. And come Province time, the fact that it's a dead card probably won't bother you that much, because come on $5.

Or is this even really an issue, given you can always trash Death Cart to itself later in the game? I guess you don't really need THAT many $5+whatever turns to end the game.

89

Dominion Articles / Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway

« on: August 31, 2012, 07:36:19 pm »

I assume highway > bridge here because you need actions, and +buy synergy doesn't help so much when you're already gaining cards?

I haven't played this at all but I have a hard time imagining Altar/Bridge would be much better than Workshop/Bridge. The Altar trashing is nice (maybe not as critical as for Highway chains; depends on the board whether this is necessary or sufficient). And if there's a critical $5 engine piece then I guess that's well and good. On the other hand, having to hit $6 might be distraction from the necessary engine building?

I don't know. Anyway my point is, you probably have an opinion about workshop/bridge so I suspect that gives a pretty decent idea how strong altar/bridge would be.

90

Dominion Articles / Re: Throne Room

« on: August 30, 2012, 05:34:26 pm »

You play Haggler twice, but the physical card is only in play once.

i think i get it... does it mean that when there is written "while THIS is in play," it means the EXACT card and not just any Haggler?
because if not, then when you would check if Haggler is in play, then take a card, then check again - and the one haggler is still there, so thatīs what i meant... nevermind, thank you...

I still don't think you're quite there. The thing is that the "while in play" part is completely separate from the Action ability. It's more akin to "when you gain this card" abilities or Reaction abilities or whatever.

Imagine that in Guilds, there was an Action card like this. "Choose a card from your hand and put that card into play. Do not "play" this card; don't even bother to read it at this point. Just physically take the card out of your hand and lay it on the table in front of you, along with the other cards that are 'in play,' and then go on with your turn." Okay, I might need to tighten up the wording But the point is that if you played this card on Haggler or Goons, you would still get to use their "while in play" abilities. As long as that Haggler is sitting in the play area, it changes the rules of the game, and that's all there is to it. You don't care how the Haggler got there: whether you played it once or twice (or in this case not at all) this turn, or whether there is a Throne Room tucked behind it as a handy reminder of times past. You only care whether it's there or not when its ability is triggered by buying a card.

Now of course that would be a pretty terrible card idea. It has very few interesting interactions and is also super-confusing. In actual Dominion the only way to have a card "in play" is that you played it at some point, and that's probably always going to be true. (OK, full disclosure: I always thought it would be neat if Havened cards were 'in play' instead of 'set aside'.) But the idea stands: there's a sharp distinction between "is this card in play [sitting in the play area]" and "did you play this card this turn," which also matters in edge cases like Conspirator and Horn of Plenty and so forth.

91

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Dark Ages initial report

« on: August 17, 2012, 08:10:04 pm »

Ironmonger is usually either a Village or a Laboratory or a Peddler and *additionally* has Jack's filter effect (which is certainly non-neglibile, it can be quite useful). There is another bonus in the fact that it is action cards which give +actions. If there is an action card on your deck, there should be an above-average probability that you can make use of the +action - you might well have another card to draw the action on top and Ironmonger gave you the action to play it as well.
All this is really decent for a $4 card!

Plus, the Action option in particular has great self-synergy in that a high Action density means you're more likely to get the free Action, and also more likely to have a use for it.

On the other hand Big Money still has a use for Peddler. And almost all decks can use a Lab with an impeccably-timed bonus filtering effect, but green-heavy decks most of all. Which is good because almost all decks have Victory cards at some point, but green-heavy decks most of all!

Someone mentioned that a benefit of Ironmonger over Tribute was that you can tailor your deck to get the effects you want. That's certainly true, especially in case of the +Actions option, but it looks as though you don't have to go too far out of your way; Ironworks will do a lot of the work for you. Obviously there are going to be many exceptions but the only major class I can think of is a nonterminal-heavy deck that doesn't need +Actions.

92

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Band of Misfits rules questions

« on: August 17, 2012, 12:10:42 am »

So really my question is, where exactly do duration cards that are still in play go when another player ends the game?  Are they still considered in play or are they cleaned up? 

Base rules:

The game ends at the end of any player’s turn when either:
1) the Supply pile of Province cards is empty or
2) any 3 Supply piles are empty.

Each player puts all of his cards into his Deck and counts the
victory points on all the cards he has.

To me the most natural interpretation is that moving BoM back to your deck at this point triggers the card text and reverts it. There's no rule that Victory cards are the only cards whose text still has effects in the ending stages of the game. (But if that were so and BoM's text no longer has any meaning, you could make the case that this too means BoM is just a BoM.)

93

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Band of Misfits rules questions

« on: August 16, 2012, 10:29:07 pm »

I think we should see it like "Play that card twice" doesn't mean exactly "Play that card. Play that card." Instead the setting-up is done only once, and then we follow those copied instructions twice. So Throne Room doesn't have to remember that the card it played was a Mining Village, because it doesn't have to look at the card a second time.

But why shouldn't Throne Room be able to remember that it played a Mining Village? This isn't an obstacle.

Again the lose track rule does not destroy information, just prevents you from moving cards. You can still play a card that's been moved to the trash or burned to ash, if you have a way of doing so. The part of "playing the card" that involves physically relocating it to the play area will fail, but the rest works just fine.

I mean you COULD rule that TR works by pre-caching all the instructions, don't get me wrong. (Whether or not that's a natural interpretation of the wording is another question.) But you're not fixing any problem by doing so. The TR/Mining Village issue is equally well resolved by saying that TR plays the Mining Village that is in the trash, full stop. And I don't see why this leads to any contradiction in the case of BoM either.