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Messages - mameluke

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26
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Words in card names
« on: November 18, 2017, 06:54:37 pm »
Even if English speakers recognized in some way that the "bank" in "Mountebank" had something to do with banks, they also likely would have to assign some meaning to the "Mounte" part, which they do not. This is pretty much a rare word anyhow, so typical speakers of English are likely to not have any transparent morphological composition for it.
Hmmm? They're the dudes who mount a bank (to sell stuff from it). Mount like getting on top of and bank like a river bank.

In this case I think it's actually supposed to be the "bench" meaning of "bank" (which as far as I know is obsolete in English, if it ever existed), and these two meanings are distantly related to each other (as well as the financial bank), but their meanings are so far from each other that English speakers don't really think of them as being the same.

27
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Words in card names
« on: November 18, 2017, 04:07:15 pm »
Remind me again why Bank and Mountebank don't qualify.

It seems they both have the same Italian root.

Truuuue, but I think that within English they don't have any kind of synchronic relationship, any more than do, say, "chance" and "cadence". (In other words, the list isn't about etymology; it's about synchronic structure.)

Then why do Fortune and Fortuneteller qualify? Isn't one about a large quantity of money and the other is about predicting one's luck or well-being?

I'm not trying to argue; I'm just not familiar with the linguistic terms and criteria you are using for this list.

The line between (a) one word with two different meanings and (b) two words with the same form and/or origin is a fuzzy line, all right, and I'll admit to basically going by gut feeling and judgment call on these. So, like, it's my impression that, in the minds of typical English speakers, the two meanings of fortune are conceptualized as two (related?) meanings of the same word, while the similarity between the last syllable of mountebank and the word bank is conceptualized as coincidental. But I don't have strong evidence for this other than gut feeling and educated guessing.

Even if English speakers recognized in some way that the "bank" in "Mountebank" had something to do with banks, they also likely would have to assign some meaning to the "Mounte" part, which they do not. This is pretty much a rare word anyhow, so typical speakers of English are likely to not have any transparent morphological composition for it.

EDIT: The two kinds of Fortune are at least polysemes in English. It's not an accident that they have the same form here, in the same way that the word iron "a metal" and iron "a device for removing creases" are different things but certainly related to each other. Sometimes we have totally different words that just overlap in pronunciation, like bat "a winged mammal" and bat "a object for hitting a baseball", which have nothing to with each other in meaning or origin.

28
Dominion General Discussion / Re: How to Win Less...
« on: November 14, 2017, 08:03:41 pm »
Yeah, you have to let them know you are handicapping yourself. Otherwise, when you likely win with a weaker strategy that you just executed well, they will get the wrong idea about what cards are strong and they'll never get better.

29
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Blacker Market
« on: November 10, 2017, 12:58:01 pm »
If it's a Night card it doesn't need to let you play treasures. It's definitely stronger because it's non-terminal though.

I wouldn't say that it's definitely stronger. Actually I think it might be weaker. With the normal Black Market, you get to see what cards it gives you and then if you don't want any of those, you can buy something from the kingdom. With Night BM, you have to make that decision without knowing what cards you would get, which is a pretty huge deal. Also, you can't buy something from the Black Market and then immediately draw and play it the same turn (which happens a lot in regular BM games), and you can't do the usual BM tricks with Tactician, Menagerie, etc or any other Action card interactions (doesn't happen very often in regular BM games but still happens sometimes).

EDIT: Also, you can't use the dollars for buying something from the kingdom, which is another big deal.

Yeah, along the lines of the the last point, if the Night BM card you want costs more than $2, you might not be able to buy it. Sure you can use the $ from cards already in play, but you might have spent all of it during the Buy phase -- you would have no way of knowing if it's worth saving your $ for the Night BM or just spending on a sure thing from the Kingdom. Imagine deciding between buying a $5 or waiting for something great from Night BM, only to flip over three $6+ cards. What a waste.

30
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Teaching Dominion to young children?
« on: November 06, 2017, 01:31:33 pm »
Ain't nobody got time to read the entire thread!

...it's not even an entire page?

Better read it before it's exchanged for a Treasure Hunter

31
Throneability isn't a great way to judge a card's strength because most of the time there are no throne variants. Werewolf is definitely a stronger Hexer than Skulk because it's non-terminal.
Completely agreed. I brought up throneability mostly in connection with how degenerate can the card be at it's worst.

Personally, I hope it doesn't get any worse than it is with Werewolf...

My first game with Werewolf had Vampire in it, too. My opponent got an early Vampire and kept gaining Werewolves, using one or two for draw and then spent the rest of the turn in the Night phase sending hexes my way. It wasn't much fun.

32
Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Bonus Preview #5: Necromancer
« on: October 29, 2017, 02:15:00 pm »
I Throne a Necromancer and play Zombie Mason and Zombie Spy, turning them face down. Then I play a Lurker.

Can I choose to gain the Zombie Spy? May I look at the face down trashed cards—which sounds like a wrong interpretation of "face down"—or do I have to pick a face down card, hoping I remembered correctly which is which? Are you required to shuffle the face-down trashed cards whenever you turn an additional trashed card face down? (That sounds like a terrible rule.)
You can look at the face down cards. They are just face down to track which ones you've Necromancer'd this turn.

What if you gain a face-down card during your turn, and later trash it during that same turn? Can a Necromancer play that card from the trash during that turn?

33
Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Bonus Preview #4: Leprechaun
« on: October 26, 2017, 06:00:30 pm »
so, about that undo button...

34
Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Bonus Preview #3: Fool
« on: October 25, 2017, 10:35:24 am »
How do states work with Possession? If I possess my opponent and play Fool, who 'receives' the Boons?

35
Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Bonus Preview #2: Faithful Hound
« on: October 24, 2017, 12:45:24 pm »
Seems awesome with inn.  Discard the hound, draw it back, have extra actions to use.  Hm. The more I think about it the more I like Hound/Inn

Note that you don't get it back until the next turn (if you have an Inn then, then great)

36
Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #2: Shepherd, Pooka, Cemetery
« on: October 24, 2017, 12:12:07 pm »
Ghost sounds really interesting to me. It looks like it'd create a lot of tension when it's a part of a traditional deck type. The fact that it's a throne makes me think it's an engine card, but it won't do anything if you draw your whole deck (unless you have some way to discard an action for it to find). The fact that it digs for an action to play makes me think it's a sloggy card, but any game it's in will always also include a trasher (Cemetery). As a result it might actually work best in those mythical "hybrid" decks.

Since the Night phase is after the Buy phase, you can still draw your whole deck, but you'll just have to buy another Action card during your Buy phase. This is really only an issue if you don't have multiple buys and you're greening, but that's probably not a draw-your-deck type anyhow.

37
Night cards are interesting with Haunted Woods.

38
Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Bonus Preview #2: Faithful Hound
« on: October 24, 2017, 11:47:17 am »
Faithful Hound + Journeyman is hilarious. Not sure what to do with all of those in your hand, though.

39
Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Bonus Preview #2: Faithful Hound
« on: October 24, 2017, 11:32:18 am »
This is great! Just played a fun game with Faithful Hound and Torturer, and I was able to discard the Hound to get Ghost and Arena points, too.

40
Dominion General Discussion / Re: New German Promo 'Abbruch'
« on: October 23, 2017, 10:39:47 am »
Interesting. So in most cases, if you open with this you can trash an Estate for a Copper and a Gold. I'm not sure how good that is. Probably fine if you can open this / Forager or some other good treasure trasher. Otherwise, with a $2 Kingdom card, maybe it's worth trashing a Silver for a Gold plus that $2.

Trying to think of some other good combos, but Rats is the only thing that comes to mind.

41
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Masquerade
« on: October 07, 2017, 01:32:15 pm »
The worst is when there is a handsize reducer like Militia or Ghost Ship on the board as well and +Actions, which will effectively reduce your handsize to 2 cards, since you will want to keep a bad card in your hand in case Masq is played afterwards.

I'm not a fan of the card either, because it can really hurt if you keep a lot of junk but it just doesn't show up in those 5 cards you drew for this turn, and you have to pass something good. It's worth buying more 3s and 4s (like Silver) which are not the worst thing in the world to pass.

42
Lurker + Hunting Grounds

That's actually a very strong combo. You can win the game in 9-10 turns by piling out on Lurkers, Hunting Grounds and Duchies.

Sure, I guess. I think the point was that if you are intending to pick up HGs, you'll get something else before you get them even if you didn't want it. Maybe Catacombs is a better choice, but it's easier to choke on the green.

43
Lurker + Hunting Grounds

44
Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Events: Lost Arts
« on: September 30, 2017, 06:22:41 pm »
Um. This is a really amazing thing to put on Poor House in a game with trashing, because you can easily obtain lots of Poor Houses, and play several of them in a turn without having any treasure.

In general it’s better to put Lost Arts on draw vs payload, but situationally this is cool I guess.

But then you can only play one Poor House, or Bridge, or whatever. Is the argument that it's better just to put it on Smithy and use Treasure as payload for better turn-to-turn reliability?

No, the argument is that it's better to put Lost Arts on Smithy so you can draw all your villages and Poor Houses and then play them, rather than having to find your villages first before you play your Smithy so that you can then play your Lost-Artsy Bridges.

I guess my assumption was that there would be no villages in the kingdom. I agree otherwise. I also suppose on the circumstance that you really want to play two different terminal payload cards and there are no villages, you'd need to put Lost Arts on one of them.

45
Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Events: Lost Arts
« on: September 28, 2017, 01:20:39 am »
Um. This is a really amazing thing to put on Poor House in a game with trashing, because you can easily obtain lots of Poor Houses, and play several of them in a turn without having any treasure.

In general it’s better to put Lost Arts on draw vs payload, but situationally this is cool I guess.

But then you can only play one Poor House, or Bridge, or whatever. Is the argument that it's better just to put it on Smithy and use Treasure as payload for better turn-to-turn reliability?

46
I think like with a lot of the $3 or $4 cards this pairs well with (WW, Herald, etc.) it's even better when you can easily gain them, like with Workshop and friends. Otherwise, you still need economy.

47
Rules Questions / Re: Poacher question
« on: September 19, 2017, 11:02:43 pm »
There's a card in a later expansion called Haunted Woods, which forces you to put all of your unplayed cards from your hand onto the top of your deck before you ever get to the Clean-up phase -- this is definitely bad if those unplayed cards are Curse or Victory cards. Poacher and other cards like it are helpful counters to this attack card.

48
Bridge Troll + Sage doesn't work when you want Sage to find $3 cards.

I'm terrible at noticing these sorts of cost-reduction anti-synergies. My recent one:

Peddler + Ritual
Me (early in the game): Oh sweet, I can gain a bunch of Peddlers cheaply and then trash them for 8VP + Curse
Me (later in the game): Oh. Right.

You can always buy Bonfire first to get rid of those pesky Bridge Trolls in play!

The particular problem with Ritual is that it happens during your buy phase, which is also when Peddler's cost reduction happens.

Peddler's cost reduction is contingent on Action cards in play; Bonfire can get rid of those for you.

49
Bridge Troll + Sage doesn't work when you want Sage to find $3 cards.

I'm terrible at noticing these sorts of cost-reduction anti-synergies. My recent one:

Peddler + Ritual
Me (early in the game): Oh sweet, I can gain a bunch of Peddlers cheaply and then trash them for 8VP + Curse
Me (later in the game): Oh. Right.

You can always buy Bonfire first to get rid of those pesky Bridge Trolls in play!

50
Dominion Articles / Re: Occasionally Relevent Rule Edge-Cases
« on: September 11, 2017, 06:30:46 pm »
The split piles / tokens section should be updated to mention the the +Buy token *can * be placed on Castles, however, via Seaway.

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