Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

351

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Power Grid promo card

« on: November 15, 2012, 07:10:36 pm »

I was thinking about Power Grid promo yesterday, don't have a card ready, but I think the idea is far enough to post it here, maybe someone will fill the holes better than I can

So I wanted to start with electricity. The only medieval "source" of electricity is a lightning. Then power plant #50 came to my mind (http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic135555_lg.jpg - at the bottom), as everyone I play Power Grid with says this one is powered by lightnings closed in the glass ball. So this should not be an ordinary lightning. Ball lightning is definitely more cool. And the cool thing I would like to do with a ball lightning is throwing it at my opponents.

And the card of course has to be Victory card as well, to be at least partially green Working off cards you trashed - the more your lightnings burn, the more victorious you are.

So what I have right now is:

Ball Lightning
Action-Attack-Victory
(some attack here, maybe some small bonus as well if the attack isn't too strong to allow this)
----------------
Worth 1 VP for each 5 cards on your trash card (rounded down).
----------------
In games using this, each player uses his own trash card to store cards he trashes.

The set would come as 19 cards: 12 standard, 1 randomizer, 6 alternate art trash cards. Or maybe 6 trash mats - so that the Dominion time machine works at least a bit

What I'm most unsure about is the attack text. It definitely should be a trashing attack. A lightning is something that could take two objects and melt them into one - so I thought about something like a forced Forge, where your opponent doesn't have full control about what he receives. But is should not decrease the deck size (as this could lead to people ending up with too small decks to do anything). I tried to invent something good but so far couldn't, so I decided to post it, maybe someone has a good idea for attack for this card

352

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Top 100 Games: People's Choice @ Tom Vasel

« on: November 13, 2012, 06:32:09 pm »

Farmers are Carcassonne's Big Money

This summer I played Carcassonne (2-player, base game + Inns and Cathedrals - first expansion, considered by many rather a fix of problems the base game has, it's very common to suggest this expansion straight away for people learning the game) really a lot. I think something like 300-400 games, all against my girfriend, we both were new to the game. When one of us found a new trick, the other looked for a way to go around it, and so on. When recently I started to learn Dominion, I noticed similarities to how we learned Carcassonne.

First you just have fun laying tiles so they fit together. Meeples go on the table, score, come back. A light family game. If you play just to have a bit of fun, you stay at this level. But if you like competing, you look for efficient ways to the win. After a few games a big farm will be scored. Something like 10 cities, singlehandedly deciding the win. Then you see that nearly every game has a high scoring farm. If you place tiles semirandomly, with no big plan, it tends to go this way. So you discover "the broken strategy". Farmer wars begin - the game is a contest to claim the big farm with a side activity of trying to score some points when this doesn't hurt the farm assault. But those points are only a tiebreaker in case the farm is claimed by both players.

You can stop there. Carcassonne becomes a random game with one dominant strategy for you. Or you can find other possibilities. Often ignored and placed anywhere on the side road tiles can be good farm dividers keeping your farming opponent in check. If a chance comes, a big city, long road or a few cloisters adjacent to each other can score big points too. Suddenly farms are important, but the big farm no longer is the main game decider.

And probably there are more layers above that. I guess it takes way more games to truly master this game. But, as after 3 months of playing small Carcassonne set I bought Big Box + some extras, we moved to playing Mega-Carc, a brain burner with over 200 tiles, over 10 ways to score, 3 very different ways to kill your opponent's meeples and a few other twists, including new ways both to divide and to connect farms. This is a really hard game, mostly because there are very many things going on and you have to watch out for everything while managing 12-15 meeples with various properties and additional pieces you are given. The only downside of this game is that it takes more time - even experienced, quick players need an hour or more to complete it. That's why I feel Carcassonne and Dominion fit to each other - both are big game systems with many possibilities so it's likely someone will have fun playing both, but one is a long game and the other short, so you can choose depending on time you have.

353

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Adventure mode in desperate need of rehaul

« on: November 12, 2012, 09:20:57 am »

https://getsatisfaction.com/goko - this is their support page - you can report bugs, ask questions etc. They are quite active there. Updates about recent site changes are also posted there from time to time - this is the latest one: https://getsatisfaction.com/goko/topics/recent_updates-5p75v

354

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Adventure mode in desperate need of rehaul

« on: November 12, 2012, 02:51:19 am »

Again, this is all going to be fixed, I have put in the work there, and I recommend not playing the adventures until this happens.

Goko announced changes to Base & Intrigue level 2 and 3 adventures - are those the changes you talked about, or should we wait for some more?

355

Dominion Strategy Wiki Feedback / Re: Going Public With The Dominion Strategy Wiki

« on: November 09, 2012, 04:33:30 am »

I think the page "Dominion" should be a good starting point. But it should talk about the whole game, not the base set (which should get "Base Set" page - unfortunately it has no name on its own, one of the few things I like about Polish translation is that base set is called Dominion: Torn Kingdom instead of just Dominion). It should be an article explaining basic rules, giving a short overview of expansions, and pointing to all other interesting issues - so that everyone, even someone completely new to the game, can start there and find his way around the Wiki. Such article should be promoted at the main page as "Read this first" thing.

356

Introductions / Re: Hi everyone

« on: November 08, 2012, 02:45:50 pm »

Geometric group theory

357

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Top 100 Games: People's Choice @ Tom Vasel

« on: November 08, 2012, 02:35:12 pm »

Carcassonne, played 100% cutthroat and with a lot of expansions (so there are really many things you need to think about simultaneously) is a really good game. And it becomes big enough so that it's impossible to remember all the tiles. The problem is that you need some time and a lot of space when playing with 300+ tiles

From the rest of the list, I have Power Grid, I like it, but it rarely gets played as it takes whole evening and preferably 4-5 people. I played 7 Wonders a few times, interesting game, I may buy it at some point. Ticket to Ride is fun, I played it only once but definitely want more - not a strange thing I guess, I'm an orienteer and this game involves maps and route planning I also played Settlers of Catan a few times but it was not that much fun. I don't know anything about the other games.

358

Introductions / Hi everyone

« on: November 08, 2012, 02:29:15 pm »

After a lot of reading and some posting it's high time to use this board

I live in Wrocław, Poland, currently doing a PhD in mathematics. This summer time I spend boardgaming went up significantly - mostly due to a misfortune - my girlfriend twisted her leg badly during an orienteering race, so she was out of outdoor activities for two months. So we played a lot of boardgames, mainly Carcassonne. I started to read BGG site, learning about various games. When I found out about Dominion, it looked interesting right from the start - nothing strange, as a few years ago I played Lord of the Rings TCG a lot. So I found a cheap, used set of Base+Intrigue, bought it, in the meantime started reading about the game, discovering this site. Both my girlfriend and my family liked the game, and I also liked it a lot after playing a few times, so I started playing online at Goko and reading this forum more often to learn the cards better.

359

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Translations

« on: November 07, 2012, 05:14:16 pm »

But we do have a Count in Dark Ages. So you would need a new word for this.

Uh oh, just found this out from Count/Duke combo thread. Will have to think about this.

360

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Translations

« on: November 06, 2012, 02:22:51 pm »

Thanks, you just learned me a new English word The only thing that came to my mind when I read Hamlet was the Shakespeare's play. Now it makes sense.

Duchy and Duke are in Polish translation "Powiat" and "Starosta". Powiat is the name of the middle step of administrative division of Poland and the name was used since XIVth century. Starosta was its head, responsible for fiscal duties, courts etc. So the names are quite good. But if you want to translate Duchess to be in line with this, you should use "Starościna", but the word is an extreme archaism. If I was to translate Duchy and Duke (and knew I have Duchess coming a bit later), I would go for Hrabstwo, Hrabia, Hrabina - even though it's rather County, Count and Countess - we never had counts in Poland, but all three words are still alive in Polish language.

361

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Translations

« on: November 06, 2012, 01:54:44 pm »

The biggest problem of Polish translation of Dominion is that only Base, Intrigue and Cornucopia were done. At some point I'll probably have to translate the other cards, as my girlfriend liked the game, but doesn't speak English well, so with no translation there's no much room to expand our games beyond Base and Intrigue I bought recently. Jack of All Trades will definitely be hard to do. And Duchess, due to the way Duchy and Duke got translated - there's no word fitting to Duchess which would go in line with the two previous translations.

Looking through the cards from other expansions, I have one question about English "translation" of the game. Does anyone know why is Hamlet called Hamlet? I can't see the name having anything in common with card text, the picture also doesn't help.

362

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks

« on: October 25, 2012, 01:53:48 pm »

At normal speed I think there's plenty of time to see everything your opponents do. Fast is too fast to see what's going on. On very fast however the status line tells you what cards they gained, which is often all you care about, and when you specifically want to know something else there's the log.

It would be really useful if you wouldn't have to turn the log on and off each time you want to check it. Having a log box somewhere on the table all the time showing a few latest lines would make it way faster to read.

363

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: The Contest Set Card List

« on: October 22, 2012, 06:23:44 pm »

Where are the winners for challenges 17 and 18 in the first post?

I couldn't find many images for "Barge". The closest I could find was this:

Doesn't look very good. Maybe a good idea could be using image that Canal currently has for Barge and one of those for Canal:


Canal Scene by William Meritt Chase

View on Enkhuizen by Cornelis Smelter

364

Dominion Strategy Wiki Feedback / Re: Dominion Wiki

« on: October 22, 2012, 01:13:22 pm »

Seems nice except for the giant ad banner.  Mine is a Romney / Ryan ad.  Is that an official sponsorship - or is it taking into account the amount of money I waste on board games and think that I'm 1%?

No idea. I think it shows ads only when you're not logged in, I've never seen any banners there.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that i would be more of a forum feature than a wiki feature

Very possible - autolinking (to a page simply showing image of the card and some very basic info about it) existed at the forum before the wiki was set up.

365

Dominion Strategy Wiki Feedback / Re: Dominion Wiki

« on: October 22, 2012, 11:04:52 am »

I think anyone who starts setting up the wiki should take a look at http://lotrtcgwiki.com/wiki/start - this is a wiki about a card game integrated with a forum (forum existed first). A great feature is that when you mention a card's name on the forum it gets autolinked to this card's wiki page.

Of course there is a problem with not enough content - pages of most cards are default templates. But Dominion has 20 times less cards and 20 times more players, so I think the problem would be way smaller here.