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101

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: June 27, 2019, 02:07:28 am »

For Binding of Isaac in particular, I've always felt like the intention is to have a few super-strong items that can carry your entire run, because it gives the feeling that you can always salvage a run if you get lucky, which gets people to keep playing even if they don't have a lot of skill in the game.

Brimstone is definitely very very strong, but I think it's one of the funner strong items.

102

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: June 24, 2019, 03:06:04 pm »

Turns out the Windows calculator issue wasn't because of floating point error, it was because the calculator internally represents all numbers as the quotient of really big integers.

http://daviddeley.com/profdeley/math/windows_calculator/index.htm

Newer versions likely did it in a different way. Standard floating point numbers are accurate enough that sqrt(4) just works out to 2.0 which can be represented exactly.

103

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: June 23, 2019, 10:32:09 pm »

I'm really astounded at how quickly I went from "Zone 4 has too much going on" to "Zone 4 is totally doable if I don't make dumb mistakes". Once I got basic patterns figured out I was taking way less damage early on. I suppose that's every roguelike though.

104

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: June 22, 2019, 02:25:30 am »

I bought Necrodancer since it went on sale the week Cadence of Hyrule was coming out. So far I like it. I just beat Zone 3 for the first time today - I felt I was hitting a brick wall with dying on level 1 almost all the time, then I got a really good run and just steamrolled to the end of the zone.

105

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Strictly Better

« on: June 19, 2019, 09:31:58 pm »

For future reference these arguments are exactly why you should stop using the Lab analogy Awaclus.

I even think Awaclus is right here, people are way too scared of Cathedral trashing a Silver or something. If there isn't a discard attack, Cathedral trashing a Silver is a *good* sign, it means your worst card is a Silver. Do you know how long that takes normally? Really really long in most kingdoms! Oh no, I had to trash a Silver because I trashed 5 of my Coppers and all my Estates. That's like the definition of a Dominion first world problem.

The Lab analogy has been memed to high heaven and no longer means anything outside of that meme. The fact that you keep using it is part of that meme, and feeds its irrelevance. It's actually really funny now that I think about it.

106

Dominion Articles / Re: Notes on Castles

« on: June 12, 2019, 01:54:48 pm »

I'm wondering why no post takes into account the fact that there's two of Humble/Small/Opulent/King's Castle except in two-player games.

EDIT: Actually all the posts appear to assume two players, which I've never enjoyed as much as with 3-4.

In general, expect all strategy discussion on this forum to assume a 2 player game. That tends to be the setup most people play here.

The main reason is that 2-player games tend to be easier for online matchmaking, and 2-player games don't have kingmaking. From a competitive standpoint, it can be really frustrating when you lose because of someone else's decision rather than your own.

That isn't to say there's no skill in 3-4 player games, and that isn't saying 3-4 player games can't be fun. A lot of official paper Dominion tournaments use 3-4 player setups, and the winner is almost always a solid player. Not always the best, but definitely not the worst. But in 2-player, the better player is more likely to win, and that's what people like about it.

107

Dominion General Discussion / Re: New promo revealed: Schwerin Cathedral

« on: May 29, 2019, 10:12:04 pm »

I have a new prediction: everyone trying to come up with a Cathedral variant is going to be wrong.

108

Dominion General Discussion / Re: New promo revealed: Schwerin Cathedral

« on: May 29, 2019, 08:40:35 pm »

I think there's a good chance this doesn't have anything to do with trashing, but here's a trashing-based guess.

Set aside a card from your hand.

At the start of each of your turns, if this is in play, choose one: set aside a card from your hand (on this), or trash all set aside cards, +$1 per trashed card, and discard Schwerin Cathedral.

There's probably a better wording for this. This seems mega-busted so it's probably wrong.

109

Dominion Articles / Re: Notes on Castles

« on: May 13, 2019, 03:52:30 pm »

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=18405.msg752284#msg752284 is a Castles article I wrote from last year. It's interesting to see how the perception has changed in the past year.

Overall, me + ehunt are saying the same things and then aku_chi replies with the same comment, except this time with more stats. I think the main update from last year is recognizing the Crumbling Castle is genuinely really, really bad to pick up. It's both a weak effect and it exposes Small Castle. You want to trash your Crumbling Castle to Small Castle, but if you buy Crumbling without buying Small, your opponent buys Small Castle and you're sad.

Between 2 threads and 2 years, there surely has to be enough content to combine into a Castles article for the main strategy blog.

110

Dominion General Discussion / Re: New Player-Strategy Question

« on: April 25, 2019, 02:04:49 pm »

One thing I'm not great at is playing with Lurker. I think given the strong kingdom here, and the ability to load up early on with cheap and powerful $3 cards like Fishing Village, Swindler, and Forager, I would be tempted to skip Lurker and go straight for those. You can buy the key $5 cards outright fairly easily with those cards. However, there is the possibility of an "arms race." If one player skips Lurker, the other player can play a single Lurker on his or her turn to trash a key $5 without fear that it will get snapped up, then pick it up for free a turn or two later. If you end up with only one Lurker in hand but are worried about the opponent having one for the following turn, you are forced to trash a less powerful card. So on this board given how powerful the early $3 buys are, I'd be tempted to skip Lurker but maybe that would be a mistake? Anyone else have thoughts?

If you have the draw and buys to support playing 2 Lurkers a turn (which you do with Wharf), then it's a free action gain every turn at the cost of not drawing, which I think is good enough here because there are so many good $5 actions, you definitely won't run out of targets. Also it increases your 3 pile threat. I don't think you want Lurker early, you want it more towards midgame (early on you should be focusing on Fishing Village with your $3 buys)

The other things pushing towards Lurker here are:
* Swindler is going to be trashing actions and you want Lurker as defense (to take them back) / offense (to steal them before they can take them back)
* If you get a Haggler early enough, it's easy to pick up Lurkers on a $3 buy.

111

Dominion General Discussion / Re: New Player-Strategy Question

« on: April 24, 2019, 04:37:50 pm »

There's a Game Reports / Help! section where these posts are supposed to go, although it looks like they haven't been used in a while.

It might help if you could explain how you lost - what did your opponent do, what did you do? If you have trouble answering these questions, then it's a sign you should be paying more attention to what they're doing.

In the specific kingdom here, there's a lot of fancy stuff you can do but the core is going to be using Fishing Village for actions, Wharf + Torturer for cards and attacks, and then some mix of Haggler, Lurker, Swindler, Upgrade, Forager. This kingdom is complicated because you plausibly want almost every card in the Kingdom at some point (except for Death Cart).

The other option for cycling through your deck is going heavy on Minion, combining it with Fishing Village, Swindler, Haggler, and Forager to get use of each of your 4 card hands, but I think this will be worse than the Wharf and Torturer route.

I would open Forager/Swindler, get Fishing Village and Wharf from there, then pick up Lurker and Haggler once the deck is going a bit. If you get a good Swindler hit or if your opponent buys Lurker, consider buying Lurker sooner. The Forager is to get early trashing in, the Swindler is to add early disruption and to get a source of +$2 because you want to hit $5 soon for Wharf or Torturer.

112

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Competitiveness

« on: April 07, 2019, 10:24:29 pm »

For me, Dominion hits that sweet spot where I find it fun to play, and find it even more fun to play when I'm winning. So that's why I care about getting better.

Not all games are like this. I actually sorta like the beginning of Monopoly, especially when I play with a group that doesn't use free parking house rules and correctly puts things up for auction. We play with trading rules which makes the game a lot more Catan-like in figuring out who it would be good or bad to trade with. But when the game devolves into who lands on a monopoly first, it becomes sad if you have bad properties and boring if you do. Similarly I don't like Catan that much anymore because it feels like the endgame of Catan just drags on and on when you have no chance of winning.

I wouldn't say I'm competitive in all things, but I'm certainly competitive when it comes to board games. I would say the distinction is that some people like trying to win within a single game, but aren't looking to go to the point of mastery. This is stuff like the "play 3 games of Dominion ever" crowd. They're trying to win, but aren't going to play a kingdom over and over until they figure out why they're losing.

In casual Dominion playgroups, I'll go all out, but if it's clear that I'm the best one there, I'll start seeing if I can win with weirder conditions, or I'll try to avoid playing attacks too often. My IRL Dominion tends to be 3 player or 4 player, so if I'm the only one getting mass Torturer to work, then it's making 2 or 3 other players really sad. I mean, if I can win without it, why bother adding it?

The last time I played IRL Dominion with new players, I played the 1st game engine, minus Militia, and still blew all their minds.

113

Dominion Articles / Re: Chariot Race

« on: April 01, 2019, 10:12:21 pm »

It's a reference to Kaiji, an anime about gambling.



I don't even know what Kaiji is, all I did was search for the full quote to see what turned up.

114

Dominion Articles / Re: Fool

« on: April 01, 2019, 10:04:42 pm »

Fool is super underrated. It really makes me pity it.

I already did that one. :-p

Please check the source of the first Donald X quote, then report back to me. I take pride in doing due diligence in my joke articles.

I think you're seriously underselling the 3 Boons you get from playing it the first time. If you get River, Field and Forest, that's a friggin Grand Market!

Don't you mean Sea's Gift instead of River's Gift?

115

Dominion Articles / Fool

« on: April 01, 2019, 03:07:43 pm »

Fool is my greatest creation, and my worst mistake.

Fool is one of the strongest $3 costs in recent memory, and has a tendency to take over games, especially if multiple players decide to pick it up.

Most of its power comes from the passive effect of the Lost in the Woods state. Getting to discard a card for a Boon every turn is powerful enough to deserve contesting it heavily - the 3 Boons you get when playing Fool the first time are simply a rounding error.

Due to the power of Lost in the Woods, it's important to pick up as many Fools as possible. Not only does this protect you from other players taking the Lost in the Woods effect, it also gives you plenty of fodder to feed to Lost in the Woods. A Fool's a Fool, but you could discard that Fool to to Lost in the Woods and get The Sea's Gift to get +1 Card. You could draw anything! It could even be another Fool. This was strong enough that Donald X ended up pairing Fool with Lucky Coin to slow down the game.

In the end though I decided maybe I could pair it with Lucky Coin and the Silvers you gained would slow down how often you played Fool enough to avoid problems.

As everyone knows, Silvers are the same as Curses. It's only thanks to this Lucky Coin balancing that Fool doesn't take over games quite as strongly as Ambassador or Masquerade do. Strategy-wise, there isn't much more to say, besides

1) You should open Fool (Fool/Silver is a common choice).
2) You should try to pick up a 2nd Fool before your 2nd shuffle.
3) It's important to check the date of all strategy articles, as many old articles are no longer relevant in the current age.

116

Dominion Articles / When Should I Start Greening?

« on: March 30, 2019, 04:29:12 am »

If you're not familiar with Dominion slang, "greening" is when you start buying VP cards for points.

You should start greening based on how quickly you can improve your deck and your buying power. The faster you can improve it, the longer you should delay buying VP. The reasoning's simple: buying VP cards slows down your deck. Part of the problem is adding a junk card. The bigger problem is that $8 spent on a Province is $8 less that could have gone to more money or Action cards. If the Kingdom supports faster growth, you're better off investing into your deck now and buying points later.

If you're playing a Gardens rush, then, well, for one Gardens rushes are not as strong as we thought they were 5 years ago and a lot of Big Money baselines compete with it. But something they're right, and in these cases you start greening right away. It's not like your deck is going to do much better than hitting $4 for Gardens.

If you're going for Duchy-Duke, then you want to start greening a bit later, late enough that you can somewhat reliably hit $5. But still much earlier than you would in a Province game.

If you're playing a 1 buy a turn deck, you don't have any reason to hit more than $8 for Province (or more than $11 for Colony), so you start greening when you think your deck can usually hit $8.

If you're playing a reasonable engine, one that draws a lot of cards but not always your entire deck, you start greening around the point where you're hitting $13 (Prov + Duchy), $16 (2 Provinces), or $18 (Province + 2 Duchies, a useful option to have in endgames). Two Provinces a turn is a sweet spot where the game ends very soon if both players decide to start greening - 8 Provinces goes away in 4 turns, or 2 turns each.

However, if you're playing a Kingdom with a strong engine, something like Wharf + Village + trashing, you may want to build even more. $24 for triple Province, $28 for 2 Province + 2 Duchy, maybe even $32 for 4 Provinces. On these boards, it's common for high-level play to turn into a game of chicken that eventually ends in a low-scoring 3 pile. When both players believe detouring for points will cost them the game, they both buy actions instead, bringing the game closer to a 3 pile.

And then there are Bridge boards and Bridge Troll boards, where you play for the megaturn and buy all your points on the final turn, because these cards grow quadratically and there's really no reason to pick up points unless you have to in order to avoid a 3 pile.


Here are some toy examples. In these examples, when I say a deck hits $N, I mean it always hits $N, even as Victory cards are entering their deck.

Both decks can hit $8, takes 2 turns to build deck into one that hits $16

Let's say first player goes for Provinces, and 2nd player tries to build

P1: Province
P2: build
P1: Province
P2: build
P1: Province
P2: Province + Province
P1: Province
P2: Province + Province, both players have 4 Provinces, tie at game end.

So it isn't any worse at hitting 4 Provinces. But in a real-life version of this scenario,
1) P2's deck is more reliable because they buy Provinces later, and
2) if P1 misses $8 once, P2 can punish that bad luck more severely.
If P2 gets unlucky, then well, they lose. But if they didn't build and got unlucky, they would have lost anyways, and P2 is less likely to get unlucky if they build their deck a bit more.

If we reverse the roles, and have P1 build, then P1 wins.

P1: build
P2: Province
P1: build
P2: Province
P1: Province + Province
P2: Province
P1: Province + Duchy (P1 has 3 Prov 1 Duchy, P2 has 3 Prov)
P2: "If I buy Province, P1 wins on Province. If I buy Duchy, P1 wins on 2 Provinces." P2 loses.

Both decks can hit $16, takes 1 turn to build deck to one that hits $24

Say P1 goes for double Provinces and P2 goes for building.

P1: Province + Province
P2: build
P1: Province + Province
P2: "If I buy 2 Provinces, P1 wins on Province + Province". Buys Province + 3 Duchies (costs $23)
P1: Province + Province (P1 has 6 Provinces, P2 has Province + 3 Duchies)
P2: loses

In this example, P2 loses because they don't have time against a double Province player.

If we reverse the roles, P2 still loses.

P1: build
P2: Province + Province
P1: Province + Province + Province (P1: 3 Province, P2: 2 Province)
P2: "If I double Province, P1 wins on Province + Duchy. If I don't buy any Provinces, P1 wins anyways on triple Province." P2 loses. (In a real game I would buy Province + Duchy and hope P1 has a dud and hits less than $16.)

In fact, P1 wins even if both players go for double Provinces.

P1: Province + Province
P2: Province + Province
P1: Province + Duchy (P1: 3 Prov + 1 Duchy, P2: 2 Province)
P2: "If I double Province, P1 wins on a single Province. If I Province + Duchy, P1 wins on double Province". P2 loses.

In this setting, P1 wins because they have first mover advantage. But what if we can build to $24 while picking up some points along the way?

Both decks can hit $16, takes 1 turn to build deck to one that hits $24, on the building turn you can afford buying 1 Province

P1 goes for double Prov, P2 builds

P1: Province + Province
P2: builds + Province
P1: "If I double Province, then P2 ties on triple Province. Can I win if I don't allow the tie?".
    (P1 hypothetical)
    P1: Province + Duchy (P1: 3 Provinces + 1 Duchy, P2: 1 Province)
    P2: "If I buy 2 Provinces, P1 can end the game." Province + 3 Duchies (P1: 3 Provinces + Duchy, P2: 2 Provinces + 3 Duchies)
    P1 "Only 3 Provinces are left, so P2 can end the game no matter what I do. I should get as many points as possible." Province + Province
    P2: Province + 3 Duchies (P1: 5 Provinces + Duchy. P2: 3 Provinces + 6 Duchies. P2 wins)
P1: "Okay, I can't, I take the tie". Province + Province
P2: Province + Province + Province

If we give the option of picking up a Province while building towards $24, then P2 can turn a losing situation into one where they can get a tie instead, as long as P1 goes for the double Province strategy. But, if P1 builds, then P2 will once again lose no matter what they do.

P1 builds, P2 does double Province

P1: builds + Province
P2: Province + Province
P1: Province + Province + Duchy
P2: "P1 can end the game no matter what I do and I can at most get 4 Provinces, while they have 3 Provinces + 1 Duchy". P2 loses.

P1 builds, P2 builds

P1: builds + Province
P2: builds + Province
P1: Province + Province + Duchy (P1: 3 Provinces, 1 Duchy. P2: 1 Province)
P2: "A 6-2 Province split is not beatable. If I buy a single Province, P1 can end the game on Provinces. Therefore I should deny all the Provinces I can." Province + Province + Province
P1: Province + 3 Duchies (P1: 4 Provinces, 4 Duchies. P2: 4 Provinces)


These toy examples are far enough from reality that I would not follow them religiously. In particularly, they're missing a model of how your deck becomes less reliable as you add VP cards to it. But, they do show how the decision of when to build and when to green isn't just "stop at $8" or "stop at $16". It's dependent on the context of how quickly your deck can become better, how many VP cards are left in the pile, and how well your deck can handle Victory cards.

Even though these examples aren't perfect, they do show off the emergent complexity of Dominion endgames. It's quite tricky to play them correctly, and there aren't really any shortcuts besides thinking about the possibilities and seeing what happens in each one. But that's a subject for another article.

117

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion current Popularity?

« on: March 21, 2019, 12:59:59 pm »

I'm not saying it's a good game; I'm saying it's a successful game.

Although I do think there are times in which a game that isn't really much of a game is just what I need. Those moments aren't common; I'd usually much prefer to play an actual game. But they exist, and Exploding Kittens is one of the games that does a good job then.

We Didn't Playtest This At All is a good non-game for this that I found much more fun than Exploding Kittens.

118

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: March 04, 2019, 01:26:44 am »

(For those who haven't heard about it yet, GPT-2 is OpenAI's big project. It can write essays responding to a textual input (like two paragraphs). I'm not quite sure what it has as input here, maybe it can also respond to images.)

https://www.gwern.net/TWDNE

1. Seed GPT-2 with a bunch of anime keywords to get it to generate text that looks like an anime synopsis

The seed is

Code: [Select]

"Anime ai nani arigatou gomen \
        sayonara chigau dame Madoka jigoku kami kanojo mahou magical girl youkai 4koma yonkoma Japan Oreimo baka \
        chibi gakuran schoolgirl school uniform club Funimation Gainax Khara Ghibli Hayao Miyazaki Saber Fate \
        Stay Night Pop Team Epic Japanese Aria Escaflowne Kanon Clannad comedy itai manga Shonen Jump pocky \
        tsundere urusai weeaboo yaoi yuri zettai harem senpai otaku waifu weeb fanfiction doujinshi trope \
        Anime News Network Anime Central Touhou kanji kaiju Neon Genesis Evangelion Spice and Wolf Holo Asuka \
        kawaii bishonen bishojo visual novel light novel video game story plot Fruits Basket Toradora Taiga \
        Aisaka tiger Detective Conan Pokemon Osamu Tezuka cat ears neko romantic comedy little sister character \
        plot drama article nekomimi bunny isekai tanuki catgirl moe manga manga manga anime anime anime review \
        plot summary. An exciting cute kawaii new anime series based on a light novel shoujo manga called  \
        \"I Can't Believe My Alien Visitor Is My Little Sister\" or \"MAVISM\", a sequel to \"Raccoon Girl\", \
        is the latest hit. In the first episode of this anime, "

The output is some gibberish that looks like an anime synopsis.

2. To improve quality, take a synopsis outputted by GPT-2 and feed it as the new prompt to get a further elaboration on that fake anime - this is the final output used.

119

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2018 Edition: Hexes

« on: February 27, 2019, 01:12:17 pm »

[Misery] is the top-ranked Hex in the stats by a comfortable margin.

I think this is enough to make me question how useful these "stats" are. Unlike the other hexes, it's trivial to know whether Misery caused you to lose. I've only had one game where that has happened, and I play online a lot.

Is it? I've had a few games where I got an early Misery and was forced to buy a Duchy in a later turn, or had it such that a 3-pile was no longer in play. I think it's very nontrivial to figure out all the follow-on effects of -2 VP. Often it doesn't matter, but there are cases where it cascades into just enough slowdown to get you to lose.

120

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2018 Edition: Boons

« on: February 26, 2019, 03:54:28 pm »

I agree with Flame's Gift at 3rd. It's a bit inconsistent and there aren't a lot of ways to get Flame's Gift early. It's also slightly hurt by Pixie being one of main ways to get early Boons, since Pixie comes with Goat. (Which is directly called out in the secret history for Nocturne to weaken the effect of getting lucky with an early Pixie hit.) It's still by far better than anything below it though, and I could see someone moving it above Earth's Gift if they really like trashing rather than the gains. Hard to see anything dethroning Swamp's Gift though.

121

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2018 Edition: $6+ Cards (Top Half)

« on: February 22, 2019, 05:32:02 am »

City Quarter remains underrated. It's in the same league as KC and Goons. At most, just a notch below.

This is an example of relative rank being misleading. The gap from Pathfinding to City Quarter is 1.2%, then City Quarter is 3% away from Lost Arts right below it.

In terms of tiers, the top of the list really looks more like

Donate
King's Court, Goons
Pathfinding, Inheritance, City Quarter

with ordering within those tiers up to opinion. I would likely put City Quarter over Inheritance but under Pathfinding. I don't think CQ is good enough to jump into the KC/Goons tier.

122

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominon Card Lists 2018 Edition: Knights

« on: February 20, 2019, 09:06:09 pm »

I was referring to how using handsize attacks against engines hurts less because an engine can often still draw your whole deck from just 3 cards. The Knights games I've played have usually been slogs or just plain chaos, which makes handsize attacks much more brutal.

1. I think the argument that "handsize attacks matter less because engines draw their deck anyways" isn't great. Until your engine is drawing your deck, you still have a handsize that's 2 smaller than it should be. If you're at the point where you're just barely drawing your deck, you have to draw 2 more cards to do so. It only doesn't matter when you're at the point where the draw is strong enough to handle itself anyways, which is often quite a ways into the game. Plus it still takes longer to build the point of having enough redundancy to go off from 3 cards in hand, and you also lose out on some overdraw tricks. I don't think handsize attacks are systematically stronger or weaker against engines, they're still just good.

2. If your Knights games are sloggy, aren't you not going to play Sir Michael that often anyways? The same is true for every Knight in a sloggy game, but I find the slogginess tends to come from Knights colliding with themselves, in which case you really want the non-terminal Knights, and if you don't have those, then you want the Knights that give you something that helps you get more Knights.

123

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominon Card Lists 2018 Edition: Knights

« on: February 20, 2019, 06:14:12 pm »

I'm surprised Sir Michael is so low, I had him at #1. I know that the prevalence of engines has made handsize attacks less valued, but, well, Michael's trashing makes it hard to build an engine in the first place.

An engine that forces a discard to 3 every turn is good. If anything, engines make handsize attacks more valuable, since they're a reason to build the engine.

The problem is that Michael doesn't make an engine that can do that. It attacks once or twice then gets trashed to another Knight. You have very little control over whether you get to keep Sir Michael if you win the Knight split, and if you win the Knight split in a Knights game then you're already in a good spot and it's more like a win-more effect.

The way I think about Knights is that in most games, almost all your Knights will get trashed in the long run. So, you shouldn't think of the Knight effect as a key component of your deck. You should think of it more like Boons - random bonuses you get in the midgame. Given that, your goal is to hit $5 more often to buy Knights, and to play Knights more often to trash more non-Knight cards from your opponent. Which is why Bailey and Molly deserve to be so high, non-terminal Knights are great. I think Michael is actually #7, behind Destry, Sylvia, and Natalie (in that order).

124

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2018 Edition: $5 Cards

« on: February 19, 2019, 04:20:28 pm »

The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome!  It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome.  I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.

A Moat that trashes Copper is super awesome.

It would be awesome for a $3 card (essentially Masquerade with forced trashing), but not so much for $5.

A Masq that costs $5 is still a really good buy ASAP card. Recruiter giving Villagers in exchange for non-optional trash is enough to help by even more.

I would have no problem putting Recruiter at #1, although I'm still partial to Mountebank or Cultist for #1. (Wharf's time as #1 has faded a bit, now that there's more +Buy in Dominion, and more competing options in its niche.)

As Gendo mentioned, Recruiter isn't a card you want to use as your main draw. It's a trasher and a villager source with low opportunity cost for your current hand. You make this mistake once, then Recruiter is good every game afterward.

125

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion current Popularity?

« on: February 18, 2019, 04:30:00 pm »

The trend I would like to see is Discord getting used for random ephemeral notes and forums getting used for more long-form content or distillation of things people talk about on Discord. The search feature in Discord is okay but still a bit worse than forums IMO (I think forum search lets you add more conditions.)

This only works if people decide to actually post things on the forum now and then, instead of only using Discord.

I am appreciating the forum history a lot, since I've been working on-and-off on a history of Dominion article, and it's been very valuable to look up primary-source reactions to Goko's announcement, for example. If this was on Discord I'd have to go search and scroll back through a big unorganized feed of comments from 5 years ago. It doesn't have as strict of a thread system as forums. People start and pick up old conversations wherever they want on Discord, but it's all interleaved into one big stream.