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1976

Mafia Game Threads / Re: Bastard Mafia IV - You'll really get nothing. I don't know if you'll like it.

« on: July 26, 2012, 05:38:14 pm »

8. Once you are killed (either via lynch or night kill) you may no longer post. This means that you do not even get a “Bah” post. The dead in this game are silent.
9. Do not edit or delete posts. We don't want some players having more information than others.  If you want to clarify posts, feel free to double post.
10. You may ignore rule 8 - even if you aren't in the game

1977

Mafia Game Threads / Re: Bastard Mafia IV - You'll really get nothing. I don't know if you'll like it.

« on: July 26, 2012, 05:30:27 pm »

oooo, now assuming ehunt has the same role as I did, I know whether ehunt is scum or not.

1978

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Challenges #5 and #6!

« on: July 26, 2012, 02:48:44 pm »

So who recognized my cards? There were a few tweaks, because the old versions were terrible. I didn't really have time to come up with all new cards, sorry about that.

The "name a Treasure" bit on Powell/Digger was added when I realized that the card I actually wanted to make was a Chancellor on a treasure. I still wanted to keep some sort of digging mechanic, so that's why it's not only a Chancellor.

I felt that I needed to let players name treasures not in the kingdom. Otherwise, there could be a situation where Digger only combos well if a bad Alchemy card or alt-treasure is in the kingdom, even if you wouldn't pick up that treasure in the combo. It just felt too weird for treasure-Chancellor to be reliant on cards you would never buy.

By the way, for Digger/Tunnel you just name Silver and buy Tunnel over Silver, so forcing people to name treasure on the board doesn't actually help. I really want to simulate it to see how broken it is.

Edit: Oh I completely forgot to talk about Jewels. Credit goes to unnamed-person for suggesting trashing in play as a way to fix Jewels. It's just a massive coincidence that trashing a Treasure with Jewels is equivalent to trashing it with Salvager. However, the ability to trash a $4 terminal silver and get +$4 and the effect of the action was entirely intentional.

1979

Mafia Game Threads / Re: Bastard Mafia IV - You'll really get nothing. I don't know if you'll like it.

« on: July 25, 2012, 10:20:54 pm »

Claim: Reviver.

Vote: Fuzzy (That's eevee). Cuz he sucks at Dom and is level 40+. 

What is this about?   

Clearly, about out of game information.

I think.

IGNORE ME I AM A POTATO

1980

Mafia Game Threads / Re: Bastard Mafia IV - You'll really get nothing. I don't know if you'll like it.

« on: July 25, 2012, 03:06:04 am »

Vote: Robz

1981

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Clasic_Cards #9 - Trickster

« on: July 24, 2012, 08:33:14 pm »

I've tried to make subgame style cards before, but they never seem to work out. My hit rate is something like 1 out of the 5 cards I tried/

One of the general problems might be a power-based issue. Because you can't guarantee winning a subgame, the card has to give you an incentive to buy it in the first place. So, if you win, you get a strong effect for the cost. Then, in order to balance this out, you need to give a weak effect when the player loses. They look interesting, but then once you realize that the effect is guaranteed, a lot of the charm goes away. It feels like the card is setting you up to lose when you need it most. At least, it does to me.

I think that if you want to make a subgame-based card, it needs to:

0. Not include politics. Well, this isn't necessary, but Dominion is deliberately as non-political as possible.
1. Line up with deckbuilding in some way. Conspirator encourages cantrip buying. Menagerie encourages variety.
2. Give a big bonus. If the bonus isn't big enough, people don't feel like trying it out.
3. If it doesn't do 1 or 2, then the subgame should be primarily luck-based. Wishing Well is inconsistent, but it's silly inconsistent. You don't feel that you need to build to the bonus +1 Card, and even if you do it doesn't always work. The card's still fun anyways. Tribute is also similar in this way.

1982

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Challenges #5 and #6!

« on: July 23, 2012, 08:59:06 pm »

Novello is one of my favorites too. 

I wonder how many people read the discussion before they vote.  It has invariably changed my votes for the better, every time.

I say this because I want to point out that the top/bottom swapper village doesn't have nearly as many moving parts as it appears too, because your opponent's reveal the same top and bottom when you stack, and the village user often reveals the bottom card multiple times so only the top needs inspection.

But I'm not sure anyone even listens to feedback like that..

Depends on your voting criteria...

Any given voter could be voting on power level, how cool the card looks, how tight the design is, how simple the card is, whether it introduces an interesting mechanic, whether it makes you want to play the card, how much the card can act as a centerpiece of a deck, how the card would play in real life, etc.

It comes down to whether this set is meant as eye-candy or as an expansion to play. Eye-candy = vote with inclination towards cool effects/neat design, actual play = vote with inclination towards making sure power levels are right. The discussion slants more towards balancing power than neat effects.

Personally, I only read the discussions to see what people say about my card  .

1983

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Challenges #5 and #6!

« on: July 23, 2012, 04:07:13 am »

Potential issues with discard searching:

As said before, it's time consuming. Counting House has a bit of this problem, but eventually people can take it on faith that you have 11 coppers in the discard.

It has the similar problem as Counting House, which is that it's much better when you draw it later in the deck. It's contrary to other cards, where you'd rather play them early. This isn't necessarily bad, but it can be annoying.

It could lead to the Golem style deck. Lots of Golems + 2 Actions = those actions get played every turn. Golem has a high cost which helps balance this out. If a discard-searching is somewhat cheap or non-terminal, you could load up on that and 1 copy of Witch, which is much easier than buying multiple copies of Witch. If Witch isn't in your discard pile, return a discard-searcher and try again next turn.

Although it's probably reasonable, it has the potential to be degenerate. It introduces a large amount of consistency. This is a nice effect from a power standpoint, but in the end variability makes for a more interesting game. That isn't to say that there should never be cards that add consistency. See Scheme, Inn. But you can't overload it too much.

I don't think it's a bad mechanic, it's just a mechanic that appears to swing from useless to overpowered pretty quickly.

1984

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: KC + KC + 3

« on: July 21, 2012, 08:51:48 pm »

All of this countering and counter-countering is reminding me of 3 card blind...

(3 Card Blind is a Magic forum-game where each player submits a 3 card deck. Each deck plays against each other deck with perfect information, meaning all cards revealed. Wins/losses/ties are assigned points, whichever deck earns the most points wins. There is a surprisingly deep metagame.)

So maybe KC + KC + 3 cards is the Dominion version of 3 card blind. Except you have to include perfect or worst possible shuffle luck to make the results deterministic.

1985

Dominion Articles / Mini-combo: University/Inn

« on: July 20, 2012, 05:44:07 pm »

Just found out about this today, so I don't have logs. You'll have to take it on faith that this combo is fun.

Use Universities to gain actions and play some +Cards to draw into your deck. Then, use University to gain Inn, shuffling in all the stuff you just gained from your Universities this turn. Draw into the shuffled actions and repeat.

I don't know how useful this is, or whether it speeds up the engine that much, but it's a neat interaction.

1986

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Painful Choice

« on: July 19, 2012, 03:02:48 pm »

I'm worried about picking up multiples of these. If you pick up enough, it's going to be around the same as multiple Wishing Wells, except with a free discard attack added on top. Or if in an engine you play Militia first, they're all just Labs. I like the idea, but I'm not sure if it's actually workable.

Oh yeah, and politics.

Prepost edit: Darn I type way too slow, most of what I just said was covered already.

Postpost edit (is that the right word?): Maybe if there's a cap on the discard, it could be kept in check. For instance, instead of "Each other player", it could be "Each other player with at least 4 cards in hand". Then you can only discard down to 3, which caps the amount of Labs you can get. This probably makes the card too weak though.

1987

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Part 2!

« on: July 19, 2012, 02:20:16 pm »

Congratulations to the winners!

My thought behind Master was to recreate the play I really like from Pawn. You can either go for guaranteed +$1, or you can hope to draw a good card. So I stuck it onto a terminal draw card. 4 cards/3 cards +$1 seemed too good at $5, so I bumped it up to $6 and added +Buy accordingly. I still like it for it's simplicity, but it might be a bit too simple.

There weren't really any other attempts to merge +Cards and +$, but most of the versions of those cards have already been done to death in other threads, so it's understandable.

1988

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Greatest Isotropic Moments of 2012

« on: July 18, 2012, 01:47:28 am »

Not exactly the "greatest" moment, but I found this interesting:

— father patrick's turn 14 —
father patrick plays a Steward.
... getting +$2.
father patrick plays a Silver.
father patrick plays a Silver.
father patrick buys a Farmland.
... trashing a Copper.
... gaining an Estate.

(this was his final turn of the game)

So... in essence, this poor soul paid $6 to get as many VP as a Duchy ($5)... while reducing the money density of his deck by 3 cards (losing a copper, gaining 2 different green cards). The irony is, this kind of move would make sense if he had any Silk Roads. They were in the kingdom... but he didn't buy any. D'oh!

Without seeing the log it isn't clear, but it could be a longshot play to Farmland a Farmland into a Province in the future.

1989

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: July 17, 2012, 05:24:03 pm »

1990

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Part 2!

« on: July 17, 2012, 03:26:58 am »

Doesn't adding "non-Duration" change the functionality?

Honestly, I don't see the problem with "return a card that you have in play".

1991

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2012 Ed.2: $4 cards

« on: July 16, 2012, 11:52:34 pm »

I'm with ehunt that walled village-ambassador is a really cool/useful opening.

But besides using it to guarantee double Amb is never drawn dead, it's a Village. The top deck effect is kinda useful? It's more of a small consistency bonus than anything else. Although it's hard to tell how much it helps, I'm pretty sure it doesn't help that much.

Nomad Camp to get $5 on turn 2 never quite works for me. I mostly use it to pick up a +Buy if there isn't much better. I'd still put Walled Village over Nomad Camp, I just like the card more.

1992

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Part 2!

« on: July 16, 2012, 01:53:04 pm »

I didn't vote for Museum, but I voted for Herald and Canal so all in all I'm okay with this. They're all pretty solid.

As soon as I realized Mobile Home gave you 5 VP for $6, I knew I wasn't going to do well. The issue with the whole "when buy gain less" mechanic is that when you put it on a Victory card, you only use it in the endgame to sneak in some VP anyways. Maybe you use it when you pick up a Gold to force the other player to buy an extra Victory card in the endgame. The card I should have made was:

Some Name
$4*
Victory

1 VP
------
Has whatever cost as long as it's >= 4
When you buy this, gain a non-Victory card costing exactly $1 more than this.

So now you have an incentive to pick up a Victory card, instead of only using it for an endgame VP boost. Opening 5/3 or 6/2 on turn 1/2 is probably broken, so it needs to be fiddled with a bit. But whatever. What's done is done.

1993

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Lumber Mill -- a self-comboing Woodcutter

« on: July 15, 2012, 09:15:02 pm »

I don't think it's supposed to have "(including this one)". If it had that, 3 Lumber Mills = 3 activated Conspirators.

It feels kinda strong, and it's worth noting that AFAIK 1-card engines are all cards with cost $5 or higher. It starts up slow, and without Villages you get 2 buys per turn, but if you can manage 5 plays a turn you're pretty much set. Needs support, but questionably strong with support and not totally useless without.

1994

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why does Adventurer cost 6?

« on: July 14, 2012, 04:30:22 am »

Because if Adventurer was worth getting, it would make the game boring.

Compare to Harvest and Counting House, the other sources of pure terminal money. Harvest encourages you to buy variety, so maybe you pick up a non-terminal or two. It's not required, but you could get more money out of it. Counting House encourages you to buy lots of Copper while making sure you can actually play your Counting House. Neither card is particularly good, and picking them up is pretty uncommon, but both push you towards making decisions you might not normally make. That's good. Variety in gameplay and all that.

Adventurer encourages you to buy good treasure, and trash bad ones if you can. That's what you'd do in ~90% of games anyways.

Really, I just don't like Adventurer from a mechanics standpoint, but I like the flavor of it enough to let it slide.

1995

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Scholars

« on: July 13, 2012, 05:17:39 pm »

Well, there is presumably Wharf, which helps out with drawing pieces. And Scholars discarding treasure to draw more Villages could work in theory.

But still, that is quite a bit of treasure.

1996

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Part 2!

« on: July 12, 2012, 05:01:06 pm »

I was recently thinking about something that is relevant here.  First, note that I'm not thinking about any particular cards here.  But it occurred to me that the value of having a +Buy is more valuable on a terminal drawer than it is on any of several other cards.  Because if you're adding 3-4 cards in your hand with a terminal drawer, that implies two things:  (1) You're probably playing with a big money deck.  Certainly you MIGHT have some kind of +Actions/+Cards engine going on, but Smithy-type cards tend to be about money.  (2) You might very well have a LOT of money to spend this turn, because you just drew a lot of cards.

Thus, having a +Buy is more likely to come in handy than it would on a card that's not necessarily as lucrative in and of itself.   Trade Route is interesting in this way.  If all you've got for Victory cards are Estates, Duchies, and Provinces, then that +Buy probably isn't all that important.  If there are Colonies, Islands, and Great Halls as well, you're more likely to want to use it.

You can notice a similar thing with Market.  Market is a sturdy $5 card but not earthshattering.  A stack of Markets gives you WAY more +Buys than you'll ever use, which means that they might as well be Peddlers for you.  On the other hand, if you have a whole pile of Peddlers, Bazaars, Treasuries, and Conspirators, then slipping a Market into the mix can be amazing -- worth skipping a Colony over, because maybe it means you can buy two per turn thereafter.  Point is, Market's +Buy needs help to be worthwhile; on its own, it might not even matter.

But combine +Buy with a card that also helps extra Buys matter, and that's something to reckon with.  (This is probably why Adventurer and Bank don't have +Buy on them:  too strong otherwise!)  Anyway, I've made my point:  having +Buy on a Smithy variant might be a somewhat big deal.

I'm reminded of the arguments against the Village Idiot. Just as your +Actions are as good as the terminals you play, your +Buys are as good as the amount of extra money you have to spend.

To me, +Buy is a way to push towards building an engine. A Smithy or Envoy powered engine needs +Actions and +Buy to work well, whereas a Wharf or Margrave engine just needs +Actions. I also think it's interesting that asides from Envoy, all cards that draw 4 cards give +Buy.

1997

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: July 10, 2012, 06:54:03 pm »

Nest
Action - $4

Play a game of Race for the Galaxy.
If you win, +4 Cards. Otherwise, +2 Cards.

1998

Game Reports / I had no idea how to play this board

« on: July 10, 2012, 02:00:39 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/09/game-20120709-215424-57574544.html

Important cards: Jack of All Trades, Ambassador, Margrave, Ghost Ship, Apothecary, Throne Room, Silk Road
Important lack of cards: Any village effect, +Action on any card except Apothecary

Ignore the log. I played terrible.

So here's my problem with understanding this board.

Jack counters Margrave and Ghost Ship nicely.
Ambassador counters Jack by feeding in lots of Coppers.
Apothecary can use all those Coppers, but chokes if there are lots of Estates, which Ambassador can give.
Silk Road is fine with both, but might be too slow against Jack-BM
An engine with Throne Roomed Apothecary and Margrave is interesting too.

What would you do?

1999

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Part 1!

« on: July 09, 2012, 02:52:06 pm »

When barely anybody was talking about my cards, I got kinda worried, but turns out I did okay anyways.

In retrospect, Smelter/Vega might be a bit strong, but I have trouble figuring out the power level. It trashes Coppers better than Upgrade for a lower cost. Smelting Estates is a bit worse than Upgrade; +$1 now compared to a Silver later. For any other card, it's a lot worse. All in all, I think it's a pretty strong opener, and it stays very useful for pretty much the whole game. It's strong, but the card just wouldn't work at $5.

Sorry Witch/Io, I just like the card. I've posted it before, it parallels Sea Hag very nicely, that's that.

2000

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: July 08, 2012, 02:40:43 am »