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101

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What cards do you appreciate the existence of?

« on: July 11, 2013, 04:54:09 pm »

Can't believe I forgot my favorite card in the base set:

Militia.

No really. When you talk about power cards in the base set, people immediately think of Witch and Chapel, and it's not either one of those two, but it's still a good, solid card.

Having had to teach the game to a bunch of people has really made me appreciate this card; it's simple enough to explain readily, it hurts enough to make you feel it, and it doesn't hurt so much to make you hate the game (in the way that e.g. Torturer does). It's the perfect card to include in a teaching game, but it's also good enough to be useful in an actual, competitive engine. Does it have first player advantage? Sure, but so do most attacks. It's not nearly as bad as Torturer or even Cutpurse in a multiplayer game. Plus it has fun synergies like with Council Room.

102

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What cards do you appreciate the existence of?

« on: July 11, 2013, 11:49:24 am »

I really like the cards that use their mechanics in a cool or thematic way.
So wharf is kinda dull in that respect (sure it's powerful, but generic), but on the other hand, these cards are quite good:

1) Ill-Gotten Gains: I know lots of people hate it, but I love it. It's a perfect example of using the mechanics; you see it and think "$5 for a one-shot curse and a worse silver, no thanks" but then you realize, on-gain means both the IGG and curse piles empty at the same time!

2) City: already been mentioned, but this card is one of the most thematic in Dominion. Starts as a village, grows to be a city.

3) Swindler: another hated card, but so much fun. Yeah it's swingy, but making you adapt to unexpected cards can be fun. One of my favorite games ever involved Swindler, with my $4's kept getting turned into talismans, which I eventually used to drain the Secret Chamber pile the turn before my opponent's unstoppable city stack went off. An example of a trashing attack at it's most fun.

4) Courtyard: technically not designed by Donald, but provides simple, yet somewhat interesting choices even in a Big Money deck.

Edit: bolding

103

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Advisor

« on: July 10, 2013, 03:44:50 pm »

From a less strategic level, it can be great to mess with your opponent's head. That's the most fun part of most of these opponent chooses cards (envoy, contaband and now advisor).

"I know what you're thinking. 'Did he have five money or only four?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a Contraband, the most powerful card in Dominion*, and would buy that last province, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"

*slight exaggeration

104

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Online-Only Cards

« on: July 08, 2013, 10:10:47 pm »

I understand where you are coming from, don't get me wrong. What about if "Flooder" gave a Copper that was specifically gained in-hand, so effectively giving opponents +$1 on their first turn after you play it. Now is it an attack? Maybe, but not necessarily. What if it gives them 2 Coppers in hand? I'm just trying to say that it is truly a complicated affair and it's best to avoid this design space when possible for that exact reason.

Pseudo-attacks sure are interesting to think about (if not design), even if they can cause head-aches.

It's still an attack. The fact that Soothsayer lets your opponents draw a card doesn't mean Soothsayer is not an attack, even though it helps the opponent while junking his/her deck.

Are there times an opponent would like to be affected by an attack? Sure, as anyone with a hand of 5 junk cards in a minion game can attest. Likewise tunnels against militia. Those cases don't make either minion or militia not be attacks.

But we're kind of straying from the OP here. Can you think of other examples of cards that wouldn't work (well) in-person but might online?

105

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Most annoying situations in Dominion

« on: July 08, 2013, 05:34:56 pm »

There are a couple of horrible situations that make you want to quit. What is the top-3?

I guess I would put full pins at first spot, but I've never been in either end of them. My current top 3 is:

- Constant Ghost Ship.
- Torturer chains.
- Scrying Pool chains.

Any additions?

When you lose. I'd say that's pretty annoying.

Depends how you lose. I've had games I've lost that were still very enjoyable. I've also won games that made me feel guilty (e.g. pulling the only curser out of the Black Market on turn 3).

106

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: The Omniscient Spy

« on: July 08, 2013, 12:31:40 am »

Stash is also an interesting option; you "know" where he will spy, so you can place them to avoid his spying. I was also thinking of lighthouse; it has the advantage of giving unblockable money this turn and next turn, as well as blocking spies.

Scavenger stash wouldn't be that hard to set up, although you'd have to have redundancy, because the worst shuffle luck means that you will get Scavenger-Scavenger-Stash-Stash-Stash every time.

107

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: The Omniscient Spy

« on: July 07, 2013, 05:39:11 pm »

Are we assuming they just play Spy every turn (so we can use reactions), or just treating it as if we have been Spied upon?

108

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Missing vanilla

« on: July 07, 2013, 04:05:07 pm »

There's also an absence of +1 card being tacked onto other effects. There are many cards that do something, then are also either cantrips, just +1 action, terminal silver, or terminal draw, but I can't think of any terminal +1 card cards.

Ironworks gaining an Estate.

yeah, but you hardly ever want to do that!

and yeah, I know ruined library, but that's hardly ever a good card too!

Ironworks gaining a Silk Road/Gardens.

109

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ranking the Expansions

« on: July 07, 2013, 11:56:08 am »

9: Cornucopia - this is the only expansion that suffers from power creep, I feel. Whether intentional or not, around half the cards are power cards for their cost, which is something I dislike. I don't mind a few cards being powerful, that makes the game fun in my opinion, but when half the set are that good, it's not much fun.

....

1: Seaside - My favourite expansion and it has been for a while. Durations are a lot of fun, and the set itself is very thematic. There's a few cards I dislike, such as Ghost Ship and Sea Hag, but they aren't enough to overcome my status quo bias of putting this first love of this expansion.

I find this list curious, because to me Seaside is the expansion which has the most power creep.  Using Qvist's rankings, Seaside has:

- 2 of the top 3 of the $3 cards (Ambassador, Fishing Village)
- The most powerful $4 card (Sea Hag)
- The 3rd best $5 card (Wharf)
- Several other cards such as Lighthouse, Warehouse and Caravan, that are very strong even if they don't get listed in the 'best of the best' category.

Now you could argue over whether Cornucopia has more or less power cards than this, but I'm intrigued that you use it as the sole justification for putting Cornucopia in last place, yet never even mention it while putting Seaside in first.

I actually did some calculations about Qvist rankings at one point recently. I looked at cards in top and bottom quintile of each list. This was before the $6+ list came out, and I excluded Alchemy and Promo cards entirely (treated them as if they didn't exist for purposes of calculating the quintiles).

When you subtracted the "bad" cards from the "strong" cards using this formula, I was surprised to discover that they all almost (i.e. within 1) exactly cancelled out except for two of the expansions. Yes, Seaside has Wharf, Sea Hag, etc., but it also has cards like Treasure Map and Pearl Diver. Likewise, Intrigue (home of Scout, Saboteur, etc.) has a reputation for being weak, but it also has cards like Masquerade and Swindler.

The 2 exceptions:

Cornucopia had 6 cards in the top quintile, and only 2 in the bottom quintile. When you remember that it's only a 13 card set...

Base. Base has a reputation for being somewhat underpowered, and the community ratings seem to bear that out. 9 (!) cards from Base were in the bottom quintile, while only 3 made it into the top quintile (Militia was the 3rd).

So to summarize; Base cards, while often important, tend to be weak on average, while Cornucopia cards tend to be very strong on average. Now with numbers!

Edit: Should note I rounded up on the sizes of my quintiles.

110

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Trashing your entire deck as quickly as possible

« on: July 06, 2013, 10:31:56 pm »

Mining Village is clearly where it's at.

It's too bad this is a solitaire game. Otherwise I'd want to end it by playing Band of Misfits as Sir Martin, and get trashed by an opponent's knight.

111

Dominion General Discussion / Re: WW's Power Rankings

« on: July 06, 2013, 12:11:23 pm »

It would be hilarious if Walled Village really did nothing unless you had a Google+ account.

Walled Village $4

You may reveal a Google+ account. If you do:
+1 Card
+2 Actions
At the start of Clean-up, if you have this and no more than one other Action card in play, you may put this on top of your deck.'

112

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Online-Only Cards

« on: July 06, 2013, 12:45:13 am »

How about a variant of Balcony from the Dominion Outtakes article (the throne room that drew first, then discarded)? It got talked about in the forum thread. It had a couple issues (not knowing whether or not it would be terminal until you played it, balance issues) but those seem fixable; the consensus was that the real problem was the stacking.

Likewise the version of crossroads from the Hinterlands outtakes that gave you actions depending on how many victory cards you had in hand when you played it; one of its problems was that you couldn't backtrack and figure out how many actions you had at any given point if you lost count.

A computer would fix those problems.

113

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Negative Cost?

« on: July 06, 2013, 12:33:54 am »

Even then, this card is very overpowered (Strictly better than ruined village and market). Should not have self synergy, and should actually be more punishing:

Surely being strictly better than Ruins isn't a concern? After all, we already have a $0 card that's strictly worse than any Ruins (Curse) and one that's almost (ignoring Vineyards/Scrying Pool) strictly better than Ruined Village or Ruined Mine (Copper).

Ruins are supposed to be mostly junk; if a card is worth buying, it needs to be better than junk.

114

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: July 05, 2013, 03:55:11 pm »

And now I'm going to go offline for 24 hours so people can't hurt me.

Memes without pictures are like playing Dominion in text only mode.

At least there are still pretty colors.

Venture is just Adventurer
{sudden clarity clarence}
With one draw guarenteed to be Copper

You...You lied!

115

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: July 05, 2013, 11:27:42 am »

You bought and played the last card of each pile during your turn. You played all the tacticians via processioned heralds or golum. you used all the KC, TR, and BoM as duration or TR (before you emptied those piles) too.

10 tacticians
10 KC
10 TR
10 caravans
10 BoM
10 haven
10 wharf
10 FV
10 merchant ship
10 outpost
10 lighthouse

110 cards

That's 11 piles.

116

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: July 05, 2013, 10:32:22 am »

Another easy puzzle which just requires a bit of thinking and a lot of counting:
How many cards can you maximally have in your "Duration" area (in a 2p game)?

92:
9 of 8 of these stacks and 10 of 2 of them:
-Every duration except Tactician
-King's Court, Throne Room, Band of Misfits

117

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Thought Experiment: On-Gain Scout

« on: July 04, 2013, 02:01:57 pm »

The top part could possibly be Scout itself. So this would be just an improvement and not a new card.

Interestingly, a Scout which does the same thing on gain would often be worse in some of the few decks that Scout is halfway decent in now, simply because it will pull all those nice hybrid VPs into your hand during your Buy phase, instead of saving them until next turn.

I wrote that before. Which doesn't change that it's true.

I actually thought of that! That's why the on-gain wording says "you may."

The hardest thing is coming up with an appropriate top half; as LastFootnote noted, just making it a Victory card is boring, and really only makes it viable late game. I like how it messes up the opening, but no one would buy a dead card as an opening buy, so it has to be an action. At the same time, the late game antics are probably the most useful, so it needs to be something a moneyish deck wouldn't mind having while greening (before the last shuffle, when it doesn't matter what it is). And I want it to cost $4 or less, because that interacts with cards like Ironworks (so you could theoretically get a weaker Wandering Minstrel effect, or set up a Wishing Well, in theory).

118

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What cards have a funny/weird thematic interactions?

« on: July 03, 2013, 11:05:58 pm »

"Sir, we've established a village on the borders of our territory."
"Hmm, we need someone to govern it. Better appoint a Margrave."

"Sir, we've established a village on the borders of our territory."

"Hmm, we need someone to govern it. We could choose a Margrave, a Governor..."

"How about a rag-tag Band of Misfits? They'll start arguing all the time, but eventually they'll learn to overcome their differences and work together as a team. It'll be the heart-warming comedy of the year!"

119

Variants and Fan Cards / Thought Experiment: On-Gain Scout

« on: July 03, 2013, 10:56:38 pm »

Apologies if this has been done before.

People make fun of scout. It takes up a card in your hand, requires $4 and a buy, and maybe lets you grab a few (mostly) useless green cards in your hand.

But what if it were on-gain?

e.g.

Surveyor $4
+$2, +1 Buy
------------
When you gain this, reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. You may put any revealed Victory cards into your hand. Put the other cards on top of your deck in any order.

The top-action doesn't matter (well it does, but not right now).
The key is that this opens up a fewer broader uses:
1) 5/2 openings become potentially 5/5 openings, where one is a Woodcutter (similar to Nomad Camp)
2) Late game while you are greening, you can pull green cards out of your next hand, to keep from stalling (sort of like Mandarin)
3) A bit more shuffle control.

Would something like this be a useful/interesting card?

120

Dominion FAQ / Re: Time Setting of Dominion?

« on: July 03, 2013, 08:27:07 am »

I'd say the Dominion covers the Middle Ages, let's say the High and Late, and a bit of the Renaissance.

The discovery of America by Columbus in 1492 was right at the end of the Middle Ages and ushered in a new age of exploration, as seen in Seaside in cards like Explorer and Navigator.

Marco Polo travelled the Silk Road in the thirteenth century and we get some Hinterlands cards from his travels, Mandarin and, of course, Silk Road.

I'd say it goes even earlier than that as well. Dark Ages, in particular, has several cards that are intentionally evocative of the "Dark Ages" (i.e. Early Middle Ages). Marauder, for instance, is clearly inspired by the Vikings, or even the Migration Period.

So say, 750-1550 as your time period. That's long enough that I'd put it as "vaguely Medieval," especially when you include intentionally fantasy elements like Sea Hags, Familiars and the like.

But of course, if you're making a fan expansion for your friends, you can do whatever time period best suits you. The Roman Empire, for instance, would have several interesting options for card names. Likewise with a focus on the Reformation period,  or the Mongols. You could expand the geographic area as well; cards like Mandarin already do this to some extent, but a fan expansion could easily focus on e.g. Persia or Sengoku Japan.

You could even do something totally made up, although your friends might look at you strangely when you try to sell them on Lord of the Rings or Star Wars-themed Dominion expansions.

121

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Debasement

« on: July 03, 2013, 12:41:51 am »

It's also idempotent (until the Coppers run out).

+1 for teaching me a new word.

122

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: July 03, 2013, 12:38:43 am »

Count von Count
Action, 0$
Chose one:
Discard 2 cards; or put 3 cards from your hand on top of your deck; or gain 4 Coppers;
Chose five:
+6$; or trash 7 cards from your hand; or gain 8 Duchies;

FTFY

123

Dominion General Discussion / Re: WW's Power Rankings

« on: July 02, 2013, 06:22:43 pm »

Moneylender at 179?  And we haven't seen Counting House (among others) yet?  I'll take Moneylender, you take Counting House

I'm curious when we will see Spice Merchant, and how much difference there will be between it and Moneylender. It certainly seems somewhat better, but many of the objections to Moneylender apply almost equally to Spice Merchant.

124

Dominion General Discussion / Re: WW's Power Rankings

« on: July 02, 2013, 04:16:36 pm »

Three, and most important, I don't think the statement is actually true - none of the cards I've gone through so far are really any good for Big Money - in fact they are generally more useful for engines, when they are useful.... actually, a huge chunk of them don't even beat BMU.

You're just trying to hide the power of Poor House-Big Money.

125

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The most important question about scout opening

« on: July 02, 2013, 04:05:15 pm »

Scout/Baron with Baker's coin?
Play Scout, draw 3 Estates, next hand have a dead Baron.

Surely in that case you just wouldn't play Scout?

I'd think Scout Baron would be slightly better than Baron/Nothing, because it can turn a hand of Baron/Scout/C/C/C into one that has an estate. I'm too lazy to work out the probabilities of those occurring, but it seems non-negligible.

Of course, Baron/Silver and save the token would still probably be better.