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101

The Bible of Donald X. / Dominion: Seaside Preview

« on: June 20, 2011, 04:41:11 pm »

It's time once again for me to tell you about a Dominion expansion. I totally wrote this in time for it to be a preview, but Jay wanted to wait on articles about the game until it actually came out at Essen, so what we have here is just a view. It has three prominent features.

First, there's What You Get. Probably images of all of the cards will have appeared at BGG by the time you can read this, but still, I will go over what-all is in the box, pointing out some stuff and showing off some cards.

Second, I offer you Anatomy of an Attack. It's just an essay about making Dominion attack cards. I dunno, I felt like an essay about a random Dominion-related game design issue would be a way to fill up space. And it was! I nailed that one.

Third, there's The Throne Room Variations. As usual most of the questions people have are about Throne Room. I have no regrets. I do have answers though. Where there's no confusion, I will just marvel at what you get out of Throning the different cards.

What You Get

Dominion: Seaside has 300 cards, divided into 26 new kingdom cards times 10 or so copies each, their 26 randomizer cards, and some blanks. It does not have Copper, Estate, Curse, etc.; you will need either Dominion or Dominion: Intrigue in order to play with these cards. It also includes playmats used by three of the cards, and counters used by two of the cards. I do not actually know how many counters it is. It's enough counters.

That's 26 cards, where Dominion and Dominion: Intrigue only had 25. There was space, so the set got an extra card. There was actually space to go to 27, but we included a set of blanks instead, so you can make your own card. There had been one extra card that hadn't quite made the set but was well-liked, so it all worked out. There wasn't space for 28, phew.

Seaside has one large functional theme: your next turn. It's the set of the future! A watery future.

The most blatant way the theme occurs is with Duration cards. These are orange-framed cards that do something on your next turn. They sit out in front of you until the end of the last turn they do something. It's not too hard. Most of them, like Wharf, do something on both your current turn and your next turn. Tactician is one that only does something on your next turn. Lighthouse does something over the time interval between the two turns (as well as on both of those turns). Here are some pretty pictures!

[Wharf] [Tactician] [Lighthouse]

There are other ways to break out of the bounds of a single turn. The top of someone's deck is often what they'll draw on their next turn, so several cards involve deck tops, including Treasure Map. Treasury is a card you can replay turn after turn, until you finally need some points. Smugglers reaches into another player's turn and pulls out something tasty.

[Treasure Map] [Treasury] [Smugglers]

Some cards have an effect over time using those tokens and playmats I mentioned. Island sends a card to the far future - the very end of the game! Pirate Ship accumulates its own pile of treasure over multiple uses. Native Village repeatedly builds up piles of cards for you. The three cards have playmats that go together, as you can somewhat tell from the card art.

[Island] [Pirate Ship] [Native Village]

The next-turn theme looms large in the set, but there are cards that don't have anything to do with it. Here are examples of those.

[Salvager] [Cutpurse] [Explorer]

So Seaside has cards, and there are some of them! It has other cards too.

Seaside requires Copper etc., like I said, but if you do have those things, you can play it by itself. I mean you can play with just kingdom cards from Seaside. There are 26, so there's plenty of variety. And the cards take care of all of the basic game functions that you need to make things run smoothly. Of course you can also mix it in with Dominion and Dominion: Intrigue. It's up to you. We won't judge you.

Anatomy of an Attack

There are basically six kinds of attacks in Dominion. And I've only done four of them! Mostly there are four.

The way to see the kinds of attacks is to look at, well, what there is to attack. What is there? There are decks. You can attack those three ways. There are hands. There's really just one way to hurt them. There's what you can do on your turn. And there are scores, separate from cards. So:

1. Give them a card they don't want.
2. Make them lose a card they do want.
3. Put their deck in an order they will not be fond of.
4. Make them discard.
5. Make their turn worse.
6. Lower their score.

All of the attacks so far fall into one or more of the first four categories. Witch is #1, Bureaucrat is #3 and #4, and so on. You can also do things to other players that they do want to happen, but man, that's not attacking.

Let's look at these in more detail.

1. Give them a card they don't want.

For example, Witch and Swindler.

The beauty of Cursing is its simplicity. It takes very little space to say "each other player gains a Curse," leaving lots of room for more stuff that the card can do. You can also potentially give players other cards they don't want, such as Coppers or even Estates, often just as simply.

2. Make them lose a card they do want.

For example, Thief and Saboteur.

This is the hardest kind of attack to make. It has to be that there isn't too much variance in how it hits the other players - no making one player lose a Province while another loses a Copper. It has to be good enough to play - trashing Coppers and Estates is usually not what you're after. It can't generate a ridiculous game state too easily - some of the early cards in this category would by themselves lead to a game where everyone had just 5 cards and could not get ahead. And finally it has to be that the text actually fits on the card. With all of those other conditions to meet, it's tricky.

Ultimately, there usually isn't much room to define these attacks by the extra stuff they do; they often end up defined by how they handle the problems above. And then some people don't like them. My stuff, my precious stuff! So I do these less often than the other attacks.

3. Put their deck in an order they will not be fond of.

For example, Spy and Bureaucrat.

This is kind of like making them discard in advance. It ends up hurting them either next turn or this turn, depending on whether or not they draw some extra cards this turn. As you can see, there are two main ways to do it: either look at what's on top and muck with it, or put something specifically on top.

Spy-type cards tend to be wordy, and reminiscent of Spy. There is more flexibility to the Bureaucrat style of hurtful deck ordering, but still not a lot.

4. Make them discard.

For example, Militia and Bureaucrat.

Just making another player discard a card doesn't work. Discard one card and you don't even feel it. You tend to feel it at two. At discard three cards, so much for your turn. But you can get up to "discard three" if you ever do "discard one" - by playing it three times (or having three people play it once). So the simplest kind of discarding just doesn't work.

Which is why Militia says "discard down to 3." That keeps it right around the magical "feel it" level of pain. Bureaucrat manages a different approach; you can only discard (or in this case, put on your deck) so many victory cards. Sometimes it misses. Bureaucrat would still be scary if it didn't also gain you Silver; that Silver helps keep you from just building a deck that plays Bureaucrat three times every turn, so that the other players are stuck drawing their Estates constantly.

Discard-based attacks don't take much text, so there is a fair amount of variety possible with them, with the non-discarding part. The discarding part itself can't vary so much, but there are a few things you can do there.

5. Make their turn worse.

How can you even do this? The answer lies in Duration cards. Duration cards can do stuff like "until your next turn, each other player can't..." and so forth.

Seaside originally had some attacks like that. In the end it didn't get any. They make Duration cards in general a little harder to understand. Those attacks were turned into similar things that didn't require this trick. I could still do this kind of thing someday, but I wouldn't expect it for a while.

6. Lower their score.

Making each other player lose one point is just like gaining one point yourself. Score-lowering only makes sense if it keys off of something specific to your opponents - for example, each other player loses one point per action card in their deck. That one would be a mess to add up at the end.

Cards like this may be possible, but all of the ones I've tried out so far have died. They fluctuated between being too weak, too strong, and too much work to deal with.

There you have it! Six kinds of attacks, you heard it here. Seaside has the first four:

Ambassador - #1 - Cursing
Cutpurse - #4 - Discarding
Ghost Ship - #3 and #4 - Deck ordering and discarding
Pirate Ship - #2 - Trashing
Sea Hag - #1 and #3 - Cursing and deck ordering

Deck ordering made it into two attacks, as this is after all the next turn expansion.

Embargo is an honorary attack, falling into the fabled category #5, but it punishes you too, at least if you didn't pick carefully.

The Throne Room Variations

Ah, Throne Room. King of cards, or card of kings? It's a card of kings. That was an easy one. Here's what happens when you Throne Room these cards.

Ambassador: You don't have to reveal the same card both times, but why wouldn't you. You also don't need to give up the card you reveal the first (or either) time, which comes up. Reveal the one Curse in your hand. Decline to put it back in the supply, but each other player takes one. Then put it back, and each other player takes one.

Cutpurse: This can be nasty. You get $4 and everyone else discards two Coppers. Anyone who actually has two Coppers is hurting.

Embargo: You can only trash Embargo once, but you get $4 and place two tokens. They don't have to go on the same pile. Throning this can mean you run out of tokens. Just use something else as tokens if that happens. You get your token, that's a guarantee.

Explorer: You can reveal the same Province both times. Surely no-one was going to ask that. Throning Explorer revealing Province, that is getting some groans.

Ghost Ship: The second time, they already have 3 cards in hand (or less), so you just draw 2 more cards.

Island: You set aside the Island and a card from your hand, then set aside another card from your hand. You don't set aside the Throne Room. And you don't want to. So, hooray!

Lighthouse: The defensive part of this can't be doubled, but wouldn't mean anything if it could be. Throning this gets you +2 Actions, +$2 this turn and next, and one round free of attacks.

Outpost: Throning this explicitly doesn't work! It's right on the card. I played a game without that clause and got infinite turns immediately. The clause is there to stop infinite turns, not specifically to stop Throne, but the best way to stop the infinite turns also happened to stop Throne. What can you do.

Native Village: You do the card twice in sequence. Remember you can look at the cards on the mat at any time. So you might first draw the cards, then put another on it; or put another one on it, and after seeing it, either draw them all or put yet another on it. Or you might pick draw them all twice, even though the second time you get nothing. Maybe the first time too, if that's your game.

Navigator: If you liked the cards the first time, they'll still be there the second time. If you didn't though, you get another chance to reject a hand.

Pearl Diver: If you put the bottom card on top the first time, then you draw it the second time, before making a new choice. If you didn't, then it's still there the second time, taunting you.

Pirate Ship: You can mix and match your choices, and don't pick the second time until resolving the first time. So you could steal the first time, then get money; steal both times; well you can work out the rest of the possibilities for yourself.

Sea Hag: This doesn't have an anti-Throne clause, so much as an anti-abuse clause. The first thing they do is, they each discard the top card of their deck. That may seem like part of the attack, but really it's there so that they don't end up with three Curses on top if three people in a row play Sea Hags. So anyway, if you Throne it, they toss the top card, put Curse on top, toss that Curse, and put another Curse on top. They may still end up with more than one Curse on top, but that won't be this turn's Sea Hag's fault.

Smugglers: This is just cool because you get more of it than they did. They buy Gold, you Throne Smugglers and get two Golds!

Tactician: This is another one that you just can't (usefully) Throne. In this case it was specifically to stop you from Throning it! Throning Tactician was just ridiculous. That had to go away to keep the card, which is good times otherwise.

Treasure Map: Throning this does not work like you want. If you have another Treasure Map in hand, you trash them both and get the money (like you would have if you didn't play the Throne). Then if you have yet another Treasure Map in hand, you trash that one but get nothing. You never trash the Throne. It's not a Treasure Map. If you just have one Treasure Map and Throne it, you trash that Treasure Map and get nothing whatsoever. It's a two-piece map, there's no getting around it.

Treasury: Throning this gets you +2 of each of those things. The put-it-on-your-deck part isn't doubled; it's not something the card does when played. Throne doesn't go on your deck either.

There is really nothing to be said about Throning Bazaar. If you Throne a Haven, Lookout, Salvager, or Warehouse, you just do the card, then do it again. It's not tricky. If you Throne a Duration card, leave out the Throne with the Duration card; it's tracking the fact that you doubled the Duration card. Other than that, there's nothing much to say about Throning Caravan, Fishing Village, Merchant Ship, or Wharf. They're certainly fine to Throne.

That's all we have time for! Join me next expansion, when I will say a bunch of stuff and then have to figure out an ending paragraph.

102

The Bible of Donald X. / Seaside Flavor Paragraph in Progress

« on: June 20, 2011, 04:37:26 pm »

[For no good reason, here are my notes as I wrote the flavor paragraph for Seaside.]

You finally got some of those rivers you'd wanted, and they led to the sea. These are dangerous, pirate-infested waters, and you cautiously send rat-infested ships across them, to establish lucrative trade at far-off merchant-infested ports. Then you will conquer those ports, and have their rivers too, for that is your way. The sea is a harsh mistress, but a good cook, at least if you like lots of salt.

You finally got some of those rivers you'd wanted, and they led to the sea. The sea is a harsh mistress, but a good cook, at least if you like everything really salty. These are dangerous, pirate-infested waters, and you cautiously send rat-infested ships across them, to establish lucrative trade at far-off merchant-infested ports. Then you will conquer those ports, and have their rivers too, for that is your way. There will be the usual competition of course - other monarchs who have followed rivers of their own, probably the wrong direction. Why can't they go conquer some tundras or something - why do they always want the good stuff? Well you will be ready for them.

You can probably buy out some of these pirates, not to mention the merchants. And your food? You like it extra salty.

something something you will conquer them all hooray

usual enemies, why can't they be bothering another expansion

All you ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. And someone who knows how to steer ships using stars. Probably a whole crew, come to think of it. You've got room for them, vertically anyway.

Salty, like the salty tears of your enemies.

You will stay in these waters until your skin is wrinkled, like the wrinkled skin of your enemies.

You've got your sea-legs, and are working on your sea-arms. When you have them, you will sea-conquer the region, and build a sea-palace on a conquering-infested island.

No man is an island (they're women).

The sea is your friend. It will carry you until you drown. Islands start out friendly, but eventually turn on you, especially atolls.

There are cannibals on these islands - or there will be, after they find out how delicious your homemade brain pie is.

You've rounded up some old salty dogs, plus a sourpuss and a bitter goldfish.

They say a haunted ship prowls these waters - and sometimes it lands, and there's a haunted beach party.

There's treasure on these islands. You're sure of it. You already have an old treasure map, which is bound to be worth something to a treasure map collector.

The natives seem friendly enough, crying their peace cries, and giving you spears and poison darts before you are even close enough to accept them properly.

All you ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. And someone who knows how to steer ships using stars. For you finally got some of those rivers you'd wanted, and they led to the sea. The sea is a harsh mistress, but a good cook, at least if you like everything really salty. These are dangerous, pirate-infested waters, and you cautiously send rat-infested ships across them, to establish lucrative trade at far-off merchant-infested ports. Then you will conquer those ports, and have their rivers too, for that is your way. There will be the usual competition, of course - other monarchs who have followed rivers of their own, probably the wrong direction. Well, you will be ready for them. You've got your sea-legs, and are working on your sea-arms. When you have them, you will sea-conquer the region, and build a sea-palace on a conquering-infested island.

All you ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. And someone who knows how to steer ships using stars. You finally got some of those rivers you'd wanted, and they led to the sea. The sea is a harsh mistress, but a good cook, at least if you like everything really salty. These are dangerous, pirate-infested waters, and you cautiously send rat-infested ships across them, to establish lucrative trade at far-off merchant-infested ports. First you will take over some islands, as a foothold. The natives seem friendly enough, crying their peace cries, and giving you spears and poison darts before you are even close enough to accept them properly. Then you will conquer those ports, and from there you will look for more rivers. For that is your way.

There will be the usual competition, of course - other monarchs who have followed rivers of their own, probably the wrong direction. Well, you will be ready for them. You've got your sea-legs, and are working on your sea-arms. When you have them, you will sea-conquer the region, and build a sea-palace on a conquering-infested island.

for what is the sea, but a really wide river?

All you ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. And someone who knows how to steer ships using stars. You finally got some of those rivers you'd wanted, and they led to the sea. These are dangerous, pirate-infested waters, and you cautiously send rat-infested ships across them, to establish lucrative trade at far-off merchant-infested ports. First you will take over some islands, as a foothold. The natives seem friendly enough, crying their peace cries, and giving you spears and poison darts before you are even close enough to accept them properly. Then you will conquer those ports, and from there you will look for more rivers. For that is your way.

103

The Bible of Donald X. / Dominion: Prosperity Preview

« on: June 20, 2011, 04:25:09 pm »

Well some people have the set from GenCon but not everyone can get it yet, so it's time once again for a Dominion expansion preview.

What You Get

Dominion: Prosperity has 300 cards: 12 Colonies and 12 Platinum, 10 copies each of 25 Kingdom cards, 25 randomizers, and one blank. It also has some VP tokens and Coin tokens, with corresponding mats. There are several prominent themes. Let's see now...

Colony and Platinum are new basic cards. You use them at the same rate you use Prosperity cards - if half of your cards are from Prosperity, you use Colony and Platinum in half of your games. They don't take up any of the 10 Kingdom cards slots - they are additional piles sitting next to Province and Gold. They change the end condition - the game also ends if the Colonies run out (plus if Provinces run out or 3 piles are empty, as normal).

[Colony, Platinum]

Backing up Colony and Platinum are some expensive actions. There are three $6's and four $7's in the set (plus an $8, but that's a trick, you usually will pay less for it). So you don't just build up your money past Gold, you also build up your actions past their normal level.

[Expand, Forge]
[King's Court, Peddler]

There are eight special treasures in the set (not counting Platinum). Eight! Some of them do something when you play them; others do something while they're in play.

[Quarry, Royal Seal]
[Hoard, Bank]

Three cards involve VP tokens. These give you ways to score points without victory cards. Well you will still buy victory cards. But you know. Monument is a vanilla card that gives you +$2 and a VP token; Bishop lets you trash cards for VP tokens; Goons gives you a VP token with each card you buy.

[Bishop, Goons]

The game needs interactive cards to uh keep it interactive. Attacks slow the game down though, and make it harder to get Colonies. There are still attacks in the set, but only three; they are supplemented by five cards that create interaction without attacking (plus one reaction, but I don't count those). Bishop and Vault let the other players do something; Trade Route and City care about which piles have been bought from or are empty, which is something everyone contributes to; Contraband gives a decision to another player.

[Trade Route, City]
[Contraband, Vault]

Some cards in the set care about treasures, special or not. Counting House makes you want Copper, Grand Market makes you not want it, and Mountebank hands out Copper. Hoard gets you Gold with your victory cards. Mint copies a treasure; Venture digs for one to play, while Loan digs for one to trash.

[Counting House, Grand Market]
[Mint, Venture]

Your Guide to Beating Attacks

Now as usual I have an essay on a random Dominion-related topic. This one is about how to beat attacks. It's a strategy essay! There are probably more design issues to write essays about, but someone at BGG was just asking how to fight Saboteur, and man, sounds like an easy way to fill some space. So here goes.

Some people play with Moat in every game. Gotta have some defense! Is what they're thinking. Otherwise, what do you do about attacks? Well there's a ton you can do. Moat usually isn't even the best option. It's an option though. I better mention it. You can Moat attacks! And Lighthouse them. And sometimes Secret Chamber them or Watchtower them.

Now let's consider every attack.

1. Attacks that make you discard

Militia, Goons, Cutpurse, and Minion all put you down cards in hand. Your turn ends up not playing out as well as you thought it was going to.

The first thing is, a few cards draw you up to a particular hand size - Library to seven, Watchtower to six. These can make you actually happy that the attack was played against you - you tossed your worst cards and got well perhaps better ones.

These attacks make you need to have good hands consisting of not many cards. One approach is to have good cards and weak cards but not cards that are in-between. A hand of five silvers turns into a hand of three silvers when they play Militia, but a hand of two Golds a Silver and two Duchies keeps the cash and still buys Province. Well it's easier said than done to get those Golds in the face of Militias beating down on you, but it's a plan.

Getting the good cards may be work, but it's easy getting the bad ones. Strategies that involve having lots of junk in your deck, i.e. Gardens, are fine vs. Militias.

Another thing is, sometimes playing a single action can be enough to have a decent turn. Workshop a Gardens, buy a Copper, that's good enough. Expand is another good example, for the late game at least.

Minion is a special case in that it's essentially a random discard. You're just as likely to toss good cards as bad ones. Secret Chamber can send cards down the line for you, though you have to guess which way they'll use the Minion. Cutpurse is also special, since it only hits Copper. You can fight it by trashing your Coppers.

What you don't want vs. these attacks is well cards that get worse with a smaller hand. You probably just discard that Cellar when they Militia you; it's not doing much. Cards that require a combo, like Remodel, are worse early on - a turn of "Remodel an Estate, buy Silver" becomes "Remodel Estate, done." Even Chapel gets weaker vs. Militia.

2. Attacks that trash your cards

Thief, Pirate Ship, and Saboteur all trash your cards. Your precious cards!

The first thing you can do is, you can gain cards - Ironworks, Talisman, etc. You break even vs. just one other player; with multiple people trashing your cards, it may not be enough. When multiple people are trashing cards though, they are sometimes trashing the cards that trash cards, so gaining extra cards can still be good. +Buys are another way to gain extra cards, but since you also have to have that extra money, they don't typically work fast enough.

Thief and Pirate Ship only trash treasures, so the easy out there is to do without 'em. There will often be an action out that makes money, and that will do. If Thief isn't being played too often, you can sometimes just ignore it. It will steal some good cards from you eventually; oh well, they are down money in hand the turn they play Thief and you have no such burden. It's not so bad. If lots of Thieves are being played though, you can just run out of cash. In the unusual situations where you can't make up the difference in actions, you'll want to fall back on gaining extra cards, even with +Buys. Also, end the game before they can get the upper hand this way.

Now when Thief hits Copper, you're glad and they aren't and that's that. When Pirate Ship hits Copper though, everyone's happy. You don't want the Copper and they want the token. You don't want them to get the token. In a two player game, trashing your Coppers first can help here. With more players, you probably can't get everyone to slow down the Pirate Ship enough. Instead, just coast to victory by building your own efficient Copper-free deck, courtesy of them stealing those Coppers for you. Pirate Ship can cause some groups problems, I think because it's an answer to itself - Pirate Ship makes you want an action that makes money, and hey Pirate Ship is one of those. So everyone plays Pirate Ships and Pirate Ship seems unbeatable. It is so beatable though. Trashing your Coppers is normally something you give up several turns to do; having it done for you leaves you in fine shape. And you don't even have to do without money - eventually the Pirate Ships will stop attacking. You can even feed Pirate Ships by gaining Silver - say, with Explorer - and it can all work out.

Saboteur is the anti-Remodel - it turns a card into a worse one. One general approach to fighting it is to spend all of your money each turn. Normally when you have $6, it may be a decision as to whether to buy Gold or some strong action for $5. Get the Gold! And when you have $8, get that Province, don't wait. You want the more expensive cards because they devolve into better cards. It takes multiple hits to wipe expensive cards clean out of your deck, so it's no trouble staying ahead with card-gainers. You can even fight it with Remodel. When they do trash a Province late in the game, take a Duchy, you'll be sorry if you don't. Peddler provides a unique defense against Saboteur; you probably paid from $0-$4 for it, but you get something for $6 when it gets hit. Cards that are mostly just good in the early game, like Moneylender, are nice in that Saboteur will clear them away for you.

Deck-thinning cards get worse when your stuff is being trashed. You only have so much stuff. How much you care really depends on how much attacking is going on though. Deck-thinning is of course fine vs. Saboteur, since it was just skipping past those Coppers and Estates anyway.

3. Attacks that give you junk

Witch, Ambassador, Familiar, and Mountebank all directly give you Curses or other junk. Your turns become bad and you sit there trying to claw your way up to Duchies.

The first thing you think is, how about trashing those Curses? This is almost a sucker bet. It can be okay, depending on what it's costing you on those turns. Ambassador is a great way to get rid of a Curse. Steward, for example, not so great. You spend your turn just trashing junk, and they spend their turn giving you more junk and also buying something. I mean if you bought Steward for some other reason and then draw it with two Curses, man, why not trash them. Just don't make it your game plan.

Some cards let you just deal with having a bad deck. Vault lets you toss those Curses for $1 each; in fact a hand with Vault and four random cards will get you at least $6.

A few cards reward you for having junk. A Gardens deck wants as much junk as it can get, and is already expecting lots of cash-poor hands; it's not like you want to buy Curses for it, but it's not so bad getting handed them. Counting House puts any Coppers you got from Mountebank or Ambassador to good use.

And of course you want to set your sights lower. You may simply not be able to get to Province this game (let alone Colony). And hey that Witch is already running out the Curse pile; run out the Duchies and there's just one more empty pile needed to end the game.

Since Curses are limited, you can fight fire with fire. Every Curse I give you is a Curse you aren't giving me. This is more relevant when fewer people buy the Witches.

And finally, Witches are the attacks that most reward you for actually going for Moats. The attack is pretty significant in how much it hurts you, and if you are actually leaving the Curse in the pile (rather than trashing it with Watchtower), that's a Curse someone else may end up getting.

Card-drawing gets a lot worse in the land of Witches. Except for things that skip past those Curses, like Adventurer. Villages also get worse, since you don't draw your actions and Villages together as often. What, all combos get worse.

4. Attacks that muck with your deck order

Man these don't sound too scary. Spy, Scrying Pool, Rabble, and Bureaucrat do this.

The main effect of a Spy is to make your top card weak. It also may make your good cards go by. That's annoying but people tend to overrate how much that hurts them. Anyway there's not much you can do about that. You can get through your deck faster, such as with Chancellor.

The basic defense is to change the top of your deck yourself, without drawing that top card. Spy doesn't fight Spy, because you draw that weak card they left for you. Well you might see their Spy and make them discard it. But you know. However there are ways to just get rid of that top card. Venture, Loan, and Adventurer dig for treasures, meaning any victory card left on top just goes by. Chancellor flips your deck, getting rid of even a multiple-card pile-up, such as from Rabble or multiple Bureaucrats. Golem digs for actions. Scrying Pool has you Spy before drawing, so it does actually fight itself and Spy. Lookout trashes cards directly from the top of your deck, or flips them over. Scout draws the victory cards from the top four, although you need another piece to that combo to make that worthwhile.

Spies prey on the tendency of decks to have both weak cards and strong cards. If your deck is more medium, that's a defense of sorts. You are going to have victory cards in the long run, but in the short run you can trash your junk in order to weaken Spies, especially Rabble and Bureaucrat. You can also play one of those Gardens decks you hear so much about; they leave a Gardens on top and well whatever, your hand wasn't going to be good anyway.

Sometimes you will be able to draw your whole deck on most of your turns. In those cases you are not too hurt by the top card being a victory card, or by seeing your good cards get flipped over. You're drawing them anyway.

I included Bureaucrat in this category even though it's also discard-based. The discard part just isn't that relevant normally. Sure it makes Cellars worse. You can fight it with Library or Watchtower, although it's not like you're so thrilled to draw those victory cards again.

These attacks are on the weak side (the attack part I mean), so you won't always feel obligated to put up much of a fight. You'll just do whatever you were doing. Still, every little bit counts. Maybe you were eyeing that Venture already; now you definitely get it.

Chaining actions are especially hurt by Spies. That Village that was at least getting you the next card down, now gets you an Estate they left for you. You would have been better off with Silver.

5. Combination attacks

Fighting one attack is usually straightforward. Fighting multiple attacks is a lot harder. What if they're playing both Thief and Witch? Man. It's a tough spot. So naturally some attacks are packages of two different kinds of attacks. Let's see you get out of this one.

Swindler is a trasher and a junker. It turns a card into a worse one at the same cost. Some games there's only one card at a particular cost - especially, only Gold at $6 or only Province at $8 - so those cards become more desirable. Cards from Alchemy with potion in the cost often fall into this category. The junk you are getting isn't all cheap, so cards in the Remodel / Salvager families are good defenses. They turn your $5 into a Duchy; you Bishop it away. Peddler is a ridiculous defense if the Peddler pile sells out; they have to give you a Province.

Sea Hag is a junker and a mucker. That Curse goes on your deck, ready to be drawn. Lookout is a special-case solution; otherwise, just use a mix of anti-Witch and anti-Spy tactics, heavy on the anti-Witch.

Torturer either makes you discard or gives you a Curse in hand. The fact that the Curse goes to your hand makes it easier than usual to fight with ways to trash Curses. With Trading Post in hand, you could actually be happy to get that Curse to trash. The big thing though is, since the choice is yours, you can fight the side of Torturer you'd rather fight. If Torturer gets played a lot then okay, you can't just discard to nothing, you're gonna have to fight the Curses. But you know, sometimes there's just one here and there.

Ghost Ship is a discard mucker. So was Bureaucrat, but again, that only made you discard stuff that's usually dead anyway. Ghost Ship gets rid of whatever. The fun way to fight Ghost Ship is with combos. Cards like Throne Room and Treasure Map are no good without a partner, but if you get Ghost Ship'd and don't have the combo, just save the combo card for next turn. If you do have the combo, keep it. Since you'll be putting bad cards on top a lot, anti-Spy cards are good here.

6. Attacks, any attacks at all

However you're getting attacked, you want to fight it from turn one. Sometimes there's that guy in your group who always attacks if it's at all possible; sometimes you just know, you are dealing with some Goons fans, or whatever it is. Sometimes you don't really know of course. But as soon as you can, get to beating that deck.

Attacks slow the game down, while also making 3-pile endings more common. Don't be the last one to sigh and go for Duchies. Get in there.

Attacks can fight attacks. Muckers like Spy can flip over attacks, stopping you from getting hit by them as often. Card trashers like Saboteur and Swindler will sometimes get to trash attacks. Junkers like Mountebank slow down the pace of opposing attacks, as they have to wade through the Curses and Coppers to draw their attacks. And discard-based attacks can slow down the attacks that don't produce immediate resources - such as Sea Hag, Thief, and Saboteur - since if they hold onto the attack, they now only have two cards left to actually buy stuff with.

Sometimes, the guy with the attacks is just not going to beat you. You know. He went heavy into Thieves and it's a bad board for it; so much for him. If it's a two player game, that's that; if it isn't, there are still those other guys. Fighting the attacks better than they do may make all the difference.

104

The Bible of Donald X. / Dominion: Alchemy Preview

« on: June 20, 2011, 04:12:11 pm »

The Inevitable Dominion: Alchemy Preview

The new Dominion expansion, Alchemy, has been out for a few days now, which means it's high time for another one of my "previews." What's in Alchemy, anyway? What do the cards look like? What can you do with them? Are these rhetorical questions? All this and more, coming up!

What You Get

Alchemy has 150 cards. It's half the size of a "normal" Dominion expansion. Those 150 cards break down into 12 kingdom cards and one "basic" card.

The "basic" card is Potion! It's part of the supply in games using Alchemy cards. It's a new resource. It's a treasure, but instead of making money, it makes a potion symbol. Ten cards in the set have that symbol in their costs, and to buy one of them, you need a Potion, plus whatever money they cost. The rulebook covers cases like, how does Remodel work with these cards, etc. It all works pretty much like you'd expect. A Potion is like money, but doesn't combine with other money. It's worth a Potion.

[Potion]

Some cards in the set care about Potions. Alchemist comes back next turn if you have a Potion; Apothecary draws Potions (and Coppers) for you. Other cards don't mention Potions, but do useful things with them. Herbalist lets you reuse one of this turn's treasures next turn; Apprentice lets you trash a card to draw cards based on its cost, which is handy with a Potion you no longer want.

[Alchemist, Apothecary, Apprentice]

The set has a sub-theme of "cards that care about Action cards." Vineyard is a victory card that counts Action cards in your deck. Golem plays the next two Actions from your deck (other than Golems). University gains you an Action, and provides +2 Actions for playing all the Actions you end up with. Scrying Pool draws you all of the Actions from the top of your deck

[Vineyard, Golem, University]

If there's just one card out with Potion in the cost, is it worth buying a Potion in order to get that card? It oughta be. So, the cards with Potion in the cost are almost all useful in multiples. Apothecary, Scrying Pool, University, Alchemist, and Familiar all provide +1 Action or more. Golem plays other Actions from your deck, which can end up giving you +1 Action. Vineyard is a victory card, and Philosopher's Stone is a treasure - both useful in multiples. That just leaves Transmute, which can at least turn unplayable Action cards into Duchies, and Possession, which costs so much that you won't typically be able to buy more copies than you want.

[Scrying Pool, Familiar, Possession]

How to Play With this Expansion

As usual, the choice of kingdom cards to use is yours. You can use whatever method to pick out 10 cards, and whatever method to pick out that method. It's methods all the way down! And they're all yours.

However, since multiple cards in Alchemy cost this new resource, Potion, some people prefer to see more than one Alchemy card on the table at once. So that you have a choice of what to buy when you draw your Potion. And some of those people are used to just dealing out 10 random cards to play with.

For those people, here's a method you can use. Deal out 8 cards at random. Then, if any of those cards are from Alchemy, dig through the randomizer deck for two more cards from Alchemy. If none of those 8 are from Alchemy, dig for two cards that aren't from Alchemy. Either way, put the cards you went past back on top of the randomizer deck. This way, in the long run, you will see each card just as often as you would have otherwise. The Alchemy cards will just end up clumped together.

There are other ways to achieve this. Or you can just always deal out 3 cards from Alchemy when you're using it, and 7 from your normal randomizer. Or you can just deal out 10 random cards, and live with sometimes having just one card with a Potion in the cost. It's not so bad. But if you wanted a method for using a randomizer deck, there's one.

Your Guide to Costs in Dominion

To pad this sucker out some, here is a short essay about a random Dominion-related topic. I have chosen the cost system, since Alchemy mucks with it.

People sometimes try to make a tidy formula for calculating how much the +'s in Dominion are worth. They assign values to +1 Card etc., to try to get them to add up correctly for the existing cards. It doesn't work. The costs in Dominion aren't linear. The abilities aren't linear either! +1 Action is better if it comes with +1 Card; +2 Buys isn't twice as good as +1 Buy. And so on.

A big thing is, you start out with 7 Coppers and 3 Estates. That seriously distorts the low costs. Your deck can make $3 consistently right out of the gates, and it makes $4 plenty. Then, as you buy more cards for your deck, each card has less and less of an effect on your draws - since your deck is larger! At the same time you are buying better cards, but it isn't quite enough; building up from $7 to $8 is generally harder than building up from $4 to $5.

Here is a general guide to the base costs:

$2: Since your deck starts out already making more than $2, these cards struggle to be good enough. Often they really have to be worth $3. Otherwise you're just so rarely buying them. Mainly you buy a $2 when 1) you get $2 on turn one or two and the $2 at least isn't going to hurt your deck, 2) you get a victory-card heavy draw late in the game and the $2 is useful then, 3) you're choking on Curses, 4) you have an extra buy and can get the $2 with something else, and 5) the $2 is really worth $3. Often the main thing I go after with a $2 is, I at least want you to be able to buy it with a 5/2 opening without regretting it.

$3: These cards are squarely up against Silver. Silver is a good buy, and not a "terminal action" either. A terminal action is one that doesn't give you +1 Action. The problem with a terminal action for $3 is, you could be using up your action on something costing more instead, which would be more powerful. Sometimes your strategy doesn't involve an expensive terminal action, so you can go ahead and take a few cheap terminal actions. Other times you can live with having extra terminal actions, and other times you are just not buying a lot of $3's. Unless of course they aren't terminal! If they give you +1 Action then it's a whole different story. You may just snatch up some of those.

$4: These cards are also squarely up against Silver! $4 is just not that much more than $3. You most often start the game with either 3/4 or 4/3 hands; you are buying a $4 right away. A main distinction for $4's is, you can't buy two of them on turns 1 & 2. Some cards are too strong if you can buy two immediately, so those may end up at $4 rather than $3. Some simple cards are at $3 so that I can make variations at $4; if Village cost $4, Village-with-a-bonus would have to cost $5, and that's a lot more. But with Village at $3, I can make Village-with-a-bonus at $4 and it all works out.

$5: These tend to drive your strategy. They make the biggest difference between actions and treasure; you can get Silver at $3 and Gold at $6, and you can only afford to have so many terminal actions, so you probably buy Silver at $4 some too. At $5 then you have actions that really do stuff for you, with very little competition from Silver. $5's get to be a lot more powerful than $4's. And if you have a game that's missing a particular cost, this is the one you really don't want to be missing. Ideally there are multiple choices at $5.

$6: It's hard to compete with Gold, and you don't just get $6 immediately too often. People will snatch up a $6 if it's a good one, but still, I don't do that many cards at this cost. The main set had one, Intrigue had two, Seaside didn't have any. They don't do as much to promote different strategies as the other costs, and they get played in fewer games. The cost isn't a complete dud - it can be cool to have something at $6 sometimes. It's just not a significant factor in the game.

I haven't done cards costing less than $2, except for Copper and Curse. Originally this was because of things like Bridge - I didn't want it to be too easy to empty a pile. And if a card costs $0, you can just take it with any +Buy, so probably it's going to be pretty weak. But really, $2 itself is already pretty low-end. There's no point to having cheaper cards. Often a card costing $1 would actually be worse than the same card costing $2 - you wouldn't be paying $1 for it, and it's worse with Remodels. Anyway a card costing $0-$1 isn't out of the question, especially when you consider weird additional costs. It's not really on the menu though.

Some people think I should never do a card costing $7. They think that hole is doing so much for the game. When actually, if there's a card costing $7, then in almost all games there still is no card costing $7. Whatever that hole is doing for the game, it's still doing, almost always. And then whatever you get from having a $7, you get to have that too, in those games where that card is out. Anyway a $7 here and there is just not causing a hole-filling problem. Instead the problem with $7 is that this is an engine-building game, and that engine normally tops out at buying Provinces. Province costs $8. If you aren't building a deck designed to buy multiple Provinces in one turn, a $7 is going to usually be overkill. You would buy one if you got $7 early enough, but later on you'll look sadly at the expensive action and then buy your Duchy. Hence, no $7's. And no $8's either. To compete with Province - as Possession does - you have to offer up a Province plus extra.

Alchemy mucks with this arrangement by adding in Potions. It's tempting, like with those people trying to figure out what +1 Action is worth, to try to assign a $ value to having a Potion in a card's cost. You can't though. It's not linear! And this is especially obvious with Potions. Transmute and Apothecary are pretty close in cost, barring +Buys; Apothecary and Golem aren't. Gardens was originally in Alchemy, way back when, with Vineyard in the main set. When they were switched, Gardens cost a Potion - no $ - and Vineyard cost $4. But that doesn't mean that Golem is roughly worth $8. Potion doesn't really have a $ equivalent, but is worth more on cheaper cards.

Fun With Potions

Normally at this point I'd be talking about what Throne Room does with all of these cards. Man, everyone has figured Throne Room out by now, right? You do the thing twice. So instead I'm just going to say whatever nonsense pops into my head about some of the cards.

Alchemist: The obvious combo is Herbalist. Put your Alchemists on your deck via having a Potion; then put the Potion on your deck via Herbalist. Nothing puts the Herbalist on your deck though. I don't know what to tell you there. There are other ways to try to make sure you've got a Potion handy of course. You can look around in your Cellars for a Potion. You can trash things with an Apprentice, madly looking for Potions. And of course you can just buy a bunch of Potions.

Apothecary: There are a bunch of cute tricks you can do with Apothecaries, but one of the simplest combos is just another Apothecary. The first Apothecary gets some Coppers and maybe a Potion into your hand, and lets you reorder the other cards you looked at. Then the second Apothecary draws you the card you wanted that you put back (and who knows, maybe more Coppers).

Apprentice: I know what you're thinking. Not now, in a second. You're thinking, someday, I will trash a Province with that, and draw eight cards. You will, too. And if trashing a Province with it can be good, trashing anything can be good. They especially like to feed on each other.

Familiar: It's free (it gives you back the card and action it cost you), it hands out Curses, what's not to like. When the Curses run out, it essentially vanishes from your deck; move along, Familiar, your work here is done. Free attacks can be scary things and well it does cost a Potion.

Golem: Golem is insane. Fortunately it's expensive and you have to set it up. You worry more about what exactly is in your deck when any of it may leap out at you when you play a Golem. The fun thing of course is to have to play a card-trasher you may not want to, such as an Apprentice. Something's going down. Another thing about Golems is, you can get combos. Sometimes there's some combo between two action cards that you'd like to see. Only you need to draw a Village and both cards together and well it doesn't just happen. With Golem, it just happens.

Herbalist: To some eyes, this is the only card in the set having nothing to do with Potions. Ten cards have the potion symbol in the cost; Apprentice cares about potion symbols in costs; and Potion is potion. What's up with Herbalist? As it happens Herbalist is in the set specifically for how it interacts with Potions! A cheap +buy is a handy thing when you're trying to buy cards with the potion symbol in the cost. And then it puts a treasure back on your deck. A treasure like... Potion? That's right. Of course you already knew that from the bit about Alchemist.

Philosopher's Stone: This one is tricky. You want to draw through your deck in order to play it more often. But when you play out that line of Villages and Smithies, suddenly your cards aren't in your deck anymore, and Philosopher's Stone doesn't make you any money. You want ways to draw it more often that don't actually put cards into play or your hand. That sends you into the realm of underappreciated cards like Chancellor and Navigator. Or hey, Herbalist.

Possession: The most common question is, if you Possess someone and make them play Possession, who controls that turn? They do. Possession isn't an attack, but can feel like one, and sometimes you'll try to defend against it. One obvious thing to do is to buy attacks. Not attacks that gain you cards - hurty attacks. If you Possess me and I've got Witch in my hand, do you play it? Either way, that hand was better for me (had I gotten to play it) than it was for you. You are not getting full value from that Possession. Another trick is to go for special victory cards like Gardens. In a typical Gardens deck, my hand is full of Coppers and victory cards. I'm just trying to get to $4. If you Possess me and I do have $4 this turn, the best you can do is take a Gardens away from me. You built a deck that can make $6 plus a potion; you're going for Provinces. Once again my hands are better for me than for you.

Scrying Pool: Here's another way to draw 8 cards. The massive card-drawing this can do for you does not just happen by itself. There are actions to acquire, Coppers to trash. If you look closely, you will see that the vision in the pool is of a Village.

Transmute: Yes, if you Transmute a Great Hall, you get both a Duchy and a Gold. And a Curse doesn't turn into anything. At least you get rid of it.

University: When your University is gaining you Markets, it's a business school! When it gets you Festivals, it's clown college! When it's getting you Torturers, that's one badass university. If you have other Alchemy cards out then it will often teach new Apprentices. Yes all I really have to comment on here is the flavor. Gain actions, then play them, what's not to like. It's important that University can't gain itself, or you would see piles empty so fast.

Vineyard: The obvious card to compare this to is Gardens. There are a lot of differences though. The cards that make each one good are completely different. Gardens wants Coppers, Estates, and other copies of Gardens. Vineyard doesn't like any of those, or even other Vineyards. It wants cheap actions and lots of them. This makes playing a Vineyard deck a lot different than playing a Gardens deck. Another thing is, when you're going for Gardens, other players will buy a few to stop you from going too nuts. They can't buy Vineyards without Potions though. Did they get Potions? They didn't always get them.

And That's That

They were rhetorical questions! In retrospect it was obvious.

105

The Bible of Donald X. / Complexity in Rules on Cards

« on: June 20, 2011, 04:03:01 pm »

[This is an essay I wrote for the Alchemy preview, then decided to save for a later set. Now that BGN is part of BGG I've talked myself out of doing that kind of preview, so here it is.]

Somehow I have fallen into the trap of writing essays about random Dominion-related topics and including them in these previews. And this preview was especially short, what with the set being a small one. Here then is a lengthy bunch of thoughts on the topic of card complexity.

Alchemy's cards are more complex than those in Dominion's main set. Dominion has six "vanilla" cards - just combinations of pluses. Alchemy has zero. Alchemy does have a couple fairly simple cards - Vineyard is a straightforward victory card; Familiar is a very simple attack; University is pretty simple. But it also has a couple very wordy cards - Scrying Pool and Possession are both thick with text. And then, the cards in-between are more involved than Dominion's non-vanilla cards. As you can see from the images!

So how did that happen? Weren't there more simple cards left that were worth doing?

The short answer is, not really! There were only so many simple cards worth making. I spread them out among the main set and six expansions that I had before the game was published. The main set got the lion's share, because simplicity was its theme. Some expansions managed to get new simple cards from their themes, such as the simpler Duration cards in Seaside. Alchemy didn't have anything like that; I could have had a card with "+1 potion symbol," but it would have been a dud when there were no other Alchemy cards out.

So, what's the deal? Why are there only so many simple cards worth doing? In fact there are several factors pushing cards to be more complex.

1. The Card Complexity Axiom

At the root of it all is this:

The number of cards you can make for a game is proportional to the product of the complexity of the game and the amount of space you allow yourself for card text.

That's pretty basic and obvious but still seems worth going on about for a paragraph. There are only so many possibilities within a certain amount of space. To get more possibilities you have to add more space. You can add that space in the rulebook, or on the cards themselves, but it has to be somewhere. Dominion has very few rules, so by default the burden is on the cards.

2. Little Computer Programs

Cards are little computer programs. They refer to data, and have operations and "program flow." There are only so many elements to combine, and getting more cards at some point requires combining more elements (or creating new elements).

Each game has its "atoms." These are the simplest ways that data in the game can change. In Dominion you can move cards between the places that they hang out, and can muck with the amount of actions/buys/coins/vp you have. Those are the atoms. There are also a few more exotic things, i.e. the turn sequence. I am probably never making "The turn order switches direction," but it would be simple.

The simplest cards just do the atomic things. +3 Cards! Simple. Courtyard from Intrigue is "+3 Cards, put a card from your hand on top of your deck." That's just two atoms, even though the second one doesn't have a shorthand for it.

You can spice these up with qualifiers. University doesn't just gain you cards; it only gains you Action cards, and only ones costing $5 or less. Adding qualifiers like that is a good next step towards getting fairly simple cards.

Then there are formulas. In general you can only do the simplest things. We can access data directly, with no math beyond counting; how many cards are in play? I also let myself divide by N; Philosopher's Stone and Vineyard both make you divide. Multiplication, I don't know if I will ever go that far. I don't know why division seems simpler. Anyway this can never account for very many cards.

Finally there's "program flow." This is the stuff in computer programs that determines what happens next. "If X then Y else Z." "Repeat X until Y." And also simple stuff like "Do X, then do Y." This is stuff you can do on cards to get more variety, and it's the bulk of what there is to do. There are only so many ways to use qualifiers on a basic concept that will be interesting enough. You can't do very many things with formulas at once. And there are only so many atoms.

So in the end it's all about using program flow to combine atoms involving qualified data. There are only so many atoms, so once you've made all of those cards, you're going to have to make more complex cards.

For Dominion specifically, we can go further. Some of the atoms have parameters, but not all simple combinations of atoms with parameters are worth doing. Most of them are either utter duds ("+1 Card"), too strong to cost low enough to get to buy them before the game's over ("+6 Cards"), or too close to an existing card ("+2 Actions +2 Buys +$2" is too close to Festival). A bunch are randomly different in a really uninteresting way ("+2 Cards +$1"). At one point I made a chart of all of the combinations of pluses to possibly consider, and figured out which ones I thought were good enough to actually do. There weren't many.

3. The Vanilla Card Problem

In some games, one card can just be better than another one. Medici has a 3 of spices and a 4 of spices and no-one is like "omg the 4 of spices is broken." You bid on those cards, that's what makes them fair. In other games, including Dominion, there's a cost system balancing the cards, and at a given cost the cards are expected to be about as good. Obviously there will always be cards better than other cards. Each game the cards vary in value based on what other cards are out, so hopefully every card gets its day in the sun. But still. In general, one card will be better than another at the same cost. And that's fine, and anyway unavoidable.

It's a problem though if two cards are very similar and one is clearly better. In particular, if one card does everything another card does plus a little more, for the same cost, that's bad. It makes some people unhappy. If both are in the same game, we don't buy the one until the other sells out. That's still not a complete loss, but it's not as good as having some other card there.

With only so many atoms, like I was saying above, there are inevitably going to be similar cards - a new Village, a new Remodel. And these cards help make the game work - you need some Villages here and there. I just need to try to keep them enough different that this issue doesn't come up.

Enter vanilla cards. Vanilla cards in Dominion are ones that just have pluses. More broadly it's all of the simplest versions of concepts; the vanilla card problem applies to some cards that aren't strictly vanilla. But it especially applies to vanilla cards. Whatever it is.

Okay the vanilla card problem is this: vanilla cards limit what other cards you can make, without having two similar cards such that one is too obviously better than the other.

For example, Dominion has Village: "+1 Card +2 Actions." It costs $3. Village means I can never make a card that's Village-with-a-bonus, without charging $4 or more for it. I make Village-with-a-bonus sometimes - Mining Village in Intrigue is one. And when I do it has to cost $4.

It's not so bad charging $4 for Village-with-a-bonus. In Dominion, $3 is secretly pretty close to $4. By putting Village at $3, I gave myself some room to make variations on it at $4.

I can do Village-with-a-bonus cards at $4 forever. As long as each bonus is different, the cards don't end up too close. Sure they're both Villages, but is the one bonus always better than the other?

Now consider Throne Room. It's not a vanilla card, but it's the simplest version of its concept. Suppose I wanted to make Throne Room with a bonus. That would have to cost $5. At $4 it would just be better than Throne Room. But in Dominion, $5 is a lot more than $4. That bonus would have to be pretty significant in order for that card to be worth buying. And in fact that came up. Originally Throne Room cost $3, and I had a variation for $4 in an expansion that was "Choose one: +1 Card +1 Action, or Throne Room." Once Throne Room went to $4, the variation had to go to $5, and it wasn't worth $5. So it died.

The solution to the vanilla card problem is not to do vanilla cards. If your basic version of a concept includes a bonus, you can vary the bonus and keep the cost the same. Only when you do the bonus-less version are you stuck with increasing the cost. But you can't just not do vanilla cards. You need them for how simple they are. So in the end you pick and choose. For example Dominion does not have a card that just says "+1 Card +1 Action +$1." If I made that card, it would limit what other cards I could make. So instead I just do variations on it.

I should note that the vanilla card problem only exists in games with a lot of granularity to their costs. Generally you want to keep numbers in games as low as possible. Dominion has small cost numbers and that's good. But it means that a difference of +$1 is sometimes very significant. With larger costs, you would have more room to tweak costs for similar cards.

4. Complexity: The Panacea

You've just playtested a card. It's too weak / too strong. How do you fix it? By making it more complex. If it's too weak, you add a bonus; if it's too strong, you add a penalty. Or, if it's too strong, you weaken it too much, then add a bonus, and if it's too weak, you power it up, then add a penalty. In fact normally you add bonuses, not penalties, one way or another. Bonuses are more fun.

Adding complexity isn't the only option. But there is a lot of pull in that direction. The granularity of the system is again the issue.

Let's say Militia is too weak. It's "+$2. Each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand." It's not too weak. But let's say it is.

I can't just change it to +$3 - that's vastly more powerful. I can't just make it "discards down to 2 cards in hand" - that's crippling. I can't just lower it to costing $3 - that's not going to make the difference, and then maybe it's too good at $2. I could try a mix of things - up it to costing $6, make it +$3. In general though, the granularity of the system is fighting me. There may simply be no fair version of the card that just tweaks the numbers.

But I can always tack on another ability. And if that other ability is too weak or strong, I can replace it with a different one. I can also just replace Militia, but that's not nearly as good of an option. Militia may be doing something I need, and may be the best version of it in some other way. It may be totally worth doing except for power level. It may be a card people adore.

So the normal progression is, a card starts out simple, and if it isn't perfect, it desperately tries to get more complex, as I struggle to rein it in.

This also happens when power level is fine. A card is filling an important role but is too boring. What could spice it up? How about another line of text?

5. Ideas vs. Text

In these many paragraphs on this exciting card complexity topic, I have really been talking about complexity of ideas. A card can also just have a lot of words. But that's not as bad.

Suppose the rulebook defined "dig" appropriately. Then Golem could have read, "Dig for two Action cards other than Golems. Play them in either order."

That's pretty simple. Golem doesn't do anything complex really. Once you have that definition of "dig." And digging is straightforward too. But there aren't enough cards that dig, so digging is always spelled out on the cards, and well it takes a bunch of words.

Contrast this with Scrying Pool. Scrying Pool does two things: first it lets you toss or keep each player's top card, and then it draws you all of the actions from the top of your deck, plus a card. That's how many words it took me to tell you what it does, as a non-precise summary. It's not just wordy, it's complex idea-wise.

In general it's the multiple-idea complexity that's really complex. And sometimes even those cards can be simplified by having a strong connection of some kind between the ideas. Having a bunch of words can be intimidating when you first see a card, but you learn it quickly if those words just add up to one idea.

6. Complexity Solved

So there it is. Rules end up in the rulebook or on the cards, but they're somewhere. There are only so many game elements to combine, so you end up combining multiple elements to get more cards. You can't even do all of the vanilla cards that are possible. And in any case you're pushed towards complexity just by trying to make the game work.