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51

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Petition for the return of Isotropic

« on: January 09, 2014, 02:07:59 pm »

You are missing the somewhat obvious point that a free server is better than an official server simply because you don't have to pay for it.

52

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 09, 2014, 01:55:51 pm »

He isn't getting the silk road either way, masq can draw a curse.

53

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 05:15:55 pm »

I'll presume you need to KC/KC rather than just KC/Duchess because you also need to king an Abandoned Mine to get to $8. Then it seems like you have a solution, and I think around here you get bonus points for extreme convolution.

54

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 05:05:01 pm »

You play KC-KC-spy to start. [...] you are now out of actions

No you aren't, Spy gives you three more.

55

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 04:39:19 pm »

It has to be the KC which directly played the duration card.

56

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 04:28:01 pm »

Mic Q is correct, that's the solution I had in mind - structuring the KC tree more efficiently to leave out fewer KCs alongside duration cards. It doesn't have to be exactly of the form KC/KC/nothing/something/something, I was just giving an example of declining to king, and then immediately kinging in the same chain.

Scott's solution I'm not sure about, why would B trust you to pass Silk Road, but not trust you to not play Militia?

57

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 04:17:35 pm »

A related problem: Your hand is TR/TR/TR/Smithy/x. Your deck contains no card which you don't want to Throne. Why might it be correct to play TR/TR/Smithy/... instead of TR/TR/TR/Smithy?

you can play TR-TR-smithy-TR-x-x or TR-TR-TR-Smithy-x-x and it doesn't matter.

So your "solution" is that there is no solution? Then, to my knowledge, you are wrong.

(I guess I should have added that you do play TR/TR/Smithy/TR/... rather than possibly drawing a Remodel and trashing the third TR.)

58

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 04:16:50 pm »

Sorry, how does that work? I decline to king a card, then I immediately king a card, there is no time in between for an opponent to make a decision based on the false belief that I had no card to king.

59

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 04:04:52 pm »

Again, why would it be correct to firstly not king them, and then immediately king them? As I said, it's easy to come up with reasons why you might prefer not to king a card, but still want to play it once.

60

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 03:41:56 pm »

The puzzle is that it has to be correct to decline to king a card, and then immediately king it. There are plenty of reasons why you might decline to king a card, but then play it normally - forced trashers, for example.

A related problem: Your hand is TR/TR/TR/Smithy/x. Your deck contains no card which you don't want to Throne. Why might it be correct to play TR/TR/Smithy/... instead of TR/TR/TR/Smithy?

61

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 03:29:12 pm »

I don't get it, why would it be correct not to king them, and then immediately king them? If you want to hide that you have them, you wouldn't king them at all.

Edit: I guess you might have two that you want to king, and possibly one more that you don't want to play at all, but you don't want to reveal that you have it, and you're playing online where there will be a noticeable pause if you can king it but choose not to - in that case, to preserve the mindgame, you also have to do it in situations where you don't have the third card. If that was your answer, then I should add that it's not about online time tells, or mindgames, I believe there is at least one legitimate edge case which you might see in an IRL game, or against a bot, or both if that were possible.

62

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Redistrict v3.0

« on: January 08, 2014, 03:24:31 pm »

Edge case: opening Remodel/Scheme, you can topdeck the Remodel but not a trashed Redistrict.

63

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 03:20:16 pm »

In a KC/KC situation, when is it correct to decline to play an action card from your hand three times, but then immediately choose to do so? E.g., KC->KC->(nothing, some card, some card)

64

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Gain and play

« on: January 08, 2014, 01:42:41 pm »

You could Ambassador a Province, so that another player gains it during your turn. Of course, then you need four cards in the combo (Fools Gold, Village, Ambassador, Province).

65

Game Reports / Re: The Scheme behind the Hermits who draw near the Market Square...

« on: January 08, 2014, 10:32:36 am »

Lose track does apply to cards which do things to themselves - I actually can't think of an example other than Hermit/Scheme, now, but the text of the lose track rule doesn't say anything about an exception for cards which have effects on themselves. DXV sez Hermit can lose track of itself, so you can indeed take a Madman without trashing the Hermit.

66

Help! / Re: A rats debacle

« on: January 08, 2014, 06:16:25 am »

If you want to fill your deck with Rats, you have to open Rats. They grow exponentially in your deck, starting one shuffle earlier means twice as many Rats.

If you want to play sensibly with Rats, you should probably still open Rats, but stop playing them when 1/5 of your deck is already Rats.

67

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Cave - secret vp card

« on: January 07, 2014, 06:42:00 pm »

And what if I put a Bank on there, or a Philosopher's Stone?

68

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Cave - secret vp card

« on: January 07, 2014, 06:17:08 pm »

It's not enough to just play Cave every turn, you need to just-as-reliably buy expensive cards to set aside. That said, a Golden deck (Gold, Gold, Silver, Cave, Cave/Province) does produce the quadratic payoff - setting aside a Cave (later, Province) every turn.

This makes me think that the card must care about uniques. If each Province on the mat makes Cave worth another ~1VP then the Golden deck (with 3 more Caves on the mat) produces ~10VP/turn. That's too much, it would almost always be the optimal strategy. (If a Province on the mat isn't worth even 1VP, then Cave just looks pointless and weak.) i.e. the first Province on the mat has to be worth it, but the duplicates can't count.

69

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Cave - secret vp card

« on: January 07, 2014, 04:58:10 pm »

With three caves, you'll be getting cards onto your mat three times as quickly, and then scoring three times as many points per card on the mat, so that's 9 times as many points. 

That's not true, because Cave is terminal, and decreases handsize. Without villages you can't put away more than one card per turn, and without villages+draw you can't put away more than two per turn.

There is no rule against quadratic payoffs - see Bridge, Goons and Merchant Guild - but notice that for each of them, it's hard to play a lot of them, because they don't give either +actions or +cards. Madman has exponential payoff, but that's OK because it's hard to get a lot of them in the first place.

70

Game Reports / Re: I <3 Stash

« on: January 07, 2014, 03:37:29 pm »

I think we need to rename Worker's Willage, Wandering Vinstrel and Wishing Mell - they are just too confusing.

71

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Redistrict v3.0

« on: January 07, 2014, 03:35:35 pm »

Sometimes opening Remodel is good, but usually even Silver is better - most of the time, the key cards are at $5, not $4.

72

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Cave - secret vp card

« on: January 07, 2014, 03:29:18 pm »

I think it's OK if Cave/Peddler is a brokenly-strong combo - although probably weaker than Masterpiece/Feodum and Beggar/Gardens, not to mention Hermit/Market Square which is within a single expansion. It's going to have to be something like "worth 1VP per $8 in the total cost of cards on the mat, rounded down" in order to be balanced anyway.

73

Rules Questions / Re: Newbie Question: Playing Actions

« on: January 07, 2014, 03:23:04 pm »

This is something which is clearer when you play online, but you can imagine that you have an "Actions" counter which starts at 1, goes down by 1 every time you play an Action card (and must be at least 1 for you to do so), but can be increased by the effects of those cards; "+1 Action" literally just adds 1 to that counter. Coins and Buys work the same way, although the "Coins" counter starts at 0 instead of 1.

74

Game Reports / Re: I <3 Stash

« on: January 07, 2014, 03:18:47 pm »

Oh, I should read the board. For some reason I read WW and thought Wandering Minstrel, because AdamH (it is AdamH, isn't it?) calls them Wandering Winders. (As you spotted, I call them Winstrels.)

75

Game Reports / Re: I <3 Stash

« on: January 07, 2014, 02:54:34 pm »

With the winstrels, you can play Salvager before the Highways - Remodel does seem almost strictly better for the purpose though, with the exception that Salvager in an empty hand still gives the +buy.