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801

Dominion FAQ / Re: Counterfeit Clarification

« on: May 30, 2018, 08:20:01 pm »

Things will probably get quicker with practice. I doubt I'd spend more than a minute on that turn; two tops. (-8

One of the greatest innovations in Dominion was the idea of having people draw their next hand during cleanup for the turn before. As well as making various kinds of attack and reaction possible, it means you get to plan your turn a bit while other people are playing.

802

Dominion FAQ / Re: Counterfeit Clarification

« on: May 30, 2018, 04:06:44 pm »

Yup!

An entirely reasonable turn might be:

• (Actions:1 Buys:1 $0 to spend.)
  
• Play Throne Room, select Village (Actions:0 Buys:1 $0 to spend.)
  • Play Village the first time. Draw a card. (Actions:2 Buys:1 $0 to spend.)
  • Play Village the second time. Draw a card. (Actions:4 Buys:1 $0 to spend.)
• Play a Smithy which you drew the second time you played Village. Draw 3 cards. (Actions:3 Buys:1 $0 to spend.)
• Play another Smithy you drew by playing the first Smithy. Draw 3 cards. (Actions:2 Buys:1 $0 to spend.)
• Play a Village. Draw 1 card. (Actions:3 Buys:1 $0 to spend.)
• Play Remodel. Trash an Estate. Gain a Throne Room. (Actions:2 Buys:1 $0 to spend.)
• Play a Market. Draw 1 card, causing a shuffle, and drawing the Throne Room you just gained. (Actions:2 Buys:2 $1 to spend.)
• Play Throne room, select Moneylender. (Actions:1 Buys:2 $1 to spend.)
  • Play Moneylender the first time. Trash a copper. (Actions:1 Buys:2 $4 to spend.)
  • Play Moneylender the second time. Trash a copper. (Actions:1 Buys:2 $7 to spend.)
• End your action phase and move on to your buy phase. (Actions:1 Buys:2 $7 to spend.)
• Play Gold. (Actions:1 Buys:2 $10 to spend.)
• Play Counterfeit, select Silver. (Actions:1 Buys:3 $11 to spend.)
  • Play Silver the first time. (Actions:1 Buys:3 $13 to spend.)
  • Play Silver the second time. (Actions:1 Buys:3 $15 to spend.)
  • Trash the Silver. (Actions:1 Buys:3 $15 to spend.)
• Buy a Province. (Actions:1 Buys:2 $7 to spend.)
• Buy a Gold. (Actions:1 Buys:1 $1 to spend.)
• Clean up. (Leaving 1 action, 1 buy and $1 of spending power unused.)

803

Dominion FAQ / Re: Counterfeit Clarification

« on: May 29, 2018, 09:00:01 pm »

The best way to think about this may be to imagine you have a line of dials in front of you. One says how many actions you can play, one says how many cards you can buy, one says how much spending money you have.

At the start of the turn, those dials get set to 1 action, 1 buy, no spending money.

During your action phase, you play Action cards. Each time you play one, your actions dial goes down by one. If it's at zero, you can't play any more actions; you have to end your action phase and proceed to your buy phase, even if you have more Action cards in hand.

If you play a card that says "+1 Action", your actions dial goes up by one. If you play a card that says "+2 Actions", your actions dial goes up by two. And so on. "+1 Action" does not mean "play another action"; it means increase the number of actions you'll be able to play this turn. If, for example, your action phase consisted of playing Village, then Smithy, then Remodel, you would finish playing Village before you began playing Smithy.

Throne Room (and a handful of other cards, for example Vassal if you have the Second Edition base) are different. They explicitly say to play a card. So when you play Throne Room, you select a card from your hand, play it (completely resolving it), play it again (completely resolving it again) and only then are you done playing Throne Room. When you play a card because you're told to, that doesn't decrease the number of actions you have available.

804

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Trashing the Engineer

« on: May 23, 2018, 09:35:58 am »

The Secret History suggests it started out without a debt cost, but for me the key benefit of Engineer is in buying it with the $3 in a 4/3 or 3/4 split. On many boards, that can be a useful springboard.

When to trash it is highly situational but also, I've found, normally pretty obvious. I've never agonised over the decision, certainly.

805

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Alchemy card revelation...

« on: May 21, 2018, 10:17:39 am »

This turn, you may look at any and all face down cards - in decks, set aside, in the Knights pile, etc.

Are other players' hands officially face-down? Normally, they're just kinda angled away from you.

Or is this just a way to punish a player who needs to go to the bathroom while someone's dealing with King's Court - Possession?

806

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Card alchemy revelation....

« on: May 20, 2018, 06:08:33 pm »

Indeed; before this weekend, she was a commoner.

Now she's a Duchess. The Queen also, by convention, allows her the style "Her Royal Highness". Though she is a princess by marriage, she's not a "princess of the blood royal", i.e. descended from a monarch, so she's not styled "Princess Meghan".

It's amazing how complicated and subtle this all gets. It's almost as though centuries of tradition have carried forward through multiple nations and dynasties. (-8

807

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Would you give a new player 1st edition cards?

« on: May 17, 2018, 06:03:26 pm »

Merchant has a "condition" but man come on. It's not complex.

It adds a "play-a-Silver" trigger to remember later, and requires you to track how many times you've played Merchant (which Throne Room can complicate) until you play that Silver.

I sort of half wish Second Edition Base had just included the mythical +1 Card, +1 Action, +$1 costing $4 instead of Merchant and Poacher. That feels more suitable for beginners.

I do accept Bandit is simpler than Thief just considering the decision-making. Though there is the "gain a Gold" and "other than Copper" to complicate it again.

808

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Would you give a new player 1st edition cards?

« on: May 17, 2018, 05:51:56 pm »

But how are you possibly rationalizing the interpretation that you can choose not to trash a Copper with Moneylender and still get +$3? "You may trash a Copper for +$3." If you didn't trash a Copper, you must have opted out of this ability! Hence, no +$3. It seems really cut and dried to me.

The erroneous thinking I envisage is "I play Moneylender. I choose to trash a Copper, but I don't have one to trash. Because I chose that option, I get +$3."

After all, a new player will have just read the bit in the rulebook which says "If you cannot do everything a card tells you to do, you
do as much as you can; you can still play a card even if you know you will not be able to do everything it tells you to." and the one which says "When a card gives you a choice [...] you can pick any option, without considering whether or not you will be able to do it." Only the notes on Moneylender itself will correct the misapprehension about how "for" works.

809

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Would you give a new player 1st edition cards?

« on: May 17, 2018, 12:50:22 pm »

I always assumed the reason Bandit didn't trash coppers wasn't to teach that coppers are bad, but because those 4 player newbie Thief games where someone gets totally bankrupted are exceptionally unfun for that player.

Have you ever actually experienced such a game? Given Thief can only affect your deck, never your hand, it'd be tough for it to empty you out entirely. I guess if there was also Militia, no Moat, no actions that give coin and you didn't fight fire with fire by buying a Thief yourself it would be just about possible to contrive a completely miserable game, but...

Normally, if the other players want to do the job of a Chapel for me without eliminating my action or my spending power for my next turn, that's fine!

810

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Would you give a new player 1st edition cards?

« on: May 17, 2018, 12:37:28 pm »

I haven't generally heard new players think of Moneylender as a worse-Silver because you lose a Copper.

Generally, they seem to think "ooh, it's a cheaper Gold, but you have to trash a Copper". Then they realise trashing a Copper is good. Then they notice Moneylender is only really a Silver. Then they notice that it being a terminal action is an issue. Then they start wondering what they're going to do once the Copper is gone.

811

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Would you give a new player 1st edition cards?

« on: May 17, 2018, 12:31:03 pm »

Gosh. I'm pretty astonished to see the designer of, say, Mascarade describing base Dominion as too simple. Besides, I'm definitely in the camp of playing games which are only as complicated as they need to be, rather than games which are only as simple as they need to be. I'll play Istanbul rather than Agricola, for example or, closer to home, Kingdom Builder rather than Terra Mystica. I'll even play Trans America rather than Ticket to Ride. I like deep and subtle gameplay, but that's no reason for the rules not to fit on the back of a postage stamp.

Meanwhile, often at a games event I'll be mustering up a group to play Dominion. We'll be discussing which expansions to play, then someone who's played never before, perhaps once or twice, will join us. Immediately, I will scale back which cards we use. Many of the cards in recent sets are way too daunting for beginners.


For reference I know someone - and they're a serious gamer who's been an industry professional for decades - who adored base Dominion, then felt Intrigue drifted away from the spirit of the game as something where the play of the cards was near-automatic, and the challenge was in choosing what cards to get for your deck. They hated the on-play decisions.

I can see where they're coming from. Conditionals and decision points are the main sources of complexity in a game like Dominion. Life is simpler when you can just read down the card and do everything.

All the new cards in Second Edition Base have conditions or decisions, whereas Spy was the only decision-heavy card to be removed.

To be clear: I do like the new cards. They just don't feel right for new players, or for Base.

812

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Would you give a new player 1st edition cards?

« on: May 17, 2018, 10:04:53 am »

I'd like to sound a controversial note of dissent and say I find the second edition Base and Intrigue problematic precisely because they are worse for new players in a few respects.

The new art on the base treasures/victories is good, as is the gender-neutrality. However, it feels to me as though beginners need simple, elemental cards rather than deep or strong ones. Woodcutter, for example, is an ideal card for beginners even if it then rapidly falls out of favour. Similarly, I remember having great fun with Thief when I started out; Bandit may be less wordy, but it's much more convoluted in practice. and if you don't already know that stealing Copper is bad, well, it's good to learn that rather than have the short-cut of a "fixed" card handed you on a plate.

Similarly, I'm uncomfortable with some of the "simplified" wording. "Trash a Copper from your hand for +$3." is only clearer than "Trash a Copper card from your hand. If you do, +$3." if that specialised use of "for" is spelled out somewhere and, so far as I can tell, it isn't.

813

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Optimize Triple Tactician

« on: May 15, 2018, 06:46:41 pm »

1. How do you line things up such that you are sure to play both Tacs?

!

Scout! Scout will do this!!!1!!11

814

Rules Questions / Re: Inheritance interaction

« on: May 15, 2018, 09:44:14 am »

All the fixes take away a significant amount of the fun you can have with Inheritance in order to deal with an obscure edge-case that will never come up in 1000 years of playing Dominion.

The problem I see, from an engineering perspective, is that obscure edge-case problems have a nasty habit of biting harder later if not caught at the outset.

For example, exactly when you clean up a Duration, how they interact with throne rooms, and when you then clean up those thrones, probably looked like obscure edge-case problems when Seaside first came out...

815

Rules Questions / Re: Inheritance interaction

« on: May 14, 2018, 08:37:26 am »

Once per game: Set aside a non-Duration Action card from the Supply costing up to $4. Move your Estate token to it.
Throughout this game: Estates are also actions. When you play one: play your Estate-token Action card, leaving it there.

It sounds like that works, although you do also need to fit the text in the box. Probably I would say "During your turns" rather than "throughout this game"; for one thing it continues the thought, it's part of the ability.

If card count was no object, you could provide an alternate set of Estate cards (alas, they'd probably stil have to be called Estate, for the sake of the effects that refer to Estate by name) that were Action-Events saying "Play your Estate-token Action card, leaving it there.", and Inheritance could have a setup step saying to substitute them.

816

Rules Questions / Re: Inheritance interaction

« on: May 12, 2018, 06:11:19 pm »

Inheritance should be e.g. "discard an Estate to..." (it's trickier than that because there's no terse way to say "you can do this any time you are allowed to play an action," although again it's too big of a change for errata, and if the card weren't published yet I wouldn't be trying to simulate it exactly).

Might it be simpler to fix Inheritance along these lines?

Once per game: Set aside a non-Duration Action card from the Supply costing up to $4. Move your Estate token to it.
Throughout this game: Estates are also actions. When you play one: play your Estate-token Action card, leaving it there.

By my understanding, that fixes the problem by arranging that every Estate in the game is identical; having Estates be Action-Victory cards isn't the problem.

817

Rules Questions / Re: Inheritance interaction

« on: May 12, 2018, 07:39:25 am »

Another way to treat Throne room is like this:
1. Choose an action card from hand.
2. Create a pointer to the physical copy of the card.
3. Store a virtual copy of the card (ie remember its instructions and name and types)
4. Play the card being pointed to.
5a. If the card has moved (even if it later returns to play), then play the virtual copy of it.
5b. If the card has not moved, then play it.

I fear the body of rules you'd then need to create for how a "virtual copy" of a card behaved in every possible circumstance would then be second only to Possession in its baroque intricacy. Specimen question: is a virtual card in play for the purpose of pricing Peddler?

818

Rules Questions / Re: Inheritance interaction

« on: May 11, 2018, 08:34:07 pm »

Just one voice, but for what it's worth I quite like the idea of Inheritance affecting all Estates everywhere during your turn. That feels simple and intuitive to me.

819

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Playing to lose?

« on: May 11, 2018, 11:18:11 am »

The situation that annoyed me was a four player game where one player (the winner) pursued a big money strategy and developed an early lead and tried to finish the game by using up the 3rd supply pile - behaviour I don't have a problem with. What I didn't like is when another player (the loser) realised he was unlikely to catch the winner but ahead of the other two players (who were pursuing an engine strategy and had pretty much nothing in terms of victory points) decides to cut his losses and help the winner end the game.

Hmm. To me, that's a difficult grey area.

Two players select a big money strategy, two select an engine. Big money is emptying piles before the engines get going. One of the big money players develops a lead; the other decides to help end the game quickly so they can come second. I see no problem with that.

One player adopts big money, two adopt an engine, one has no real strategy to speak of. Big money player develops a lead, player with no strategy is getting nowhere and decides to end the game as quickly as possible without regard to their score. That's not at all sporting and ruins the game for others.

Trouble is, the two lines of play could look very similar. It's more about the player's attitude and intent than their actual behaviour.

820

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Playing to lose?

« on: May 11, 2018, 09:28:06 am »

Personally, if I see a line of play that might let me win and will otherwise make me crash and burn, I'll take it. I'll only play for second place either if there's no way to play for first or if playing for second is my best chance at reaching first.

821

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What does it mean for a card to be "powerful"?

« on: May 11, 2018, 09:25:07 am »

Rats is pretty situational, but if you're using it properly then gaining $4 cards is a strength, not a weakness.

What would be the right cost for a straightforward +1 Card, +1 Action, trash a card? Comparing with Ratcatcher, Lookout and Junk Dealer it's pretty clear it couldn't cost more than $4, and maybe even $3 would be OK.

822

Rules Questions / Re: Sacrifice and Inheritance

« on: May 04, 2018, 11:33:15 am »

Hmm. That reasoning makes sense. So...

...what happens if you Sacrifice a Fortress? Does Sacrifice Lose Track of the Fortress and give you nothing?

823

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: May 04, 2018, 11:16:22 am »

Hmm. That one feels like a workaround for an unnecessary restriction. I wonder if, with Nocturne hindsight, it might have made more sense for Plan to say "non-Victory" rather than "Action"?

824

Dominion General Discussion / Re: To Those Who Deny Undo Steps Online

« on: May 03, 2018, 05:51:52 pm »

I frequently play non-tournament games with relative strangers at FLGS games evenings. The only reason Dominion isn't one of them is that it's a lot of cards to lug about and I get my Dominion fix with friends.

825

Dominion General Discussion / Re: To Those Who Deny Undo Steps Online

« on: May 01, 2018, 10:59:43 am »

I make it a policy to not ask for any undo that I wouldn't grant.

That, to me, feels more like setting the bar for cheating than setting the bar for poor etiquette.

A nobler standard might be the one the late great Jon Postel established in the early days of specifying the protocols underpinning the Internet: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others".