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901

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Anthology/Fan edtion PLEASE

« on: March 17, 2018, 10:46:43 pm »

Then too, when a set has multiple mechanics, it's best to minimize how often multiple mechanics show up on one card. Instead of it being, "this is so cool it has both cool things," it's, "if you don't like either of these mechanics, you don't like this." For example, some people like Heirlooms but not Boons. Three of the seven Heirloom-givers have Boons. Turns out, that wasn't the move.

I see that issue with multiple novel mechanics, but does it also apply with multiple established mechanics, or a mixture of old and new?

I mean, a few years after Seaside and Alchemy had come out, I'm guessing it was pretty clear that some people would like more Potion cards while others would be horrified by that idea. By contrast, I suspect the number of people thinking "oh no, more Durations" when they saw Adventures was approximately zero. And I suspect you were confident of that in advance.

To be clear, some people might be wanting the return of heaps of existing mechanics for the sake of heaps of mechanics, or watching Courtier break, or whatever. I'm wanting the return of heaps of mechanics because I see what each brings to the party in the right circumstances, and just bet there are fascinating card ideas that are difficult or impossible to achieve without a combination of them.

902

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Anthology/Fan edtion PLEASE

« on: March 17, 2018, 08:09:52 pm »

A 'Treasure chest' expansion--of, say, 25 Kingdom cards--would need to highlight some of the hallmarks of each of Dominion's 11 existing modules. That leaves about 2 Treasure Chest cards to represent each expansion.

I'm not so interested in a couple more cards for each expansion. That's basically promo territory.

What really interests me is cards which combine those hallmarks. Debt-cost Reserve cards. Durations you can overpay for. Durations that give you coin tokens. All that good stuff. If most cards have characteristics of more than one previous expansion, there can be a lot more than two cards relating to each.

903

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Surplus

« on: March 17, 2018, 05:44:25 pm »

Writing up that fan card thread would have been very time consuming

Ah. I don't routinely read the fan card threads. [looks] I do see what you mean; that smells a lot less like a troll.

904

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Anthology/Fan edtion PLEASE

« on: March 17, 2018, 04:22:55 pm »

There can be a coherent theme alongside a return to old-favourite mechanics. For example, nobody seems to mind much that, while Empires is a theme running through the card names and artwork in that expansion, it's got basically nothing to do with the mechanics.

905

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Surplus

« on: March 17, 2018, 04:17:49 pm »

Chase Adolphson is just very young.

Allegedly. /-8

I don't know. It may just be bad luck, but a lot of what they say seems to be finely calculated to be wrong in ways that cause slight outrage and a smidgen of controversy without being as blatant as "Chapel is a bad card". Meanwhile, those wrong things aren't interspersed with correct things to the degree I'd have expected. I mean, it's pretty easy for even an inexperienced player to say correct things about Dominion once in a while, right?

Also, their remarks seem fairly widely distributed across the forums, cropping up unexpectedly in the middle of some fairly advanced threads such as this one. Call me Mr Suspicious, but it's almost as though it was a sock puppet for an avid forum user.

Having said which, I've not been sure enough to be the one who calls them out.

906

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Anthology/Fan edtion PLEASE

« on: March 17, 2018, 03:44:33 pm »

This kind of request comes up a lot. Which suggests to me that a lot of people are really keen for it.

Now, admittedly, the people who are really keen for it are also the people who will probably buy any new expansion, even if they'd prefer a Treasure Chest expansion, so publishing other expansions may, indeed, make more sense. But some day, Donald may be stumped for an idea or, worse, will produce an expansion people perceive as lacklustre...

And actually, I've said this before: most old mechanics could be revisited successfully without requiring components from the old sets. Durations have already demonstrated this. As have Events.

Potions, Platinum and Colony are in the base cards set, so even people without Alchemy/Prosperity have them now.

Night and overpay require no special equipment.

More per-player tokens like the ones in Adventures could work independently of the existing ones.

New Looters and new Ruins could turn up together, so players with the new expansion had both, and players who also had Dark Ages could mix and match.

Beyond that, it wouldn't be too onerous to include six "tavern cards" in another expansion with Reserves, for people who didn't have Adventures. And I'd say it was acceptable to ask players without Guilds or Seaside to find their own coin tokens.

VP tokens... um... suddenly turned up again in Empires, in defiance of this reasoning! Maybe debt could turn up again some day, similarly?


I'm sure I'm not the only person who'd be more interested in seeing some cool combinations of existing mechanics over still more new ones.

907

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Extending the game

« on: March 16, 2018, 02:35:43 pm »

Agreed. At the start of the evening.

If there's 30 minutes before home time and someone suggests finishing up with a quick game of Dominion, you don't want to go full random, shall we say!

(I very seldom play full random, actually. I rather enjoy crafting kingdoms, tuning them to the mood of the table, carefully keeping my kingdom creation hat separate from my playing hat.)

908

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion jokes/pick-up lines

« on: March 16, 2018, 12:57:53 am »

Duke and Duchess?

They'd be husband and wife, not brother and sister. (Well, unless something really obscure and exciting had happened with two different duchies.)

909

Help! / Re: A lot going on, here...

« on: March 16, 2018, 12:51:56 am »

Really interesting board! There's a powerful engine here with Artificer and tons of draw (Magpie with the +1 Card token from Teacher, or Shepherd + inherited Estates). Inheritance should go on Magpie or Shepherd, and then Artificers can pick up Estates rapidly.

To be clear, are you advocating forgetting about economy entirely and instead gaining everything via Artificer and Alms?

If so, how do you ever muster $7 for the Inheritance? I agree, looking at the kingdom with fresh eyes, that Leprechaun may not be the greatest way ever of reaching $7, but there has to be some plan to achieve it!

910

Help! / A lot going on, here...

« on: March 15, 2018, 02:25:20 pm »

I played an RL Adventures and Nocturne game last night:

Kingdom piles:



Events:


Heirlooms:


I lost badly.

Both I and opponent wanted Inheritance on Shepherd. Both I and my opponent opted for Gold from Leprechaun as our economy. But there we diverged.

My opponent opened Magpie/Leprechaun, and used the flood of Magpies to get Wishes instead of Hexes after a shuffle or two. They only bought one Shepherd, and one Estate. But they ramped up to Province turns pretty quickly.

I instead opened Peasant/Leprechaun, intending that the Peasant would give me double-Estate turns early on and double-Province turns later. While waiting to spike $7, I bought Estates, and a couple of early Shepherds to lubricate things.

Annoyingly, two of my first three Hexes were War, trashing one of my Shepherds and Locusts, turning an Estate into a Curse. And I reached $6 three times before I managed to spike $7. Meanwhile, my opponent's shuffling seemed to be alternating Magpies with Treasures an uncanny proportion of the time. By the time I'd managed to Inherit and get my engine going, my opponent had choked on green... but it was too late.

Each of us once used Alms to buy Cemetery and trash Copper. Opponent took out four Copper that way; I trashed three Copper and held back my Haunted Mirror. I'm not sure if that was a mistake, or if it could have paid off if I'd got going more quickly. A Ghostly Shepherd feels like a fine start to a turn!

It feels like the luck went heavily against me, but did I also choose the wrong line of play? My instinct was to focus somewhat on winning the Estate split, but then my opponent didn't compete. Neither of us bought Artificer; if I'd got going two or three shuffles sooner I expect I'd have picked one up as a way of parlaying all that spare green into a Province once I'd started drawing my deck.

Opponent used one Wish to gain a Hireling. I'm not sure that was a smart choice, but they were winning comfortably by that point anyway. With hindsight, I wish I'd picked up one Ratcatcher instead of an Estate early on, to thin things out a bit. (And to trigger Haunted Mirror more easily than Cemetery can.)

Nobody even thought of touching Crypt or Exorcist.

911

Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's Discuss Nocturne Cards: Cobbler

« on: March 14, 2018, 09:07:55 pm »

But if there are a variety of good engine components that cost 4$ or less, putting together a consistent engine is too easy without it.

It looks like a nice, reliable way to pick up the Villages and Smithies (or equivalents) you need while focusing on buying payload.

I agree it doesn't seem to work as well as it looks like it should, though. /-8

912

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Heirlooms and split piles as full kindoms piles?

« on: March 14, 2018, 09:03:16 pm »

My wife loves Dominion but hates complex or weird cards, she loves the simplicity of the base game and the further we go from that the less she likes it.

Are there any other people you can play Dominion with? There are expansions which, though they'd be bad value for money if she was the only person who was ever going to play them, do contain several surprisingly simple yet interesting cards.

Examples from (fairly) recent expansions:

• Dark Ages: Armory, Bandit Camp, Junk Dealer
• Guilds: Candlestick Maker, Baker
• Adventures: Port, Lost City, Hireling

913

Dominion Articles / Re: Salt the Earth and global effects

« on: March 13, 2018, 04:49:04 pm »

The best way I've found to use Embargo is to drop the token on something my opponent is intending to buy, while I have a plan to gain it some other way.

914

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cursed gold opening. 7/2, 6/3, or 4/5?

« on: March 13, 2018, 04:41:33 pm »

Surely, when deciding whether or not to play Cursed Gold,  how strong the available trashing is matters at least as much as what expensive power cards are available?

I used Cursed Gold to open Wharf/Monastery last night; the Curse was a brief and minor inconvenience.

915

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Extending the game

« on: March 13, 2018, 04:25:27 pm »

Tweak that might not suck: players may start with up to 8 coin tokens, provided they also start with an additional Copper per token they take.

916

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What should Dominion do next?

« on: March 13, 2018, 04:12:26 pm »

Turning that on its head (and I do notice this is rapidly veering into variant/fan territory rather than general discussion), one of Reiner Knizia's signature game elements is what I'll loosely call "eras": you play the game a bit, then some proportion of the game state is swept away while other parts survive into the subsequent era.

So instead of having something survive between games, there could be something which happens in the middle of a game and resets a bunch of stuff.

As a random example intended more to show what I mean than to actually play well: have a pile which, when selected, has you pick an extra pile that you stack underneath it like an Empires split pile. When, after someone's turn, the top half the pile is gone, immediately everyone may set aside as much of their deck as they like until game-end scoring, gains 7 more Coppers, shuffles, draws 5.

917

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What are all the deviations from the 2/5 and 3/4 split?

« on: March 12, 2018, 11:34:13 am »

Port

I think this is quite a stretch since you cannot choose the other €4 card drawn.

Feels OK to me.

So too does Stonemason, which could get you anything up to $2/$1/$1/$2/$2/$2 if you go wild with it when Poor Houses are available.

Other possibilities I can see:

• Another player buys Lost City
• Another player buys Messenger
• Summon
• To state the obvious, all the terrifying potential combinations of things already mentioned. (-8

918

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Semi-Interesting Dominion Moments Thread

« on: March 12, 2018, 11:24:21 am »

Just won a game 3-1. No victory cards were bought.

Many years ago, I won a game by having the least negative score. The cards I remember were Torturer, Grand Market, Quarry and Outpost. The Grand Markets had all gone and our engines were revved up ready to go, but I figured since I'd taken by far the fewest Curses it was safer to end the game at once on piles (Grand Market, Torturer, Curse).

I even had to buy the last couple of Curses myself!

919

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What should Dominion do next?

« on: March 10, 2018, 11:29:48 pm »

Aha! The long-awaited promo card with a Hanabi theme!

920

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: March 09, 2018, 11:29:34 pm »

You're using this example of a hand of Cache and four Coppers like it's guaranteed to happen.

Then again, the on-gain does make it a whole bunch more likely?

And I like it when Treasure-heavy strategies are occasionally competitive.

Hear, hear.

When people denounce Gold gainers on the grounds that Gold is a bad card to have in your deck, I find myself hoping they're wrong or, if they're right, that Donald does something to fix that. Money ought to stay relevant!

921

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: March 09, 2018, 09:28:41 pm »

A cool thing to do with Mine, which alone is probably not enough to make it good, but can make it shine occasionally (and be real fun), is to let it upgrade to up to more.

$4 more seems an interesting prospect. Copper to Potion; Silver to Bank. But, say, Copper to Venture, plus Copper to Platinum in two hops rather than three feels dangerously overpowered.

922

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: March 09, 2018, 01:49:59 pm »

Contraband fits well in the Prosperity expansion.

It's quite amusing to play Contraband and watch your neighbour try to second-guess whether they should be prohibiting Colony, Platinum or King's Court. (-8<

I also remember a game where my opponent played Contraband and I named Stonemason. They looked strangely at me and then went "ooooooooh!". With hindsight, I should never have mentioned it.

(This is possibly an anecdote for the AI thread as well. Good luck teaching a computer to keep its stupid mouth shut about something like that!)

923

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Surplus

« on: March 09, 2018, 01:43:45 pm »

Another example of surplus to ensure consistency is having enough non-terminal draw in your engine that you're unlikely to get a hand that stalls.

Spending 1 turn buying the Laboratory that will prevent you stalling an expected 1.2 times is good play, even if it causes overdraw.

924

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Surplus

« on: March 09, 2018, 01:08:08 pm »

A big reason for surplus that you don't mention is to mitigate a lack of consistency. It might well be worth risking a surplus to avoid the risk of a deficit.

925

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: March 08, 2018, 06:16:53 pm »

Fool - The problem isn't that it's weak, but that it's slow.  When you're not lost in the woods, gain only one boon, plus a vanilla bonus.  +1 card +1 Action would be cool.

You're in danger of making Fool too similar to Pixie, Tracker and/or Bard, though.