Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

51

Game Reports / Rabble / Fairgrounds board

« on: December 23, 2015, 05:01:19 pm »

So I started playing this game the other day, and then my friend had to leave so we never finished it:

Hamlet (bane)
Fortune Teller
Watchtower
Young Witch
Hunting Party
Jester
Rabble
Royal Seal
Venture
Fairgrounds
King's Court
...with Colonies

What strategy would you recommend? With Young Witch and Colonies it's not too hard to get 8-point Fairgrounds, making Fairgrounds a much cheaper source of VP than Colonies ($12 for 16 points instead of $11 for 10 points). And there are good components for an engine (even with no trashing)—but it looks like the engine would be really fragile once you start greening. While you're building the engine you can dodge your opponent's Rabble etc. by top-decking engine components with Watchtower and Royal Seal, but once you're buying green you have less opportunity to do that, you have more targets for Rabble to begin with, and your Hunting Party is less likely to skip dead cards. We didn't get to the greening phase of the game before my friend had to leave, so I'm not sure if my engine would have been able to stand up to it. Thoughts?

52

Puzzles and Challenges / Round the mulberry bush

« on: December 08, 2015, 12:47:21 pm »

I play Action X from my hand.

Once Action X is finished resolving, the gamestate is exactly the same—it is as if Action X had been an Action card that said "do nothing". All cards are in the same places they were when I put Action X in my play area, I have no more (or fewer) coins, actions, or buys, etc.

But! Action X didn't actually do nothing! During the course of resolving Action X, a single card ran around the mulberry bush, passing through four distinct locations and stopping in the fourth, right back where it started.

How did this happen?

53

Puzzles and Challenges / What's missing?

« on: November 06, 2015, 02:41:45 am »

Here are some Action cards! There's one that should be on the list but isn't. Which one?

Coppersmith
Haunted Woods
Outpost
Possession
Swamp Hag

54

Variants and Fan Cards / Battle of Wits

« on: August 09, 2015, 01:49:14 pm »

Inspired by something from Really Bad Card Ideas:

Which? - Action/Attack - $5
+2 Cards
Each other other play gains a Curse card or any other card of your choice.  You must make them guess which card.

I think this is kind of a fun idea for an Attack. It'd have to be online-only, I suppose:

Battle of Wits
Action–Attack: $4
+$2
Choose a card in the supply. Each other player simultaneously guesses what card you chose. Anyone who guessed wrong gains a copy of the chosen card.


Obviously you want to make them gain a Curse. But they know that, so they should guess Curse to protect themselves. But that means you don't want to pick Curse; you should pick Copper or Estate if they're going to guess Curse. But they know you know that, so if you're not going to pick Curse, they should guess something else. But if they're going to guess something else, maybe you should choose Curse after all….

55

Puzzles and Challenges / Edge-case puzzle: exceptions to Inheritance rules

« on: May 02, 2015, 07:57:36 pm »

Inheritance gives "your Estates" the abilities of some other card in the supply. What are "your Estates"? The rules say:

"An Estate is yours if either it started in your deck, or you gained it or bought it, or you were passed it with Masquerade. An Estate stops being yours if you trash it, return it to the Supply, pass it with Masquerade, or are stopped from gaining it due to Possession or Trader."

What situations are exceptions to these rules? That is, under what circumstances can an Estate meet the stated qualifications for being "yours", and yet not be yours, or vice verse?

I can think of a couple.

56

Rules Questions / Prince and Reserves

« on: April 29, 2015, 04:06:40 pm »

Ordinarily using Prince on a Reserve would strand the Prince, since the Reserve isn't discarded from play the turn it's played. But—if you Prince a Duplicate or a Royal Carriage, then…
…at the beginning of your turn you play the Reserve card, putting it on the Tavern mat;
…then once you gain or play another card, you could call the Reserve card to repeat it and put the Reserve back in play;
…and then discard the Reserve in the Cleanup phase of the same turn, triggering Prince to set it aside once more.

In other words, you can successfully Prince a Duplicate or Royal Carriage as long as you call the Reserve card back every turn, right?

Does the lose-track rule kick in because the Reserve has moved itself to the Tavern mat and back before being discarded? I don't think it does, since Prince isn't trying to keep track of it; it's just checking to see if it's discarded from play or not.

57

Game Reports / Any more interesting potential on this board?

« on: April 27, 2015, 08:07:20 pm »

So I played this game yesterday. It was our first game mixing Adventures with other expansions, so we decided to randomly select five Adventures and five Intrigue and/or Hinterlands. Here's what we got:

Duchess
Guide
Bridge Troll, Cache, Embassy, Haunted Woods, Relic, Wine Merchant
Harem, Nobles
Plan, Scouting Party

So: no villages except Nobles, no trashing except Plan. I looked at the board, saw no engine potential, and basically played straight-up Haunted Woods / BM. I won, but my opponent didn't really have a strategy so I don't know if this was actually the optimal approach. Is there anything more interesting I should have done on this board?

(More specifically, what I did: put Plan on Haunted Woods for a modicum of trashing; buy 3 Haunted Woods and thereafter spend $5 on Relic, $6 on Harem, $10 on Province + Scouting Party. I got one Guide at some point too. Haunted Woods' draw is good enough that with three of them I could play one almost every turn and usually afford at least a Harem; I never bought Gold because I didn't seem to need it.)

58

Rules Questions / +Card token and when-you-play

« on: April 27, 2015, 12:12:40 pm »

If my +Card token is on an Attack and I have Urchin in play, do I get +1 Card from the token before or after I trash the Urchin and get the Mercenary? Or do they happen at the same time (and therefore I choose the order)?

59

Rules Questions / "Resolve"

« on: April 26, 2015, 09:54:23 am »

The Adventures rule book doesn't really define what it means to "resolve" an Action card, but I guess the intended interpretation is something like "finish executing its on-play effects (but not its other effects)"? This is important for when you can call Coin of the Realm and Royal Carriage.

In this BGG thread, for instance, Donald explains that you can't call Royal Carriage after calling another Reserve card; executing its on-call effects doesn't count as "resolving" it. And there are other Action cards that you can play to have effects other than when you play them: you call Royal Carriage on Duration cards right after you play the Duration card, not after you're done "resolving" its effect at the beginning of your next turn. I assume you call Royal Carriage on Scheme after you get the +1 Card and +1 Action, not after you "resolve" what Scheme does in the cleanup phase.

60

Rules Questions / "Naming" a card

« on: April 13, 2015, 11:08:29 am »

So when you name a card, you're not forced to name an actual card that's being used in the current game; this comes up, for example, when you play Mystic but and want to make sure you don't draw anything. You don't even have to name a card that could in principle be in your deck; you're free to say "the Knights randomizer" or "the Three of Clubs" or "Black Lotus" or whatever.

This has led to an assumption on these board that the instruction "name a card" is actually equivalent to "say some words", whether it's the name of a card or not—and if the words you say happen to be the name of a card, then you get the intended effect.

But with the introduction of Events, "name a card" can't just be "say some words", right?

If you play Contraband, and your opponent "names a card" by saying the word "Expedition", that doesn't actually block you from buying Expedition that turn, right? Because Expedition, the Event, isn't a card, and so your opponent hasn't actually succeeded in naming a card to block you from buying.

So I think, as a board, we need to revise our interpretation of what's covered by the instruction "name a card".

61

Game Reports / Weak Colony board

« on: January 22, 2015, 12:25:44 am »

So I just played a three-player (IRL) Colony game with the following cards:

Village
Workshop
Advisor
Farming Village
Herald
Quarry
Smithy
City
Contraband
Bank

Things to note: no trashing whatsoever; copious +Actions; only +Buy is Contraband and powered-up City.

What ended up happening in this game is basically, I and one opponent both assembled a Smithy engine with Contraband and Workshop to pick up components, and a couple of Banks and a Platinum. (The other opponent basically noodled around without a plan, but her presence did contribute to emptying piles and whatnot.) Emptying the Smithies meant we could mostly draw our decks using 3 or 4 Cities each but couldn't do much with the $30ish we were producing. We held off from greening for a while while we played chicken over emptying the Farming Villages; I managed to Workshop the last one in mid-turn to finally activate City's +buy, but didn't have enough buys to both take the lead and empty a third pile until two or three turns later (fortunately my opponent's engine stalled on the same turns mine did).

Was building a draw engine and then waiting for City to activate the right strategy here? Or would it have been more effective to just try and produce a Big Moneyish deck that could produce $11 on most turn and try to grab Colonies one at a time?

62

Puzzles and Challenges / Buy but don't gain?

« on: December 16, 2014, 08:14:31 pm »

In Dominion, buying is separate from gaining: (1) first you pay for a card, and any on-buy effects happen, and (2) after that you gain a copy of that card from the supply, and any on-gain effects happen.

As far as I can tell, there are seven events in Dominion which can stop (2) from happening if (1) has happened. Two of them are pretty well-known, and the other five have something in common.

What are they?

63

Variants and Fan Cards / Buy but don't gain?

« on: December 16, 2014, 08:06:06 pm »

In Dominion, buying is separate from gaining: (1) first you pay for a card, and any on-buy effects happen, and (2) after that you gain a copy of that card from the supply, and any on-gain effects happen.

As far as I can tell, there are seven events in Dominion which can stop (2) from happening if (1) has happened. Two of them are pretty well-known, and the other five have something in common.

What are they?

64

Game Reports / Lucky? with Rats

« on: September 15, 2014, 05:19:26 pm »

I played a 4p Shelter game yesterday with the following kingdom:

Poor House, Beggar, Squire, Watchtower, Rats, Spy, Counterfeit, Adventurer, King's Court, Forge

I opened Watchtower/Rats and got very lucky early draws—my Rats never failed to line up with my Watchtower and I bought a Forge on turn 4. After that I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do; I was thinking I would Forge pairs of Rats into Provinces, but my Rats always lined up with my Watchtower and on each individual turn it seemed like a better tactical decision at the time to trash rather than keep the incoming Rats, so I never actually had a pair of Rats to Forge. I eventually just ended up buying Gold and drawing for it with Watchtower, which probably wasn't ideal—though I ended up finishing second, and would have won if I'd been paying better attention to the score and Forged Province into the last Province to end the game on my turn.

Thoughts on the best approach on this board?

65

Dominion General Discussion / Moneylender or Baron?

« on: May 05, 2014, 01:52:34 am »

I just played a 3-player game with this kingdom (no Colonies, no Shelters):

Vagrant, Fishing Village, Woodcutter, Baron, Bureaucrat, Moneylender, Bazaar, Upgrade, Goons, Hunting Grounds

Is it better to use your $4 opening on Baron (to try to spike an early Goons) or Moneylender (to get an early start on trashing)? Or something else (e.g., a double–Fishing Village opening)?

Once people have said what they think the right approach is, I'll say what I did and how it worked out.

66

Puzzles and Challenges / What's missing?

« on: April 06, 2014, 12:49:57 am »

What do these cards have in common, and what is the one other card that has this property but isn't on the list?

Band of Misfits
Beggar
Catacombs
Conspirator
Cultist
Feodum
Fortress
Horse Traders
Hunting Grounds
Lighthouse
Market Square
Moat
Procession
Quarry
Rats
Secret Chamber
Squire
Tunnel
University
Vineyard

Honorable mention: Vagrant

Edit: Also Prince!

67

Dominion General Discussion / They learn fast

« on: February 17, 2014, 10:26:05 am »

A friend of mine got the base game recently. She reports: "We've been playing Dominion at least three or four times a week since then. We've played so many games, we actually played one board where Adventurer was useful! …I still didn't win with it, though."

68

Dominion General Discussion / Nonterminal percentage

« on: January 23, 2014, 11:58:13 pm »

So, the base set has way fewer non-terminal Actions among its kingdom cards than any expansion except Prosperity (which makes up for its small number of non-terminal Actions with a large number of Treasures). Any idea why this is the case?

Prosperity: 26%
4 nonterminal, 12 terminal, 1 King's Court

Dominion: 27%
6 nonterminal, 18 terminal, 1 Throne Room

Hinterlands: 37.5%
6 nonterminal, 11 terminal, 3 variable

Seaside: 38%
10 nonterminal, 16 terminal

Intrigue: 41%
7 nonterminal, 11 terminal, 5 variable

Guilds: 42%
5 nonterminal, 7 terminal

Cornucopia: 45%
5 nonterminal, 6 terminal
…Maybe demote it to 42%, since Tournament can add terminals to your deck.

Dark Ages: 45%
13.2 nonterminal, 16.8 terminal,  2 variable, 1 Procession

Alchemy: 72%
6 nonterminal, 3 terminal, 1 Golem

69

Puzzles and Challenges / Gain and play

« on: January 07, 2014, 10:15:43 pm »

With the famous University/Watchtower combo, you can gain a card and play it the same turn: gain with University, topdeck with Watchtower, play Watchtower and draw the gained card, play the gained card.

There are lots of other ways to gain a card and play it the same turn, but most of them involve having a deck-drawing engine.

However, there is at least one other two-card gain-and-play combo: two cards X and Y that are sufficient to guarantee your ability to gain a card and play it on the same turn.

(By "sufficient" I mean that no cards' abilities other than X and Y are used to execute the gain-and-play, and it can be done regardless of the condition of your deck and discard pile. There may still be edge cases that could prevent you—e.g., University/Watchtower fails if your handsize is larger than 7 or if there are no Actions costing up to $5 left in the supply—but I'll trust you to recognize such situations as mere edge cases that don't invalidate the premise.)

What are X and Y? There may be more than one valid answer, though I only have one in mind.

70

Game Reports / Bad opening shuffle luck

« on: November 22, 2013, 09:03:48 am »

Debating with yourself over whether to open Wharf/nothing or Young Witch / nothing becomes moot when you draw 5/2 on turns 3 and 4 also and your Wharf and Young Witch collide on turn 5. 

…That's all, I just wanted to whine about that.

71

Innovation Game Reports / Order is important

« on: November 11, 2013, 09:01:09 pm »

I'm very proud of one particular tactical point in this very close game:

http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201311/11/game-20131111-170653-8067fb74.html

Talia had built up a huge lead in points, most of it via Lighting and therefore in 7s. When I lucked into drawing Mass Media, then, returning all her 7s was the obvious way to go. (Turn 20.)

When I was about to return Talia's 7s, I realized that I had Atomic Theory on my board, and the 7 pile was otherwise empty. That meant if I paid careful attention to the order in which I returned Talia's 7s—rather than just shoving them at the bottom of the pile the way I usually do—I could plan out exactly my next however-many melds with Atomic Theory. And so I made a point of putting the 7s in the order in which I thought I could use them.

And it worked out exactly! Well, Combustion may have been a bit of a wash. But if I hadn't melded Railroad and Publications when I did, I wouldn't have won; and if I hadn't known exactly what cards Atomic Theory was going to draw, I probably would have tried drawing 8s instead of 7s since there are so many duds in the 7 pile. So paying careful attention to the order in which I returned a whole pile of cards absolutely saved the day for me.

72

Variants and Fan Cards / Token

« on: November 04, 2013, 12:46:19 am »

Extra cards with the "Curse" type may cause confusion.

I see what you did there.

(New thread so as not to distract from the discussion in that thread.)

73

Dominion General Discussion / Okay, Halloween kingdom:

« on: October 30, 2013, 05:47:44 pm »

Scheme
Tribute
Masquerade
Band of Misfits
Witch
Jester
Urchin
Forager
Harvest
Horn of Plenty

74

Dominion General Discussion / Non-terminal attacks

« on: October 14, 2013, 05:56:13 pm »

I just noticed how few non-terminal Attack cards there are. This makes sense, of course—repeatedly attacking your opponent can be very strong and very annoying. Having Attack cards be mostly terminal makes it that much harder to just load your deck up with Attack cards so you can Attack every turn; to do that you need to either also invest in a lot of villages or run the risk of your terminals colliding.

So what are the exceptions?

Sir Bailey and Dame Molly—these are only 2 out of 10 Knights, so you can't load your deck with them
Familiar—has a Potion cost so you can't get a lot of them fast
Urchin—a very weak attack
Spy—a fairly weak attack, especially if not stacked
Scrying Pool—has a Potion cost and the fairly weak Spy attack

...and what does that leave?

Minion. The only non-terminal Attack that (a) is relatively easy to stuff your deck with and (b) reliably has a decently-strong effect on the opponent (discard-5-draw-4 is probably on average at least as effective as Margrave, and it's idempotent rather than weakened by repetition). So no wonder people find Minion annoying to play against—not just because it's disappointing to discard your hand, but because it's the only card that makes it really easy to very reliably hit with an attack of pretty decent strength.

75

Rules Questions / Parentheses are meaningful

« on: September 22, 2013, 09:50:08 pm »

Parentheses are meaningful!

I think.

Cutpurse says: "Each other player discards a Copper card (or reveals a hand with no Copper)."

If it said "Each other player discards a Copper card or reveals a hand with no Copper," I think standard Dominion interpretation would give the opponent the choice of which to do. And then, if you had Copper in hand, you could choose "reveal a hand with no Copper", and then just "do as much as you can", as the saying goes (just like with Torturer, you can choose to gain a Curse even if no Curses are in the supply).

Obviously you can't do this, so we have to infer that "X (or Y)" doesn't mean the same thing as "X or Y" on Dominion cards.