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

Forum Game Awards / 2016 Mafia Setup of the Year: Voting

« on: January 05, 2017, 09:55:48 am »

Mafia Setup of the Year
Players, mods, and spectators should nominate the most impressive original setup introduced in 2016 based on the player/spectator experience.  This award highlights and recognizes setup creation by a mod, and focuses on all the important aspects of a good game of mafia: including balance, roles, and thematic interactions.

The nominees are:

M79: Sherlock Mafia by faust.
RMM29: Board Game Mafia by Archetype.
RMM35: Rewind Mafia by mail-mi.
RMM37: Worms Armageddon Mafia by faust.

52

Forum Game Awards / 2016 Mafia Game of the Year: Voting

« on: January 05, 2017, 09:53:21 am »

Mafia Game of the Year
Players, mods, and spectators should nominate the most memorable game from 2016, based on the player/spectator experience.  This award highlights and recognizes the overall best game held during 2016, and includes all aspects of a mafia game on f.ds.  When someone asks, "hey, what game should I reread to know if I should start playing mafia at f.ds?," this should be the first game that comes to mind.

The nominees are:

M72: Marvel Heroes Mafia by ashersky.
M75: Cupcake Mafia by Haddock.
M79: Sherlock Mafia by faust.
M80: Fruit Ninja Mafia by Roadrunner7671.
M86: Ghibli Mafia by ashersky.
M87: The Aperture Science Robot Humanization Initiative by mail-mi.

The poll remains open for 14 days.

53

Feedback / ShuffleIT username?

« on: January 04, 2017, 09:14:53 am »

I realize we had a Goko username in our profiles until long after Goko was gone, and we still have Isotropic from some reason (nostalgia? Innovation? I don't know)

But with the new client around, I think we should introduce ShuffleIT usernames, considering that some people may actually use names different from the ones they had on Goko/MF, and new members may not even know what Goko is.

Can this be changed?

54

Forum Games / f.ds Mafia Meetup! (August 9 - 13, Berlin)

« on: December 13, 2016, 10:53:58 am »

So I had this idea yesterday: We have a couple of players currently living in Europe. Europe's not that big. Maybe we could make a meetup happen?

Not exactly sure when or how; I'm just starting this thread to see if anone would actually be interested in this. We could play IRL mafia, Dominion and other stuff.

55

Forum Game Awards / 2016 f.ds Mafia Game Awards: Nominations open!

« on: December 12, 2016, 06:57:32 pm »

We are now taking nominations for all categories listed below.

Mafia Game of the Year
Players, mods, and spectators should nominate the most memorable game from 2016, based on the player/spectator experience.  This award highlights and recognizes the overall best game held during 2016, and includes all aspects of a mafia game on f.ds.  When someone asks, "hey, what game should I reread to know if I should start playing mafia at f.ds?," this should be the first game that comes to mind.

Mafia Setup of the Year
Players, mods, and spectators should nominate the most impressive original setup introduced in 2016 based on the player/spectator experience.  This award highlights and recognizes setup creation by a mod, and focuses on all the important aspects of a good game of mafia: including balance, roles, and thematic interactions.

Flavor of the Year
We all know that writing flavor can be a hard and grueling task.  This award recognizes those mod specifically who put the time in to choose, implement, and write flavor that improves the game experience, while not disadvantaging players who don't know the flavor.  Players, mods, and spectators should nominate the most spectacular flavor used in a game in 2016.

Town Player of the Year
Players, mods, and spectators should nominate the one player that they would rank as the absolute best when given the town alignment in 2016. This award highlights and recognizes a player that best embodies the virtues of good, and includes characteristics such as strong scumhunting, the ability to convince fellow players of good ideas, plans, setup theory; and appropriate and impactful use of night actions.

Scum Player of the Year
Players, mods, and spectators should nominate the one player that they would rank as the absolute best when given an anti-town alignment in 2016. This award highlights and recognizes a player that best embodies the virtues of (in-game) evil, and includes characteristics such as an uncanny ability to fool everyone else, extraordinary skill at exploiting any extra information received as scum, phenomenal fake claims, and impactful use of night actions.

Newbie of the Year
Players, mods, and spectators should nominate the one player who debuted in 2016 that rises above the rest, regardless of alignment.  This award highlights and recognizes a new player's ability to quickly and accurately learn metas, rules, setups, and make an immediate positive impact on f.ds's mafia world.

Most Fun to Play With
We all know that playing mafia on f.ds isn't all about wins and losses, about stats and flavor. First and foremost, it is a social experience. This award takes the social dimension of mafia games into account: Players, mods and spectators should nominate the one player they are always happy to see on a signup list. This award highlights and recongizes a player's ability to turn a game into a great experience, and includes characterics such as friendliness, wit and the ability to deescalate tense in-game situations.

Best Performance in a Single Game
Players, mods, and spectators should nominate the single best performance by one player in a game held in 2016.  This award highlights and recognizes an extraordinary performance as any alignment, and may include characterics such as stellar scumhunting, taking the most use out a power role, winning a game through thorough planning and theorycrafting as well as unusual and effective fakeclaims.

Mod of the Year
Players, mods, and spectators should nominate the absolute best mod of 2016, based on their performance at all aspects of running a game.  This award highlights and recognizes a mod's attention to detail, creativity, and dedication to the game and f.ds.  Specifically, this should include setup creation and explanation, flavor writing, and accuracy in vote counts and rulings, and availability to the players.


Here is a quick run down of eligible games and players, to help you in nominating:

Normal Games: Mafia 72 (Marvel Heroes) to Mafia 89 (Best Dominion Card)
M72: Marvel Heroes Mafia by ashersky. Town wins!
M73: Forest Fire by iguanaiguana.  Mafia wins flawlessly!
M74: X-shots 2 Apocalypse Now by yuma.  Town wins.
M75: Cupcake Mafia by Haddock.  Town wins.
M76: Soap Opera Mafia by gkrieg13.  Town wins.
M77: Scout Mafia by 2.71828......  Town wins.
M78: Insomnia Mafia by A Drowned Kernel.  Mafia wins.
M79: Sherlock Mafia by faust. Serial Killer and Survivor win.
M80: Fruit Ninja Mafia by Roadrunner7671.  Mafia wins.
M81: Desperation Mafia by yuma.  Town wins.
M82: Speed Dating Mafia by EFHW.  Mafia  wins.
M83: Duel Mafia by silverspawn.  Town wins.
M84: Battlestar Galactica Mafia by Haddock.  Mafia wins!
M85: Olympics Mafia by gkrieg13. Town wins!
M86: Ghibli Mafia by ashersky.  Mafia wins!
M87: The Aperture Science Robot Humanization Initiative by mail-mi.  Town wins.
M88: Covert Affairs Mafia by gkrieg13.  Mafia wins!
M89: Best Dominion Card Mafia by LaLight.  Ended inconclusively.

RMM Games: RMM 29 (Board Game Mafia) to RMM 37 (Worms Armageddon Mafia)
RMM29: Board Game Mafia by Archetype.  Town wins.
RMM30: Making Fun Mafia by faust.  Mafia wins.
RMM31: Untitled Mafia by silverspawn.  Mafia wins.
RMM32: Walking Dead Mafia by ashersky.  Cult wins.
RMM33: Heroes Mafia by gkrieg13.  Mafia wins!
Dune Mafia 3 by ashersky.  Mafia wins.
RMM35: Rewind Mafia by mail-mi.  Town wins!
RMM37: Worms Armageddon Mafia by faust.  Mafia wins!

BM Games: BM 24 (Secret Societies)
BM24: Secret Societies by Archetype.  Town + Skull + Bones win.

Newbie Games: NM 8 (Time Loops)
NM8: Time Loops by silverspawn. Mafia wins!

Blitz Games: None

2016 Debuts:
M72: Ampharos
M78: limetime
RMM33: Cellovix, Cron, fontisian, Jan, teamlyle
M79: Melsiandre
M82: ced
M84: Calamitas, diedre91, SpaceAnemone
M85: LaLight
NM8: McGarnacle, Zigaton
BM24: thesoundandthefury
M86: schadd
RMM37: Dylan32
M87: Fargo, JakeTheBaseballGod22
M89: IDontPlayThisGame

56

Mafia Game Threads / M90: Literature Mafia (Scum wins!)

« on: November 22, 2016, 11:06:13 am »

Welcome to M90: Literature Mafia!

Mod: faust, comod: schadd

This is a semi-open setup for 12 players in the style of asher9++. See second post for additional information.

Players:
1. LaLight
2. Calamitas
3. gkrieg13
4. Witherweaver
5. Robz888
6. SpaceAnemone
7. silverspawn
8. J Reggie
9. teamlyle
10. Eevee
11. mcmcsalot
12. pacovf

Spectators tagged: Archetype, Roadrunner7671, mail-mi, Joseph2302, 2.71828....., scott_pilgrim

Day starts/ends:

General rules

Changes to the usual rule sets are marked in olive.

The Golden Rule:

Please remember that this is a game and your main objective is to have fun!  Be considerate of each other, don’t get personal, and enjoy the game. Please read The Civility Pledge before signing up for any mafia game on this site.  If you have not /pledged there, you cannot play. Excessive personal attacks or uncivil behavior may be dealt with by modifiers or modkills.

1. General Gameplay and Etiquette:

1. You may not quote information (either real or fabricated) from any game-related source other than the thread you are posting in. This means no quotes from PMs and no quotes from QTs in the main thread or in another QT. Paraphrasing is acceptable. If you are unsure whether a post is legal, please ask the moderator before posting.
2. There is to be NO personal communication outside of the forum postings and the QTs specifically designed for this purpose.
3. As a general rule you should aim for one post every 24 hours, minimum, to keep the game moving.

2. Voting, Deadlines, and Player Death:

1. Day phases will last 7 days, Twilight lasts 12 hours, Night lasts 36 hours.
2. A simple majority (rounded up) of all living members must agree on one person for a lynch to occur prior to deadline.
3. Once you have reached a simple majority no further unvoting will change someone’s fate. Further votes will also be ignored.
4. Once a player is lynched the game enters twilight until the mod locks the thread; all players including the one who was lynched may continue to post during twilight.
5. If the deadline is hit without a player reaching the majority of votes, there will be no lynch.
6. Please submit votes as: Vote: PlayerName.  Votes will NOT be counted if they are not bold or do not follow this syntax! Obvious abbreviations or nicknames will be counted so long as they are unambiguous.
7. Please submit vote revocations Unvote. Unvotes are not necessary before changing votes.
8. You may Vote: No Lynch - a simple majority of these vote types are required to send the game to Night phase without a lynch.
9. If the game goes on for 3 days and 3 nights without a lynch or night kill, town wins.
10. Once you are killed (either via lynch or night kill) you may no longer post in the game or in Quicktopics. This means that you do not even get a “Bah” post. The dead in this game are silent.
11. If the thread is locked, you may not post.  Threads can be locked for various reasons, but no matter what the reason, you may not post.  The mod may forget to lock the thread, but if they say it is locked, it is still locked.

3. Miscellaneous/Mechanics:

1. Bold, olive text is reserved for the mod.  No invisible/small text is allowed, nor is cryptography.
2. If you have an issue/problem with the game, please discuss this in your role QT.  Do not post issues/complaints in the game thread.
3. The Mods may make mistakes - please point out any mistakes gently.  Mistakes will be corrected where possible, but sometimes mistakes are made that cannot be reversed.  These will stand as final to be commiserated over after the game.
4. Please bold all requests to the Mods so that they don’t get missed.
5. Prods of missing players will be issued upon request after 24 hours of no activity.  A prodded player has 48 hours to respond or risks replacement.  A player who has been prodded 2 times is subject to replacement under rule 3.9 without further notice.
6. Please do not discuss ongoing games, it can unintentionally affect the other game. Do not discuss this game in any thread that is not directly related to it.
7. Rule violations will be dealt with according to their severity, which may include modkill(s) if needed.
8. If you anticipate being unavailable for more than a 48-hour period please post a notice to that effect in the thread.  Treat this game as a commitment.  Be considerate – don’t leave us hanging. Players who fail to post for 48 hours without an announcement, or fail to post for 24 hours repeatedly, risk being subject to replacement and/or being modkilled without further notice.
9. Players who discover they are too busy to play in a game or want to leave the game for civility issues are not allowed to officially /out in the thread.  A request to /out must only be done via a post in the role QT. Please do not use this as a manipulation technique.  (Note players may continue to threaten to /out or imply that they might as long as it does not include an official request). Requests to /out are final once submitted. There will be no /outing and then /inning back into the game so make sure that when you /out you have thought it through and really want to do it. Players that can't be replaced will simply be mod-killed. Whether your request to /out will lead to replacement or a modkill is up to the mod's discretion.

57

Puzzles and Challenges / You can't play them all at once

« on: November 16, 2016, 06:43:38 am »

On a given board, assume that your deck consists of nothing but Treasure cards. No cards in any weird places (Mats, in play, set aside etc.). Your discard is empty.

You can fix any hand of 5 treasure cards that you want to start your turn with. Your challenge is to find a hand of 5 cards, and a fixed ordering of the rest of your deck such that your can maximise the range of $ you are able to cash in if you play all cards in your hand.

In order to preserve our sanity, we will exclude Counterfeit, Crown and Venture from this challenge. And no Villa. Never Villa.

Clarifications:
- you have to play every card that ends up in your hand.
- the state your deck is in has to be possible, i.e. you should be able to give a kingdom that allows you to form this deck.
- it is not enough that you can score $4 and $40; you have to be able to score every value in between.

58

Game Reports / Piledriving Spoils

« on: November 02, 2016, 05:56:58 am »

This was fun.

Code: [Select]

Ferry, Pilgrimage, Advisor, Mining Village, Pirate Ship, Remake, Bandit Camp, Ghost Ship, Giant, Mine, Hireling, Nobles
So this is an interesting board to begin with. There's no +buy, but otherwise the engine components are great. Pilgrimage is a sort of weird pseudo +buy. Also notice the neat interaction of Ferry/Remake.

My opponent was mainly going for a thin engine/BM hybrid deck with lots of Bandit Camps providing ecomony and some other actions, going for Provinces early. I build some more and get a bit behind, and well there isn't a good way to catch up. I go for multi-Giant, but realize that alone is too slow to stop him before he empties the Provinces.

And here it became option to destroy his economy. Just trashing 2 Spoils per turn turned out to be enough to wreck his deck. This is also an example of how the Ferry token can hurt - once I wanted to remake $4-cost into Giant, but my token was on Giant. And my opponent would really have benefitted from Bandit Camp into Gold, but his Ferry token was on Bandit Camp.

Overall, I thought this was a cool board and it's very rare that trashing all the Spoils is a legitimate strategy. Also I love the "screw this" move in my opponent's final turn.

59

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den

« on: September 19, 2016, 03:45:54 pm »

The Roman Empire theme is exquisitely subtle on this one.

Welcome to the last installment of Let's Discuss Landmarks! And what a ride it has been. The participation has been up and down, mostly down, and my own pace was a bit slowed at times, but now the series stands entered into the forums, for future generations to ponder upon the folly of some and to marvel at the prescience of others; like a beautiful monument that shall endure the ages, like a landmark.

Anyway uh. Let's discuss Wolf Den. This one can really make your life hard. What to do about those cards that you really only want one of? Trashers like Chapel are one of the first things that come to mind -  it will always give you -3 VP, unless you can trash it with yet another card. Potion has similar issues. But often, these -3 VP are not what makes you go for another strategy. It should be noted that Ruins can get extremely swingy with this; if you split 5-5, it may be that you end up with 0 VP and your opponent with -15.

The endgame becomes more interesting (as with many Landmarks); if you manage an early 3-pile, then you can be pretty sure that your opponent will still have some uniques in their deck. It also challenges common wisdom about Duchy dancing, because that first Duchy will not yet give you any points.

60

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wall

« on: September 17, 2016, 05:54:05 pm »

I think Donald Trump just wants to build a wall because he has such a small hand size.

It's the landmark that will probably cause you to get the most negative points on average! Because 15 cards is not a lot. Nothing but a Golden Deck and maybe something like Chapel/Treasure Map/BM can win with only 15 cards in the deck.

So basically every card you buy is also a Curse. How do you plan around that? BM is somewhat better with this, since you won't gain as many cards per turn. Or you could build your intricate engine and then try to trash down before the game ends. There could even be trashing megaturns with KC'd Chapels or something, in the right kingdom. Donate is of course very neat for this, but remember you can't actually end the game on Donate. The most viable option is probably Bonfire - you get to play all your actions, and then hopefully have enough buying power to trash them all.

Other thoughts: Junking gets clearly better, as if that was necessary. An kind of low-impact card is suddenly very unattractive, you don't want any of these forgettable cantrips. It's probably a boost to Events, which can do stuff without adding cards to your deck. VP tokens are also a clear winner.

I predict that this will be the Landmark that the community will need the longest to figure out how to play.

61

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Triumphal Arch

« on: September 16, 2016, 06:04:29 pm »

Waiting for someone to make a fan card called Tie.

In a similar vein as tower, this card empowers 2-card combos. But this works only with two Action cards. So think Native Village/Brigde rather than Ironworks/Gardens. And, certainly, engines engines engines. We have seen that Bandit Fort makes BM terribly bad, but when you think about it, the point swing from this in an engine vs BM game is almost as bad.

And it's another card that requires lots of tracking to play well. You need the number of your own and your opponent's top two most common Actions (sometimes even the top 3).

There is a comparison to Palace to be made, because this wants you to collect sets of 2. It is in that regard more powerful than Palace, and more flexible as you may choose which cards to collect, but a bit limited. Outside of weird edge cases, this will never score more than 30 VP, and that's already rather unrealistic.

Some interesting cards to interact with this, in no particular order: Rats, Stonemason, Scyring Pool, Ironworks.
The interaction with Triumph is unfortunately rather limited.

62

Mafia Game Threads / RMM37: Worms Armageddon Mafia (Game over)

« on: September 16, 2016, 05:46:33 pm »

Welcome to RMM37: Worms Armageddon Mafia!

Mod: faust, comod: LaLight

This is a semi-open setup for 12 players. Information about the setup is included in the second post.

Players:
1. Roadrunner7671
2. SpaceAnemone
3. gkrieg13
4. J Reggie
5. silverspawn
6. chairs
7. Ghacob
8. 2.71828.....
9. mail-mi
10. Dylan32
11. schadd
12. EFHW

Spectators tagged: ashersky, iguanaiguana, LostPhoenix

Day starts/ends:

General rules

Changes to the usual rule sets are marked in olive.

The Golden Rule:

Please remember that this is a game and your main objective is to have fun!  Be considerate of each other, don’t get personal, and enjoy the game. Please read The Civility Pledge before signing up for any mafia game on this site.  If you have not /pledged there, you cannot play. Excessive personal attacks or uncivil behavior may be dealt with by modifiers or modkills.

1. General Gameplay and Etiquette:

1. You may not quote information (either real or fabricated) from any game-related source other than the thread you are posting in. This means no quotes from PMs and no quotes from QTs in the main thread or in another QT. Paraphrasing is acceptable. If you are unsure whether a post is legal, please ask the moderator before posting.
2. There is to be NO personal communication outside of the forum postings and the QTs specifically designed for this purpose.
3. As a general rule you should aim for one post every 24 hours, minimum, to keep the game moving.

2. Voting, Deadlines, and Player Death:

1. Day phases will last at most 7 days, Night lasts 48 hours. Day and Twilight combined last at least 24 hours.
2. A simple majority (rounded up) of all living members must agree on one person for a lynch to occur prior to deadline.
3. Once you have reached a simple majority no further unvoting will change someone’s fate. Further votes will also be ignored.
4. Once a player is lynched the game enters twilight until the mod locks the thread; all players including the one who was lynched may continue to post during twilight.
5. If the deadline is hit without a player reaching the majority of votes, there will be no lynch.
6. Please submit votes as: Vote: PlayerName.  Votes will NOT be counted if they are not bold or do not follow this syntax! Obvious abbreviations or nicknames will be counted so long as they are unambiguous.
7. Please submit vote revocations Unvote. Unvotes are not necessary before changing votes.
8. You may Vote: No Lynch - a simple majority of these vote types are required to send the game to Night phase without a lynch.
9. If the game goes on for 3 days and 3 nights without a lynch or night kill, town wins.
10. Once you are killed (either via lynch or night kill) you may no longer post in the game or in Quicktopics. This means that you do not even get a “Bah” post. The dead in this game are silent.
11. If the thread is locked, you may not post.  Threads can be locked for various reasons, but no matter what the reason, you may not post.  The mod may forget to lock the thread, but if they say it is locked, it is still locked.

3. Miscellaneous/Mechanics:

1. Bold, olive text is reserved for the mod.  No invisible/small text is allowed, nor is cryptography.
2. If you have an issue/problem with the game, please discuss this in your role QT.  Do not post issues/complaints in the game thread.
3. The Mods may make mistakes - please point out any mistakes gently.  Mistakes will be corrected where possible, but sometimes mistakes are made that cannot be reversed.  These will stand as final to be commiserated over after the game.
4. Please bold all requests to the Mods so that they don’t get missed.
5. Prods of missing players will be issued upon request after 24 hours of no activity.  A prodded player has 48 hours to respond or risks replacement.  A player who has been prodded 2 times is subject to replacement under rule 3.9 without further notice.
6. Please do not discuss ongoing games, it can unintentionally affect the other game. Do not discuss this game in any thread that is not directly related to it.
7. Rule violations will be dealt with according to their severity, which may include modkill(s) if needed.
8. If you anticipate being unavailable for more than a 48-hour period please post a notice to that effect in the thread.  Treat this game as a commitment.  Be considerate – don’t leave us hanging. Players who fail to post for 48 hours without an announcement multiple times risk being subject to replacement and/or being modkilled without further notice.
9. Players who discover they are too busy to play in a game or want to leave the game for civility issues are not allowed to officially /out in the thread.  A request to /out must only be done via a post in the role QT. Please do not use this as a manipulation technique.  (Note players may continue to threaten to /out or imply that they might as long as it does not include an official request). Requests to /out are final once submitted. There will be no /outing and then /inning back into the game so make sure that when you /out you have thought it through and really want to do it. Players that can't be replaced will simply be mod-killed. Whether your request to /out will lead to replacement or a modkill is up to the mod's discretion.

63

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Tower

« on: September 15, 2016, 06:18:42 pm »

Sorry about the delay. Some annoying cultists and their overlord have occupied my tower and I had to clean them out.

Three-pile endings give you a headache? Then expect to get all green in the face additionally, with the advent of Tower! Now you not only have to align your gains, money and buys in the best possible way, no, you simultaneously have to track how many cards from each supply pile each player has. Have fun!

Aside from such shenenigans, Tower will be most interesting in non-mirror games. It's a big Rush card; Ironworks/Gardens for instance gets a decent boost from this. Combo stuff like Hermit/Market Square gets better too. Anything really that has you depleting piles all by yourself. You probably shouldn't ignore Magpies and Ports now, should you?

It's sad that it doesn't really have any significant combo with Watchtower. But well, you can't have everything I guess.

64

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Tomb

« on: September 14, 2016, 12:49:11 pm »

Lara was furious when she raided that tomb and all she found was a bunch of metal chips.

So, in case you didn't know, trashing is good. Now it's even better. Is this really worth it? Is it just encouraging the predominant strategy?

Well, there's a couple of quirks here. First, I rather like that this makes it more realistic to play an engine on a sort of sloggy board with junkers and weak trashing and come out ahead. It's also interesting as a deterrent from trashing attacks. I mean, you probably still can't ignore Knights only because of Tomb, but maybe losing the split 6-4 isn't all bad. It's also nice that certain cards on the weak side like Farmland or Rats get a boost.

The most interesting question is how much do you cannibalize your deck during the endgame? Imagine you have junk-dealt away all starting cards, the Province pile goes goes - when do you start playing that Junk Dealer again?

65

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Palace

« on: September 12, 2016, 02:07:32 pm »

Trust me, your palace would be a lot more magnificent if you replaced those golden statue by copper!

In the right deck, all (very) basic treasures get 1 VP. Which is, you know, nice, but not great. The maximum you could possibly reach with this is 90 VP if you get all 30 Golds. Not very impressive compared to what some alt-VP cards can do. Palace will never be your main source of VP.

It also has the problem that most decks that you flood with Treasures you only flood with one type. Think Trader, Masterpiece, Raid, Tunnel, Market Square, Hoard. Okay, you already have 7 Coppers. The main thing that happens in such treasure floods is that whichever treasure you don't spam basically becomes worth 3 VP, which is nice, and obviously better in Gold floods.

In a more standard BM, you can probably expect to get around 9 VP from this (3 Golds seems like a usual amount), which does give the BM player a slight edge, but a good engine often wins by more points.

Which cards do you think work well with this? Explorer is the only one I can think of that somewhat reliably gains both Silver and Gold, and well that's not the best combo ever.

66

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Orchard

« on: September 11, 2016, 11:17:53 am »

If you take the lift down, you will find the hidden time machine.

In some way it is like Obelisk. This gives the first three actions you buy from a pile like 1.33 VP each. Of course it doesn't really work that way. Orchard is pretty interesting strategy-wise. With stuff like Museum or Fairgrounds, you can easily get away with just buying a single copy from a pile that just sits around in your deck being mostly dead. Orchard forces you to change your strategy much more; if you're going to have 3 copies of a card in your deck, you better have some plan for what to do with them.

The easiest thing to get for this are cheap cantrips. It gets interesting with many payload cards. If you think Cursers, Haggler, Altar, all kinds of things, the sweet spot for how many you want is frequently 2, sometimes 1, but rarely 3. So do you change the structure of your deck early to accomodate another copy, or do you hope to pick the missing piece up while greening?

67

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Obelisk

« on: September 08, 2016, 03:58:32 pm »

Secret Secret History: Originally, Donald wanted to name this Brothel, for the Harem flavor tie-in. For some reason RGG didn't want that. So instead he went for a phallus symbol.

Obelisk haremizes one Action pile in the game. As we know from Harem, adding 2 VP is roughly worth $3. As we know from Nobles, that's not actually true since Nobles is already better than Smithy without the VP. The chosen card also doesn't get Victory type, which disables some cute interactions. Fun fact: Since it chooses a random Action supply pile, it could theoretically end up on the Ruins pile. That seems weird.

This will probably be at its most interesting when it ends up on a card that belong to the sightly weaker strategy of the board. Then you have to ask yourself, do I want to go for the other strategy just for the additional VP? Of course strategy 1 player can always pick some of those cards up for themselves. It probably mostly prevents rush strategies like Rebuild or Ironworks/Gardens, since it makes it much easier to get a couple VP for the countering player.

And then of course there is the most important question, the elephant in the room: How do you randomize the Action supply pile? Most of the discussion in this thread should be dedicated to this question.

68

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Museum

« on: September 07, 2016, 04:06:15 pm »

Dominion life advice: If you want to run a profitable museum, best buy your exhibits on the black market!

Here it is, the Fairgrounds-turned-Landmark. Only it is a lot more powerful than a meager Fairgrounds. More like 5 Fairgrounds at once. That means you really want those differently-named cards. We already know all the tricks of differently-named card collecting. Empires adds some more with split piles and Castles.

I think that Museum will nevertheless play differently from Fairgrounds. The reason is thus: In Fairgrounds games, you first get a lot of differently-named cards and try to build a working deck. Then you buy Fairgrounds with that deck. Wiht Museum, the second part is gone. This means you're more likely to build a normal deck first, only adding the differently-named cards towards the end. I think it will overall have a smaller effect on how you build your deck.

69

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Mountain Pass

« on: September 05, 2016, 12:32:17 pm »

I really hate Scout, *** you nerds, girls and booze - that is what matters

Okay, I realize there has already been a thread about this here. It was all about the bidding though. We want to discuss the larger issues here. Like, how does your greening strategy change with this around? Which kind of decks get the largest benefit from the auction (i.e. can handle the debt better)? What kind of credit institute sets up shop on a Mountain Pass to give debt to people climbing through that cold, unforgiving place? Talk about subprime lendings. One day, that Mountain Pass bubble will burst, sending the whole Dominion into a deep recession until inflation runs so high that you have to pay $12 just to get a Village (Scout will still cost $4 though).

70

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Labyrinth

« on: September 04, 2016, 12:58:17 pm »

The depicted structure is actually a maze. Boo!

This seems a lot like Basilica. It has no potential for multi-VP gain, but on the other hand you do not necessarily need +buys. Is it kinda boring? Yeah. Sorry.

- Is it different enough from Basilica to warrant being its own Landmark?
- Does it make you want to open Stonemason+2 $2-costs?
- Wouldn't it be more interesting if you needed like 3 gains, from the reward was higher? Or like "once per turn: when you gain a card, take 1 VP per card you gained this turn"? What, are you telling me this isn't the Variants subforum?

71

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Keep

« on: September 02, 2016, 01:09:16 pm »

And the threads just Keep on coming...

Okay, let's face it, that first bunch of Landmarks did not really stir excitement. But now, in the bottom half, things really got interesting. Defiled Shrine, Fountain, now Keep - all those are much more unique than the tenth "get 2 VP for some random thing". Good news is, the remaining Landmarks are all more on the exciting side.

This is like a little sub-game of Dominion - in Dominion, you aim to get more Provinces than your opponent, and now there's a bunch of other cards you aim to get more of than your opponent. And these piles are pretty large, man.

It makes controlling the game state pretty hard. It's easy-ish to calculate how many VP your opponent is away from you, but now you also have to Keep in mind how many Golds, Silvers, Coppers they are away. It only gets worse with Kingdom treasures, and this is one of the only Empires card-shaped thing where Kingdom treasures didn't get excluded because nobody knows what a Kingdom card is, so yay for that.

This card probably won't affect BM games a lot, except that it makes them more viable. Things are more interesting in an engine mirror, which might devolve into a more BM-ish deck in the mid-late game. Oh, and if you ever thought losing the Fool's Gold or IGG split sucked: You knew nothing.

- Which Kingdom treasure cards do you think will be most interesting with this? Hoard, Horn of Plenty, maybe even Treasure Trove?
- How does engine vs BM play with this around? Does the engine player try to win one of the splits while ignoring the other two?
- Is this Landmark better suited for multiplayer?

72

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Fountain

« on: September 01, 2016, 03:36:58 pm »

The kind of fountain you'll find in Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin, with Coppers sprawling out.

But really, this is again a cute flavor connection - if you throw enough Coppers into the fountain, you will be blessed.

It warps the game in a major way. 15 VP is a hefty load of points. 2.5 Provinces right there. In games without trashing, that means every Copper you buy is effectively worth 5 VP. So it really seems like a no-brainer to pick up Coppers as soon as you're greening.

Where things get really interesting is when you can trash your starting Coppers. Will you? Here it works somewhat similar to Inheritance, making you consider to keep your starting Coppers. I predict that in most cases, you still want to trash at least some of them.

- How does this landmark play with Thief on the board? Is it actually something that makes you want to go for Thief?
- in an engine with trashing, how often do you think you want to re-buy Coppers towards the endgame?
- Overall, which cards are better support for this - cheap +buys or cards that care about Copper?

73

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Defiled Shrine

« on: August 31, 2016, 05:29:59 pm »

Have you ever played Knights of the Old Republic? This reminds me of the final planet you land on there.

It's the other part of Curse Empowerment Movement (also known as Purple Cards Matter)! Unfortunately, it doesn't combo very well with its sister in spirit, Ritual, because the bonus is only on-buy.

In a standard game, you'll have maybe 9 action supply piles if you're lucky, which makes this get 18 VP, or three Provinces. Of course often there's Scout or something and the pile is never touched. But it's reasonable to assume it will be at least a double-digit number of VP usually. Which means there will be at least 2 times someone buys a Curse during the game. Chances are this will make a heavy impact in almost every game it's in, excluding maybe games with other Cursers that make the pile run out before you can get the VP.

- At which value would you start picking this up with a spare buy in a trashing game? How about a non-trashing game?
- How often can you do the "gain several actions, then buy a Curse" move?
- Just how often does it matter with Cursers? Like, you buy the last Curse if you know that your opponent would give it to you anyway?

74

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Colonnade

« on: August 30, 2016, 11:35:48 am »

Architecture pro tip: Add a mirror to each end of a colonnade.

While I love how the name fits the thing it does, I'm really not sure if this leads to interesting games. It mainly seems to encourage monolithic strategies - Minion, Hunting Party, that kind of stuff. Oh boy, can it get crazy with Peddlers. I think it's just too often "Hey cool, I get to do that thing I wanted to do anyways and even get VP for it" rather than "Now I could do this one thing that isn't just as good for my deck as the other things, but I would get VP for it". I guess it pushes engine strategies, so that's something.

- Is this a Village idiot's new second favorite card-shaped thing?
- Which are the kind of cards that you get more of with Colonnade around than you would without?
- Can you think up any weird edge cases that work with the "when you buy" trigger?

75

Let's Discuss ... / Let's Discuss Landmarks: Battlefield

« on: August 29, 2016, 01:49:00 pm »

Why are all the guys with shields not in the front row?

In terms of epicness, this battle is sorely lacking. It's more like you and your D&D buddies encountering some random bandits than a clash of armies to control the first Province. Anyway, the card encourages early greening and makes Rebuild games even more atrocious. Now you're like, am I really going to give my opponent a Duchy for this $5 card I just swindled? It does a bunch of interesting stuff because unlike some other "take 2 VP" landmarks, you have pretty good control over when to take them.

Some interactions are quite weird. Swindler was mentioned, but Ambassador has a similar issue. I can't really imagine deciding not to ambassador your Estates because that seems bad too, but there's definitely some impact. Obivously it's pretty good with hybrid VP cards and Inheritance, plus all that stuff that makes you gain Estates.

- Would you buy an Estate over nothing on a 5/2 Shelters opening with this around?
- Which deck type benefits the most? Probably the rush deck, but after this?
- Does Battlefield change the optimal ultimate big money strategy?