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26

Rules Questions / Re: Talisman + Sir Martin

« on: January 14, 2013, 11:39:56 am »

But the reason I mentioned it was because Donald had said "I am just interpreting the cards as written. I can't change them, counterintuitive or not." I was wondering if the same was true for the actual rules, but the rules are more error prone than the text on the cards and if in doubt the card has right of way so to speak. At least, that's how I understand it.

My only concern is for that small percentage of people which actually end up playing with Trader and Talisman not knowing there was this ruling. At least Donald said he would help them if they show up.

I have no concern here. It is an obscure situation and if they blow it it's not so bad.

There is no errata or rules change here. I read the card and applied the rules. There is nothing contradictory in the rulebook. It says "another" in the same way that tons of FAQ entries have sentences that explain the basic way a card works in simple English without accounting for uncommon or obscure cases. Find your own examples!

I only have so much time to try to explain things I have already explained. If it's not clear to you now then I do not see what I can say to make it clearer. That itself feels like something I have already said too many times.

Well, it's very clear to me, I just wanted to make sure there was no discrepancy between the rulebook and your ruling here and if there was, I wanted to double check that your ruling here would trump it.

Your point about "other FAQ entries" is not entirely valid as I was quoting from the Talisman section. You would think that this section contained solid info, there are many other card entries which mention edge cases specifically. In the Dark Ages rules Talisman is mentioned for the Ruins under "Additional Rules", but it only says that you can only gain another Ruined Market if the next card is a Ruined Market.

The Knights section is silent about Talisman, but it even mentions Black Market, which is a promo card! So saying tons of FAQ entries don't account for edge cases isn't entirely true. They all try to cover the weirdness as much as they can.

You're saying using a word like "another" doesn't mean anything, I'm saying it does.

I'm sympathetic to Davio here, because I think he's been pretty doggedly pursuing reasonable questions and not getting anywhere.

A lot of comments I've seen, some from DXV, seem to imply that

a) the game creator doesn't have any power to create errata to fix the game and/or
b) even if he did, it's not necessary, because the cards explain themselves, and the FAQs only provide "clarification" (is the word I think I've seen).

I think these are both problematic ideas.,

Then again, I don't think we particularly need to solve them. Instead, it would simply make things easier if somebody -- presumably DXV -- would just claim authority to make final decisions about what the cards mean -- essentially adding errata. Otherwise, we have a lot of people claiming equal authority in interpreting what are occasionally (fundamentally) unclear things.

I guess what I'm saying is...I feel you, Davio, I feel you.

27

Other Games / Re: Game rules and their depth

« on: January 10, 2013, 10:50:06 am »

(I mean, good players know the openings in their sleep and that's hard to get around if you only play occasionally.)

Yes and no. I mean, yes, good players will know what's going on in the openings they play regularly, and will have a reasonable idea what to do in an arbitrary opening, but the place where a good player has the biggest marginal advantage over an occasional player probably isn't opening knowledge.

Is there a skill or set of skills that could be said to be the part of a good player's skill that gives them the greatest marginal advantage over the worse player...me?

28

Rules Questions / Re: Hermit + Scheme

« on: January 08, 2013, 11:08:49 am »

Good reasoning. I suspect DXV will say that you don't get a Mad Man, but if so, I think that flies in the face of previous interpretations. What I mean is, many times it's become clear that card instructions -- even ones in the same sentence or even in the same note (as in, for example,drawing cards) -- are broken down as much as possible into individual actions that need to be executed independently of one another.

Also, nice use of the lose-track rule. Man, that thing has got to be the least intuitive part of the game.

EDIT: I'm already questioning my own interpretation, mostly of the FAQ: "If Hermit is not discarded from play during Clean-up--for example, if you put it on your deck with SchemeScheme.jpg (from Hinterlands)--then the ability that trashes it will not trigger." (per http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Hermit)

So the question is about the phrase in the FAQ that talks about "the ability that trashes [the Hermit]." Does that refer only to the trashing "ability" or to the whole phrase that trashes and gains a Mad Man?

29

Other Games / Re: Game rules and their depth

« on: January 08, 2013, 10:31:25 am »

It's hard to decipher whether some posts are serious or not. 

The game you're talking about is a language game and would be very hard for a computer. I think it's one of the better games among those that a computer wouldn't be good at. Certainly better than Mao, though maybe not 7 Minutes in Heaven.

Anyway, to respond to the OP: I agree with the Go-lovers. I guess overall I like Go because it feels like such an organic extension of math: Relatively few starting principles that result in lots of intricate problems.

As for Dominion vs. chess: I think overall chess is deeper -- the problems inherent in chess can go several moves deep, with each step creating new possibilities.

Still, I find Dominion more fun probably because it's "broader", an idea that seems like a nice complement to "deeper": It feels like there are many more kinds of Dominion games, since set-ups can be so different. I suppose you achieve the same in chess by varying your first several moves, but from a weak player perspective the variations are a little dreary, and they create a big barrier to getting into the deeper game. (I mean, good players know the openings in their sleep and that's hard to get around if you only play occasionally.)

Anybody else want to comment on depth beyond Snakes and Ladders? I mean, let's just admit that it's the deepest game there is, but anybody want to nominate something for second place above Dominion/chess/Go?

30

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Hillarious game -109 turns-

« on: January 07, 2013, 09:19:15 am »

Yeach I noticed that the first time I played the adventures - the bots don't seem to want to end the game when they are losing.

This is interesting, because it reflects the way that extra-game considerations creep in to most board games. A person, even if he or she really likes to win, will revert to mundane priorities like saving time if they are assured of a loss. A bot, however, has no other priorities other than to win. Take away that possibility, and they have nothing to live for.

That said, why don't they just program the bots to recognize defeat and resign? Of course, why don't they do a lot of things...

31

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Why aren't *you* playing on Goko?

« on: January 04, 2013, 02:17:25 pm »

I'd like to put my answer in the form of an analogy:

Let's say you've discovered a really great pizza place that makes pizza that maybe wasn't really fancy looking but that swerved this grease-loving, fairly hardcore pizza fan really well. The chef, god bless him, was handing out slices for free -- for free! -- but you liked it so much you stuck what would have been retail price in his tip jar.

Then Pizza (tm) comes to town, holding its license, saying that rando pizza chefs must shut their doors. Okay, well, that's the way it goes...but Pizza (tm) is serving blando, generic frozen grocery store pizza. No matter how much they solicit your opinion or lower the price or promise that future pizzas will be up to snuff, you don't want to buy their stuff. Not because the other thing was free, but because the other thing was great and really puts Pizza (tm) to shame.

That's why.

32

Other Games / Re: Twilight Strategy

« on: January 04, 2013, 09:51:58 am »

Although your suggestion on what to do next did make me think, really bad strategy blog ideas:
TicTacToeStrategy

... and already done

Somebody should just buy the domain name and link it there. That's too cool.

Edit: At least for Tic Tac Toe nobody can say, "Depends on the board."

33

General Discussion / Re: Favorite quotes? "No. I don't think I'll ever get over Macho Grande."

« on: January 03, 2013, 02:15:50 pm »

"I don't drugs. I am drugs."

I like this because it implies that there is still territory in the mind and in art that is to be explored.

34

Other Games / Re: Twilight Strategy

« on: January 03, 2013, 10:51:26 am »

I guess I vote RftGstrategy, too. I've played 30+ games against the Keldon (sp?) AI, and maybe 15 games IRL. After the last RftG game, my friend and I were contemplating how much strategy matters -- as he said, maybe we can't see the strategy because we both suck at the game. But I've read strategy articles from rrenaud around the web, and I feel like I'm doing a decent job strategizing...but RftG feels much more chancy than Dominion. 

To be more specific, it seems like it's very hard to win unless your strategy happens to work well with whatever 6-cost development cards come your way. In the meantime, good tactics can help, but it just seems not very useful to make up any sort of overarching plan (as you might do in Dominion).

Is the game just all tactical, or what?

Thoughts? I guess this should be in other board games but it seems apropos.

35

Dominion Strategy Wiki Feedback / Re: draft a rules/rule theory article?

« on: December 25, 2012, 04:52:47 pm »

Are you looking for the http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Gameplay page?

That could be expanded a bit, and rewritten a bit, and have 'rules' redirect there. I just reread the page and it could use some work.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I'll add to that.

36

Dominion Strategy Wiki Feedback / draft a rules/rule theory article?

« on: December 25, 2012, 02:55:56 pm »

I think it would be nice to have a wiki page that gives an overview of rules in Dominion -- i.e., common rule issues, disagreements, some pertinent DXV rulings, perhaps some (objectively discussed) rule theory.

Am I missing something, or is there no current article on this in the wiki? I searched "rules" and "rule theory" and didn't see anything about what I'm talking about.

37

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Quitting Iso solo games

« on: December 12, 2012, 11:32:32 am »

I think there are etiquette questions, too. If you're going to quit a solo game, I think you should probably ask yourself whether you would like to play out the game first. At the very least, "gg" yourself, otherwise you might think you've just ragequit.

38

Goko Dominion Online / Re: An offer to Donald X.

« on: December 12, 2012, 10:17:43 am »

I wouldn't be too hard on the OP.

Yes, too many pixels have already been wasted on the Iso vs. Goko arguments and "Why can't Goko be better?" etc.
But people have a strong gut reaction when you say to them "Hey, you know that thing you're willing to pay for? Well we're still taking it off the market." It just seems...crazy.

But yeah, DXV didn't make that call and it's a little absurd to ask him to fix this.

39

Rules Questions / Re: It probably doesn't work this way: Possession and Trader

« on: December 09, 2012, 11:27:07 pm »

Part of the reason I linked to the other thread was that it has a discussion about which event "happens" to whom.

You say that Alex chooses which order the triggers happen in, but I'm not convinced that should be so -- it makes sense (enough) to me that the Possession redirect of Province to Alex "happens" to Alex and the Trader replacement "happens" to Betty.

If this is true, then Betty has to reveal Trader first in responding to the fact that she "would" gain a Province because it's her turn right now -- and because when two reactions/triggers are supposed to happen at the same time, we use turn order as the first way to determine which happens first.

So Betty reveals Trader first. Part of the effect of Trader will be to nullify the gain Province event that was previously hanging in the air. Indeed, Alex's Possession trigger still occurs in response, but by the time it happens, there's no Province to gain...although Alex still gets the Silver Betty would have gained, of course.

The difference is that Royal Seal is reacting to something that happened.  It's a fact, it occurred.

Trader reacts before the effect it is reacting to actually occurs.  So if that effect is no longer about to occur, Trader cannot do anything.

I don't agree that if the effect is no longer about to occur Trader can't do anything; the triggering event in the game that sets Trader off is "would gain a card". True, this isn't an event, but it is a stage that can be inferred as part of the gaining process. Once this trigger happens -- once Betty is at a point where she "would gain" a Province imminently -- the Trader can be played.

Obviously, I don't think Possession in this case would trigger before Trader (based on my reasoning above), but even if it did, it wouldn't matter. Here's how I imagine all this going:

1. The triggering event occurs. In this case, Betty declares her intention to buy a Province card, which means she "would gain a card," which is the trigger that would set off either Trader and/or Possession.
2. Now, anything triggered or that may be triggered via Reaction card is indeed triggered , even if it isn't resolved right away. We need to establish this in order to start determining in what order to resolve the new triggered events.
3. We figure out which order the new triggered events occur.
4. The Possession, if it occurred first, would redirect Province to Alex, and then the Trader could still be revealed. However, in this case, I think that means Betty's Trader would resolve first. This would nullify the event that triggered all this to begin with, but because we've already gone through step 2, we still resolve Possession's triggered event (the redirect from Betty to Alex).

40

Rules Questions / Re: It probably doesn't work this way: Possession and Trader

« on: December 09, 2012, 06:17:28 pm »

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=839.msg12381#msg12381

Does this answer your question? I haven't totally looked it over but it goes into a lot of points and DXV weighs in.

41

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Card-specific beginner traps

« on: December 05, 2012, 02:19:29 pm »

Trade Route

I see newbies buy this, then buy an estate to power it up. I always assumed this was wrong, but I'm not positive.

42

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko is offensive to actual fans of Dominion

« on: December 04, 2012, 09:06:38 am »

This thread is offensive to actual fans of threads.

That post is offensive to actual fans of posts?

Your meta-post is offensive to actual fans of meta-posts?

43

General Discussion / Re: Book De-Recomendation: Joe Abercrombie

« on: November 30, 2012, 12:45:20 pm »

Ohhhhh that makes me mad like finding out that David Sedaris writes fiction under the guise of nonfiction.  He used to try to write fiction, but failed miserably, and then realized he would sell a lot better if he pretended that it was nonfiction instead.

It's one thing to exaggerate the truth a little bit, and quite another to just wholesale fabricate events, put words in people's mouths, and recharacterize your friends in really cruel ways, all for the sake of making your 'memoir' funnier.

As great as I think Sedaris is...I kind of agree with you. Plus, some of his recent pieces on This American Life seemed to just be about griping about everyday living, which is really really well worn territory in the comedy world that doesn't need to be retread by a writer, even a good writer. (I'm thinking of a piece about waiting in line for coffee that I believe was on TAL...maybe that's not representative, though.)

44

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Price This Card

« on: November 28, 2012, 09:51:51 am »

I don't approve of the implication that Credit Unions are inferior to Banks.

Can you elaborate? From what I can tell, Credit Union is strictly worse than Bank.

Edit: Oh, duh. You were making a joke.

45

Rules Questions / Re: Market Square and on-trash effects

« on: November 27, 2012, 04:28:15 pm »

I feel like the Secret Chamber/Moat interaction is a good model.

Here's the precedent: Let's say you have SC + 4 other cards in hand and a Moat on top of your deck. When an attack is played, you reveal SC and find the Moat, and return 2 cards to deck, keeping SC and Moat in hand.

Now, IIRC, you can still reveal Moat to get its protection, then reveal SC again again to return Moat back to the top of your deck.

That's a clear case where you were not choosing to order SC before Moat -- you couldn't have, since Moat wasn't even in your hand when you began to resolve SC. Yet you're still allowed to reveal Moat, which suggests that new cards put in hand during the first reaction's resolving are fair game to be revealed.

Conceptually, this suggests to me that when it is your turn to respond to an event -- e.g., an attack being played or the trashing of one of your cards -- you in fact choose when the window to stop responding to that event closes. So the first play of the SC resolves, but you are not choosing to pass priority (as they'd say in MtG, I believe) to the next player, you're keeping priority, and the event that triggered SC's reaction is still hanging in the air to be reacted to by Moat. (Likewise your second SC play.)

In the MS/Cultist example, the fact that you discarded a Market Square seems immaterial to me, given the above.
All the other reactions are multiple reveal, right? So why not Market Square?

46

General Discussion / Re: Cloud Atlas

« on: November 27, 2012, 01:40:22 pm »

I liked the movie. I guess parts were ridiculous, but at least they were attempting something interesting. The visuals were compelling.

47

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Price This Card

« on: November 27, 2012, 10:27:13 am »

I started this thread to see if other people were interested in discussing the pricing of custom Dominion cards, and to see where the consensus lies on how powerful some effects are when divorced from their current card(s).

I don't usually comment on variant cards, but for whatever reason I find this interesting. Anyway, I don't think the question is exactly, "What's the 'right' cost for this card?" but more like "If it had X cost, what would that do to the game?" with many too-low costs making it an almost-always buy (bad for the game) and too-high costs making it almost-never buy (also bad for the game). But the middle range might be two or three different costs, which would all result in different but not necessarily better or worse games.

I think we can all agree that range is logically somewhere between $4- $6, but $4 really does seem too low to me. It's probably a frequent buy at even $5, since many engines lead to many cards in hand, but at with Bank at $7 you often have to make a serious calculation before deciding when to switch from buying bank to greening. I do worry that even at $5, this plus a tactician is very powerful.

48

Rules Questions / Re: Draft of a Timing article for the Wiki ... and does Noble Brigand jump the Moat?

« on: November 20, 2012, 05:52:29 pm »

In my FAQ (http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Complete_and_All-Encompassing_Dominion_FAQ) I have actually not prioritized triggered events before "normal" events. I don't think any rule or ruling says that they are (nor that they aren't).

I see what you're doing, and yes, this is another solution to the problem that makes everything internally consistent. I guess all I'm looking for is some consistency, and it just seemed like "when" would be a useful word to help order events, but it doesn't look like that is how it was designed.

49

Goko Dominion Online / Re: All of Dark Ages now on Goko

« on: November 20, 2012, 03:44:33 pm »

What *I* want is a bias mechanism to tell the randomizer to select cards from a specific expansion, or to include a specific card and randomize everything else.

Are you nuts? Do you know how much time and how many people it would take to program that?

Oh, wait...

50

General Discussion / Re: STAR WARS

« on: November 16, 2012, 03:24:09 pm »

SO I've mathematically determined the best possible plot for Star Wars VII:

The entire thing takes place in the Galactic Senate chamber and chronicles the minutia of a trade dispute between the Ewoks and the Gungans. The only established character from the franchise is Jar Jar Binks, who has been made Chancellor.

Also, there's a highly technical discussion of the midi-chlorians, which is summed up by a scientist who observes, "As it turns out, there's really nothing mystical at all about the Force."

Best. Sequel. Ever.