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26

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Silly boards you got from randomisers

« on: August 16, 2017, 07:26:45 pm »

Since I'm dumb and hate Rebuild, I think I'd try to go PStone-Worker's Village to Colonies.  Maybe throw a Hoard in there if I got an early 6.  Royal Seal could also be useful, allowing me to topdeck a PStone after buying it, but I doubt I'd have the opportunity to get one - I'd want as many Worker's Villages as possible.

I'd have fun losing with this deck.

27

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Golden Sombrero question

« on: July 09, 2017, 12:26:35 pm »

I only know of the term Golden Sombrero from baseball - it is when a batter strikes out 4 times in the same game, a relatively rare but ignominious accomplishment.  I don't really care for its application here - in baseball, it's indicative of poor performance, but in Dominion, it would be indicative of bad shuffle luck?  A Golden Sombrero in Dominion to me would be like being a Village or (if you're a bot on Goko) Warehouse Idiot.

28

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2016 Edition: The rest

« on: July 07, 2017, 12:17:37 am »

It's unlikely that you will ever lose a game just because someone Donated more optimally than you

This is basically how all Donate games are lost.

Also, if you don't buy Donate on a board that it is on, you lose (unless opponent does something stupid), meanwhile there are boards where buying KC is losing.

That seems awfully glib on Donate - you and your opponent may not even be pursuing the same strategy, Dominion being what it is, not to mention the large mitigating factor of shuffle luck which can still manifest itself even after a Donate.

29

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2016 Edition: The rest

« on: July 06, 2017, 08:08:33 pm »

Because Donate can be bought with debt and King's Court cannot be, I'd still have KC over Donate even though there are games where KC is skippable - in a game with Donate, all players will almost certainly use it at some point, but the race to KC in certain games and then lining it up with other actions can really swing things.  It's unlikely that you will ever lose a game just because someone Donated more optimally than you, but you will lose games when your opponent manages to line up his KC with his Swindler/Mountebank/Cultist whatever before you. 

I suppose it's just a question of what the rankings mean.

30

Goko Dominion Online / Re: What feature will you miss the least?

« on: December 08, 2016, 06:32:56 pm »

Oh man, where to begin - I'll just start by thinking of the first thing I thought of - the fact that when you want to play against a bot, you select the brain icon in the menu.  This idiocy, while tiny, sums up so much of what was wrong with Goko/MF's Dominion.

I'll also miss having to download the entire implementation of the game whenever they do an update - I assume the new version won't be doing that.

31

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is resigning considered rude?

« on: October 24, 2016, 12:58:02 pm »

I rarely play strangers but in 2017 I'm going to start - regardless, I think an opponent resigning in a 2p game is slightly rude when it's done on my turn.  When I resign I almost always wait for my turn in order to end it - it just feels crappy to be rolling on a turn and then have the game seize up and I wonder, 'did the server die, is my Internet connection out, etc.' only to find out my opponent resigned.   But yeah, in 2p games I can't see who has a problem with resigning except maybe players that haven't played many games and want to see how an X/Y/Z engine plays out.

32

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds

« on: October 03, 2016, 02:48:17 pm »

My friend who I play Dominion with often once suggested the idea of a 2nd edition of Base but he was opposed to it - he thought that the bad cards offer education to the new player about what's good and what isn't.  As you're learning the game you buy stuff with no real plan and hope that things work and eventually you realize that most of the Base cards that got eliminated are not worth playing in a huge % of games.

Regardless, while it is fun to make a card that doesn't work in 99% of games work for you (I remember evading a Rabble pin with Adventurer, e.g.), it's not worth the tradeoff of having a garbage card in the Supply when there could be something that makes the game that much more interesting.

Also, I wonder how many games of Dominion are played Base only.  I'd guess it's a pretty high percentage both online and IRL and having that be the weakest overall set of Dominion is a bad sell for the rest of the game.

33

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Empires: The "Eat Your Vegetables" Expansion

« on: August 07, 2016, 11:10:56 am »

One of the most elegant and clever design decisions in Dominion, present from the very beginning with just the base set, is that victory cards are bad. Fundamentally, when players buy victory cards, they damage their deck, which slows them down so that the opponent(s) can catch up. Too many games neglect putting in a balancing mechanism like that, so when a player starts winning, they accelerate (I'm looking at you, Catan.) It takes careful and deliberate planning to get around that mechanism in Dominion, which is part of what makes engine-building so rewarding.

While I love Dominion and prefer it to Catan, Catan has two mechanisms that slow down a powerful player:

A:  The robber.  In a 4P game the robber should be on the most powerful player's space 75% of the time (and, if the powerful player buys development cards to mitigate the robber, these are resources he could be using to build cities - if he can do both, you're screwed either way). 
B:  Trade embargoes.  Basically when a player begins to get powerful, every other player should refuse to trade with him or her.  Let them deal with the bank or ports.

These are nowhere near as elegant as Dominion, but I've definitely played games with worse runaway leader problems (Acquire comes to mind immediately).  Catan's issue is more a runaway loser problem - if you get blocked off early or players place their initial settlements in a way you don't anticipate, you usually have almost no chance of winning.

34

Let's Discuss ... / Re: rēs cornūcōpiae consultēmus: harvest

« on: May 17, 2016, 10:26:24 pm »

Seriously, Harvest is not that bad. Same power level as merchant ship, both shine in different situations. Both have the same use : getting more money than gold if you can play enough actions.
Excluding Big Money games (which are rarely a thing nowadays), it's extremely easy to get $4 from your harvest. If you hit $2 or $1 (!) it means that you bought harvest too early. Otherwise, you will always get $3+.
And I'm not talking about tunnel or deck-inspection tricks here. I tend to think the biggest downside oh harvest is the lack of +buy, which will make you prefer something like baron, horse traders or wine merchant as a source of money. But if you already have enough +buy, harvest is usually better than those three. I think harvest is best in average-engine games, or junking attack games with slow trashers.

The problem is that Harvest, like Tribute and other 'turn cards over on a deck, get stuff' cards, is quite unpredictable - in a deck with good variation, you should almost always get at least $2, usually $3, and sometimes 44.  But you don't know before you take the Harvest plunge.  In addition, it sorta nombos with itself - early game, without Shelters, your deck doesn't have enough variation to buy it, and then middle or late game, you are probably buying better stuff with your 5s.  If it gave you +buy it might help you make your deck more amenable to Harvest. 

I love when I can find a place for it because I do enjoy making it work, but it's not optimal in most decks. 

35

Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Bonus Preview #5: Castles

« on: May 14, 2016, 01:49:14 pm »

The Small Castle is the best one to get as you can smash it and get a Province and a Castle out of it

You can't. You only get a Castle when you trash Small Castle with its action.

Oh, oops.  Missed that.   Yeah, then I probably would avoid Castles entirely in a Rebuild strategy, if I could.  I guess I probably can't, but I'd only get one or two.

36

Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Bonus Preview #5: Castles

« on: May 14, 2016, 01:22:49 pm »

Beyond that, if one person starts going for Castles, other people need to as well. Yes, you can only name one card when playing Rebuild, but you do know what's still in your deck, if you're careful.

Yes, by deck tracking you can know what's in your deck.  This is still not going to assure you of hitting a card or not hitting a card.  You can give yourself better chances.  But with all the reshuffling you do in Rebuild games you can get yourself into difficult spots.

You could Rebuild stuff into Castles, Castles into other stuff, and I'm not sure Castles into Castles would be especially infrequent either, if multiple people were buying them.

The Castles are largely predicated on getting a lot of them.  The Small Castle is the best one to get as you can smash it and get a Province and a Castle out of it, but I'm pretty sure I would switch off Castles once I got the Small Castle in a Rebuild deck.  If you get the bigger Castles, you can't prevent yourself from smashing all of them, and unless it's a Colony game you have to turn them into Provinces which isn't much of an upgrade (and indeed could be a downgrade in some cases). 

37

Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Previews #1: Debt

« on: May 14, 2016, 01:12:36 pm »

Calling a Debt cost VP card.

Debt cost VP card would be  broken assuming you don't need to pay  off the debt of the player you possess. You'd just need enough buys and  could buy them all.

I guess you're right. Maybe it's $2 [4] for 3 VP then or something like that. But that's not incredibly unique. I feel like it would have to also do something extra.

I also love that Possession is getting a nerf. It's not the best card in the world to begin with, but now it's even not as good.

Is that really a nerf?  Goons/Monument/Bishop-heavy strategies used to make it difficult to use Possession and now they don't.

38

Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Bonus Preview #5: Castles

« on: May 14, 2016, 12:25:45 pm »

Hmm. It occurs to me that games with both Rebuild and Castles would be pretty brief and wild. And there'd only really be one strategy in town...

Granted I am terrible at Rebuild but I'm not so sure how good Rebuild would be with Castles.  You can't protect more than one of your Castles when you name a card.  The Sprawling Estate looks really good with Rebuild as does the Small Castle, but the gaps in Castle costs will cause a problem as the pile runs, and the King's Castle is less appealing as you smash your Castles into other ones.

39

Dominion: Empires Previews / Re: Empires Bonus Preview #5: Castles

« on: May 14, 2016, 12:13:38 pm »

I walked past a Castles game when I was taking a break from a game day with a couple of playtesters and I only got to see that it was a "variation pile" before they were all like "NO YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO KNOW WHAT THESE DO IF YOU ARE NOT PLAYING." So it's nice to finally know what I missed.

I mean, as a concept, I love it. In practice, probably not so much? Castles seem to have the disadvantage of forcing you to decide on a very specific strategy before you make your first buy of the game (and I know there are a lot of cards like that, but Empires seems to be throwing more in than usual). As someone who's lost way too many games either not reacting to their opponent's strategy enough or not compensating for far-from-ideal shuffle luck, I can't help but get nervous when I go into a strategy blind. This should be my cue to suck it up, but that isn't as easy as it sounds. It doesn't help either that Castle-friendly boards will probably be much harder to spot than, say, Gardens- or Vineyard-friendly ones. Leaving this up to you guys.

None of the Castles seem to be way worse than the other VP options at their price point besides the King's Castle if you have no other Castles.  If your opponent somehow has made it clear that he or she is going 'heavy Castles', it doesn't seem hard to break up that strategy by buying your own Castles.  The difficulty would seem to be in rare games where one person goes Big Money variant hoping to win the game quickly and one player goes for a huge, difficult to assemble engine that intends to clear the Castle pile in one turn.

40

Let's Discuss ... / Re: rēs cornūcōpiae consultēmus: harvest

« on: May 12, 2016, 12:03:36 pm »

I played a game where I used Harvest to great effect!  Okay, this probably wasn't optimal, as I get 5 provinces by turn 15 which seems slow-ish (right?), but it felt good.

https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160512/log.0.1463065587696.txt

41

Let's Discuss ... / Re: rēs cornūcōpiae consultēmus: harvest

« on: May 06, 2016, 07:44:42 pm »

I've found some good uses for Harvest, but I cannot remember how this was accomplished.  I definitely played a game against a competent human player recently where this was a big help.  Wish I'd saved the Kingdom. 

I wonder how good it would be if it were +1 money and then +1 money for each different named card in the top 4.

42

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Early Adventures Impressions

« on: May 05, 2016, 09:22:27 pm »

Love the set so far - I'm not seeing many limited use cards.  There's some Events that are a bit wonky, but Events don't take up any room in the Supply - if there's a dud event, who cares.

Duplicate/Rebuild seems insanely good.

43

Let's Discuss ... / Re: rēs cornūcōpiae consultēmus: hamlet

« on: May 05, 2016, 12:37:05 pm »

The main interaction I've noticed with Adventures is Pathfinding (or Teacher). Hamlet is simply incredible with the +Card token. I might tentatively say that it's the single best card in the game for that token.

Tactician has more upside, but it requires one of a few specific other cards in the kingdom to work.

I may be misunderstanding, but the +Card event specifically states that you get the card before the effect of the Action takes place, so this would nombo with Tactician as you would draw a card that would immediately be discarded another with everything else in your hand.  Unless you are saying that this allows you to discard your entire hand then play Tactician - obviously edge cases can be found where that is beneficial (e.g. now Secret Chamber, without any other card support, can get you to Province in a double Tactician situation), but I hardly find that an attractive combo compared to Hamlet as a Laboratory that allows discard for +Action and +Buy.

44

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

« on: May 05, 2016, 12:51:43 am »

I had fun with Haunted Woods/Outpost today - you get a 6 card Outpost turn right away (though you do lose the Attack effect)

45

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Waiting for Adventures On-line

« on: May 03, 2016, 11:57:41 am »

Just spent about 5 hours playing Adventures, first with only Base mixed in, then with other sets but with Adventures weighted heavier - got to see every new card but one, and almost all the Events as well.

Implementation seems surprisingly good.  The only thing I think is a real misstep is forcing you to keep track of how many cards you discarded with Artificer - I lost count and was too lazy to check the log, so instead of gaining a Province I discarded 7 cards and gained nothing.

It says right on the screen "X cards discarded so far"

Didn't notice that - I guess that appears between the Supply and where you play your cards?  I definitely noticed that for Storyteller but only after a few plays - Artificer didn't come up again, sadly.

46

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Waiting for Adventures On-line

« on: May 03, 2016, 02:22:41 am »

Just spent about 5 hours playing Adventures, first with only Base mixed in, then with other sets but with Adventures weighted heavier - got to see every new card but one, and almost all the Events as well.

Implementation seems surprisingly good.  The only thing I think is a real misstep is forcing you to keep track of how many cards you discarded with Artificer - I lost count and was too lazy to check the log, so instead of gaining a Province I discarded 7 cards and gained nothing.

47

Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's Discuss Alchemy Cards: Golem

« on: April 29, 2016, 10:04:34 pm »

Familiar, great, but if you have 4P you should probably buy another Familiar instead of a Golem (although this is obviously situational).

I think you should usually pick up a Golem over a second Familiar -- sometimes, your Golem will play your Familiar for you anyway in which case it's just as good; failing that, the cycling still helps you play your Familiar more often, and, most importantly, Golem is a fantastic card in a curse-filled misery-deck once the Curse pile is empty.

Yeah, this makes sense.  You won't get the ideal turn unless you already have 2 Familiars but you should be able to play the Familiar(s) you have more often.

48

Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's discuss Alchemy cards: Transmute

« on: April 29, 2016, 09:33:25 pm »

It might be worth it in Scrying Pool games: you need the Potion anyway, and turning manky Coppers into manky Transmutes will at least make it harder for your Pools to choke. Still not great, though.

This is about the only time I've used Transmute.  I know I've tried it some other times but cannot remember any success against a human player.

49

Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's Discuss Alchemy Cards: Golem

« on: April 28, 2016, 06:49:32 pm »

Golem definitely gets better when there are other Potion cards, but it's certainly powerful enough on its own.  You just have to be willing to get that Potion.

If I have any kind of deck and I could somehow add a free Golem, that's almost always going to beneficial.

So it's all about the opportunity cost, which is pretty steep if there are no other Potion-costers.

It's weird because while Golem doesn't specifically nombo with any Alchemy potion-cost actions, it doesn't really combo great with any of them either.  Alchemist and Scrying Pool have an awkward mix.  Familiar, great, but if you have 4P you should probably buy another Familiar instead of a Golem (although this is obviously situational).  Apothecary kinda combos with it - it can get the Potions and Coppers that Golem leaves behind.  And I suppose Golem helps you find more Possessions.  But to me if you're buying Potion cost cards, you're probably buying the other ones more and dropping in a Golem. 

I did forget about University which it does work well with, and Transmute which I have no idea if they go together, I can't imagine building a Transmute/Golem deck.

And of course Vineyard seems to go well with it.

Maybe I'm just not good with this card.

50

Dominion Online at Shuffle iT / Re: Creating Dominion

« on: April 28, 2016, 04:45:17 pm »

Just wanted to say that I'm very excited about this news.  My only concern, which was voiced above, is that 2 very dedicated Dominion players may not understand the casual player, and I hope that person will be kept in mind.  But I think it's great that two people who love the game are going to be working on it and can't wait for the first day of a real implementation.