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2226

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition

« on: October 13, 2015, 08:25:26 am »

Chapel has way more of an effect on the game than Champion, and I think people massively understate the opportunity cost of getting a Champion up and running. It takes five shuffles to get it going, and before then you either need villages, a deck clogged with terminals, or mostly money. On some boards it's absolutely dominating, but it's not nearly as universally useful as Chapel. It's a card that looks crazy on paper but is a lot more balanced in reality. I suspect in the 2016 lists, Page will just barely make the top 5 $2's.

Now, if the argument was how Soldier makes upgrading to Champion as risky as winning a Tournament mirror, I'd give that more credence.

2227

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Thanks for helping me win!

« on: October 13, 2015, 07:02:13 am »

I think there's a few reasons games like Magic hold people's interest more than Dominion. Obviously there's legacy reasons in play, Magic is over 20 years old now and it's one of the most popular nerdy games out there. There's a nationwide, worldwide network of nerdy gamers at every game store in America who play this shit multiple times a week. Everyone who games a lot knows how to play the basics of Magic. The social factors more than anything else are going to drive millions of people toward it.

I also think a big factor is the cost and release model of Magic. It definitely costs more to play Magic than to play Dominion, yes. About $500 gets you physical and online copies of every Dominion expansion there has ever been, plus sleeves and a big box. You can obviously spend that much and more on Magic, and to some extent, your competitiveness is directly limited by your budget. Sounds like a big plus for Dominion (and in fact that's the biggest reason I initially got invested in this game), but the way you spend money in Magic (on collectibles) produces a more rewarding experience. Coveted, collectible cards that make you more competitive as you seek and trade them out is just more engaging - it gives you hope to get better, it gives you a way to slowly improve your deck and odds of winning with work that isn't just "play a bunch of games", and the effects of a purchase have an immediate impact on how good you are. This kind of reward for investment is a positive feedback loop like no other and that's why an entire economy exists for this shit.

I don't think it's impossible for Dominion to get ferociously, rabidly popular like that, and I hope it does, but it's distribution model, while far less exploitative and far more actually good, doesn't have that reward mechanism / feedback loop that Magic does, and I think that's a really big thing. If card stores nationwide had weekly dominion nights, that would go a long way though. It is a perfectly accessible and fair game where your financial investment only plays a role in your success to the extent that you have experience in the game.

Kind of a rambley post without a huge coherent point sorry

2228

Goko Dominion Online / Re: MAKiNG MORE FUN: Patch for Dominion Online 2.0 (Win Only)

« on: October 12, 2015, 07:07:43 pm »

- When picking a card to trash or return-to-supply, put a giant red X over the entire card image. No amount of highlighting does the trick.
- When picking a card to discard or put-on-deck, put a giant left arrow over the card image.

Maybe you're picturing something different from what I'm picturing, but wouldn't a giant red X obscure the card itself?

Now that they've got the gauntlet hand cursor, maybe there could be separate cursors for trashing and discarding.

I think the real answer is to first select the cards you want to trash/discard, and then press a button for trash/discard. Isotropic did something like this, though there you had to use a separate interface than your actual hand to make the selections, so that wasn't good. In my Temporum client, as you select each item in your hand, it moves upward to separate it from other cards in your hand.

Yes that would be good. It seems beyond the scope for SCSN though.

I don't like the gauntlet, but yes a different cursor would do the trick too.

Obv. it has to be possible to read all cards no matter what (which it isn't), so obscuring text with the X isn't an issue (once that's otherwise fixed). Mostly I will know how many coins Squire makes, and when I don't I can go look, and that extra trouble is nothing next to trashing a card I thought I was playing.

A simple solution would be to put the X over just the art of the card. Still visible, doesn't block anything vital.

2229

Goko Dominion Online / Re: MAKiNG MORE FUN: Patch for Dominion Online 2.0 (Win Only)

« on: October 12, 2015, 10:05:33 am »

Minor pedantic point - this isn't an executable file, it is just a replacement DLL file with some of the contents deleted. You don't have to run anything on your computer to make this work - you just replace the old one with this one. Haven't tried this but I bet you can use any number of text editors to compare the two files and confirm that its all just deletions.

2230

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Mah Storahj Sew-Looshun

« on: October 12, 2015, 07:02:24 am »

I don't know why I never thought of this.  I have some Pokemon binders I could put all my Dominion cards in.  Does anyone know if they'll fit with sleeves?

At least with penny sleeves, they work just fine. I'd recommend a trapper keeper / zip up binder though. Also, be sure that you put the same number of cards into any particular slot as they permanently deform when you stretch them out like this (i.e.: don't put other Kingdom cards in slots where VP went, etc, they'll be too loose).

Used a binder solution for about a year until I recently caved and bought the Hobby Lobby box and made dividers. The binder is definitely a great solution, second only to the Hobby Lobby box. My only complaint is about how long it takes to actually get cards out of the binder - it can take a minute to flip through pages to find what you're looking for. Not a huge deal though. Certainly faster than opening up 9 boxes.

2231

Goko Dominion Online / Re: MAKiNG MORE FUN: Patch for Dominion Online 2.0 (Win Only)

« on: October 12, 2015, 06:57:35 am »

Just a hunch, but something tells me that nobody at Making Fun is going to sue their own customer base for replacing one text file on their computer with another. I don't think we need to assume that legal repercussions are on the horizon for everyone who dares to do this. At the very least, someone from MF would probably ask us not to use it first? What would make this illegal but Salvager just fine?

2232

Goko Dominion Online / Re: MAKiNG MORE FUN: Patch for Dominion Online 2.0 (Win Only)

« on: October 11, 2015, 11:31:59 pm »

Just tried this out and it works perfectly. This combined with the faster speed settings from 2.0.42.1 really seem to make this version as good as / better than Goko Dominion, finally.

2233

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Latest Release

« on: October 11, 2015, 06:54:53 pm »

Honestly, now that I've downloaded the speed patch, I really don't have any problems with the MF beta. The animations are a little flashy but the useless ones are pretty ignorable, and you're never waiting around for them at max speed. I think it's either the same or slightly faster than Very Fast on the old client. Give it a try.

2234

2015 / Re: Week 2 - Losers' Bracket signup

« on: October 09, 2015, 06:41:14 pm »

/in

2235

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Dominion Live Streams

« on: October 09, 2015, 04:54:02 pm »

Starting my match against AdamH now.

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

2236

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Latest Release

« on: October 09, 2015, 12:00:43 pm »

I have not played the new version, but how in the world did they screw this up? I mean Unity can be used to make action games. How is it that card animations are so impossible to make work?

Honesty I gave it a try this morning, maybe I was just tired but on max speed I wasn't really waiting around all that much. Then again, I kept getting matched with the same person who would randomly resign on Turn 4, so maybe I missed the worst of it.

Sounds like it's an easy fix though, just changing some delay length variable, I'm sure it won't take long.

2237

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Latest Release

« on: October 08, 2015, 07:12:07 pm »

On the bright side, I'm really glad they've fixed the issue with widescreen games with the log visible making the cards super tiny, and they're making small improvements to the original interface (pirate ship showing how much $ you have, chat alerts, timeout alerts!!!, etc).

Overhauled speed settings: [...] made pause times that show important information longer

I'm delighted that MF not only decides what information I should deem important, but also how long I should pause to take it in.

It's pretty clear from the linked thread on the MF forums that it was not intentional to add this huge pause every card. Just unfortunate how it lined up with the wording.

2238

General Discussion / Re: Find me some awesome songs

« on: October 06, 2015, 08:52:27 pm »

Take each artist on that list, listen to all of their other stuff, keep everything you like. Listen to albums or chunks of albums at a time. Way easier than doing this one single at a time.

2239

2015 / Re: Game Reports

« on: October 06, 2015, 05:19:52 pm »

Trying this Game Reports thing out for this tournament. Due to time zone issues, the first six of these games were played in the 6:30-8 AM range, on about five hours' sleep. I play in the morning sometimes, but never this early, and when I do I'm even more prone to mistakes than I normally am. Some of these games have just really bad moves.

Video(s): Game 1 & Part of 2 Rest of 2 - Most of 6

Game 1: Chris is me 10 - Lucapkennedy 6

Code: [Select]

Secret Chamber, Squire, Familiar, Apprentice, Graverobber, Minion, Outpost, Saboteur, Grand Market, Nobles
 I open 5/2 and decide on Minion / Squire. Doing this over Potion / Squire means I can't get a second shuffle Familiar, which risks me losing the Curse split. Opening Potion / Squire is far from a guarantee that I'll hit 3P, though. Ultimately, I figured that Minion would speed up my cycling while possibly forcing the opponent to miss a Familiar buy / play, offsetting the disadvantage.

I didn't manage to get a Familiar until T8, when my opponent already had two, yet somehow I won the Curse split 6-4. I attribute this to picking up a third Familiar with 5 Curses left and prioritizing cycling in turns 9-14 in order to create more Familiar opportunities. After a huge T17 and a decent T18, I had two Provinces and fewer Curses, so I ended the game by buying out Squire and Minion.

I gained several Silver with Squire - perhaps too many. Initially I figured that I could Apprentice them later on, but Apprentice ended up playing a fairly minimal role in my deck. I just didn't have the opportunities with it I expected, or maybe I just didn't see them. Trashing Squire into Familiar or Minion jumped out at me - damn, maybe Apprentice / Squire would have been a better opening just for that.

Game 2: Lucapkennedy 14 - Chris is me 17

Code: [Select]

Oasis, Tunnel, Advisor, Gardens, Herald, Horse Traders, Scavenger, Spy, Bazaar, Journeyman
This was just poor play on my part. 5/2 start in this kingdom kind of sucks, but Journeyman / nothing is okay. Tunnel / Horse Traders was the obvious open here that could have led to a pretty solid Journeyman BM strategy where you basically always name Tunnel. Seeing as I was too tired to pull off the possible yet difficult engine (Herald, Bazaar, Journeyman, HT is a pretty solid group of cards even without trashing), I should have gone BM. Some nonsense Oasis buys in there and general poor play sealed the deal.

Game 3: Chris is me 19 - Lucapkennedy 2

Code: [Select]

Vagrant, Scrying Pool, Menagerie, Oasis, Island, Procession, Sea Hag, Worker's Village, Vault, Venture
I open Hag / Oasis due to the likelihood of lots of junk and the greater chance of getting Hag on the first shuffle thanks to Oasis draw. He opens Hag / Silver - I think this was a mistake here. On T3 I have $4 and Hovel, easy Island pickup there. Procession seemed quite useful - I could use Vagrants as Villages and pick up Oasises or Menageries, plus I could eventually turn Sea Hag into Vault or something. Ultimately my investment in Menagerie gets my deck off the ground faster than his, and he resigns as I'm about to end the game on piles.

I played this game better, capitalizing on good luck and better gains to pull off the win. I could have ended the game a lot sooner than I did, but I was really paranoid about setting up a 3 pile when he could, in my mind, come from behind in one turn. He couldn't. Didn't need Colony 2.

Game 4: Lucapkennedy 33 - Chris is me 32

Code: [Select]

Native Village, Squire, Masterpiece, Menagerie, Scheme, Plaza, Smithy, Rebuild, Bank, Expand
Rebuild board. I open Plaza / Silver, he opens Smithy / Silver. Smithy / Silver was far better. I manage to stay afloat thanks to a misclick on his part. I managed to get all of the Estates out of my Rebuild deck before the Duchy pile ran out, which is huge in a Colony Rebuild game. I had the win, but blew it by naming the wrong card on the final turn of the game, resulting in a 1 point loss instead of a guaranteed win. I don't think I really deserved the win here anyway. I really need to step up my Rebuild mirror game, the card freaks me out.

If I were more awake and more brave, I think the engine here might actually be able to pull off some big Colony turns fairly quickly. I'm imagining a few Banks as payload, with Squire for buy, Plaza and Smithy to get it going, Expand to pick up components, and Scheme to ensure you get a few solid turns in a row at the end. I don't know if I'm disciplined enough to make that work, though.

Game 5: Chris is me 28 - Lucapkennedy 10

Code: [Select]

Candlestick Maker, Hamlet, Ambassador, Oasis, Bureaucrat, Counterfeit, Mandarin, Merchant Ship, Trading Post, Goons

Everything you need for a Goons engine, except draw. I opened Counterfeit / Hamlet; he opened Ambassador / CSM. If this wasn't a shelter game, he could have opened double Ambassador and buried me. We both pick up Trading Posts for reasons not entirely clear to me. Better buys, especially a Merchant Ship pickup, result in me having 3 Goons to his 1 Goons, and the rest is pretty much inevitable from there. I'm able to end things before he can get something going that picks up Colonies.

Game 6: Chris is me resigned

Code: [Select]

Courtyard, Chancellor, Shanty Town, Bishop, Plaza, Scout, Young Witch, Catacombs, Mystic, Venture, Peddler
Why did I buy Shanty Town? I had no focus in this game, and I neglected Bishop as well as allowing him to get a better engine off the ground more quickly. Too little too late for me to catch up here. Realizing a Game 7 was inevitable, and since we both had to go, I resigned and prepared for Game 7 a few days later.

Game 7 (not streamed): Chris is me 37 - Lucapkennedy 25

Code: [Select]

Hamlet, Alchemist, Ironmonger, Plaza, Library, Rogue, Tactician, Upgrade, Harem, Nobles
We both open Potion / Silver to go for the Alchemist deck. On the first shuffle, only I hit $3P, so that's a huge advantage off the bat. He picks up Tactician early, which I'm not really a fan of on this board, where you have ample draw and good trashing with Upgrade. His neglect of Upgrade (buying Library instead... twice...) ultimately is his downfall, as my Estates do a lot of work as Silvers and I'm eventually able to thin all those Copper out of there. Plus Upgrading Upgrade into Nobles is a sweet trick.

2240

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Dominion Live Streams

« on: October 05, 2015, 10:54:00 am »

I'll be playing my match against Chris is Me on Friday at 5PM Eastern (2100 UTC)

I'll also be streaming this match, just in case you prefer to watch worse commentary and play in general.

2241

2015 / Re: Schedule & Results

« on: October 03, 2015, 09:20:22 am »

I won the tiebreaker match against lucapkennedy, thus ensuring that I and only I have the distinct privilege of losing to Adam Horton in Round 2.

2242

Help! / Re: What do you do with this mess?

« on: October 02, 2015, 03:26:55 pm »

I'd ignore Storyteller because of all the sources of virtual Coin. You'd hate to lose up coins built up by Market or Ironmonger when you just need a little draw.

A lot depends on what Embargo is placed on, but otherwise I'd open Amb / Forager, buy Ironmongers or Hunting Parties whenever I could, a few Markets and Gold for coin. Doesn't seem too crazy. If Young Witch is a threat I'm not too concerned since there's heavy trashing, but Oracle could be incorporated into an Ironmonger engine pretty easily if need be.

2243

Dominion General Discussion / Re: royal carriage, what?

« on: October 02, 2015, 12:47:43 pm »

I don't know how people see Throne Room as an awesome card but Royal Carriage as a bad card. The only thing you can't do with Royal Carriage is use it on itself to duplicate an additional card.

Price. $4 is cheap, $5 is expensive. You can gain $4 with a lot of really simple card setups (Workshop, Ironworks, Remodeling Estates, etc.) and you can slip in Tr gains really easily. $5 on the other hand has to compete with a whole different tier of Cards. Do I want a Tr instead of Young Witch? Maybe. Yw, after all might be blocked by a reasonable bane (like say Wishing Well) and does not increase hand size (e.g cannot hit $5 without something better than coppers in the deck). Witch on the other hand is sure curse and gives you growth in hand size (better for discard-for-benefit and decks without much garbage to discard). Tr at $4 competes directly with Yw, something it can often beat, Rc at $5 faces stiffer competition like Witch.

That said, Rc is insanely good. It gives you a huge amount of flexibility, reliability, and additional tactical options. I'd often buy it at $6. It is a pretty rare board where I would give it a hard pass (some money boards seem like possibilities).

Going off this point for a minute, Royal Carriage will consistently be able to copy that $5 anyway. 1 Witch and 1 Royal Carriage is *almost* strictly better than 2 Witches, as they are much less likely to collide with each other. You'll rarely buy RC before another $5, but it's often better than a second copy of that $5 in the absence of an engine.

Can't wait for Adventures to be online, it's gonna be so ridiculous setting these things up.

2244

Dominion General Discussion / Re: royal carriage, what?

« on: October 02, 2015, 07:42:08 am »

I don't know how people see Throne Room as an awesome card but Royal Carriage as a bad card. The only thing you can't do with Royal Carriage is use it on itself to duplicate an additional card.

It's Throne Room, but you don't need to line up the two cards with each other, and you don't need to decide to play it twice until you've played it once. That's huge.

You don't really even need that many Action cards in your deck for Royal Carriage to be good. It's probably worth it in terminal draw big money even. Plus there's no limit on how many Royal Carriages to play on the same card. The only opportunity cost is a dead card in hand next shuffle, which is a bit of a misnomer because Throne Room takes up that same amount of hand space every shuffle.

There are definitely situations where you would rather Throne Room, and definitely some tricks you can do with Throne Room that you can't do with Royal Carriage, but it should be obvious why Royal Carriage is really, really good.

do you get carriage in the kingdom of, say, salvager, moneylender, witch, bazaar, carriage, hunting grounds?

totally! I could call Royal Carriage for any one of those cards. Call it on Witch if there are Curses left to give out more. Call it on Hunting Grounds to draw half my deck with one action, especially if I didn't hit a second Bazaar on the first 4 cards. Call it on Salvager several times to trash my hand on the last turn of the game. 

2245

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Latest Release

« on: October 01, 2015, 12:15:49 pm »

I really think there's just one employee at MF who is completely useless except for doing visual effects, and when they told him to stop doing ridiculous animations he asked if he could make a custom cursor instead. He probably made the weird crystal ball matchmaking screen thing too. Just a hunch.

Otherwise, looking better every day. It's almost pretty good now! Excited for the iPad app.

2246

2015 / Re: Schedule & Results

« on: October 01, 2015, 07:54:55 am »

Partial result: Chris is me (3) - Lucapkennedy (3), playing game 7 Saturday 9 AM EST / 1 PM GMT / 11 PM his time

Never play competitive Dominion ten minutes after waking up.

2247

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Dominion Live Streams

« on: October 01, 2015, 06:30:34 am »

I'm going to be playing my f.DS championship round 1 match at 6:30 AM EDT (10:30 AM GMT) tomorrow (10-1-2015). It can be viewed at http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

Stream is live now.

2248

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Dominion Live Streams

« on: September 30, 2015, 05:14:45 pm »

I'm going to be playing my f.DS championship round 1 match at 6:30 AM EDT (10:30 AM GMT) tomorrow (10-1-2015). It can be viewed at http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

2249

Rules Questions / Re: Royal carriage and "in play cards"

« on: September 30, 2015, 05:12:07 pm »

I have no idea where this notion came from that a horizontal line has any meaning whatsoever in Dominion. Can someone cite a rule or ruling? I quite frankly think you're making this "horizontal line standard" up.

The Adventures rulebook has it:

Some cards have a dividing line on them. This separates things that happen at different times. When a card is played, it only does the effects listed above the line; text below the line happens at another time, indicated on each such card.

Someday I will rewrite the main rulebook and it will include that.

Thanks, hadn't read that before! And when the rulebook came out early I swore I read every word 

Indeed. And if there are multiple "While this is in play" effects, you do all of them if the physical card is in play. And there are multiple "While this is in play" effects when you Throne a card whose on-play effect sets up a "While this is in play" effect.

"While this is in play" effects aren't set up on play, though. They occur passively. If it was an effect set up on-play conditional on the card being in play, the effect would read "if this is in play", not "while this is in play".

It can also be "at the start of clean-up this turn" once. It doesn't prevent multiple things happening as a result of that one thing happening once.

That's totally different. At the start of clean up, the effect happens. Mulitple effects can happen at once. While this is in play is a state that is true while the card is in play. There is no second card. Where does the second instance of the effect come from?

2250

Dominion Articles / Re: Rats!

« on: September 30, 2015, 04:39:47 pm »

Those are the most relevant points of the card, but they don't actually tell a beginner/intermediate player when they should buy a Rats.  I.e. they don't answer the "so what?" that an inexperienced player might ask, which I was attempting to answer.  I wrote the article trying to solve for X in "I should buy a Rats when X.", which I don't see in the other wiki (of course, an expert player can deduce it from the points you mention, but that's the thing -- I think only expert players can correctly make that jump).

I thought it was pretty clear - "Rats is bsed used when a Rats in your deck is "better" than other junk". I then elaborated on the cases when that is true.

Adventurer and Scout are best used when they're better than other junk.  But that tells me nothing about when and when not to buy them.

Scout doesn't say "trash a card and gain a scout". I don't really understand how this is unclear - the effect of playing Rats is replacing junk with Rats.