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2426

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How to Teach People Dominion & Introduce New Expansions to Them

« on: April 07, 2015, 01:12:57 pm »

I've had mixed success with a number of methods, as it largely depends on the background of the player, but I like teaching it this way.

I start by explaining the fundamental mechanics of the game, with no action cards. Just the Base cards on the table. I "play" a solitaire game while explaining the basic mechanics of each turn. It shows a new player how the most straightforward way to win is to improve your deck economy and get the average output of a turn to equal $8 or more.

Then I add a few action cards, again still just demoing and explaining the game. Smithy gets thrown in, oh look, a single action works great! Then I buy too many of them and show how Actions collide with each other. Add a Village to explain how those work, while also explaining the opportunity cost problem as best I can (that every Village isn't a Silver).

After that, and once everyone understands the flow of the game, I set up the First Game board and play through that with people. It's a fairly even board, and I usually go for the engine because of how hard it is to make the engine more optimal than pure Big Money, particularly in the presence of Militia. That keeps the game closer. I also play with my hand revealed and explain what I'm doing and what choices I'm making.

If people want to play an additional game, I make a Kingdom with Chapel and a Village to demonstrate the power of heavy trashing. This is pretty important to learn early on. If they really want to, Witch will get thrown in too.

As for new expansions, I'll write more words later about that, but basically, add them one at a time, in rough order of complexity, but it's cool to skip right to Prosperity.

2427

Game Reports / Re: Candlestick Maker a good opener?

« on: April 07, 2015, 12:54:38 pm »

"It depends on the board", but a single CSM is a lot better than many players give it credit for, and I'd take it on a lot of boards.

Several things on a board make CSM particularly tempting. The presence of Alt-VP strategies makes CSM a lifesaver. It's excellent for Gardens, Vineyard, and / or Silk Road in particular, but not too bad for Duke either. It's one of the best all-around Alt-VP support cards. An engine with many cheap components wants to get +Buy involved fairly early on in the building process, and the Coin token really does help smooth out turns. Not that there aren't good reasons to buy Silver over it: Must-buy $5 cards, lack of engine potential, terminal draw BM, etc. But it's a strong option, and one of the best $2s that isn't Chapel.

2428

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Events will have normal (non-randomizer) card backs due to missprint

« on: April 07, 2015, 12:50:29 pm »

That said, I don't think its a problem that these cards don't have blue backs. Just don't look at the top of the randomizer deck when doing your final shuffles, then deal them out in order. It's not hard to shuffle without looking at the card piles, honestly. Or if you absolutely have to look the whole time, then cut the deck right before you deal and stick with whatever cut you make.

It's pretty hard to shuffle a deck with 256 cards in it even when you're looking at it.

In the extremely rare occasion that I'm going to use the full Randomizer deck to pick my Kingdom, I split the deck into multiple parts and/or use one of those card shuffling machines old people / Vegas casinos use. These can handle a LOT of cards and thoroughly mix them well. I don't mind dinging up randomizer cards.

2429

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Events will have normal (non-randomizer) card backs due to missprint

« on: April 07, 2015, 12:08:00 pm »

Here's a way to ensure they get the same play as all the other cards, accounting for the fact that you'll never have more than two in play in any one game.

If you have every expansion and promo there are ~236 kingdom cards. So you could make a deck of 24 coppers and 2 estates, shuffle, and draw 10 cards. For every estate you drew, add in one event card at random.

You get 10 Kingdom cards AND however many event cards that you drew. You're not strictly limited to 2 Events and they don't count as a Kingdom card in the sense that they take away a pile.

That said, I don't think its a problem that these cards don't have blue backs. Just don't look at the top of the randomizer deck when doing your final shuffles, then deal them out in order. It's not hard to shuffle without looking at the card piles, honestly. Or if you absolutely have to look the whole time, then cut the deck right before you deal and stick with whatever cut you make.

Optionally, use a software randomizer like I assume everyone does. I guess those will have to be rewritten now to account for events.

2430

Dominion General Discussion / Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #3: Moat

« on: April 07, 2015, 11:45:13 am »

Moat is a great example of a card that is pretty much AWFUL in 2 player, but much better in larger games. Kind of like Thief, except you still don't usually want Thief in multiplayer anyway.

In a lot of decks, you're trading immunity from attacks in exchange for at least one dead card in your hand most of the time. Either the dead card is Moat itself if you have another terminal action, or the terminal action that you inevitably dead draw when you play Moat. Moat Big Money isn't a serious strategy in many games, but I guess in a multiplayer junk flood it will win faster than someone being pelted with Curses in all directions could.

It's not terribly good in engines either, because you need Moat in your hand, so you still want a Moat every 5-10 cards or so. That requires more Villages, and then you still don't have good card draw, so you still need that to an extent... it's just not a good time trying to build an engine with Moat as your defense.

I'm really struggling to find situations in 2 player where Moat really is the best option. It just isn't, really. I guess really, REALLY big attack payloads like Cultist which can only be fired a few times would LOVE a Moat to make sure you're not on the receiving end of a giant Cultist chain.

2431

Dominion Articles / Re: Coin Tokens

« on: April 06, 2015, 07:32:16 pm »

My gut feeling on this is that there may be just a few more situations where having a lot of Bakers is advantageous than your article implies. I think it's more important to emphasize that you shouldn't be buying Bakers in lieu of some other form of economy; you shouldn't be using Baker as a Peddler. The usefulness of Baker is more or less directly proportional to how much Coin your deck generates. If you've got a bunch of coin elsewhere, particularly in an engine, Baker is going to be a lot better.

You certainly know better than I would here, but that's how I've been playing. I've won games by having more Bakers than my opponent, and in some cases it seems like getting / gaining four or five of them can really help things along. Dunno.

2432

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Munchkins...???

« on: April 06, 2015, 07:25:52 pm »

I hate Munchkin! Ugh.

Yes, but hear me out...if you're going to play Munchkin, you should play Adventure Time Munchkin.

I'm actually serious about this.

I'm with you here. Adventure Time Munchkin is probably the best variant I've played.

My interest in Munchkin at this point is limited to feeding nostalgic impulses and having something to do while deciding what real game my friends and I want to play that night. But AT Munchkin is a lot less bad than some other variants.

I'd rather play Adventures though, obviously.

2433

Dominion General Discussion / Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #2: Talisman

« on: April 06, 2015, 07:23:00 pm »

I'll have more to say later, but one thing I wanted to say before I forgot. Talisman is pretty weak most of the time, but one facet of Talisman people don't take advantage enough is that it stacks well with itself. If you feel a need to buy lots of cheap 2-3 cost cards in particular, multiple Talisman can help with that a lot more than you'd expect.

I've found it most useful on good boards for Vineyard, Feodum, and to a lesser extent Gardens. It gets you mileage out of Highway even without strong +Buy on the board. It's not as bad as it looks, but it's not great either.

Games where you're rushing a cheap action, the Peddler pile, or a pricier action with Quarry in play can be decided by who bought Talisman sooner.

Just to follow up here. Was digging through my logs folder and I found a match where I used Talisman as a Gardens enabler, which in tandem with Market Square / Pawn, allowed me to get a deck above 60 cards by turn 16, winning with just 5 Gardens and the starting Estates. It's not a great match, I didn't play very well, but it's an example of how stacking Talisman makes it suck less when your main goal is to get a lot of cheap shit. http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150224/log.5363eea1e4b03d4f275f8625.1424812692155.txt

2434

Dominion League / Re: Season 7 - Announcing Livestreams

« on: April 06, 2015, 04:52:13 pm »

I'm currently planning on playing nickchak at 4:30 PM (Eastern, 2030 UTC) on Wednesday, April 8. I guess I'll stream it here: http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791/

2435

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Blurry gif on Dominion Welt

« on: April 02, 2015, 08:34:52 am »

So there's a cantrip Reserve card, and at least one other of the exchange cycle cards gives the player Coin (one of the cycle starts)

I guess that's a thing.

2436

Dominion General Discussion / Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?

« on: April 01, 2015, 06:55:43 pm »

I'm in the "a little worse, but not nearly as bad as people make it out to be" camp. The effect of a cantrip is effectively "do something for free and get a random card to replace this". Neither of these things change in the presence of a discard attack. I don't really see a lot of games where I would buy a cantrip, but the presence of the discard attack persuades me to buy something else...

I think what people don't consider enough is that you can choose to discard the cantrip. In a Militia / Goons situation, two cards in your hand are going to be "dead" no matter what they are. You discard the cantrip if the expected value of the card drawn (avg. value of the rest of your deck) is better than the card you would otherwise be discarding. You can choose to take the risk with the drawn card, while reaping the benefit of the cantrip, or you can stick with what you have. Only when you have more than two cantrips in your hand are you really ever forced to take the risk and you're more vulnerable than you otherwise would have been.

Not saying "cantrips are only worse when you have more than 40% of your deck as cantrips", but I mean, I'm not going to buy Gold over Grand Market because there's a Militia on the board...

2437

Dominion General Discussion / Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #2: Talisman

« on: April 01, 2015, 01:39:16 pm »

I'll have more to say later, but one thing I wanted to say before I forgot. Talisman is pretty weak most of the time, but one facet of Talisman people don't take advantage enough is that it stacks well with itself. If you feel a need to buy lots of cheap 2-3 cost cards in particular, multiple Talisman can help with that a lot more than you'd expect.

I've found it most useful on good boards for Vineyard, Feodum, and to a lesser extent Gardens. It gets you mileage out of Highway even without strong +Buy on the board. It's not as bad as it looks, but it's not great either.

Games where you're rushing a cheap action, the Peddler pile, or a pricier action with Quarry in play can be decided by who bought Talisman sooner.

2438

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 01, 2015, 12:51:56 am »

I do wanna say that I really appreciate how you're reaching out to the player base to get suggestions on what changes to make and what improvements to implement. I'm sure years of pent up frustration about Goko Dominion are being vented in the thread right now, so I just wanted to make sure y'all know how much this is appreciated.

Most of my suggestions echo others. Persistently visible logs on desktop are an absolute must have. There isn't a "good enough" option to get to logs with a button click, they have to always be there. Mobile, whatever, it's cool if that isn't a thing there. Reduce the number of situations where a second page is necessary - Young Witch and Looters shouldn't trigger it. In general, cards that are not in the Supply can go on page 2, but everything in the Supply should be on page 1. Card concatenation is really nice. In situations where you have to select from a lot of cards (Scheme from a big turn) provide some way to make cards visible. When putting cards back on top of the deck "in any order", the interface should be less ambiguous - it ain't intuitively obvious that you click the cards in reverse order.

Really minor pet peeve, when the button to display the whole kingdom is picked, all ten Knights are just spread out over the entire kingdom so you have to read the kingdom over two pages, defeating the entire purpose of the feature. Just leave the Knights represented by the randomized card on page 1 of that view, and show all 10 on page 2.

I don't know if this is fixable, but the act of pausing the game to check if the other player wants to react inherently reveals to the curent player that the other player has that card in hand. I don't think there's a way around this but it's an unfortunate gameplay consequence that gives away some info.

2439

Dominion League / Re: Season 7 - Announcing Livestreams

« on: March 30, 2015, 09:26:16 pm »

Gonna stream my match in right now minutes:

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791/

2440

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Previews #1 - Lost City, Magpie, Hero

« on: March 30, 2015, 11:18:07 am »

Why can't I preorder yet TAKE MY MONEY DONALD

A bunch of random sites I've never heard of on Google let you pre-order and seem to promise shipping on launch day. I just ordered one a few minutes ago. Nothing on Amazon though, or any sites promising *delivery* launch day.

These cards are so cool. If this is the first, most boring preview, I'm really excited.

2441

Dominion General Discussion / Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #1: Wandering Minstrel

« on: March 26, 2015, 02:10:46 pm »

I'd take Minstrel/Steward over double Steward 100% of the time.

Just pick up another Steward on T3/4, and Minstrels cycling combined with the fact that you don't have to play a Steward for coins to hit 4 (since you already have the Minstrel) any time soon ensures that you'll draw your deck faster than with a double Steward open.

Another key reason to open Minstrel / Steward is that Minstrel is a lot more likely to pile out than Steward. You can pick up a second Steward later - obviously it isn't ideal to grab trashers after the first shuffle, but it's workable. WM's cycling is also helpful - forces the shuffle more often and you get to play the single Steward more often. I don't see when I wouldn't do this.

I think there's a similar argument for Ambassador / Masquerade as well - not that I open double Masquerade often.

2442

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko Dominion Salvager Discussion

« on: March 26, 2015, 02:08:28 pm »

In a thread on why there are really low iso level players, Wandering Winder said that there's a bug in Salvager where if players change their names, displayed iso levels in Salvager don't update. This seems to impact a number of people.

A fix would be great, but in the meantime is there a way to tell how prevalent this is? Should I avoid using iso level filters on my games because a sizable fraction of people actually have higher ratings than is displayed by Salvager?

There's a bug with players who change their names - displayed iso levels in Salvager don't ever update. That could be some of it.

As someone impacted the bug I'd certainly prefer it! I'm at 5100 Pro / 28 Iso right now (I'm probably overrated), but since I switched my name as soon as I started playing online I'll be at -54 for eternity. Would be cool to play with the people who have Iso filters on that I qualify for.

2443

Dominion Articles / Re: Why Engine?

« on: March 26, 2015, 02:00:27 pm »

This is very well written. Succinct, but thorough. Very useful for players learning how to make decisions tailored toward one kind of deck or the other - particularly a Big Money deck with a fair number of actions, but also the decisions involved with going full engine. Definitely should get on the site if that's still a thing.

2444

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

« on: March 25, 2015, 01:01:22 pm »

Cache + Doctor is something I played this morning in a really empty Kingdom without much else to do. Yet has surprisingly good synergy and pretty much works as a Big Money deck all by itself. You can open Silver / Doctor overpay, then buy Cache on $5, using Doctor to trash those Coppers before you even draw them. Get a second Doctor at some point and you can get essentially a Gold per shuffle without much drawback. Eventually you just buy gold straight up and then you're hitting $8 or more every draw. Kinda fun, I guess.

Not to be a naysayer, but I wonder if that's really better than just buying Silver, Cache, and Gold. How many Estates and Coppers did you end up trashing?

I got the first Estate on my overpay, and the second near the end of a shuffle when I knew it would be there. I picked up a second Doctor by the end of the third shuffle and trashed at least 7 Copper. Bought 3 Caches, so I had at most 6 Copper in my deck, then I think I managed two Gold buys before picking up Province. Had just two Silver. Unfortunately I don't have the log from this game.

This seems like something easy enough to script in Dominate; I'll give it a try later. You very well could be right as trashing is rarely a benefit in Big Money - the reason Doctor works well in this strategy is because it trashes without hurting your current (or even future) turn much.

2445

Dominion General Discussion / Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #1: Wandering Minstrel

« on: March 25, 2015, 12:59:01 pm »

Wandering Minstrel is pretty good. It's better than it looks even in decks that rely on Treasure, provided there's some deck thinning on the table somewhere. If you draw most of / all of your deck every turn anyway, discarding Treasures and Victory cards is a good thing - these are cards you only want at the end of your draw cycling. It's just easier to build an engine with WM than many other villages. That said, obviously the less potent your engine / the more reliant you are on Treasure, the less WM is going to do for you, but in very few cases would I say it's actually worse than Village.

It is a totally reasonable, if not great, Tunnel enabler. A Tunnel / WM strategy is pretty good on weak boards. WM is also a decent defense against Cursing attacks in the absence of a trasher. Particularly does well versus Sea Hag.

Being able to rearrange the Actions on your deck is extremely helpful for getting the most out of cantrip draws, etc.

I'm sure this is all rehashing other points.

2446

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Really Low Iso Level Players on Goko

« on: March 25, 2015, 12:52:51 pm »

For some reason, my Iso rank displays for me (and others?) as -54, but I'm level 25 on the actual leaderboard??

Have you changed your username? If so, this may help explain it:

There's a bug with players who change their names - displayed iso levels in Salvager don't ever update. That could be some of it.

Yup, I've done that a few times over the past year or so. Any way I can fix this? It sucks to be ranked in the 4000-5000 range but I can't play with people with Iso ranking filters since I'm "-54".

2447

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

« on: March 25, 2015, 11:30:35 am »

Cache + Doctor is something I played this morning in a really empty Kingdom without much else to do. Yet has surprisingly good synergy and pretty much works as a Big Money deck all by itself. You can open Silver / Doctor overpay, then buy Cache on $5, using Doctor to trash those Coppers before you even draw them. Get a second Doctor at some point and you can get essentially a Gold per shuffle without much drawback. Eventually you just buy gold straight up and then you're hitting $8 or more every draw. Kinda fun, I guess.

2448

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Really Low Iso Level Players on Goko

« on: March 24, 2015, 08:55:05 pm »

For some reason, my Iso rank displays for me (and others?) as -54, but I'm level 25 on the actual leaderboard??

2449

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

« on: March 24, 2015, 03:29:50 pm »

I guess the most interesting one I haven't seen mentioned would be Candlestick Maker / Gardens. It's one of the best Gardens enablers in the game, actually. Each CSM is at worst a Copper that gives you an additional buy, and unlike Workshop, Woodcutter, etc. they are non-terminal. Its cheap as fuck cost combined with the +Buy means you can afford to buy a TON of them (like more than 5) before you start greening. Once you start stuffing your deck, it swells so quickly that you can often get to 50 cards before the rush is over. Plus Coin tokens are just super useful for Gardens strategies. Those annoying $3 hands when you're trying to lock up the Gardens pile stop being a problem with Coin tokens. It's almost as good as Storeroom / Gardens.

2450

Dominion Articles / Re: Article: Forager

« on: March 24, 2015, 03:09:18 pm »

Since this article was written pretty much forever ago, I think I'll just add my comments on it to the wiki directly once it's up. Forager is probably one of my most bought cards in any kingdom and I was thinking of writing a whole article on it myself someday. It's useful in almost every game.

I wouldn't say it's particularly bad for Big Money, except perhaps Smithy BM. While yes, trashing is less valuable in Big Money, and cards like Chapel are actually slowing you down, Forager provides a lot more immediate benefit for a lot less of an opportunity cost. Essentially in the early game, you can trash Copper without making your hand worth any fewer points, and you get to trash an Estate for some money immediately. Also, while it doesn't help if you draw it dead, the non-terminalness of this card is another huge benefit. You get some money, a crappy card out of your deck, and +Buy without using your action, which would draw you more cards that you can use with that +Buy! Softer terminal draw in particular (Courtyard, Catacombs, Journeyman, and ESPECIALLY Library) works well with Forager in a mostly BM strategy.

Finally, more emphasis on its excellent price is needed. You can open Forager / almost anything and hit the ground running right away without collision being a problem. It's one of the best cheap trashers.

Since this is two years old (does the OP even hang out here anymore?), I can just incorporate these suggestions into the wiki later if people don't think they are dumb.