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26

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Running out of steam

« on: November 30, 2011, 11:56:02 am »

It depends on what sort of strategy you are running. If you have a rush plan (for example, with remodel or salvager), then that province can be a good buy. Generally you are better off getting a gold, though. If you are that early in the game and got a $8 hand, then that's pretty bad luck, really. It means your other hands this shuffle must be *horrid*.

27

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Exception to the rule?

« on: November 30, 2011, 10:59:04 am »

Black market? The possession is in the BM, but you can't buy the Province *during* your BM for obvious reasons.

28

Dominion General Discussion / Re: New Promo Governor

« on: November 30, 2011, 06:34:26 am »

Five provinces in 9 turns with Governor/Chapel.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/30/game-20111130-032949-e706ec9f.html

I got somewhat lucky and my opponent didn't play ideally, but I think this highlights the power of Governor. Don't be so focused on the big end turn - gain gold/trash gold and get province is something that can be done really damn fast, and the game can be over soon enough that if anything giving your opponent silvers counts as an attack because it keeps him from getting to his governors. Avoid playing the lab option as much as you can - way too dangerous.

And here's a 12 turn 5 province with warehouse as an enabler.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/30/game-20111130-041548-a313e03f.html

I really feel like greening from turn 8 or 9 or so (or faster, with good trashing) is the best play. Like the remodel-gold, the governor-gold trash is relatively resistant to green cards in your deck, especially with warehouse. There's comparatively little point to waiting for the megaturn.

29

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Running out of steam

« on: November 29, 2011, 02:33:59 pm »

Don't forget the one best friend of the Minion player: throne room.

30

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Apothecary, Wishing Well, Coppersmith

« on: November 29, 2011, 02:20:20 pm »

I think this combo is too rare. Why? Because it's not just three cards (though three cards is already pretty damn rare). It's three cards, and a +buy. This thing will probably never appear again in a game unless it's pre-selected. Without a +buy, you'll hit a lot of wasted buys at the $5-7 range, because buying Gold anti-synergises with that coppersmith.

And with that, 5 provinces in 16 turns isn't that impressive. Apothecary/WW is a good combo (I seem to consistently hit 4 provinces in about 14 turns with this, buying some gold to help out), but adding coppersmith isn't powerful enough to justify its rarity.

31

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: How many niches for village-types are left? Can you think of any new ones?

« on: November 28, 2011, 10:41:53 am »

I don't see why you need the card back - why would the player ever choose not to reveal the card? As worded, the player reveals when drawn, and if he forgets to do so, then that's his own fault.

32

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Noob's Expansion - Part 2 - Come rip it apart even more...

« on: November 26, 2011, 11:59:11 am »

IMO it's still too weak and useless. The lab effect simply means drawing this + an estate = having neither of those cards in your deck in the first place. And if you haven't drawn those two cards together, you've basically just cursed yourself by buying this card. Using this to gain estates instead of some other card would be useful in a very slim set of circumstances, since usually an estate in deck is about as bad as a curse. I would never ever buy this except as an odd combo with Baron and even then I'd probably prefer Crossroads.

Personally I think the Duchy gain isn't as overpowered as you think. Compare Tunnel, which gains a much better card (gold) and Transmute which offers you the powerful option of gaining Gold as well.

33

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Royal Scepter - combining Golem and Throne Room

« on: November 26, 2011, 11:46:24 am »

How does that make a difference? Still massively too powerful, probably even at $5.

34

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Noob's Expansion - Part 2 - Come rip it apart even more...

« on: November 25, 2011, 04:34:41 am »

That VP gain reaction is just sickeningly powerful. Think about it - Tunnel is balanced by the fact that its effect (gaining golds) works against it, by making it more difficult to chain together combos to discard it. In comparison newArchitect also lets you trash, creating a lean, mean VP scoring machine that never bogs down. Imagine it in a double tactician engine. Or just with hunting party.

Estate gaining is too weak though. I'd suggest duchy-gain as an reaction, and increase the cost to $4.

35

Dominion General Discussion / Re: iOS / Android Dominion close : Battle of Gundabad

« on: November 25, 2011, 04:23:07 am »

But I mean, I'd think that things like 'A card costing 4 whatever, that grants 2 whatever, and forces the opponent to discard 1 of 'basic currency' card' would be protected as the scrabble board layout is. The situation seems similar to the Desktop Dungeons case.

36

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Royal Scepter - combining Golem and Throne Room

« on: November 24, 2011, 12:05:12 pm »

Too cheap. Compare the other card semi-cloner, Scheme.

37

Dominion General Discussion / Re: iOS / Android Dominion close : Battle of Gundabad

« on: November 24, 2011, 11:50:41 am »

Do you think Donald has good grounds to issue a cease & desist? It seems to be pretty much a reskin of Dominion, with some of the cards being completely identical  (Paralyze = Cutthroat, Wolf rider = Warehouse), etc. It even copies the size 10 piles and the 5 card 4/3 opening split. I imagine that if not Donald X, then his publishers are going to be very angry about this. If they want to copy dominion, then they can at least think up their own cards!

38

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: How many niches for village-types are left? Can you think of any new ones?

« on: November 24, 2011, 10:11:41 am »

Yes. I think that's probably simplest.

39

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: How many niches for village-types are left? Can you think of any new ones?

« on: November 24, 2011, 08:47:09 am »

On the subject of reverse ordering...

---
Servants' Dormitory $4 action-reaction
+2 actions

Whenever you draw this, +1 card.
---

Basically, a village that can never be drawn dead when you play a smithy or whatever. Also has interesting combo potential with warehouse, spy, etc, and a defense against deck inspection based attacks.

Or the scarily powerful version:


---
Servants' Dormitory $4P action-reaction
+2 actions

Whenever you draw this, +1 card, +$2.
---

40

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Two Puzzles I Don't Know the Answer to

« on: November 17, 2011, 11:33:25 am »

I have 7 turns for the Copper, 8 for the Gold.

Care to say how?

41

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: When would you not take all your Coppers into hand with Counting House?

« on: November 16, 2011, 03:43:46 pm »

When you're going to play Contraband but don't want the opponent to be certain that you have enough $ for a province/colony. (e.g. if you have 5 coppers in discard, and a three card hand of contraband/platinum/counting house, looking crestfallen and picking up 3 coppers will more likely induce your opponent to block platinum or gold instead of colony.)

When you are going to play remake or steward to trash a copper but don't want to run completely out of money because you are going for some crazy calculated strategy where your treasures add up exactly to $8.

42

Dominion Articles / Re: Highway cost interactions

« on: November 07, 2011, 10:02:03 am »

Given the amount of prep to set that up, turning estates into silvers is a ridiculously weak payoff.

43

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Apothecary/ Warehouse/ Cache

« on: November 07, 2011, 09:58:13 am »

Just apothecary + warehouse is sufficient to get 4 provinces in ~14 turns, especially with a few helpers (+buy is nice especially).

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/07/game-20111107-065109-612e5c89.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/07/game-20111107-065659-e3ce19bc.html

You don't really want to buy additional coppers for apothecary. Doing that dilutes the apothecaries in your deck and stops you from being able to chain them.

44

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cache

« on: November 07, 2011, 09:43:18 am »

I like cache in a thin deck that started out with two early spice traders. Cache helps feed those spice traders later in the game while providing some cash. This is what I use cache for most often.

Feeding spice traders is a losing proposition. Copper + Spice trader, using the lab effect, is exactly the same as not having those two cards at all! Using the woodcutter effect is making the spice trader into a terminal copper (and okay, a buy, but still.)

45

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Variant card needs a cost

« on: November 05, 2011, 07:30:20 pm »

Why not stop worrying and learn to love the big cantrip engine game? :p

EDIT: To clarify, in my view, it's perfectly acceptable to have one card which for its cost is a must-buy on any board it appears on, so long as that card alone doesn't create a degenerate strategy that recommends you forsake every other card on the board and buy only it and maybe a silver or two.

I would disagree.  A must-buy means you're not playing, your following a script for the first X#-turns.  I would rather just put X in each players deck before the beginning of the game.  Then you can skip the script, and actually play.  (This would be an interesting variant to have a card that had a setup rule like this on it.)

The point with untitled is that you only get good value out of the card if you have the support cards in place. So there is some strategy connected with for example, whether you pick up initial silvers so you hit $5 more often, or whether you go into cheap cantrips to fuel your final megaturn. Whether you opt for trashing first, and whether you start picking up duchies.

Giving everyone copies of untitled at the start isn't the same, just as though witches should not be ignored in witch games, giving everyone a free witch at the start isn't the same.

Card name "Must-Buy"
Cost $3
Type:  Treasure
Card text:  1$  +1 Card.  As long as Must-Buy is in play, draw one card whenever you play a treasure.

It's pretty much the same as untitled right?  It just turns every treasure into a weaker Venture, no big deal.  Kinda like turning every cantrip into a lab.  It's weaker than Venture cause you could dead draw an action or victory. 

Boring because it forces big money?  What if I like big money engines?

There's a number of differences. Firstly, the cards for big money are available on every board. On many boards, cantrips might simply not be present. Or buys might not be present to let you build up those cantrips.

Secondly, big money encourages algorithmic play. If you have $6, you buy a gold. If you have $5, you buy a silver. Each of the treasures completely obseletes the one that it's cheaper than. In comparison, the action cards generally do not do this. You might have two $3 cards, that both trigger the Untitled effect, but a player that goes for the village chain might be completely crushed by the player that goes for oasis chain. Or vice versa. Even if you have $4, you might want to buy the $3 card instead. Then there are the interesting interaction effects. You might want a village, so that you can use your jester attacks to flood the other guy with coppers.

This is why big money strategies are generally considered boring, compared to actions. The real comparison is with a card like chapel. No one complains (usually) that chapel encourages thin deck games.

46

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Variant card needs a cost

« on: November 03, 2011, 10:04:14 am »

Well, you may be right that costing it high turns the game into a broken kind of race.  But I think you're wrong that it wouldn't be broken in a worse way at a cheaper price.  I think it absolutely would create a such degenerate strategy.  I think priced at $5, you buy 2-3, a single Copper, and take a Province every turn thereafter.  After you've got your extra Copper, use any <$5 turn to buy anything at all.  Probably doesn't matter what.

As I said previously, playing 3 or fewer per turn is equivalent or worse to having laboratories. So on its own this doesn't form a degenerate strategy any more than massing laboratories does (I'd think that on its own, most of the time it's worse than laboratory, since it's just that bit weaker at starting off a chain, and at the high end when you are chaining together tons of cards it doesn't matter anyway since you'll probably already have enough $ for your province.). It's combining it with cantrips or villages that gives this card real power.

47

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Variant card needs a cost

« on: November 02, 2011, 11:54:02 pm »

All that, with ONE Untitled.  Chain together two Untitleds, which you'll probably be able to do since one can explode your drawing power so much, and I'm pretty sure that's a guaranteed deck-draw no matter how many greens and Curses you've got.  Because then your Moats are drawing like Council Rooms, and your Courtyards are doing even better.  Maybe if you're REALLY clogged, you need three, but no more.  Price this card like Minion, and it won't matter if the split goes 8/2 against you, because the guy who bought 8 is down 6 Duchies that might as well have auto-Islanded themselves for all the harm it did your deck.

But that's *exactly* the reason it should be not too expensive. Price this at $7 or whatever, and you set up a massive ballooning effect whereupon a player that is lucky to hit $7 first gets stronger turns and crushes his opponent. At $5, it becomes more accessible to both players, and it becomes a matter not of who can spam the most of these cards but who can buy Untitleds whilst simultaneously building up the support cantrips and money at the same time. Like with Chapel, the matter isn't that it's powerful relative to its cost, but rather its cost has to bear in mind its effects on the game. I don't think $7 or $5P or making the card more variable or whatever would have the effect you think. If the smart play with the card is to buy 3 or so and do other stuff, then up-pricing it just penalises the unlucky, instead of what should be done - which is to shift focus away from this card to what *other* cards you should buy and when to go along with it.

Why not stop worrying and learn to love the big cantrip engine game? :p

EDIT: To clarify, in my view, it's perfectly acceptable to have one card which for its cost is a must-buy on any board it appears on, so long as that card alone doesn't create a degenerate strategy that recommends you forsake every other card on the board and buy only it and maybe a silver or two.

48

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Variant card needs a cost

« on: November 02, 2011, 09:36:21 pm »

In a given turn, a single play turns pearl divers into labs, villages into level 2 cities, etc.  I am pretty sure it's monstrously good.

Sure, but where are those pearl divers going to come from? Until you draw this card consistently, you will be a village idiot most of the time, thus ensuring that your opponent will have the lead in gaining Untitled. If you are going village heavy, you can be often better off investing in a smithy instead of this card, and that'll often give you a better upside if you draw it dead. I mean, to make this work, you'd need:

Cheap cantrips
Source of +buy
Multiple copies of untitled
Money

And you need all of these before the opponent can finish the game. So the comparison to scrying pool seems apt. It's scrying pool, minus the attack/inspect, with a more consistent but weaker-best-case draw ability.

EDIT: Then again I just love powerful cards.

49

Dominion Articles / Re: Updating the Top 5 lists

« on: November 02, 2011, 09:20:42 pm »

Note: all these are for 2 player
Top above 5
1.King's Court
2.Goons
3.Grand Market
4.Peddler
5.Hoard

Bottom above 5
1.Adventurer
2.Forge
3.Expand
4.Farmland
5.Bank

Pretty much agreed. I'd say that expand and forge are more useful than farmland most of the time, but it's close.

Top 5 Attacks
1.Witch
2.Mountebank
3.Minion
4.Margrave
5.Ghost Ship
I want to note that Ghost Ship moves ahead of Margrave when there isn't something combo-y possible; it's very good there, better than gold for your first couple actually

No jester? I'd have jester at $5 instead of ghost ship. I mean, ghost ship is more annoying, but jester seems more useful and there are fewer counters.

Top 5 non-attacks
1.Wharf
2.Hunting Party
3.Tactician
4.Ill Gotten Gains
5.Stables
Note: IGG and stables aren't stable here, I don't have a great feel for them. But man, Wharf is still the best, and Hunting party is insane.

I don't really get the love for your #4 and #5. Stables has generally failed to impress me - being often weaker than laboratory - and IGG seems narrow strategically (if its main use is for trashing into something else, then it's not that good a card :p). Vault as a strategy unto itself should still be on this list.

Bottom 5s
1.Outpost
2.Saboteur
3.Counting House
4.Contraband
5.Mine
Yeah, I'm going to get killed for Outpost. And it's not always useless. But I don't see it.

It's crazy to have outpost be the worst card. Mandarin should be on this list, though it's probably better than counting house.

I hear what you said about governor, but governor's problem comes from being misplayed. It's actually quite strong as a gold gainer/non-terminal remodel in the late game.

Top 4s
1.Sea Hag
2.JoaT
3.Monument
4.Militia
5.Smithy
I think tournament is pretty overrated, Monument very very underrated. And Caravan extremely overrated, though not bad.

Remake ought to be on this list, probably above monument.

Bottom 4s
1.Scout
2.Thief
3.Talisman
4.Treasure Map
5.Noble Brigand
Scout is terrible, by the way, even with it getting a good deal better with Hinterlands.

Coppersmith should be on this. I'd put Traders also on this but some people might complain.

Top 3s
1.Ambassador
2.Fishing Village
3.Masquerade
4.Swindler
5.Warehouse
I'm quite sure of the top 4 here, 5th is much less clear. Actually Hinterlands has a lot of ambassador counters too.

Is Swindler that good? It's too variable IMHO. Steward is more generally useful IMHO.

Bottom 3s
1.Develop
2.Chancellor
3.Woodcutter
4.Black Market
5.Trade Route
I always find that black market is tough as a terminal, as usually there's SOMETHING good on the board, rather than going fishing for some one of few things in the BM.

I don't get the hate for develop some people have. It's a nice, albeit situational card. It sucks as an estate/copper trasher, but the times where there's useful $5-3 cards are more common than people think. I'd put oracle on this list.

Top 2s
1.Chapel
2.Hamlet
3.Courtyard
4.Lighthouse
5.Pawn
Wow, I'm actually surprised lighthouse is this low. It's routinely better than silver (basically if there's almost any attack or anything benefitting from non-replacing non-terminals), but it just doesn't have the star power of hamlet or courtyard (which, incidentally, is often better than smithy).

Bottom 2s
1.Secret Chamber
2.Moat
3.Herbalist
4.Cellar
5.Pearl Diver
No comments here really.

I want to say that I may have missed something, just jotting these down in about a half hour. I also look at worst very simply: How often is it that this is the card I want to buy. If I never want it, it's terrible. That doesn't mean it's necessarily terrible once I have it, just that, given the opportunity, cost, how often is it worth it? Best is a bit more tricky, because it has to be a combination of wanting it often and having it really shine as the centrepiece of a deck.

Now that's an interesting criteria. By that criteria, herbalist is at least useful *sometimes* (as the only source of +buy). Pearl diver should be the top of this list, because I've never, ever looked at a board and said 'ah, pearl diver is what I need here'.

50

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Variant card needs a cost

« on: November 02, 2011, 08:41:17 pm »

I don't think removing the +1 card will do anything other than increase variance. It's inherently powerful, and therefore expensive, and as an expensive card, without the +1 card it has an increased chance of being drawn dead or with just one useless terminal, which would be absolutely disastrous and generally game losing. This is swinginess is part of the issue with KC, and so it shouldn't be replicated.

I think building engines with multiple copies of this seems powerful, but in practice, probably not as much as people assume. 2 untitled = 1 lab. 3 untitled = 3 labs. You need to chain together 4 or more to exceed laboratory, at which point you're probably drawing near your entire deck anyway and it ceases to be much of an advantage. It'd be (much) more powerful with villages and other cantrips, but usually building such engines are expensive and require slow buildup, whereupon your opponent can outdo you by grabbing the necessary cards. The closest comparison to this card is probably scrying pool.

So I actually like it as a $5 card as originally proposed.

EDIT:

You know, an interesting thought experiment would be:

Imagine this card:
DRAW
Action $?

+1 Action
Draw your entire deck and discard.

How much would you value this card at? Can it possibly be balanced?