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51

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Allies Preview 3: Choose One

« on: March 04, 2022, 02:48:01 pm »

Sorry to interrupt the very important discussion about Elder rules, but I'm giving my thoughts on the power level and implications of the previewed cards, based on no testing whatsoever.

Town Crier can do the Pawn thing where it's sometimes a cantrip, sometimes something else.  But I dunno, in modern Dominion, Pawn is kind of weak except for the +Buy, and Town Crier doesn't even have that.  It's not very strong but it doesn't hurt either, and there's that Elder synergy to look forward to, so eh?

Town Blacksmith seems more like it.  I think terminal draw that optionally cantrips is good in a way that Town Crier is not.

Miller is the super Border Guard.  Eh... it's not bad, but do I really want to spend $4 on it?

To gauge the power level of Elder, rather than imagining, e.g. Town Crier but with two options, I credit the second option to Elder.  So if I collide Elder+Town Crier, and use the extra option to get +$2, then Elder was like a non-terminal $4.  I would rate this on the level of a nice synergy, hardly world moving.  One thing that I find interesting, is that Elder synergizes with the top two Townsfolk, but not so much with Miller, so you have to invest in that synergy early and hope it pays off later.

Town seems somewhat above average for a village.  It's a decent even before you get your action density up, and the +Buy will be appreciated when it's needed.

Modify is roughly the power level of Upgrade, but I think slightly weaker.

I'm not sure if this was answered yet, but for Band of Nomads, can you only spend one favor per card you gain, or is it multiple?  I'm guessing it's just once per card?  When I first looked at favors, I thought they might be about as valuable as +Action or +Buy, and Band of Nomads makes that fairly direct.  But having the choice makes it even better.  What makes it less good is the timing restriction.  I think it's decent if you can gain cards during your action phase, but may otherwise be mediocre.

Architect's Guild seems comparable to Crafter's Guild from day 2.  Well, it can gain more expensive cards sometimes, but not victory cards, and it doesn't topdeck them.  I rated Crafter's Guild as extremely strong so I say the same here.

52

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Allies Preview 2: Split piles

« on: March 04, 2022, 01:59:52 pm »

For fun, I'm going to guess at the power level and implications of these cards--without having played any of them online.  Best to get all my wrong thoughts out before reality has time to correct me.

Herb Gatherer is like Messenger.  Not very strong at all.  What's interesting is that if this is the only source of plus buy, you could buy one and rotate the pile, cutting off access to +Buy.  It's a weak card that you nonetheless want to open with.  If there are better sources of +buy though, I could see this getting ignored a lot of the time.  Which is just fine, piles don't need to be good all the time.

Acolyte is Transmute.  No seriously, it's a card whose main benefit is trashing Estates into Gold, and which you can only buy on the second shuffle, and often only if you bought another weak card in your first shuffle.  Obviously this is better than Transmute but I think it's pretty weak.  I think the player who gets Acolyte would prefer to rotate the pile so they can trash it for something better, but what if nobody gets Acolyte?  Maybe the pile will just stop here.

Sorceress doesn't seem very strong unless you have some sort of synergy, e.g. with Sybil, which is obviously independently powerful already.  So the synergy is right there in the pile, so I guess that seems good.  I think cursers that require a bit of support like this can actually be more powerful, because it's entirely possible that one player will miss out, potentially leading to 10/0 curse splits.  I can see the Augur pile rotating a few times throughout the game though, so you probably don't miss out forever.

I agree with the comparisons between Old Map and Fugitive--Old Map is slightly less powerful, but not that much less.  It seems good relative to its cost.  But obviously you can't build your deck around it, and it doesn't particularly synergize with the rest of the pile (especially not Voyage).  I think this will have a very different dynamic from Herb Gatherer--you're okay missing out on this one.

Voyage seems good?  It's not great in a deck with a lot of cantrips, but I'm sure there are plenty of turns where you can play $4 and just buy a cheap card, making it at about as good as Ironworks.  Or maybe you trash some cards, without having to reduce handsize on your main turn.

Sunken Treasure is like the version of Horn of Plenty that gets worse on bigger turns, and also won't gain victory cards.  So, really not like Horn of Plenty at all.  This doesn't seem very strong without synergies, but hey Voyage is a synergy.

Distant Shore is like a Duchy + experiment.  Gaining estates is not great, but how many shuffles are left anyway?  Also don't you have old maps, just discard the estates.

Swap - This just seems like a great first $5--provided you have enough action density--because you could just swap to get whatever other $5 you would have wanted otherwise.  It seems extremely powerful.

To judge allies, I still go back to my question "how good would Underling be with this ally?".  Crafter's Guild  makes Underling a cantrip armory half the time.  That seems... extremely good.  Like, almost as good as Cobbler but at a $3 price point.

City-State also seems extremely good.  If you can gain a card during your action phase, it's effectively +1 card +1 action, with the card you draw and play being the action you just gained.  If you can't gain cards during your action phase, well, it's probably still fine.

53

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Allies Preview 1: Allies

« on: March 04, 2022, 01:11:23 pm »

For fun, I'm going to guess at the power level and implications of these cards--without having played any of them online.  Best to get all my wrong thoughts out before reality has time to correct me.

The fact that Underling costs $3 suggests that a favor is about as valuable as a +Buy or +Action, and somewhat less valuable than a +$1.  Of course, depending on the ally, a favor may be more or less powerful, or maybe Underling itself is just fairly powerful relative to its cost.  Based on the previewed allies, I think Underling may be on the strong side relative to its cost.

Bauble is a copper with a bonus.  It reminds me of Candlestick Maker, or Ducat, but without the trashing or coffers.  It faces the question of why would I want to add a copper to my deck.  Probably not a power house, but if you need buys or favors it's there for you.

Broker is Salvager plus flexibility minus buy.  In the early game you're often not using that buy anyway, and you might prefer the terminal draw over money.  But unless you have a lot of fodder, I think it may not be very strong.  Imagine trashing a silver, netting one extra card, but Broker is terminal and is one extra card really enough to replace what you trashed?

To judge allies, I initially try to imagine how strong they would make Underling, the simplest of the liaisons.

Cave Dwellers makes it roughly the power level of old map--pretty good.

Coastal Haven makes Underling a Haven, except you can keep your favors around until you need them.  I think that's way better than Haven.

Peaceful Cult makes Underling a cantrip trasher.  Obviously very good.

Plateau Shepherds, well that one's hard to judge.  If there's a spammable $2-cost, you might get around ~4 of them, maybe ~2 estates, and that's about the value of two provinces.  I think this isn't ignorable, but neither is it dominating--unless there's a strong synergy somewhere.  What's interesting is that you don't want favors right away, you just want them before the game ends.  It may antisynergize with Underling, since Underling just doesn't have the flexibility to grab a bunch of favors at the end.

League of Bankers is also hard to judge, because it's not directly comparable to anything we've seen.  I might compare it to Canal, which is okay at $7 even when there aren't synergies with cost reduction.  Or maybe think of it like a Peddler that you topdeck every turn.  At only 4 favors and stackable, I think this is very cost effective.  But imagine doing this with just Underlings--you have to play a lot of useless cantrips before seeing returns on your investment.

54

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion: Allies Teaser

« on: February 27, 2022, 12:11:11 pm »

Very excited for 3 whole new victory cards.  We haven't had that many in a single set since apparently Hinterlands.

55

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Seaside 2E Announced

« on: February 01, 2022, 01:36:06 pm »

You would actually want to drop wharf? why?

Great question.  While I understand that stronger cards are generally more popular, because you get to do bigger things in games that include them, we tend not to like them as much, because they're centralizing, and lead to situations where one player unlocked the big thing and the other player has to sit around and give a good hard think about resigning.  King's Court is one of our most common vetoes for that reason.  Wharf, eh.  I'd keep it but if DXV decides to remove it I'd go along with his judgment on that one.

We've been playing for over a decade, and are aware of the competitive scene, but don't actually play online.  So we're sort of casual players but also not.  And for what it's worth some stuff that's relatively fast online is slower offline (e.g. shuffling, tracking large action chains), and vice versa (e.g. attack and reaction effects).

56

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Seaside 2E Announced

« on: January 31, 2022, 10:23:04 pm »

Since I just play with physical copies, we don't actually need to drop any of the cards just because they get removed from 2E.  So I asked my husband which he would be willing to drop if they were removed.

His list: Haven, Pearl Diver, Cutpurse, Navigator, Pirate Ship, Explorer, Wharf

My list: Pearl Diver, Ambassador, Navigator, Cutpurse, Navigator, Pirate Ship, Explorer, Ghost Ship, Wharf

Although, I think it also might matter what they get replaced with.

57

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Seaside 2E Announced

« on: January 31, 2022, 04:02:17 pm »

That's DXV's opinion like 10 years ago though.  I too had opinions 10 years ago, I wouldn't like to be held to account for those myself.

On the other hand, DXV has said similar stuff more recently, 2 years ago.  In response to the question "What cards would you remove if later sets had an actual 2E overhaul?"

Seaside: Pearl Diver, Navigator, Pirate Ship, Sea Hag, Embargo, Lookout. The first three are duds; Sea Hag because I don't like having two cheap junking attacks in one set and would rather take out Sea Hag than Ambassador, plus some people don't like that it has no upside, just attack; Embargo is a dud but also I get to not include Embargo tokens; Lookout is fine but a lot of casual players don't like it. With any 2E I would try to make better versions of cards that left that had merit to the premise or flavor, and would try to get more use out of extra components. So here, I'd have maybe 3 cards that used the coin tokens, and a different Pirate Ship. I wanted to do a Seaside 2E; it didn't happen because Jay didn't want to ask Valerie if we could replace Harem and give her a new card in Intrigue 2E, and well Seaside has two cards depicting people, Pearl Diver and Navigator. Plus Jay had boxes of Embargo tokens sitting around. It still might happen someday; the usual problem is, it's competing with all other projects.

58

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Seaside 2E Announced

« on: January 31, 2022, 12:24:56 pm »

Interesting to speculate on which cards will be removed, because Seaside is in a different place from Base or Intrigue 1E.  In those sets, the removed cards were very much on the weak end.  In Seaside, there are a few strong cards that I could see subject to consideration (Wharf, Ambassador, Ghost Ship) but such powerful cards tend to have a lot of fans.  I'm guessing they're here to stay.

I think DXV has said that Navigator and Pearl Diver can't be removed because the art depicts real people, but perhaps the situation changed?  And what about the Island/Pirate Ship/Native Village triptych?  It's neat but I suppose not strictly necessary to keep them together.

Anyway, my best guesses are:
Navigator
Pearl Diver
Pirate Ship
Merchant Ship
Embargo
Island
Explorer
Treasure Map

I also checked with the rankings to see if they match up with the lowest ranking cards.  Thunderminion's bottom 8 are nearly the same, but Island is swapped out for Treasury.  Admittedly, I wouldn't miss Treasury, it's just not that impactful of a card.  In the current card Glicko rankings, Island is swapped out for Cutpurse.  Another one I wouldn't particularly miss.

Of the above cards, I would most miss Treasure Map.  And, I really like Embargo but I would love if it were redesigned.

59

Other Games / Re: Winter Kingdom

« on: August 25, 2020, 08:08:52 pm »

Thanks!

Pretty excited for Winter Kingdom.  I’ve played Kingdom Builder a few times, but never owned a copy, so it seems like a great opportunity to get into it.

60

Other Games / Re: Winter Kingdom

« on: August 25, 2020, 02:05:12 am »

Are the cards for Winter Kingdom supposed to be revealed?  I saw that there was a rule book available, which includes images of cards and examples, but the images are too low res to actually see the card text and it's difficult to infer what the cards do from the examples alone.

61

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Not enough village in Menagerie?

« on: March 22, 2020, 02:26:53 pm »

If you take a look at Dominion statistics, they have labels for all the cards, including whether they are villages.  This includes some cards that are labeled as half a village, if their villaginess is inconsistent.

So I filtered out landscapes, and summed up the number of villages per expansion, divided by number of cards.  Note that this still includes stuff like Shelters and Colonies, because I didn't want to do the work to filter those out.

Expansion   #cards per village
Base   8.7
Intrigue   7.4
Seaside   8.7
Alchemy   6.5
Prosperity   8.7
Cornucopia   5.2
Hinterlands   10.4
Dark Ages   5.8
Guilds   6.5
Adventures   5
Empires   4.4
Nocturne   6.2
Promo   2.6
Renaissance   3.3
Grand Total   5.9

The number of cards per village has gone down over time.

Menagerie has 30 kingdom cards, and I would say 5.5 villages (Village Green, Hostelry, Hunting Lodge, Snowy Village, Mastermind, and Paddock as half-village).  So that puts it at 5.5 cards per village, or 6 cards per village if you don't count Paddock.  That puts it around Nocturne, and that's not counting Ox or all the village-events.

62

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews

« on: March 12, 2020, 12:09:07 pm »

One dilemma this card presents: Do you exile a card that you're likely to gain this shuffle, or do you speculatively exile a card that you'll gain in a future shuffle?

I guess the way I use Duplicate, I often let it sit on the mat through shuffles, to wait for a better card.  Camel Train seems even better for this purpose, as Camel Train will not skip shuffles.  So we may see a lot of exiling-for-later with Camel Train.  Looking forward to it.


Something I'd like to see in future bonus previews, are attacks, or otherwise interactive cards/landscapes.

63

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews

« on: March 11, 2020, 09:57:09 am »

Thoughts on bonus previews:

Way of the Chameleon: It seems really powerful with non-terminal money cards like Courtier or Coven, but in the typical case it probably just ensures that there are even more options for draw.  And you can turn your overdraw into $$.  Overall, I suspect this is less zany than it first appears.  But I'm sure my friends and I will have fun arguing about the rules.

Way of the Rat: I had a fan event that was pretty similar to this.  TBH, it was a dud, just not very interesting--sometimes cards were cheaper, and that was it.  I think this one's a bit more interesting though, because it costs an action rather than coin.

Village Green: Maybe we can revisit those days when people thought Tunnel was really powerful, and tried triggering the reaction every way imaginable.  And then people seem to have figured out that tunnels aren't that strong.  But maybe this could be strong?  Well it's a village+, so the floor is pretty high.

Alliance: I love this.  Something that really appeals to me about Dominion, is this narrative arc where you build up, and then your deck slowly collapses as you cash out.  Alliance offers the option for even more dramatic collapse.  I sure hope this is good sometimes.

Gamble: The first main use I see is to clear out the bottom of your shuffle, especially if you know what's down there and don't want it to skip.  The second main use is, when drawing deck, to play something you just gained.  Like Innovation.  Innovation is good, so I'm sure this is good as well.

64

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 5: More Cards

« on: March 06, 2020, 12:05:00 pm »

Does it ever make a difference that "other card" means "other than Wayfarer"?

I would think so.  If you gain Village, followed by a Wayfarer (or two?), and then put Ferry on Village, then the cost would behave differently depending on whether it's tracking Village or Wayfarer.

65

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 5: More Cards

« on: March 06, 2020, 11:58:45 am »

The problem with Wayfarer is that we play offline with pre-errata rules (hard to remember errata rules when they're not printed!).  So if I gain and play a Band of Misfits, what happens?  I guess we do whatever we want.

I really like Black Cat and Coven, late-game cursing is a great space that I'm glad is getting explored more.

66

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 3: Exile

« on: March 04, 2020, 11:07:14 pm »

Exile is an excellent mechanic, because you can do really simple things with it, with interesting results.  Stockpile is a great example.  A card that exiles itself on play, that's all it is, but people on Discord have been arguing about how good it is all day.

I can imagine a workshop variant that exiles cards from the supply.  A card that blindly exiles cards from the top of your deck.  An exile-for-benefit card.  An attack that exiles opponent's good cards.  I'm looking forward to seeing what else the set has.

Bounty Hunter - Why is this so strong?  People initially underestimated Priest because they didn't understand how it trashes cards and helps you hit $5 at the same time, much like another power card, Masquerade.  But bounty hunter gives more money, it is nonterminal, and it thins provinces without losing VP?  Would it really have been too weak if it only had two of those three?  I wouldn't be surprised if Bounty Hunter makes you green much earlier in most games.

Stockpile - Definitely one of the harder cards to wrap your head around.  People on Discord seem to think it's good to pile these, but I'm not so sure.  Surely sometimes you can do better than having a bunch of gold in your deck.  The thing I like about this card, is imagining what happens when it's the only +Buy.  You have to buy several of these over multiple shuffles before you net much +buy out of them.  And if they pile out, that's it for your buys.

Coven - I think this is usually easier to deal with curses one at a time.  It gives you time to get control of your deck, and when the curses arrive you're ready for them.  But I really like this card.  It makes you rethink what kind of trashers are good or bad at responding to it.  And it gives your games a narrative arc.

67

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 2: Horses

« on: March 04, 2020, 10:52:31 pm »

Supplies - A $2-cost Peddler, this is so straightforwardly good, it hurts me.  I've always argued that the disadvantage of duration draw is that the card stays out and skips shuffles more often.  Well Supplies doesn't even have that problem.  I don't like it.

Scrap - It seems decent at trashing estates.  +$ and +draw puts it between Masquerade and Priest, and the silver/horse options mean you can defer the bonus to later instead of now.  Otherwise, it doesn't seem like there are very many things you're happy to trash.  For example, trashing a silver and gaining a silver is like spending two cards to play a Pawn.  I think after estates, its main strength is flexibility.

Livery - Seems like a power card--decent if you get even just one horse, and potentially amazing if you get more.  And imagine relying on only this for draw, it's so awkward and limited.  I love cards like this.

68

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 2: Horses

« on: March 03, 2020, 10:36:48 am »

Can you choose the order of the bonuses of Scrap?

No, they happen in the printed order. Same as Pawn, etc.

I do not believe that is true of Pawn according to the rulebook--not that it matters, anyway.  It is true of Trusty Steed.

69

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 2: Horses

« on: March 03, 2020, 10:14:23 am »

Can you choose the order of the bonuses of Scrap?

70

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 1: 5 Cards

« on: March 02, 2020, 07:46:31 am »

Wow, 40 landscapes?  I'm excited for that.  I'm also super pleased in anticipation of the inevitable release of Socks.

Some of you may remember this from the holiday joke cards that were on dominionstrategy a few years ago. I wouldn't be expecting those other cards

Oh...

Well, I love Snowy Village.  It reminds me of Tragic Hero, another favorite card.

71

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Best buying strategy

« on: January 25, 2020, 01:10:41 am »

Okay, here are some cost calculations:

9 for Canal (all these prices include TFair)
4 for Watchtower
5 for Blessed Village
3.5x for x Tunnels (using Ball)
3.5y for y Cursed Villages (using Ball, trashing all gains with Watchtower)
7z for z Triumphs

With every 12 Cursed villages, there are 15+x gains (Cursed Villages, Greed, Plague, Locusts, War).  Just put Locusts after Greed so you never trash a Tunnel.

So the total VP is:

2x for Tunnels
-4 for Twice Miserable
y/12*(15+x) for trashing (Tomb)
z for Estates
~z*(z/2+y/12*(15+x)) for Triumphs

I'm not going to solve for these variables exactly, but by far the most important term is proportional to x*y*z, and that can be maximized by splitting money equally between Tunnels, Cursed Villages, and Triumphs.  I estimate about 35,998,000,000,000 VP, which improves on previous solutions by two orders of magnitude.

72

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Best buying strategy

« on: January 25, 2020, 12:14:43 am »

Ignoring the infinite solutions, I think there's a solution that scales better than N^2.  You can buy a bunch of Tunnels, followed by a bunch of Cursed Villages.  Not sure how much you're allowed to stack hexes, but War should allow you to gain a bunch of gold (using Canal to skip past tunnels and Watchtower to trash Cursed Villages.)  Then buy a bunch of triumphs.  This doesn't sound very efficient, but it should scale as N^3, so with enough coffers it should eventually be better.

73

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion: Menagerie

« on: January 10, 2020, 09:32:12 pm »

The interesting thing is that with coffers, you have vanilla cards.  You have baker, candlestick maker, and to a lesser extent plaza and villain.  But there aren’t really vanilla villager cards.  No cantrip that gives you villagers, just patron and maybe acting troupe.  I think vanilla villager cards just don’t work as well as cards like lackeys that put a limit on how many you can gain. 

The question is if horses are more like coffers or more like villagers.  I suspect they’re more like coffers, and vanilla horse cards would work just fine.  Consider an action that just says +1 action, +1 Horse.  Seems like a solid card idea to me.

74

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion: Menagerie

« on: January 08, 2020, 01:04:38 pm »

With 400 cards and only 30 kingdom cards, I wonder how the other 70 cards are accounted for.  70 events seems implausible, so maybe Horses are cards, or maybe Ways are implemented in a way that requires a lot of cards.

75

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: September 25, 2019, 10:55:20 am »

It seems like with the new Inheritance rule, it's no longer necessary to restrict to non-victory cards.  I suppose you don't want to change what it does any more than necessary, but we might house-rule it so we can inherit Islands and Mills, if it ever matters.

The stop-moving rule is an improvement.  I was explaining the errata to my partner, and he was incredulous at the pre-errata interaction between Death Cart and Summon.