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126

Dominion General Discussion / Shuffling paper

« on: May 29, 2012, 02:14:40 pm »

What technique do you guys use for shuffling cards IRL?  I do the thing where I hold half the stack in each hand and throw one stack into the other.  Well good shufflers throw, I kind of mash them in, spreading the absorbing stack to have random apertures so hopefully the cards are randomly distributed.  And I do this several times.  My mother gets mad when I shuffle too much so I have to stop midturn shuffles often.

How much shuffling does it take to get full randomization?  Does riffle shuffling damage cards?  Discuss shuffling here!

127

Variants and Fan Cards / House Rule: Making all alt - VP strategies available?

« on: May 22, 2012, 05:36:08 pm »

I was thinking of trying this with my friends.  I rarely ever feel like alternate - VP strategies take away from a kingdom more than they give.  Especially in three player, which is what I usually play with my friends.

I know people who prefer to play Colony games all the time.  This is kind of similar in a way, I think, I like the broad subset of games with alt - vp involved the way they like the broad colony subset.

Silk Road, Duke, and Gardens seem perfectly balanced to be a thoughtful choice in any kingdom.  I don't own Vineyards, and frequently it's obviously the best strategy, but even then I'm not sure it's any narrower than a Province game to race to the Vineyards, and there is frequently a dynamic of deciding when to buy the potion - too early, your opponent can go for Provinces and piledrive your slower deck, too late, and you'll get a minority of the Provs.

Fairgrounds is definitely a card I enjoy too.  I think including enough extra kingdom cards that it can reach 8 points would be cool, I could be wrong though.

What do you guys think?  Worth a try?  Alienating to my newcomer friends (they are hardcore gamers)?  Give up on RL friendships and repeatedly propose half-green kingdoms to WW on isotropic?  Or are any of the alternate VP strategies too strong?

I have a poor understanding of the VP chip cards (because I'm not the fastest tractor in the barn, not because I haven't played 2000 games on iso), but I think having a Militia effect or global trash effect characterizing every game would be a drag.  Maybe Monument would be a cool card to give the Province player some extra reach, though?

BTW I might not use 10 other kingdom cards with this.  Maybe 8. 

128

Dominion General Discussion / Why is the Golden deck green?

« on: May 22, 2012, 01:46:20 pm »

Bishop is an interesting card and one of my favorites, even though it's one of my weaker cards.  I think that's mostly because I don't know when to open with it, when not to, etc.

But something I don't understand is why whenever Bishop is discussed people say the Golden deck is Province, Gold, Gold, Silver, Bishop. It trashes a Province and buys a Province every turn.  This guarantees 5 VPs per turn. 

But it's an alternate VP strategy, and it depletes the Provinces.  Substituting a Gold for the Province cuts your VP income by 1 per turn.  It's also easier to set up I think.

I've had success with a Gold Golden deck trashing a Gold each turn, clogging my opponent's deck with Provinces until I pass him.  I've never tried the Province golden deck because it doesn't make sense to me.

Am I missing something here?  Is it possible to assemble the green Golden deck so rapidly that you're denying your opponent provinces because they're destroyed?  Is the point of the green Golden deck to beat the gold Golden deck with the larger per turn income?  If it's restricted to that purpose I guess it makes sense.  Maybe there's a level 40 metagame where people see boards and decide VP chip strategies dominate the board and they want to race to a trashing engine.

129

Rules Questions / Peddler + Farmland

« on: May 14, 2012, 09:42:51 pm »

I play a Chancellor and two Golds, leaving a Peddler in my hand.  I buy a Farmland.  Do I get a Province, or squat?

130

Mafia Game Threads / Mafia I: Murder in the Gardens, night 3

« on: May 11, 2012, 03:27:44 pm »

Conduct rules

1. Don't edit or delete a post.
2. Don't quote your role pm, or try to use the time it was sent to figure out things.  Saying your role name is fine.
3. PM the mod if you're not sure something is allowed.
4. Post once every 48 hours, aim to post once every 24 hours (even more than that is better).  If you won't be able to post for a while, bold a post in the thread saying so.
5. Don't communicate with other players in the game about the game, except if you're mafia partners and it's nighttime.  This includes dead players.
6. Don't post when you're not allowed to. (e.g. night phase).

Game rules

1. Town wins the game when all the mafia members are dead and at least one townie is alive.  Mafia wins when all the townies are dead and at least one mafia member is alive.
2. During the day, all players, including mafia members, may vote for another player to lynch.  Bold your votes.  When a player has a majority of votes, he is lynched, removed from the game, and dead.  At deadline, a mere plurality of votes will decide the lynch.  A tie at deadline means no one is lynched.
3. Deadline will be ten days.  At deadline night automatically begins and a lynch is decided as described above.
4. When a player receives a majority of the votes, you may continue to post until the mod recognizes that majority.  At that point you must stop immediately, even if he hasn't posted a death scene yet.
5. At night, if you aren't a townie, you should pm the mod your actions for the night.  Doctors, Jailkeepers, or Cops need to pm the name of the player they wish to target, and may not choose themselves. Mafia rolecop needs to pm a target as well. If I don't get a pm, I'll presume you wish to do nothing.  Either mafia member needs to pm the name of the player they wish to kill, and designate which mafia member will perform the kill (which means he risks being inhibited by the jailkeeper).  Out of sympathy for the difficulty in coordinating with a partner and concern for the impact of a missed kill, failure to pm a kill will result in a random kill.
6. You may no lynch, no kill, or elect not to use a power role.  No lynching is accomplished by voting no lynch in the thread and gaining majority or deadline plurality.  PM no kills and power role skips to the mod.
7. Happily Ever After Rule - If town no-lynches and mafia no-kills for 4 consecutive days and nights, the mafia instantly wins the game.
8. For power role explication, refer to the post I made during signups, or pm the mod, or ask the other players in thread.

Signup post spoilered.
Since it looks like we'll have enough players for an inhouse mafia game, I'll be running it.  Signups are here.

The setup I'd recommend is 2of4, the setup mafiascum currently uses for their newbie games.  It's a good setup, and you don't need crazy advanced power roles to have a good time playing mafia.
The setup is
1 Mafia rolecop (his investigations report roles)
1 Mafia goon (he's worth some VP if he makes it to the buy phase.. but that's it, normal mafia member)
5 townies
A random 2 of:
1 Cop
1 Doctor
1 Jailkeeper (works like a doctor, except his target is also unable to perform kills do night actions)
1 Townie

Power roles can't target themselves.  The setup discourages day 1 claiming but allows for lots of simple power roles in a setup with a small number of players.

I'd recommend 2 week deadlines, but one week is ok too if that's all you think you guys can handle.

A nine player setup is probably best, replacements might be necessary if someone drops out.

theory
Ozle
Thisisnotasmile
O
ftl
Robz888
Axxle
goober
Davio

131

Other Games / Mafia [split from In defense of Monopoly]

« on: May 08, 2012, 12:30:12 am »

Mafia is really not that strategic but is widely loved.

As a prominent member of the biggest forum mafia community 3 years running, I feel obligated to object to this.  Face to face mafia either degenerates into reading people's faces rather easily, or feeling like nothing you can do can help your chances of lynching correctly and that there are people waiting to play another game.  Forum mafia allows games to run on longterm timetables without inconveniencing dead people, and without overly easy face reads.  Playing face to face mafia and concluding it has no strategy is a bit like learning what moves are legal in chess, playing 3 games of blitz chess, and concluding there isn't much strategy.

Success in mafia is determined by a combination of psychological analyses and luck.  This also might warp your perception of its strategy, but unfairly so.  A Texas Hold 'Em player has to combine luck with psychological predictions, if your sample size is a single hand an expert player loses money as often as a clueless player.  In the same way, it takes several games to identify whether any particular strategy is working in mafia, or whether any particular player is good or bad.

A very large proportion of our community also plays isotropic Dominion, so we aren't a group of people who love a barrel of laughs and a silly time.

EDIT:  I see others discussed poker.  Knowing odds is trivial and everything between an average player and an expert player knows them all about equally well.  There could be an inch of different in players' knowledge of these probabilities but it shouldn't be up for discussion of the "strategy" involved in poker, it's all psychological, picking up on others' habits.
Players who are good at poker win consistently with a large number of hands, so it is strategic.  You may not like psychological strategy,  but there's evidence that strategy is there.

132

Dominion General Discussion / Tribute takes down Alchemists - Counter or nounter?

« on: May 07, 2012, 04:41:28 pm »

I just had an interesting game with the following board:
Adventurer
Horn of Plenty
Tribute
Feast
Mining Village
Alchemist
Philosopher's stone
University
Secret Chamber
Pawn

Potions are attractive because the board is overall a weak one, and University provides a safety net for 2p (though, it is a pretty bad University board).
Straight Alchemists doesn't have +buy to support it and will be slow.
Alchemists could maybe use Horn of Plenty as a pseudobuy and build a Horn of Plenty engine that gets huge enough to buy Provinces, perhaps.
I decided to play a Tribute-BM strategy.  I felt like Tribute would counter the Horn of Plenty strategy since the cards would have different names.

My opponent actually decided to go straight Alchemists, the least favorite of my three choices.  Double potion and everything.
At first I was concerned because Alchemists have a nasty tendency of sharing eachother's names and being actions, but halfway through the game I realized, this is kind of like Minion versus Alchemists, but backwards.  Since Alchemists get placed on the deck, they get drawn into hand, and you have no risk of revealing them to tribute.  Instead you get Potions, Silvers, Coppers, and Estates, which are all great for Tribute BM.

I bought every 5$ Tribute I could, and one 6$ Tribute late.  After the game I feel like I should have been less shy about 6$ Tributes because this seems like a legitimate countering situation.  Am I delusional?

133

Dominion General Discussion / The game's largest structural flaw, imho

« on: May 02, 2012, 08:31:25 pm »

I've thought about this for some time, but it was sparked a bit when my mother bought her first 5$ silver.

I think the biggest problem with the rules of Dominion is, "You must spend an action to play an action".  We don't play Lighthouse for free, we play it at the expense of an action, and then we get an action rebate. 
The problem is that this rebate make actions and treasures respond to dead draw (Smithies) cards differently in a way they don't need to.  Silver is very similar to "+2$, +1 action", and the only thing that makes it any different from that is Throne room effects (well, not that you can Throne Room a silver, but if you could, you'd get 4$ and no actions) and dead draw. 

A better structure for the rules would have been,  "You get one widget point per turn.  Some cards cost 0 widget points, some cost 1 widget point.  You need to pay a widget point to play a card that costs a widget point."
Cards would only need a subtle redesign, cantrips get set to 0 cost, terminals have a cost of 1, Village costs 0, but gives you 1 widget point, and so on.  Perhaps all the dead draw cards, as we know them now, would need a higher cost, or fewer draws. 

But that makes a lot of boards that are best answered by BM/dead draw card a lot more interesting.  You are allowed to put a Market in your BM/dead draw deck.  You can even put a Village in and not worry about dead drawing it, and run a flexible engine deck.  It doesn't make Silver obsolete any more than a board with no dead draw does, Silver is the only nonterminal way to produce 2$.

I know that the action system is easy to understand.  And I do understand the value in evaluating boards and deciding whether the engine strategy can beat BM/dead draw, or it can't.  And there's some value in having to evaluate what cards are so good that you should buy them even though it risks a dead draw.  I kinda think it's a shame that you can look at all the fives, remember that none of them can be played off a dead draw (unless you get a kingdom treasure, and if it's a Silver+ it's the same problem), and buy a silver for your dead draw deck.  I could be making more interesting decisions.


Thoughts?

134

Dominion General Discussion / Getting my family to like Dominion with base Dominion

« on: April 29, 2012, 12:57:54 am »

After being an isotropic player for over a thousand games, I have only recently acquired a copy of base Dominion.  My parents are always willing to give a game I ask them to try a shot.  When they tried Settlers of Catan they didn't like it and thus weren't interested in expansions.  When they tried Carcassone my dad wanted to buy all the expansions because he liked it.  So the key here is a good first impression.

Open questions :
How can I design sets so that base Dominion's Big Money issues don't make them enjoy the game less than it is due? (or, use actions so good that the stage of learning before Silver is Better Here isn't too awkward?)
How can I play with them without crushing them into a fine powder with my experience, but still not go bored out of my mind?

Which expansion first?

135

Dominion General Discussion / Play this five card hand:

« on: December 06, 2011, 09:19:49 pm »

Governor, Gold, Gold, Silver, Copper. 

+3 cards is obviously not the answer unless you are very confident you'll hit a margrave.  But is Remodel or Gold gain better here?  If it depends, please explain.

If I totally failed at counting and one is obviouslly better, just say so and throw stuff at me.

136

Dominion General Discussion / Embargo versus potion

« on: November 19, 2011, 06:11:29 pm »

I wanted to hear some opinions on an unusual play I made the other day involving Embargo.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111118-145823-229fcfd7.html

The set, in categorized terms, was:

Trashers: Spice Merchant
Cursers: Ill-gotten Gains, Embargo
Terminal actions: Cutpurse, period
Cantrips: Alchemist, Lab, Pawn, Cartographer, Spice Merchant, Mining Village.


So we have trashable treasure and untrashable curses, making curses a big deal and IGG a strong buy.  Overall this is a weak board and though Alchemist is one of my worst cards, I think both of us wished we could open with a potion, but felt threatened by the Embargo.

My opponent opened Cutpurse/Silver.  I rather questionably purchased a Spice Merchant instead, since I disliked an untrashable cutpurse and wasn't thaat worried about the IGG race.

The second round, he plays a couple of weak buys.  I played first.  I come to my purchase right before my second reshuffle and draw 4$.  I realize - hey, my opponent hasn't played his cutpurse yet.  Meaning it's probably in his hand right now.  And since his other buys weren't all that impressive I bet he's about to hit five.  I reasoned, he gets one buy before the reshuffle, and it's probably 5 or 6$.  That's too much to pay for an Embargo.  I can trash potion if I need to.. I bought a Potion.

He pondered his buy and felt obligated to buy a 5$ card.  He went on to lose the game, but I didn't feel like I learned much about my gambit because it seemed like his total ignorance of the IGG stack lost him the game, not the two alchemists I sneaked in nor the 4$ he spent on an Embargo instead of a silver variant he could keep.


What do you guys think about buying Potion against Embargo?  It seems like it's a good idea in situations like this.  Maybe more often than that, and I'm just not paying attention.  Or maybe my move was foolish and he didn't exploit it right or I got lucky.  What think??

137

Rules Questions / Returning (new) seaside cards to the top of the deck with scheme

« on: November 14, 2011, 12:56:15 pm »

When I read the text of scheme, I always thought that seaside cards wouldnt be eligible until they had played out both their turns, but isotropic gives me the option of returning them to the top of the deck (new) so I have to consider I might be wrong.

I'd always guessed that you would just miss the second effect if you returned them to the top of the deck immediately, until today when I played a set with Scheme and Haven.  Keeping the card set aside the whole game seemed weird...

What's the correct interaction?

138

Feedback / Article subforum usage

« on: November 14, 2011, 11:08:53 am »

Is anyone allowed to write material in this subforum?  Is it presumptuous to do so if you don't have a high ranking or good reputation?
I'm only level 29 but I think I could write something people would like to read if I keep the subject specific enough

139

Dominion Isotropic / Councilroom.com

« on: November 06, 2011, 12:33:37 am »

How should I use councilroom.com to improve my play?  Hearing that university had bad stats on CR.com improved my rating a couple points as soon as I heard it.  Should I look at all aggregate stats this way, or would some be misleading?  Should I evaluate my own cards?