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26

Dominion General Discussion / Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #6: Smugglers

« on: April 30, 2015, 06:19:27 pm »

I seem to remember they were worse at playing develop, outpost, and various other cards that still had a better success rate than smugglers. In any case, if you're suggesting they played it badly then they were finding exactly the problems I mentioned at the top of the thread. We can expect new players to find the exactly the same problems again in the future.

Develop and Outpost barely had a higher WRW than Smugglers. The opinion of Outpost has changed to where it is also a mandatory card in many engines.

The old isotropic stats give smugglers a "win rate with" of 91% and a "win rate without" of 111%. That puts it in the same bracket as herbalist, cache, talisman, saboteur, treasure map, and other cards that you need a good reason to buy. I'm afraid it could be possible that you're a bad judge of smuggler kingdoms.

The difference is that Smugglers is way, way, way better than all of these and far less situational. Smugglers is usually mandatory in engine mirrors with ample +action and in engine mirrors without +action it can potentially be the strongest terminal payload. If your opponent is incompetent, which is one situation in which Smugglers isn't going to help you, he's probably picked a worse strategy and is going to lose anyway.

27

Dominion General Discussion / Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #6: Smugglers

« on: April 30, 2015, 04:17:56 pm »

The old isotropic stats give smugglers a "win rate with" of 91% and a "win rate without" of 111%. That puts it in the same bracket as herbalist, cache, talisman, saboteur, treasure map, and other cards that you need a good reason to buy. I'm afraid it could be possible that you're a bad judge of smuggler kingdoms.

Or it could be possible that people were just bad at playing Smuggler in the "old Isotropic" days.

28

Dominion General Discussion / Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #6: Smugglers

« on: April 29, 2015, 11:59:43 pm »

In theory it's possible for a Smugglers mirror to lead to an actual stalemate where the first player to buy a card is guaranteed to lose, but I've yet to hear of this happening in practice.

I've had this sort of happen in a casual game against an RL friend; it was a kingdom with Highway and no +buy and the game reached a point where if he bought VP, I could smuggle it thrice. Fortunately he only had 2 Smugglers to my 3, but if we had the same number of Smugglers, then I think the game would have been a stalemate.

I think the conventional wisdom regarding Smugglers is outdated; you cannot ignore it in most engine kingdoms.

29

Help! / Re: Big Money can't be dominant here... can it?

« on: April 28, 2015, 04:24:40 pm »

With no trashing and poor payload, I wouldn't bet on the engine.

30

Game Reports / Re: Worth buying King's Court?

« on: April 28, 2015, 04:06:09 pm »

The two big advantages of double tactician are:
1) reliability: a kinged caravan keeps a kings court from being reshuffled, and gives you two "extra cards" less the next turn.
2) the first tactician in the early game might be the key to spiking an early kc, which can be key for snowballing into a win; then once you have the first tactician, the second is probably worth it.

2) isn't true; you can get $7 after a couple of shuffles of just Lookout trashing and buying Caravan on $4, Bazaar on $5.

TC is really analysing this kingdom with the wrong approach if he keeps comparing bots playing sub-optimal strategies.

31

Game Reports / Re: Worth buying King's Court?

« on: April 26, 2015, 03:58:13 pm »

You can't really simulate King's Court strategies.

32

Help! / Re: Wrong to go for Rebuild?

« on: April 25, 2015, 01:50:18 pm »

I'd open Ironworks/Watchtower or Counterfeit/Squire

Is Counterfeit/Squire better than Apprentice/Squire or Count/Squire?

33

Dominion General Discussion / Re: university/distant lands

« on: April 25, 2015, 01:15:46 pm »

People need to stop thinking about rushes; there are very few cards that actually enable viable rush strategies.

34

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 23, 2015, 08:54:36 pm »

I think the purpose of this thread was to see if we could better distinguish the term combo from "Wombo Combo".

I hereby propose that we shorten this term to "wombo."

35

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 23, 2015, 03:35:26 pm »

I'm not sure the "interacting rules" distinction applies as much to Dominion as it does to MtG. Almost all cards that have negative or positive interactions with each other interact with respect to the rules. Like, Market and Platinum interact via their rules because the former gives +1 buy among other bonuses and the latter gives +$5. A selling point of Dominion is that the cards have their own rules printed on them.

Take the case of Gardens where its sole purpose is to change the rules such that the player has a way to get rewarded for having more cards in his deck. Anything that has a positive interaction with Gardens would be a combo under your definition, and therefore there could be no synergies.

36

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

« on: April 23, 2015, 12:26:43 pm »

DC sounds like something that you'd only buy on the last turn in Vineyards games for the points or pile control.

37

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 23, 2015, 09:24:00 am »

Well for the two examples I gave, Scout+Great Hall have positive synergy but they are so weak that I would not call it a combo.  Rebuild+Oasis has positive synergy (Oasis improves cycling, gives some coin so it's a bit easier to hit $5) but not so much that I would call it more than the sum of its parts; it's just a strong card and a decent card doing their usual things.

I think that every synergy in Dominion has its component cards producing more than the sum of its parts. Even with Rebuild + Oasis, Oasis is producing slightly more $ on average compared to a non-Rebuild deck because the Rebuild deck will have a higher Victory card density and therefore it's less likely to discard a Copper to Oasis.

38

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 22, 2015, 05:41:46 pm »

I think KC/Bridge is a definitive combo; it's something that most of the time, you will lose if you don't go for it, and the person who wins is the first person to pull it off.

Anyway, I totally get where you're coming from, although I somewhat disagree that the definition of the term "combo" is uniform across all games. In fighting games, combos are sequences of moves that are executed before a target exits hitstun, although there exist also sequences of moves that are either frame traps or greatly reduce the number of available options that the opponent has to avoid them (which are not combos). Ultimately the term can be tailored for a specific usage because games are different. I don't like the suggestion of using "strong combo" as an adjunct to "combo" because "strong" can be either an adjective to modify "combo" or the phrase "strong combo" can designate a specific noun. I jokingly once suggested the term "wombo combo" but I think there aren't a lot of people here who appreciated the joke.

I seem to remember that there was a discussion previously on what constituted a "counter" that touched on many of the same principles discussed here.

I'm going to quickly quote AdamH from another thread because he summarizes my approach of the game:

So when I look at a board, one of the things I do is look for combos. Yeah there's the big stuff like NV/Bridge, Hermit/Market Square, those you just build your whole deck around. But then there are other ones like Apprentice/Fortress, FV/Wharf, Apothecary/NV, Tactician/Black Market, and lot of the stuff mentioned here -- synergies strong enough that even though they don't dictate all of your strategy, they are incorporated strongly into it.

The way to get better at knowing these explosive synergies is to just know about them. I thought a thread that lists a bunch of these good ones would be useful.

39

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 22, 2015, 05:14:15 pm »

There's no reason it can't, though. Even weak combos can be the best thing on the board, or part of the best thing on the board. I think it's fine to qualify them; weak combos vs. strong combos. But there's no reason to label any positive synergy "too weak to be a combo". Where's the cutoff?

Fortunately we're posting in a thread dedicated to discussing, among other things, where the cutoff should be! And even if there were no cut and dry point at which a combo is different from a synergy, that doesn't mean that the distinction doesn't exist. The colors blue and green exist even though there's no specified wavelength at which blue transitions into green.

40

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Double Tac Game W/ Shark Bait

« on: April 22, 2015, 04:11:01 pm »

I feel like this is in the wrong forum.

I'm not convinced that double Tactician is the best way to go here. There is ample draw in the form of Hamlet, Envoy, and Lab, and with a good Mint buy clearing out most starting Coppers, better Treasures can reliably produce income in this kingdom. 22 points in 23 turns, even with constant Ghost Ship attack, seems to be extremely slow.

41

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 22, 2015, 04:03:36 pm »

And Death Cart/Fortress can be summarized in the Fortress article as "Fortress combos with trash-for-benefit". But Fortress is still going to combo with some TfB better than others, perhaps enough to win a game without any other support. Where do we draw the line on what deserves its own article? It's something worth discussing on a case-by-case basis so that we don't end up with articles like Plaza/Library on the wiki, but trying to precisely define a cutoff point is dumb.

The cutoff point is a combo that's strong enough to almost always be the best strategy in the kingdom and cannot be substantially improved with the addition of other cards. Obviously this is an arbitrary point and the cutoff is not too clearly defined, but everyone knows that there's a difference between Hermit/MS and Plaza/Library.

Okay, I agree with all of that. I'm confused what about my post you think you're disagreeing with. I never said Plaza/Library should have its own article or should be singled out as a combo that you should watch out for.

I'm not really disagreeing with you so much as I'm pointing out that the whole point of Dominion is to exploit card synergies. Weaker players often lose by picking bad strategies because they can't visualize synergies as well as stronger players. I don't think there is much more value in defining any synergy as a "combo" than there is in defining cards as "potential aids for gaining VPs."

42

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 22, 2015, 03:42:03 pm »

Anyway, I don't really see why anyone's getting their panties in a bunch over what actually defines a combo. So what if Death Cart/Rats isn't always going to be a game-breaking combo? It's still an interesting card interaction and I don't see any harm in there being an article for it on the wiki. If the wiki were overflowing with combo articles then maybe there should be some kind of standard to determine what merits its own article, but at this point I don't think that's really a concern.

There are tons of cards that have positive synergy. Death Cart/Fortress is a strong synergy. Death Cart/Ironworks is a weaker synergy but it still operates on the same principle as Death Cart/Rats. Death Cart/Magpie can also synergize this way. Not all of these synergies deserve combo articles, and in fact all of these synergies except for Death Cart/Fortress can be addressed in a Death Cart article with "works well with (non-terminal) Action gainers."

To elaborate on your Plaza/Library example, there are also Plaza/Jack, Plaza/Watchtower, Plaza/Minion, Hamlet/Library, Oasis/Library, Warehouse/Library, etc. Every single one of these is a combo, but there are so many of them that it's not worth thinking "oh I should look for this specific combo;" you should rather think "oh draw-to-X synergizes with cards that discard from hand."

Dude, think in practical terms. People have a natural intuition of what a combo is, and trying to globally redefine the word is a nearly impossible task with no real benefit for success. If you want to use the term "combo" only to refer to a subset of card combos, you go right ahead. But telling everybody else they're using the word wrong is a losing battle. That's why the burden to come up with a new term for "combo that is an entire strategy" is on the people who desire such a term.

Dude, I have a natural intuition of what a combo is, and it's obviously different from yours. Defining terms is not a futile exercise because any niche activity such as this one requires specific definitions and rules. People have a natural intuition that using Ironworks to gain a Great Hall and then revealing Trader to gain a Silver instead should yield +1 card, +1 action, too. People don't have a natural intuition that a "cantrip" refers to a card that produces +1 card, +1 action.

43

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 22, 2015, 03:22:02 pm »

Okay so real talk here, the problem with using "combo" to include weak card synergies is that weak card synergies still often lose the game. Village + Smithy is a "combo," and it's obviously a bad synergy with no other support (and it quite often needs substantial support in order to work, such as +buy, trashing, payload, etc.). Workshop + Gardens is also a "combo" and yet it loses to stronger forms of BM.

And so when someone posts a game or an article that talks about a "combo" and then an experienced player such as Mic Q or WW or Stef point out that such "combo" is actually a "nombo" because the synergy is not that strong even if it's greater than the sum of its parts, then of course everyone gets confused.



EDIT: I also believe that approaching Dominion from a combo-oriented standpoint hinders the progression of player skill. Synergistic card pairs can often have components interchanged with similar cards, so good players look at the entire kingdom and visualize how cards can potentially synergize rather than honing in on specific combos that they have been trained to look for (outside of the ones mentioned in the OP).

EDIT 2: Creating an arbitrary distinction between "combo" and "combo deck" is even sillier than narrowing the definition of "combo." Do you mean to tell me that most combos cannot form a combo deck? That's even more confusing!

44

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 22, 2015, 03:06:11 pm »

People use "combo" to refer to cards that synergize. It's obnoxious to keep telling them that they're wrong and to be a true Dominion "combo", it has to be strong enough to win a game by itself. They're not wrong. There's absolutely nothing inherent in the word "combo" to make me think that it should only refer to combos that are an entire deck. Why would that be the case?

And yet there is something inherent in the word "combo" to make many other players (including myself) think that it should only refer to card combinations that constitute an entire strategy.

45

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 22, 2015, 03:01:32 pm »

Nope, wrong. Try again.

This is the epitome of maturity, folks.

46

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 22, 2015, 03:00:18 pm »

Great. Come up with some other name for it than "combo" and everybody's happy. You can even put "combo" in the name, like "Super Combo" or "Monolithic Combo".

Okay. There are combos and synergies. Problem solved. Was this supposed to be an impossible challenge?

47

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Definition of Combo discussion

« on: April 22, 2015, 02:56:30 pm »

Dominion has a vast amount of synergistic card interactions. I think there needs to be a distinction between the card interactions that are so powerful that they regularly dominate kingdoms and card interactions that are merely helpful.

48

Game Reports / Re: Peddler, Bishop, and Throne but only Shanty for draw

« on: April 21, 2015, 04:03:50 am »

And, arguably, TR/Village/Peddler is draw especially since you want to avoid adding treasures to your deck.

This is not draw. None of these cards in any combination increase your handsize.

In a mirror, Peddlers are going to split and there's no way that trashing Peddlers for VP is going to win you the game on its own. Hoard and Bishop have a minor positive synergy and Hoard's Gold gaining is good in dense decks.

49

Help! / Re: Anything I could have done to win this Feodum rush?

« on: April 20, 2015, 12:56:41 pm »

I think there is approximately zero reason to use Quarry in this kingdom. There is no +buy outside of Princess and the most expensive action cards are at $5.

50

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 19, 2015, 03:54:36 pm »

When a player in a multiplayer game drops out, I think the other players should be prompted if they want to continue the game. If all players agree, then the game continues.