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851

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Zaps

« on: August 17, 2012, 03:25:46 pm »

As you journey across each map, you'll battle mini bosses and one final boss. Conquering these bosses earns you special rewards: Victory Tokens, which you can convert into special Promo CardsÑrare cards with valuable gameplay properties.

LOOOL

oooo... I hope I get a foil Shivan Dragon.

852

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Do we know when exactly it's going up?

« on: August 17, 2012, 03:20:31 pm »

...the huge, gaping lack of security. Which is why I'm going to steer clear of the thing for a long time, at least.

This is very telling.  I don't know much about internet security, but if WW won't play Dominion on Goko due to security issues, that is enough to scare me off.  That's like if a bakery comes out with a new cookie, and Cookie Monster himself comes out and says, "This cookie is not safe to eat, so I'm not eating it."  No way am I going anywhere near that cookie.

Had to come out of lurker mode to say this post made my day.  I'm a sucker for Cookie Monster analogies.

853

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What's your dominion pet peeve?

« on: October 12, 2011, 05:32:00 pm »

Players who, having built a superior engine and gained a substantial lead, proceed to decksturbate rather than end the game as quickly as possible.

854

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why's it called a cantrip?

« on: October 05, 2011, 03:36:37 pm »

But why not use a word that an outsider could reasonably guess the meaning of like serial, chainable or spamable.

Which of those terms would you use when teaching the game to your parents?  I'm not saying that should be the criterion for choosing a term, but if we want an outsider to understand it, I think "chainable" is the only one that makes sense.  But that word casts a much wider net than "cantrip" does. 

For what its worth, I always thought a cantrip in Dominion was specifically +1 Action, +1 Card, meaning it does really nothing at all, the focus is then on the additional ability. For example Great Hall is a cantrip that gives you +1VP. Caravan is a cantrip, with a duration effect, etc. etc.

I appreciate the distinction you are trying to draw between spammable/chainable and cantrip, but it seems like a very fuzzy divide.  A Laboratory is a cantrip that gives you an extra card.  A Village is a cantrip that gives you an extra action.  A Market is a cantrip that gives you an extra buy and an extra coin.  A Grand Market is a cantrip with an extra buy and 2 extra coin ...   and pretty soon we're fairly far away from the Magic meaning which (if I understand people correctly) was a somewhat crappy card that replaced itself.

Furthermore, the effect of a card replacing itself in Magic was a fairly novel concept at the time; in Dominion drawing a card and getting an action are two of the core benefits a card can provide. 

855

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Optimizing your level

« on: October 05, 2011, 12:51:21 pm »

Here is an recent effort against a level 0 player where he risked to play without card restrictions:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110916-232712-5ec9aaf4.html

This warms the cockles of my heart.

856

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why's it called a cantrip?

« on: October 05, 2011, 12:49:08 pm »

Spam/spammable is a far better term.

It describes the effect perfectly and is already in widespread use in the WOW and wider video game community (conservatively 1000 times larger than the Dominion community).

http://www.diablowiki.net/Spammable

So it looks it's the Magic players vs. the WoW players in a duel/pvp to decide the issue.  Truly a showdown for the ages.

857

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why's it called a cantrip?

« on: October 05, 2011, 11:56:46 am »

We have a word with a clear etymology that makes perfect sense in this context, and people know what it means.

I'm smiling because I'm honestly not sure which word you're talking about here. 

858

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why's it called a cantrip?

« on: October 05, 2011, 11:07:44 am »

Also Magic got the term from D&D. I know this because the people who work on Magic have said it flat out, starting with the people who worked on Ice Age, where they introduced cantrips.

I like my romanticized notion of some neck-bearded Magic player, in his stained T-shirt at some dingy game store in a strip mall, independently coming up with the term "cantrip" better than your pesky factual history.

Golem was a poor example since Magic's Golems started out as D&D Golems rather than Jewish ones.

I'm always getting my Golems mixed up.

859

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?

« on: October 05, 2011, 03:02:46 am »

I think there are a lot of Dominion players (like me) who have been insulated from the "abuse" of the phrase 'gg' by the video game crowd.  At the risk of remotely psychoanalyzing an entire population of gamers, I suspect this alternate, insulting definition of 'gg' stems mostly from sour grapes by the defeated rather than gloating by the victorious.

860

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why's it called a cantrip?

« on: October 05, 2011, 02:37:13 am »

Personally I don't think it fits, as sorcery isn't a central theme to Dominion,

Well, it's not about the 'sorcery' meaning

"Cantrip" made sense in Magic both thematically AND in game-play.  Most cards are a spell of some sort, so it makes sense to have a card with a small effect be named with a word that means a small bit of magical trickery.  It's quite a good name, really.  Kudos to whoever coined its MtG usage.

As you infer, to use the word in Dominion we reference the in-game effect rather than the thematic meaning.  But is the theme of Dominion so nebulous that we can't come up with something better than a ripoff from another game or a term that many associate with p e n 1 s pills and 419 scams?

You can send spam without thinking about it.  You'll (almost) never be worse off.

Indeed many people's machines are sending spam as we speak without them thinking one ms about it.


Of the terms I've heard so far, I like "serial" the best.

861

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why's it called a cantrip?

« on: October 04, 2011, 08:20:31 pm »

I don't have my old Duelist magazines with me, but I believe that Magic had cantrips before D&D did; 3rd edition D&D came out in like 2000, while the original cantrips came out in the Ice Age magic expansion, which I believe was in 1995.

edit - I'm well aware that D&D is older than that, but I don't remember the word "cantrip" in earlier editions.

In D&D cantrips go back to Unearthed Arcana in 1985.

Using my google-fu I see that 'cantrip' is a very old Scottish word meaning a trick or a small bit of magic.  Therefore it's very unlikely that it was invented by the designers of D&D or Magic: The Gathering.  Havins said that, I think you can see why both of those games would use it quite independent of the other, just as they both use words like 'golem,' 'necromancer' and 'sorcery.'

If one uses 'cantrip' for a Dominion card, it would seem a nod to the Magic: The Gathering sense of the word, meaning a card that replaces itself.  Personally I don't think it fits, as sorcery isn't a central theme to Dominion, but then again neither is canned meat product ('spammable').