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7476

Dominion Articles / Re: Altar

« on: April 24, 2013, 04:41:02 pm »

After playing a bunch of Altar games, one of the few issues I noticed is whether there are multiple strong, mutually compatible $5s on the board.

* If there are not strong $5s, Gold is usually superior. Gold will pay off in the next shuffle; you don't benefit from Altar's gain until the shuffle after. That's a long time to wait for a mediocre $5, and the Gold is more useful for gaining $4s.
* If there's only one strong $5, and you would prefer it to Gold, you'll acquire it a shuffle faster by just buying the $5 rather than Altar.
* If there are multiple strong $5s, but they don't synergize (e.g., Mountebank and Witch), then you're still better off buying the $5 you want.
* If there are multiple strong $5s and they go together, then Altar becomes more appealing.

Why would Gold be useful faster than Altar? You use Gold to buy a Witch; you get that Witch next shuffle. You use Altar to gain a Witch, you get that Witch next shuffle.

7477

Dominion: Guilds Previews / Re: Box Image and Description

« on: April 24, 2013, 04:32:59 pm »

So for wild unfounded speculation's sake, how do we think these new mechanics will play in practice? My thoughts:

* +Buy will become less important, or at least face competition, since now you can cheerfully use your leftover cash on other things without the effort of picking up a Woodcutter or whatever. $2 cards may also face competition, although I bet we see an "overpay to gain another card" card which functions along the lines of "when you buy this +1 Buy"

* Cards that often lead to overpaying get stronger. I'm looking at Spoils, maybe Death Cart (although that's quite severe overpayment), Platinum (likewise) and probably some others.

* Planning is in, improvising is out of style (relatively speaking of course). You don't have to worry quite so much about shuffle luck since overpaying for the card you wanted won't hurt so much, and coin tokens obviously afford a measure of control over your cashflow, especially if they're available early.

Bear in mind that all of this is only relevant if one of the 13 Guilds cards is present in the kingdom.  If all 13 of the Guilds cards even have the "pay more" mechanic.

Which I'd say it's a safe bet that they won't. Alchemy had cards without Potion in the cost. Hinterlands had cards without an on-Gain effect. Seaside had non-Durations. Etc.

7478

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Trinkets: Replacements for Starting Copper

« on: April 24, 2013, 09:02:23 am »

I like the idea a lot, but I'm worried that with different players receiving different Trinkets, there can easily be an unfair advantage for one player over another; depending completely on what else is on the board.

Rare Coin
Treasure/Trinket - $4
Worth $1

As already mentioned, sometimes 100% the same as Copper, sometimes really good.

Toy Bridge (credit to dondon151)
Treasure/Trinket - $0
Worth $0
---
While this is in play, cards cost $1 less, to a minimum cost of $0

Same as above... though it's more common to have at least some option of +buy. I like this one, basically a Silver if you buy 2 cards.

Key to the City
Treasure/Trinket - $0
Worth $1
+$1 for each empty supply pile

Needs "when you play this" type wording. The bonus isn't nearly enough to make a player try to empty a pile if they wouldn't otherwise, but it still works out just fine if you keep it to the end of the game.

Bell
Action/Trinket - $0
+2 Actions
+$1

Probably the most powerful Trinket. Interesting that it's an Action and not a Treasure. But completely unfair if it's a board that would be great for an engine except there's no Villages; the player who gets this probably automatically wins. Especially if there's something like TR or KC.

Dagger
Treasure/Reaction/Trinket - $0
Worth $1
---
When another player plays an Attack, you may trash this. If you do, you are unaffected by that Attack.

Needs "from hand" wording. I would like it better if you discarded it instead of trashed it. Trashing is weird because it can be really good (free Copper trash), but maybe you don't want to trash it because it's stopping attacks.

Locket
Treasure/Victory/Trinket - $0
Worth 1VP for every Trinket in your deck
---
Worth $1

I agree with above; should just be a flat 1 VP. Also the only Trinket which has some sort of use in every game.

7479

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko Redlines

« on: April 23, 2013, 03:06:18 pm »

This is the first time I hear of RFTG, is it worth playing? How does it compare to dominion?

It's awesome. I'm terrible at it, but I still love it.

Hard to compare to Dominion. Maybe a cross between Puerto Rico and Dominion. If you've played San Juan; even more similar to that. I like that it goes really fast. It only has as much player interaction as a game of Dominion without any attacks.. that is to say, you still need to pay close attention to your opponent, but no direct interaction.

7480

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko adventures help

« on: April 23, 2013, 09:54:53 am »

One l more question, what are the stars for? I read the instructions and would think it is a measure of point gap at the end of the game, but I had one game where I beat the bot by 50 points and got one star, and another where I was only ahead by 6 and got two stars. I believe the stars don't matter, but in case something in the game looks at them I wanted to check.

The stars are based on your score, unless the've changed something:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=7147.0

I found it impossible to get 3 stars on at least one of the levels...

7481

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko Sound Effects

« on: April 22, 2013, 02:47:55 pm »

I think that beep is the "new round" beep. It indicates that it is the start player's turn.

I just played a game with a bot where the bot went first and it beeped on my turn. This was the first time recently I've seen it beep on my turn. But, it disproves this theory.

Maybe it's buggy.

Ok, then I don't know what it's supposed to be. Some half-programmed turn alert that doesn't always go off, and doesn't go off on your turn.

Random n = new Random();
if (n.Next < .5)
   PlaySound();

7482

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Inverse Counting House?

« on: April 22, 2013, 01:56:55 pm »

Sometimes i'm just stupid. I totally missed you had the shuffle in there ^^'

You missed the reshuffle!

I'm a Duration. This turn, i give + 1 respect.

You have to give +1 respect to his next post as well...

7483

Dominion: Guilds Previews / Re: So. Guilds.

« on: April 22, 2013, 01:30:26 pm »

In this case we can imagine there might be a card in Guilds that looks like the following:
Discounter - Action - $4
+1 Buy
Name a card. While this is in play that card costs $3 less.

That's insanely overpowered... it's strictly better than a Terminal Gold, which most say would be balanced at $5.

7484

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Stupid Pet Tricks

« on: April 22, 2013, 11:26:41 am »

Another way to put it: if Scrying Pool and Familiar are the only Potion-costing cards on the board, Watchtower is Strictly Better™ than Potion, and cheaper.

(Edge-case counterexample: Bank, I guess?)

Forager, Counterfeit, Adventurer, Venture.

7485

Rules Questions / Re: Smuggle a spoils?

« on: April 21, 2013, 06:58:15 pm »

just a quick question on the subject. How about harlekin hitting a spoils?

If you mean Jester, then the spoils gets discarded, I think technically Jester player (or his possessor) chooses who gets the spoils, then nothing happens - no one actually gains it.

And this could matter if some Guilds card reacts to "when a card asks you to make a choice"!

7486

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko Sound Effects

« on: April 20, 2013, 11:23:08 pm »

We just played a 5-player game in Outpost (with Sea Hag and Mountebank, it was great). Anyway, Goko made the "doo-doo" beep at the beginning of the turns of one of my opponents, but was silent at the start of every other turn, including mine. I'm guessing there is just something wrong in the sound effect logic that makes it think it's your turn when it's not. I'll report it when I get the chance.

Was the player who had the sound the player who went after you? Because I think perhaps it's a sound signifying that your turn is over, rather than that it's now your opponent's turn. Of course, your still right, there needs to be a sound at the start of your turn; it's the only thing that makes any sense.

7487

Rules Questions / Re: Cards that "play or modify" Durations

« on: April 20, 2013, 02:23:40 pm »

On cards since Revised edition (1994), tapping has been represented by a symbol, though this is not unique to the game of Magic: The Gathering. U.S. Patent 5,662,332 was filed by Wizards of the Coast to patent the mechanics of some aspects of collectible card games, including tapping.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tap_(gaming)

Yeah, actually I just looked that up myself! It actually sounds like the opposite if what you thought, though... the mechanics of tapping are patented, not the term. If I'm reading correctly.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5662332

It also sounds like it only applies to "trading card games", though I don't know how that is defined.

7488

Rules Questions / Re: Cards that "play or modify" Durations

« on: April 20, 2013, 02:12:11 pm »

Lotr LCG uses tapping as well, but maybe they call it differently?

I'm pretty sure something this basic is unpatentable.

The mechanic isn't patented, but the word in this context is, I'm pretty sure.

I'm not so sure; tapping in Magic isn't really defined all that differently from "tapping" in a general context... you tap an oil well to get oil out of it; you tap an Island to get blue mana out of it. To say that something has been "tapped" is to say that it has been used. Magic didn't create a new keyword there; no more so than using the word "destroyed" (now "killed") to refer to a creature being sent to the graveyard.

7489

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko regrets

« on: April 20, 2013, 02:09:49 pm »

The seemingly oxymoronic concept of monopolistic competition actually exists. If Harry Potter books became too expensive, people would switch to reading Artemis Fowl. If the Goko implementation left something to be desired, people would switch to Isotropic Innovation.

That's obviously not true in practice, though.  The Goko implementation leaves a lot to be desired (for me), and I haven't stopped playing it or started playing some other free game.

Maybe you haven't, but I'm pretty sure lots of other people have... I mean, I play Goko from time to time when I really want a Dominion fix, but I won't pay money for it until certain things are addressed. I think there's lots of people who played on Isotropic who haven't bought Goko Dominion.

7490

Rules Questions / Re: Possession and on-Trash effects

« on: April 20, 2013, 11:14:56 am »

Finer-detailed point: Is possession's effect an on-trash trigger, and if so, can that can be re-ordered if there are multiple on-trash effects?

Say for example, you are Possessing someone and you make them trash a Fortress. Do you have a choice between resolving Possession first (set aside) vs Fortress first (goes into hand)?

Yes.

If so, is there some hilarious way that I can abuse this? I don't think that there is--as far as I'm aware, Possession and Fortress are the only two "moving" on-trash triggers.

Yeah, not that I can think of. Well, pulling the trick with Fortress and setting it aside first (so that, by lose-track, it doesn't go back into hand) can make your opponent's Fortress a little more likely to miss a reshuffle... but it's still probably more useful to put it back into hand and get some use out of it this turn.

Unless you're trashing his entire deck and leaving him with a Forge-only hand next turn.

7491

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko regrets

« on: April 19, 2013, 04:10:26 pm »

Haha.  I also wrote up a long post but deleted it for exactly the same reason.

It's just very strange to associate Goko with monopolistic anti-competitive behavior.  It's not even close.  Scholastic Press had an exclusive license on publishing Harry Potter.  Maybe you're sad that they overpriced the book or used cheap binding, but that doesn't mean that the answer is for someone else to publish Harry Potter as well.  The market will correct: if the prices are too high or the product is too shabby, Scholastic and JK Rowling will suffer accordingly and appropriately.  Scholastic may have an exclusive license, but its incentives are correctly aligned with that of its consumers.  Ditto for Goko. 

So it's not about legalistic hair-splitting or semantic issues.  It's just not a situation where antitrust concepts are in play.

Can you explain to someone completely ignorant of anti-trust concepts what makes Goko (or Scholastic Press) NOT an anti-trust / monopolistic situation? I mean, if the only way to read Harry Potter is to buy the Scholastic printed version of it, then isn't it the case that Scholastic will not suffer for overpricing the books or poor bookbinding nearly as much as they would if there were a second company also allowed to publish it?

7492

Rules Questions / Re: Procession --> Band of Misfits (as Smithy)

« on: April 19, 2013, 02:35:37 pm »

All the references I could find of Procession & Band of Misfits deals the Fortress scenario.  However, what happens when I play BoM as Smithy instead?

Argument 1:
- Since Smithy does not have an on-trash ability, Procession plays it twice, and then upgrades to a $5 action card... the way it would if it were an actual Smithy

Argument 2:
- Procession puts BoM in the trash before doing the "upgrade".  Once BoM is in the trash, it has left play, and is now a BoM (and not a Smithy)... therefore it upgrades to a $6 action card.  This is analogous to the Fortress scenario, where the BoM leaves play (back to the hand) and "forgets" that it used to cost $4.


Personally, I lean toward #2, but can't find anything definitive on the issue.

Definitely 2. But I don't think it has much to do with "forgetting" that it used to cost $4. It's a matter of when do we care about how much it costs. And we don't care about how much it costs until after it's been trashed, which is after it is a BoM again. So after trashing it, you THEN check to see how much it costs, in order to gain an action card costing $1 more than it. At that point, it costs $5.

7493

Rules Questions / Re: Procession-->BoM as Fortress

« on: April 19, 2013, 01:19:18 pm »

There was an extensive discussion on this topic on another thread (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=7882.25), but we failed to come to a satisfactory conclusion.  When you play Procession on Band of Misfits and choose Fortress, do you trash it or put it into your hand?

The issue here is that Fortress has an effect that occurs when you trash it, while Band of Misfits has an effect that occurs when it leaves play.  My understanding would say that a card it trashed when it hits the trash pile, at which point it has already left play.  However, this contradicts the FAQ (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Band_of_Misfits), which says you put it into your hand.

Can anyone explain this?

That thread specifically quoted the actual rulebook... (Note that the FAQ on the Wiki there is just a quote from the rulebook).

For example, if you use Procession to play Band of Misfits twice and choose Fortress the first time, you will automatically replay it as Fortress, then trash the Band of Misfits, return it to your hand (it is a Fortress when it's trashed, and Fortress has a when-trashed ability that returns it to your hand), and gain an Action card costing exactly $6 ($1 more than Band of Misfits, which has left play and so is no longer copying Fortress).

It goes back into your hand (note that you still trash it... after you trash it, it goes back into your hand. So the answer to your question is "both"). The fact is that you did trash a trash a Fortress. You had a Fortress, and then you trashed it. The fact that it changed into a different card as part of being trashed is irrelevant. You did indeed trash a Fortress, and Fortress does something when it gets trashed. So the Fortress goes back into your hand... it so happens that it's not a Fortress anymore, but that doesn't matter.

It sounds like you are thinking of trashing as a process... as in "pick up a card from in play. Then move it to the trash pile. Now, the card is "trashed." But that's not how it works. There is no time at all between the card leaving play, and the card being in the trash, despite that in real life, you're forced to take actual time to physically do it. Rather, trashing is a one-time, instantaneous act. The card is trashed the very second you say "I'm trashing this card." At that exact moment, it's been trashed, it left play, and it is in the trash pile. All at once.

7494

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition: $5 cards (Part 2/6)

« on: April 19, 2013, 12:10:11 pm »

Jack of all Trades is all the rage, but Trading Post can turn two Estates into a Silver instead of just one, hah!

Remake is unimpressed.

Trader snarks at Remake: you need two Estates for two Silvers, how about just one?

Remodel an Estate, gaining Feodum, revealing Watchtower to trash Feodum and get 3 Silvers.

Also, discard 10 Market Squares to get 10 Golds, revealing Trader to each one to turn them into 10 Silvers.

7495

Rules Questions / Re: Market Square when-a-card-is-trashed timing

« on: April 18, 2013, 02:16:24 pm »

Inn lets you reorder your discard pile mostly because it sort of has to - when searching through for cards to shuffle in to your deck, you don't have to be careful about preserving the order of the discard pile.

Yeah, similar to how Navigator lets you reorder cards you put back on your deck. Usually it's not going to matter, but it keeps you from having to keep track of the order of the cards.

Better example is probably Oracle. Navigator has a fair amount of edge cases where it matters. Oracle has absolutely none (unless Guilds introduces some sort of "when you draw" reaction).

7496

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Feedback Wanted: The Anti-Embassy

« on: April 18, 2013, 12:59:17 pm »

Side note: What's wrong with a $4 being usually better than Silver?

Because, in many ways $3 and $4 in Dominion are considered interchangeable costs. It's rare that you can only afford a $3, but not a $4... $4s aren't generally made $4 because they're better than the $3s. They're made $4 because either you don't want the person to open with 2 of them (Treasure Map), or you don't want the person to be able to buy too many of them with multiple buys. Or, like Rats, because it's a much stronger card at $4 than it would be at $3.

7497

General Discussion / Re: How old are you?

« on: April 18, 2013, 12:37:58 pm »

My age is the most logical cubed number to hang around on these forums, not that I have anything against the other cubes, I would just be surprised to find them here.

I'm old enough that my first computer only had a black and orange screen.
I'm young enough that I still understand modern day technology.

It's quite a fun age: I've seen the rise of technology (well, not the industrial revolution) and the internet and both know a time without it and with it.

I still remember the old downloading days with Napster where you spent an entire afternoon looking for and downloading a song (with 56k) only to find out it was a fake!!! So annoying. And so different from the streaming world we live in today.

Wow, you're good at Dominion for an 8 year old!

7498

General Discussion / Re: How old are you?

« on: April 18, 2013, 10:27:42 am »

30. 31 in July.

9/11/01 was my second week of classes for my first year of college.
I never listened to current music; I listened mostly to 60s music in high school.

7499

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Two Great Uses for Band of Misfits

« on: April 18, 2013, 10:12:05 am »

Seriously though I had one game with BoM with worker's village, smithy and remake, and started 5/2. Using BoM as a remake without having to buy a remake and then turning it into a slightly-better-than-nobles engine piece later was kind of fun

Worker's Village + Smithy is more than slightly better than Nobles + Nobles... and extra card AND a buy... WAY better than 2 Nobles for an Engine.

7500

Rules Questions / Re: Yet another Treasure Map question

« on: April 18, 2013, 10:06:41 am »

Still, I wouldn't say that Feast fails to trash itself due to lose track; it fails to move itself to the trash because it's already there, something can't be moved to where it already is.

It's both! See the example with Possession, Throne Room and Mining Village given by AJD earlier in the thread. MV tries to move itself to trash, but can't. To quote: "not because it's already in the trash (it's not), but because it's lost track of itself due to being moved by Possession"

And no, Throne Room can lose track of a card, because the card is not in play. It's been explained in this thread.

So: Cards will always be moved to play when they are played. Cards will always be move to trash when they are trashed. But this can't happen if either (1) the card is already there, or (2) the card is not where it's expected to be. (And (1) will never be true without (2) also being true, because no card effect is stupid enough to tell you to move a card to where it already is by default.)

I don't think cards are always moved to play when they are played.... when you Throne Room a Feast, the second time it is played, it's played from the Trash, and never moves from the Trash.