51
Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Dominion Cards - A Strategy Series
« on: November 15, 2020, 02:32:11 pm »
And now a video for every card in 2nd Edition Intrigue is complete too!
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52
Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Dominion Cards - A Strategy Series
« on: May 23, 2020, 01:57:17 pm »
2 months to the day and a video on every card in the 2nd edition base set is complete!
53
Rules Questions / Re: Considering Trader errata
« on: May 10, 2020, 05:25:05 am »
"New card image" does not mean different artwork, it means a new version of the entire card for the printer to print the card from, text and borders and all.
54
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Getting back into Dominion after long hiatus; a little overwhelmed... any help?
« on: April 28, 2020, 01:41:36 pm »- I struggle to wrap my mind around the basics of: Fate/Boons, Doom/Hexes, States, Zombies, and Artifacts.Boons and Hexes are just a way of giving cards a random outcome. When a card gives you a boon, the top card of the boon pile is discarded and you get that effect. The boon pile is made up of positive bonuses. Hexes are the same, but negative effects.
States are just a card you get to keep next to you to remind you something is happening, e.g. two of the hexes give you an effect that only take place during your buy phase, so you get given a state card to remind you that that's a thing that's happening to you on your next buy phase.
Zombies are just some action cards that are in the trash when you play with Necromancer. Necromancer plays action cards directly from the trash, so this just means that there is something for Necromancer to do at the start of the game.
Artifacts are like a passive bonus, but only one person can have it at a time. So if a card gives you the artifact, you take it from whoever had it last. Now you are the only person to get that benefit, until somebody else steals it away from you.
- I get the basics of Reserve cards, but it seems like they aren't Throne-able since the card doesn't stay in play. Or has this changed with the changes to the lose-track rule (which I kinda got)?These act like cards like how Goons interacts with throne rooms. Throne rooms only play the "on-play" instructions twice, that is, things above the dividing line. So when you throne Goons, you don't get double the points. So if you throne Wine Merchant, you get +$8, +2 Buys, and it goes onto your tavern mat. But if you throne Duplicate, it moves to your tavern mat, then tries to move again (nut it's already there) and then that's it for the throne room's effect. So useless in the case of Duplicate, but really nice in the case of Wine Merchant.
- I get the basics of Travellers, but I see from Qvist rankings that they are both ranked VERY high. What is it about this progression that is so powerful? It seems like it would take quite a long time to make them come online...Shuffling your deck 5 times doesn't have to take very long at all if you build your deck to do it. And the payoff is something like infinite +actions! Obviously you don't play these on Big Money boards, but the thing about these cards is that if they are present, then it's not a Big Money board...
- I get the basics of Debt, but it seems like Donate is game-warpingly strong and Capital is weak. Can someone walk me through the significance of these cards?Donate is indeed the single most powerful thing printed for Dominion so far. Capital lets you get multiple cards or more expensive ones now and pay for it later, like making normal cards cost debt. Getting good cards sooner is usually pretty nice, and it can help you smooth out money distribution. But there are times when it's bad, and obviously in typical circumstances you still need to have most of your money come from other sources.
- I get the mechanics of Gathering cards, but Farmer's Market utterly confuses me strategically... when is this good?On average it gives slightly less money than Monument but you also get a buy. Of course, this is only the case if you get all the points, and your opponent playing it can get you the points from when they played it! Much better when you have more control over when you can get the points from it, like strong engines that can play multiple copies and have throne rooms, for example.
- I get the basics of Villagers, but how strong are they?How good is a village that is guaranteed to be drawn exactly when you need it? Imagine getting a village that topdecked every turn.
- Renaissance seems like a little bit of a power-creep set... or am I missing something?No, it's arguably the strongest set overall.
- Coming back, I hear that Butcher is considered one of the best cards in the game. Can someone help me understand this?It's an incredibly flexible Remodel that can also give you money to boost your buys. Usually the downside of Remodel is that it doesn't give you direct economy so your ability to also buy cards can be impacted. Not so with Butcher.
- Also, it appears that the strategy space has shifted in favor of 'gainers' - what's the story there?I don't think this is true, but the cards overall have all gotten more powerful at each price point so traditional gainers that rely on other cards will be better by proxy, and there are a load of cards that now gain cards from their own separate non-supply piles, so there exist a lot of strong cards that have the word gain on them.
- Can someone point me in the direction of good Dominion content-creators on YouTube? Twitch? I hear there is a Discord? Apparently Podcasts too?!?This forum has its own videos section: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=19.0
55
Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Dominion Cards - A Strategy Series
« on: April 19, 2020, 07:08:58 am »As far as I can tell, there is.I swear I tried wrapping the links in url tags before and it didn't work. I must be going mad.
https://youtu.be/U7ivxF0L1Y4
Thanks. This has allowed me to include an alphabetical list of videos by card name in the original post, to make it easier if somebody just wants to know about a particular card.
56
Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Dominion Cards - A Strategy Series
« on: April 11, 2020, 05:22:50 pm »
If you were expecting each of these videos to be posted here, there's no way on this forum to not embed videos when you try to link to one, as far as I can tell, and I don't want this thread to cripple your browser when you open it with a ton of embedded videos, so I'm not going to be posting the latest videos here.
But this series is ongoing and has just made it to its tenth video. So do make sure to come back and check the channel regularly, or susbscribe to it if you're interested in this series.
But this series is ongoing and has just made it to its tenth video. So do make sure to come back and check the channel regularly, or susbscribe to it if you're interested in this series.
57
Dominion Videos and Streams / Dominion Cards - A Strategy Series
« on: March 23, 2020, 06:53:03 pm »
Dominion Cards is a series of videos where I talk in-depth about various cards, how good they are, when you want to add them to your deck (or not), and sometimes will generate random kingdoms using it to assess what sort of impact it will have on that kingdom. It's got its own exclusive Youtube channel, so feel free to subscribe.
Here's the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgHOCYSX1xxB59TOUBcVcUg
If you want to watch all videos in order, here's a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjfhlD18fkwXynl-Kbfg98bm2KmdNF-D0
Alternatively, if you just want to watch the video for a specific card, this list might be an easier way to find it
Base Game
Intrigue
Seaside
Alchemy
Prosperity
Promos
Here's the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgHOCYSX1xxB59TOUBcVcUg
If you want to watch all videos in order, here's a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjfhlD18fkwXynl-Kbfg98bm2KmdNF-D0
Alternatively, if you just want to watch the video for a specific card, this list might be an easier way to find it
Base Game
- The Base Cards (Copper, Silver, Gold, Estate, Duchy, Province, Curse)
- Artisan
- Bandit (and Gold in general)
- Bureaucrat
- Cellar
- Chapel
- Council Room
- Festival
- Gardens (and the end of the game in general)
- Harbinger
- Laboratory
- Library (and Draw-to-X in general)
- Market (and +Buy in general)
- Merchant
- Militia
- Mine
- Moat
- Moneylender
- Poacher
- Remodel
- Sentry
- Smithy (and drawing in general)
- Throne Room
- Vassal
- Village (and villages in general)
- Witch
- Workshop
Intrigue
- Baron
- Bridge
- Conspirator
- Courtier
- Courtyard
- Diplomat
- Duke
- Harem
- Ironworks
- Lurker
- Masquerade
- Mill
- Mining Village
- Minion
- Nobles
- Patrol
- Pawn
- Replace
- Secret Passage
- Shanty Town
- Steward
- Swindler
- Torturer
- Trading Post
- Upgrade
- Wishing Well
Seaside
- Astrolabe
- Bazaar
- Caravan (and duration cards in general)
- Corsair
- Cutpurse
- Fishing Village
- Haven
- Island
- Lighthouse
- Lookout
- Merchant Ship
- Native Village
- Outpost
- Salvager
- Sea Chart
- Sea Witch
- Smugglers
- Tactician
- Tide Pools
- Treasure Map
- Treasury
- Warehouse
- Wharf
Alchemy
- Alchemist
- Apothecary
- Apprentice
- Familiar
- Golem
- Herbalist
- Philosopher's Stone
- Possession
- Potion
- Scrying Pool
- Transmute
- University
- Vineyard
Prosperity
- Platinum and Colony
- Bank
- Bishop
- City
- Contraband
- Counting House
- Expand
- Forge
- Goons
- Grand Market
- Hoard
- King's Court
- Loan
- Mint
- Monument
- Mountebank
- Peddler
- Quarry
- Rabble
- Royal Seal
- Talisman
- Trade Route
- Vault
- Venture
- Watchtower
- Worker's Village
Promos
58
Dominion General Discussion / Re: What are the kingdom generation odds post-Menagerie?
« on: March 18, 2020, 08:16:39 am »
I think I figured out the first one, 2.825%, which means a particular kingdom card will show up in every one of 35.4 games.
Although I ignored the effects of Young Witch and Way of the Mouse. I guess 2 and 3 cost kingdom cards show up ever so slightly more often.
Although I ignored the effects of Young Witch and Way of the Mouse. I guess 2 and 3 cost kingdom cards show up ever so slightly more often.
59
Dominion General Discussion / What are the kingdom generation odds post-Menagerie?
« on: March 18, 2020, 08:04:24 am »
Someone who is good at stats please help satiate my curiosity.
Menagerie has added 30 kingdom cards and 40 landscapes to the mix. This means if you ignore first edition removed cards and include promos, there are now 354 kingdom cards and 115 landscapes. Assuming a full random selection from all second edition, using standard setup rules (so landscapes shuffled into randomisers and a max of two are included) what are now the odds of:
Menagerie has added 30 kingdom cards and 40 landscapes to the mix. This means if you ignore first edition removed cards and include promos, there are now 354 kingdom cards and 115 landscapes. Assuming a full random selection from all second edition, using standard setup rules (so landscapes shuffled into randomisers and a max of two are included) what are now the odds of:
- A particular kingdom card appearing?
- A particular landscape appearing?
- Colonies and platinums being in the game? (Prosperity has 25 kingdom cards)
- Shelters being in the game? (DA has 35 kingdom cards)
- A particular two kingdom card combo appearing?
- A particular three kingdom card combo appearing?
60
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews
« on: March 17, 2020, 05:46:39 am »Is the person on the art missing a hand?I think they're just scratching their arse. Probably in desperation.
61
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews
« on: March 07, 2020, 03:19:29 am »
The key word is "that", meaning it only applies to the one card you applied the Way to. The "this turn" clause is there I imagine to prevent tracking issues with durations.
62
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews
« on: March 07, 2020, 03:08:32 am »Very interesting card! If I chameleon a second time in a turn - does it undo the first one - putting all the cards back to normal?You choose to apply Ways on a card by card basis, so its either active or not for an individual card play, you can't apply it twice.
63
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 4: Ways and Events
« on: March 05, 2020, 03:38:50 pm »This has probably been answered elsewhere, but will the previewed cards remain playable online up until the expansion is released or will they get removed for a brief period of time in the interim, such as next week?ShuffleIt forums say previews are available to play Monday 2nd March to Sunday 8th.
http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=4029.msg17264#msg17264
64
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 1: 5 Cards
« on: March 03, 2020, 06:32:51 pm »
Animal Fair has two costs, 7 coins; or 0 coins and trash an action card, and you get to pick the one you want to pay.
This still feels consistent with the rules excerpt you posted. If you cant afford either cost, you dont get to spend your buy on it.
This still feels consistent with the rules excerpt you posted. If you cant afford either cost, you dont get to spend your buy on it.
65
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 2: Horses
« on: March 03, 2020, 04:03:43 pm »
Just played a game against the bot with Livery and King's Court. Gained 12 horses with each colony. Turns out emptying the horse pile is quite easy. 
66
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Recruiter too good?
« on: February 23, 2020, 02:21:46 am »
So why exactly is Recruiter so strong?
- Masquerade showed us that drawing two cards before you trash is incredibly strong. In the early game, it makes you way more likely to find an estate which you usually want to prioritse trashing first, instead of having to find one in 4 other cards, you get to look at 6 other cards. So Recruiter is quite consistent at trashing the highest priority junk first.
- Drawing cards is one of the strongest effects a card in Dominion can have. While Recruiter isn't a draw card per se as your handsize does not increase, you're still cycling your deck, so you can use it and your newly purchased cards sooner and more often. You have better turns when you use the Recruiter, early on you'll have more coppers in hand to buy stronger cards, drawing 2 coppers is like the $2 you get from Priest plus cycling. Later on your engine becomes more consistent, as Recruiter isnt a stop card so even if you weren't looking to trash more, playing it anyway might save a turn from otherwise dudding. And playing Recruiter as a last-ditch attempt at saving your turn is way better than playing Masquerade in the same situation, as if the worst happens, you will be trading an OK card for some villagers, which is still pretty good, instead of giving it to your opponent, possibly in exchange for a worse card.
- Villagers are really good. Regular village cards rely on you drawing them first or at the same time as your terminals, but villagers dont have this problem. Early on you can think of Recruiter as a non-terminal Masquerade, which sounds super strong, but its actually even better than that. Recruiter can be better than a village. It can generate a lot of villagers, it can be beneficial to trash stronger treasures or even engine components over coppers so that you gain incredible consistency over your deck. Never be stuck being unable to play the cards you draw. Buy a Smithy then trash that silver you opened with, the coppers drawn by Smithy will give you equivalent economy and you can just focus on building more with no worries about drawing your actions dead. As the only village, Recruiter can work, but needs a gainer to provide fuel, and if your draw is terminal you might want tone down your grand aspirations for your deck a bit.
67
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas
« on: February 18, 2020, 04:24:21 pm »
Pension Fund
Action - Reserve - Duration
$Potion
Put this on your tavern mat
--------------
At the start of your turn, you may call this for $6 at the start of your next turn.
Action - Reserve - Duration
$Potion
Put this on your tavern mat
--------------
At the start of your turn, you may call this for $6 at the start of your next turn.
68
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion: Menagerie
« on: January 23, 2020, 01:25:15 am »
Dominion getting an animal themed expansion. Does this mean its jumped the shark?
69
Rules Questions / Re: Fiddling around with TR/KC + duration cards
« on: May 10, 2019, 06:30:59 pm »
Every card you own is already either in your hand or in play. You can't draw more because you haven't got anything left to draw.
70
Game Reports / Re: When you don't think straight: Canal + Upgrade
« on: February 26, 2019, 02:20:44 pm »
Look on the bright side, at least they stopped upgrading into Poor Houses!
71
Dominion Articles / Re: The Top 20 Best Designed Cards
« on: January 06, 2019, 01:44:12 pm »Whoops yes I did. Thanks. I've corrected the article. Still getting those two mixed up!
Tomb's and Citadel's early inclusion on this list made it clear that I like trashing.
Do you mean Cathedral?
72
Dominion Articles / Re: The Top 20 Best Designed Cards
« on: January 04, 2019, 05:34:59 pm »Funny, because I consider Storyteller to be one of the poorer designs in Dominion. First, it made playing Treasures during your Action phase a standard thing (when before it was only the case for one obscure promo card), which weaked the distinction between Treasures and Actions considerably, to the point where now they feel almost interchangeable. It also misleads you by saying "+1 Coin" and then not giving you any coins.You raise good points, but I'm not sure I agree with it all. I think some treasures like Scepter are the real cause of blurring the lines between treasures and actions. And if you think of Storyteller from the concept of "how can I make a draw card that draws proportionally according to how much you're willing to pay", Storyteller's implementation is the one that makes the most sense. By using the treasures in your hand, Storyteller cares about the composition of your deck and which cards you draw when. I can easily see the +$1 being swapped for +1 card at the end if the card text, but then all of the simple instructions won't be at the top, for whatever that might be worth, and the way it is now allows for that stylistic choice while still allowing the card to be a cantrip at worst without letting you draw an extra treasure first. The stylistic choice being not worth sticking to in this case is a part where I might agree here.
Even then I don't see the +$1 as misleading because you always know that a play of Storyteller wipes out all +$ from every source before it finsihes resolving. Which really was the only part of the card I wanted to discuss anyway.
73
Dominion Articles / Re: The Top 20 Best Designed Cards
« on: January 04, 2019, 05:21:21 pm »I think this is the problem with the concept of "best designed." Without more clearly defined criteria, it doesn't actually mean anything.It's true, you caught me. What does best-designed even mean? What does the 3rd best designed card do worse than the 1st or 2nd? Well... basically nothing.
That being said, I still find kieranmillar's write-ups interesting.
What does good design itself even mean? I see design as problem solving in the pursuit of multiple, sometimes contradictory outcomes. Dominion wants to be simple to play but with deep strategic complexity. It wants to have the freedom to play with ideas while being constrained physically and mechanically. It wants cards to be exciting on first glance and when playing with it for the 100th time. There's a lot to unpack, and different cards have different problems that need solving. And as someone who was not involved in any of that design process, merely a player of the end product, commenting upon what problems were encountered and the solutions that were taken contains a heaping of guesswork and navel gazing that makes the whole thing ultimately rather pointless.
This article started its life as me wanting to talk about Dominion compared to other board games I'd played, and why I think it succeeds so brilliantly, and what it does differently that makes that work. The problem is, this article would have just been a rambling mess with no real structure, darting from place to place with nothing to tie them together. Me just talking about some examples in isolation of a greater point. So instead I stripped it down to cards where I had something that felt meaningfully different from each other to talk about, then put them in an order, added a clickbait title, and avoided ever needing to have some coherent underlying narrative or actual competence in essay writing. Hooray!
74
Dominion Articles / Re: The Top 20 Best Designed Cards
« on: January 04, 2019, 05:07:19 pm »
#5 - Bishop
Tomb's and Cathedral's early inclusion on this list made it clear that I like trashing. A lot of deckbuilders that use a rotating market rather than a supply to buy cards from always feel highly restricted on how much you can trash because it is so powerful and unequal access to trashing is particularly unfair. Dominion not only avoids this problem, but fully embraces trashing, and few other cards deeply encourage you to intentionally annihilate your deck like Bishop does. Bishop is powerful, but it's clever in how it curtails that power without diminshing what it's designed to do. The opportunity for your opponent to also trash a card is smart because of the way it directly promotes the exact counter-strategy to a heavily-Bishop focussed deck. The free trash for your opponent provides some significant acceleration to their deck, and it's fast decks that green quickly that Bishop struggles to beat. Bishop either wants to end the game quickly with a reasonable points lead before a multi-province engine can get going, or engage in a long, drawn-out game where it has more opportunities to amass points without worrying about the deck clogging up with green. By ensuring a good counter to dull mono-Bishop strategies is always present, Bishop helps promote more varied types of decks that utilise it. "But what about Bishop-Fortress? That usually dominates and plays out the same each time", I hear you say, or would have, if I hadn't ran off with my fingers in my ears going "La la I can't hear you!"
#4 - Menagerie
You might have gathered by now that I think that Dominion massively benefits from variety, and an important part of maximising that is trying to ensure that as many cards as possible influence the Kingdom in their own way, as this helps make each Kingdom feel unique. It's not always going to be possible to make every card impactful, but some cards find their own ways to make other less usueful cards more worthwhile. Menagerie is the king of these cards, encouraging you to pick up as many different cards as possible to get the strong draw. But unlike, say, Fairgrounds, Menagerie really makes you care about how you build and play that deck to make it work, rather than last-minute diversification. Menagerie's play-by-play care over the composition of your hand makes for a simple-seeming card that adds some very complex and careful deck-building strategy. Menagerie adds its own unique play-style to the table while also making other cards more valuable, making Menagerie decks feel different not just to other types of deck, but also to each other.
#3 - Lurker
Lurker is the best card I've ever bought and then not played. A non-terminal gainer that can gain any action but requires two plays? OK that's cool. But the card you want to gain goes into a shared pile that anybody can take? Absolutely devious. When it was introduced in 2nd Edition, gaining from the trash was nothing new, and there was always this potential undercurrent of having your trashed cards be taken by other players with those cards. But Lurker embraced this, bringing this tension to the forefront of the card's gameplay, and I love it for it. The utility of playing Lurker can swing wildly from turn to turn, and also based on the other cards in the kingdom. I don't know how much the combos with other trashers or on-trash bonuses was accidental or the original basis of the card, but either way Lurker is a very unique and wild idea. Lurker took an existing mechanic on the fringes of the design and built on it to great success.
#2 - Butcher
Butcher takes full advantage of the components being included in its expansion to get maximum mileage out of them while it has the opportunity. Butcher takes the existing Remodel mechanic and allows it to be partially utilised, in order to save part of its upgrading to boost a later use, or just use as regular Coffers. It allows you to get better cards into your deck in two different ways but shares the resource between those uses so you can improve your deck in the way that best works for you in the moment. Additional physical components are expensive, and Butcher's approach to making the most use of them is very clever and works brilliantly.
#1 - Throne Room
I think Throne Room proves more than any other card in Dominion just how much Donald X fundamentally understood the genre that he created, and as early as the base game! It seems so unassuming on its own, but you can't possibly make a card like this without having full confidence that it's not going to be horrendously broken and cause problems some time down the line. But you know you can be confident in that design, because a core feature of Dominion's design is that multiple copies of cards are always available to put into your deck, and therefore playing multiple copies is usually expected. But what I also love about Throne Room is how deliciously meta it is. A simple instruction, that is entirely reliant on another card to even do anything but can still be combined with itself and make perfect sense without requiring an exception. Throne Room is beautiful in its simplicity, but hiding beneath its simple exterior is a huge amount of reliance in a careful and consistent core framework, combined with some great ingenuity to even come up with in the first place. When I think of what sets Dominion apart from other deck builders, I think of Throne Room.
Tomb's and Cathedral's early inclusion on this list made it clear that I like trashing. A lot of deckbuilders that use a rotating market rather than a supply to buy cards from always feel highly restricted on how much you can trash because it is so powerful and unequal access to trashing is particularly unfair. Dominion not only avoids this problem, but fully embraces trashing, and few other cards deeply encourage you to intentionally annihilate your deck like Bishop does. Bishop is powerful, but it's clever in how it curtails that power without diminshing what it's designed to do. The opportunity for your opponent to also trash a card is smart because of the way it directly promotes the exact counter-strategy to a heavily-Bishop focussed deck. The free trash for your opponent provides some significant acceleration to their deck, and it's fast decks that green quickly that Bishop struggles to beat. Bishop either wants to end the game quickly with a reasonable points lead before a multi-province engine can get going, or engage in a long, drawn-out game where it has more opportunities to amass points without worrying about the deck clogging up with green. By ensuring a good counter to dull mono-Bishop strategies is always present, Bishop helps promote more varied types of decks that utilise it. "But what about Bishop-Fortress? That usually dominates and plays out the same each time", I hear you say, or would have, if I hadn't ran off with my fingers in my ears going "La la I can't hear you!"
#4 - Menagerie
You might have gathered by now that I think that Dominion massively benefits from variety, and an important part of maximising that is trying to ensure that as many cards as possible influence the Kingdom in their own way, as this helps make each Kingdom feel unique. It's not always going to be possible to make every card impactful, but some cards find their own ways to make other less usueful cards more worthwhile. Menagerie is the king of these cards, encouraging you to pick up as many different cards as possible to get the strong draw. But unlike, say, Fairgrounds, Menagerie really makes you care about how you build and play that deck to make it work, rather than last-minute diversification. Menagerie's play-by-play care over the composition of your hand makes for a simple-seeming card that adds some very complex and careful deck-building strategy. Menagerie adds its own unique play-style to the table while also making other cards more valuable, making Menagerie decks feel different not just to other types of deck, but also to each other.
#3 - Lurker
Lurker is the best card I've ever bought and then not played. A non-terminal gainer that can gain any action but requires two plays? OK that's cool. But the card you want to gain goes into a shared pile that anybody can take? Absolutely devious. When it was introduced in 2nd Edition, gaining from the trash was nothing new, and there was always this potential undercurrent of having your trashed cards be taken by other players with those cards. But Lurker embraced this, bringing this tension to the forefront of the card's gameplay, and I love it for it. The utility of playing Lurker can swing wildly from turn to turn, and also based on the other cards in the kingdom. I don't know how much the combos with other trashers or on-trash bonuses was accidental or the original basis of the card, but either way Lurker is a very unique and wild idea. Lurker took an existing mechanic on the fringes of the design and built on it to great success.
#2 - Butcher
Butcher takes full advantage of the components being included in its expansion to get maximum mileage out of them while it has the opportunity. Butcher takes the existing Remodel mechanic and allows it to be partially utilised, in order to save part of its upgrading to boost a later use, or just use as regular Coffers. It allows you to get better cards into your deck in two different ways but shares the resource between those uses so you can improve your deck in the way that best works for you in the moment. Additional physical components are expensive, and Butcher's approach to making the most use of them is very clever and works brilliantly.
#1 - Throne Room
I think Throne Room proves more than any other card in Dominion just how much Donald X fundamentally understood the genre that he created, and as early as the base game! It seems so unassuming on its own, but you can't possibly make a card like this without having full confidence that it's not going to be horrendously broken and cause problems some time down the line. But you know you can be confident in that design, because a core feature of Dominion's design is that multiple copies of cards are always available to put into your deck, and therefore playing multiple copies is usually expected. But what I also love about Throne Room is how deliciously meta it is. A simple instruction, that is entirely reliant on another card to even do anything but can still be combined with itself and make perfect sense without requiring an exception. Throne Room is beautiful in its simplicity, but hiding beneath its simple exterior is a huge amount of reliance in a careful and consistent core framework, combined with some great ingenuity to even come up with in the first place. When I think of what sets Dominion apart from other deck builders, I think of Throne Room.
75
Dominion Articles / Re: The Top 20 Best Designed Cards
« on: December 31, 2018, 05:28:25 pm »
#10 - Vineyard
There are a bunch of alternate victory cards in Dominion that encourage building certain types of deck, but how do you balance one around building the most powerful deck type - the engine? Engines tend to be great at picking up pretty much any type of card, including Provinces and Colonies, so how do you possibly set a suitable cost? This problem is brilliantly solved with potions. Now Alchemy is the least popular expansion for a reason, but I believe that unlike a number of the other Alchemy cards, Vineyard is one that simply could not work without costing Potion. Potions put a strong limit on the number of a certain card you can get during a shuffle, and force you to load up on a junky stopcard if you want to increase how many you can get each shuffle, which allows Vineyard to remain viable for all players to collect in crazy engine boards with lots of gaining without turning into a total blowout for one player.
#9 - Shepherd / Pasture
Individually, each of these cards has a problem. Shepherd is really powerful, but needs a high density of victory cards, and can struggle to be viable early and mid game with only the initial 3 estates, and really you'd rather trash them. Meanwhile, Pasture struggles to be a victory card pile, because it's just too insanely strong to get in any reasonable quantity unless the scaling is made so much worse. Now the heirloom mechanic is cool and all, but honestly for a lot of them the pairings feel incidental. No other heirloom solves the problems each card has in the way that it does for this pair. By adding an extra victory card to your starting hand and making the estates more valuable so you want to keep them, and putting a hard limit of only one Pasture in your deck, these two cards combined solve each other's problems in a way that would have been really tough or inelegant to solve any other way. The perfect solution for two cards at the same time!
#8 - Bridge
Lots of other deckbuilders decide to change the supply to a constantly rotating market but cards like Bridge show why this was ultimately a worse idea. Dominion allows you to actually build a deck themed around making certain cards work because you have ample access to multiple copies of the card and have the opportunity to actually get it in games where it's available. Bridge is a particularly nice example of this because of the manner in which its power explodes as you play more of them, it is almost like a naturally-occuring alternative victory condition whereby if you can play enough of them, you almost certainly just win through raw power, but doing this reqires you to build your deck very well, and feels very different from decks without it.
#7 - Dominate
After Prosperity's release, fans immediately asked the question, would there be the next step beyond Colony, that cost 14 and gave 15 points? But this always had an issue, in that it risked dragging out games to be quite long most of the time it showed up. Also, what about the base-cards-only product? Does it count as a new base card and need to be included? Where Dominate is so smart is that instead of making a whole new pile of cards and adding yet another game-end trigger, Dominate simply runs down the Province pile. This means that running down Provinces as the game progresses can be a viable way to shortcut the game's length a reasonable amount of the time, and the fact that it is an Event had the nice bonus of meaning only one card has to be printed instead of a new stack of 12. So the base cards product remains intact, and there's more room in the expansion to add even more cards. Everyone's a winner!
#6 - Imp
So let's say you're looking to make a card that multiple other cards can give out. You want this card to be usuable in a reasonable quantity to make the cards that give them out better value, but you don't want it to dominate the game on its own if you can quickly amass lots of them in case multiple types of these cards are in the kingdom, so there needs to be some sort of check on how many of them you can play. Imp's mechanic of being able to play other cards if you've not got any of them in play yet is the ideal solution to this. It's effective in making a reasonable and flexible limit, that can even change and evolve as your deck does. It requires some manner of thought and care in when you get them and how many, and best of all, it encourages using more of the cards available in the kingdom that you may not have otherwise. This card's design absolutely nails it, and I love it.
There are a bunch of alternate victory cards in Dominion that encourage building certain types of deck, but how do you balance one around building the most powerful deck type - the engine? Engines tend to be great at picking up pretty much any type of card, including Provinces and Colonies, so how do you possibly set a suitable cost? This problem is brilliantly solved with potions. Now Alchemy is the least popular expansion for a reason, but I believe that unlike a number of the other Alchemy cards, Vineyard is one that simply could not work without costing Potion. Potions put a strong limit on the number of a certain card you can get during a shuffle, and force you to load up on a junky stopcard if you want to increase how many you can get each shuffle, which allows Vineyard to remain viable for all players to collect in crazy engine boards with lots of gaining without turning into a total blowout for one player.
#9 - Shepherd / Pasture
Individually, each of these cards has a problem. Shepherd is really powerful, but needs a high density of victory cards, and can struggle to be viable early and mid game with only the initial 3 estates, and really you'd rather trash them. Meanwhile, Pasture struggles to be a victory card pile, because it's just too insanely strong to get in any reasonable quantity unless the scaling is made so much worse. Now the heirloom mechanic is cool and all, but honestly for a lot of them the pairings feel incidental. No other heirloom solves the problems each card has in the way that it does for this pair. By adding an extra victory card to your starting hand and making the estates more valuable so you want to keep them, and putting a hard limit of only one Pasture in your deck, these two cards combined solve each other's problems in a way that would have been really tough or inelegant to solve any other way. The perfect solution for two cards at the same time!
#8 - Bridge
Lots of other deckbuilders decide to change the supply to a constantly rotating market but cards like Bridge show why this was ultimately a worse idea. Dominion allows you to actually build a deck themed around making certain cards work because you have ample access to multiple copies of the card and have the opportunity to actually get it in games where it's available. Bridge is a particularly nice example of this because of the manner in which its power explodes as you play more of them, it is almost like a naturally-occuring alternative victory condition whereby if you can play enough of them, you almost certainly just win through raw power, but doing this reqires you to build your deck very well, and feels very different from decks without it.
#7 - Dominate
After Prosperity's release, fans immediately asked the question, would there be the next step beyond Colony, that cost 14 and gave 15 points? But this always had an issue, in that it risked dragging out games to be quite long most of the time it showed up. Also, what about the base-cards-only product? Does it count as a new base card and need to be included? Where Dominate is so smart is that instead of making a whole new pile of cards and adding yet another game-end trigger, Dominate simply runs down the Province pile. This means that running down Provinces as the game progresses can be a viable way to shortcut the game's length a reasonable amount of the time, and the fact that it is an Event had the nice bonus of meaning only one card has to be printed instead of a new stack of 12. So the base cards product remains intact, and there's more room in the expansion to add even more cards. Everyone's a winner!
#6 - Imp
So let's say you're looking to make a card that multiple other cards can give out. You want this card to be usuable in a reasonable quantity to make the cards that give them out better value, but you don't want it to dominate the game on its own if you can quickly amass lots of them in case multiple types of these cards are in the kingdom, so there needs to be some sort of check on how many of them you can play. Imp's mechanic of being able to play other cards if you've not got any of them in play yet is the ideal solution to this. It's effective in making a reasonable and flexible limit, that can even change and evolve as your deck does. It requires some manner of thought and care in when you get them and how many, and best of all, it encourages using more of the cards available in the kingdom that you may not have otherwise. This card's design absolutely nails it, and I love it.