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76

Dominion General Discussion / Re: My new Dominion YouTubing Series

« on: December 30, 2018, 06:43:04 pm »

I'd say there were 3 main areas you went wrong in that game:

1) You definitely underestimated Lookout. With that much junking coming in to your deck you definitely wanted more than one of them. Also with fortress on the board, using lookout more than usual is OK because if a fortress and some other engine pieces come up, you can freely trash the fortress and it goes into your hand, so the risk is lessened. Also also if you do get the Royal Blacksmith engine going, you can draw all of your cards and end with a load of coppers as the only cards in your deck, that your lookouts can then trash with no risk.
2) You got too distracted by Flag Bearer and Soothsayer. The extra card from the flag didn't matter because your deck was filled with junk so it made little difference. On this board you either wanted to go all in on Soothsayer or build the engine, and you sort of went half on both and as such had a deck that didn't really do anything. Note that in 4 player, one person can easily skip cursing and it's not so bad as in 2 player. In 2-player if one person skips junking they lose the curse split 10 - 0, but in 4 player, they tend to lose 7 - 7 - 7 - 10 or there abouts, which is nowhere nearly as bad.
3) You needed to focus more on Engineer to get the engine components you needed. You needed way more fortresses, patrons and lookouts in your deck so that the engine could be built in time, and the only realistic way of getting enough of these was with engineer. Lookout - Engineer would have been a good opener.

77

Dominion Articles / Re: The Top 20 Best Designed Cards

« on: December 30, 2018, 11:05:32 am »

#15 - Council Room

I may be completely wrong on this assumption, but Council Room has always struck me as having the bonus interaction come first, and the rest of the card designed around it to make it work. Given that having your opponents draw additional cards to start their hand is very strong for them, this effect really needed to be put on a card that was good enough to sorely tempt it to actually be bought and used in the first place, but on something that wasn't going to be played loads of times to make the drawback seem like less of a downside. The stronger than usual draw means you simply don't need to play that many, and I think this card ends up working out really well. I also think this card's inclusion into the base game was a very smart choice, providing an immediate counter to the criticism that Dominion isn't interactive enough. This particular interaction spreads a lot of good feeling around the table, if anything I wish there were more cards like this.

#14 - Hireling

I have included Hireling in this list not so much for the card itself, but for the forward-thinking of Donald X's design of many game mechanics. In the pre-Adventures era of Dominion, all of the Duration cards only impacted your next turn at most, so it would have been really easy to try and "simplify" the rules by setting in stone that Durations affect this turn and the next. But by leaving that flexibility open for Durations to stay in play for as long as necessary, a card like Hireling could come along and offer what is essentially a whole new dynamic, a card that once played offers a passive bonus all game, and have it use an existing mechanic in a way that feels completely natural.

#13 - Storyteller

Dominion benefits substantially from being a physical product first and foremost, as not being able to rely on the computer to handle and keep track of things for you helps eliminate a lot of potential unnecessary complexity that makes it easier to think about your turns. The way that Storyteller forces you to spend all of the money you have earned up until that point gracefully eliminates all potential tracking issues, while still allowing it to interact with other sources of coin. Storyteller could have fairly easily only spent the money generated by the treasures you play using it, but by carefully designing away from that it maintains maximum interactivity with the kingdom it is a part of.

#12 - Golem

A lack of theming is a criticism that gets levelled at Dominion, but Golem is brilliantly thematic. When you play Golem it really does feel like a force clumsily stomping through your deck and executing other cards with reckless abandon, consequences be damned. This card's name, artwork and mechanics all tie together perfectly.

#11 - Stonemason

Stonemason has a pretty interesting on play effect, but I think it is not exciting or strong enough to justify the card being purchased a lot of the time. Where Stonemason is clever is that it finds a way to force itself into your deck by being attached to an incredibly strong on-buy effect, and you're more than happy to take advantage of the card once you've already got it. The low cost of Stonemason also means it's usually bad to use Stonemason on another Stonemason, which helps keep its power in check by forcing you to trash other things.

78

Dominion: Renaissance Previews / Re: Capitalism Questions

« on: December 29, 2018, 01:54:52 pm »

That's not true, and potentially somewhat misleading. Capitalism makes those Action cards be Treasures for all purposes. You could buff them with Mine, duplicate them with Mint, discard them to Stables, gain them with Hero... whatever!

It even lets you play them twice with Crown!

79

Dominion Articles / The Top 20 Best Designed Cards

« on: December 28, 2018, 04:07:44 pm »

I love Dominion. It's my favourite board game by a significant margin, so I've spent some time ooh-ing and aah-ing over its design and that of particular cards. So I figured, why not write about what I think is so brilliant about the design of some of the cards. At first this was gonna be the top 5, but then when looking through the list of cards I simply had to include more, and found it hard to pare the list of best designed cards down below 20. Even leaving it at 20, there are still more cards I could gush about but I have to stop somewhere. I am sure you will be outraged that the list ends up not containing a card that you were certain I would include.

Note that this is not a power ranking, although obviously the power of the card factors into its design. It is also not a list of my favourite cards. This list is merely my opinion on what I believe constitutes a well-designed Dominion card and how these cards achieve this.

I'll be posting them in batches of 5 cards whenever I find the time. I have already compiled the list but the write-ups are kinda the whole point and it takes time.

#20 - Baker

While Baker itself is a fairly basic and average card, it's setup bonus is a really good idea. Baker manipulates the kingdom in a very profound way, and doesn't even need to be bought or played in order to have an impact! Dominion lives and dies on its variety, it is a game that benefits from as many cards as possible providing interesting ways to deal with the kingdom when they are present, and this rather simple-seeming effect on Baker really makes itself a big deal without getting in the way of other cards being able to do their own thing. I also think it was absolutely the correct card to put this concept on, Baker already uses coffers and is otherwise a very forgettable card, but the bonus helps elevate it to being a memorable standout of its expansion. It also has the side bonus of being an excellent way to introduce Coffers to players new to the concept.

#19 - Lackeys

I think Lackeys' particular combination of effects is absolutely pitch-perfect. It is just two very simple concepts on their own, but this particular combination has some really interesting implications that I find a lot of fun. The on-gain villagers are quite strong so it is very tempting to gain the card just for them but then Lackeys is in your deck just begging you to spend the villagers on it for that sweet little bit of extra draw. This then throws you into a quandary. Do you keep buying Lackeys, just so you can keep playing your Lackeys? It can be hard to assess where the right sweet spot is for getting more Lackeys, which for such a cheap card with a simple combination of basic effects is really pulling its weight.

#18 - Guide

It was Guide that got me sitting up and thinking "hot damn, Dominion has really got its act together" when I first got to play Adventures. How many times has Dominion tried and failed to get the concept of avoiding bad end-of-turn draws to work? Navigator is just bad, Cartographer feels lacklustre in practice, and all of these cards get worse in the fun engine decks where you're drawing everything. Not so with Guide, that just so beautifully sidesteps the issue by sitting around waiting until you actually get the bad hand and then throws it away. Guide is the sort of card that's really easy to get wrong. But the way that the card itself goes out of your deck until you use it, then has a natural cool-down period until you find and play it again, and stacks so wonderfully and sensibly with multiple copies of itself just works so well. Guide makes you feel like it was your smart preparation and forward planning that helped you avoid a bad hand rather than luck, and that feels great.

#17 - Tomb

When Adventures reintroduced Duration cards and people were musing about a "Prosperity sequel" the one thing I knew I wanted to see a comeback more than anything else was VP tokens. Bishop and Monument were always a crowd-pleaser and it was such a shame that so little was done with them in Prosperity. It was like Donald X read my mind because along came Empires and not only gave me everything I ever wanted, but massively exceeded all of my expectations. I think Tomb is the best representation of this. Dominion sticks out from many other deckbuilders because of its love of trashing, and Tomb just sits there and forces you to re-evaluate the trashing cards, encouraging you to go all in and make decks whose contents vary wildly in the course of the game. The only reason why this is not rated more highly is because it has the chance to be completely useless, and that's always sad, but the fun this card brings more than makes up for it.

#16 - Cathedral

Never has a card simultaneously provided such feelings of hope and dread. Cathedral is equal parts amazing and horrifying. It offers such tantalising power, but at what cost? I love the way Cathedral sets you on a path that feels very different to decks without it, with some incredible burst of power early in the game followed by that moment of doubt later when it starts cannibalizing all of your engine pieces as the game drags on to extended Duchy dancing. If Dominion were differently themed, this project would probably be some terrifying dark force that tempts you into great power with the risk of corrupting your soul, but instead in Dominion it's .... organised religion? Huh. I guess this card also provides scathing social commentary.

80

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: kieranmillar's Rated Games

« on: December 21, 2018, 03:01:44 pm »

Games 7 - 60 were all posted with no other messages inbetween.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjmQA_pi2AYQ-ErmXp255m8zIEtEltNi9

Here's one of my latest videos

81

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: kieranmillar's Rated Games

« on: November 21, 2018, 03:28:02 pm »

Two more games. I found myself utterly lost and confused in the second game, with a sort of non-engine board but no real good options but pure money still seemed bad. Any ideas what the right strategy would be for such a board?

Games 5 and 6

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjmQA_pi2AYQ-ErmXp255m8zIEtEltNi9

82

Dominion Online at Shuffle iT / Re: Any Time I select Renaissance cards I get "More Cards Required Than Available"

« on: November 19, 2018, 02:55:18 am »

You have set it to respect familiar cards, but don't actually have enough cards marked as familiar to construct a full kingdom.

83

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: kieranmillar's Rated Games

« on: November 13, 2018, 03:29:36 pm »

It was a bit of a laugh when you scanned the board and like "..and there's keep" in a whatever-tone. My first glance on it was at once "oh man, this keep-board is cwazy!1!", but well, in the end you played it as you should. Mountebank is completely nulled on most keepboards. Free copperwin? well thankyou!

I have liked both of your videos, I'm not sure why, but there is something in your narrating that is more catching than with other videos I have tried watching. Maybe is the shorter format or something, but it's good. I hope you'll find time to do more and please take your time to analyze the board more thourough if you like, that's often the most enjoyable part as a viewer. No need to feel pressure, these things are not for "showoff" or anything and in any case it can be soothing too see good players screw up sometimes as well so who cares. 

Keep it up

Edit: Another suggestion could be to summarize the game after you're finished. Did it went as you thought? Could you catch any mistake on your part, could you spot anything your opponent did better/worse than you and so on. It's a little abrupt as it is now, I might think.

Thanks, I'm glad you're liking my videos. I think I was feeling rushed out of some sense of not wanting to keep my opponent waiting while I essentially talk to myself, but perhaps I shouldn't feel this way. After all, if they're really impatient for another game, they can just leave and rejoin the queue. I also like the suggestion of giving a quick retrospective of my strategy at the end of the video, so I'll try to do that a bit more.

I recorded two more games with these in mind. Trying to go a bit slower at the start and end. There are two games because the first one was an absolutely terrible board, but the even worse turns I had was worth keeping it around for. In the second video there are actual interesting things happen for me to talk about.

Games 3 and 4

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjmQA_pi2AYQ-ErmXp255m8zIEtEltNi9

84

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: kieranmillar's Rated Games

« on: November 11, 2018, 06:20:42 pm »

Finally found the right time to record another match. Trying to do a bit more analysis, here I completely misread the board initially but then end up doing a completely different strategy anyway that happened to be the right thing to do. For some reason I feel really under pressure when recording these, but I'm sure I'll get used to that in time.

Game 2

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjmQA_pi2AYQ-ErmXp255m8zIEtEltNi9

85

Dominion Videos and Streams / kieranmillar's Rated Games

« on: November 05, 2018, 06:26:12 pm »

Hey all,

I decided I wanted to record some of my Dominion games, so here's the first one. I got into Dominion back in the day of WanderingWinder's quick games, so wanted to try and replicate that here. I wasn't really prepared for the new world of live commentary, and in hindsight said little of interest and played a bit too quickly. I didn't even properly look over the kingdom before starting this match!

I have no planned schedule for these as I play on an irregular basis as it is. Any feedback appreciated! I hope you enjoy.

EDIT: This page was taking so long to load so many embedded videos, that I've replaced all the videos with a link to my playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjmQA_pi2AYQ-ErmXp255m8zIEtEltNi9

86

Dominion: Renaissance Previews / Re: Renaissance Previews #5: Fair, Silos, Citadel, Star Chart, Sewers, Innovation

« on: October 01, 2018, 04:06:08 am »

I like how Sewer amplifies weak trashing, I mean really weak trashing as in Acting Troupe and Embargo.

With Sewer, Embargo is the Bomb!

87

Dominion Online at Shuffle iT / Re: Previews

« on: September 23, 2018, 05:18:44 pm »

Looks ace, and am also very excited for the previews this week! Well done on these features.

88

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why I'm quitting Dominion for the foreseeable future (not satire)

« on: July 07, 2018, 03:56:27 am »

I will say that Dominion taking too long online has become an issue for me. I don't play in League and am not all that bothered by rating, but like to play rated games so I can play against people of roughly the same skill. But sometimes games just drag on and take forever and I play less now as a result.

I got into Dominion in a big way after playing it IRL (where only a single game would be played and take 40 mins but that's fine because it's IRL and you're socialising) and I found WanderingWinder's videos on YouTube. I think I watched all of them! Yes there are hundreds and I watched them all. Games were often pretty fast and it was great. I also used to watch League matches. But for a while now League match sets of 6 can have videos that are close to 3 hours, and I'm sure there was a final that was almost 4 hours! Who has time for this? Watching it is boring now. Long periods of time in the middle of games where nothing happens.

Dominion's original appeal to me was speed and simplicity on the surface but deep strategy underneath. But sitting staring at a screen of cards with nothing happening is dull. I think Dominion would be better online if there was a clock. Sometimes it would mean people were forced to rush and make suboptimal plays, well that's fine. Intuition is a skill too. Long turns and overthinking might be fun for some, but it is not fun to play against, and also very dull to watch.

89

Dominion FAQ / Re: Counterfeit Clarification

« on: May 28, 2018, 05:13:54 am »

There is no concept of playing treasures in "the first buy" or "the second buy". In your buy phase you play all treasures you want to BEFORE buying anything. Then you sum up the total coin you have and then buy up to as many cards as you are allowed to according to the additional buys your played cards give using that total coin pool. You do not have to assign each treasure card to a particular purchase.

Note that once you've bought a card, you can't play any more treasures. So you need to do all your treasure card playing first before buying anything. This matters for cards like Grand Market, so you cannot for example, play 3 silvers, buy Grand Market, then play 3 coppers and buy a silver.

90

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Would you give a new player 1st edition cards?

« on: May 17, 2018, 01:39:35 pm »

I always assumed the reason Bandit didn't trash coppers wasn't to teach that coppers are bad, but because those 4 player newbie Thief games where someone gets totally bankrupted are exceptionally unfun for that player.

Have you ever actually experienced such a game?

Yes. I have seen new players get reduced to being forced to buy coppers in futility because they literally can't do anything else in more than just one game thanks to Thief. Usually because they don't see it coming until it's too late. These were IRL games. Bear in mind that in 4 player you frequently get hit multiple times between your turns.

Obviously wouldn't happen to an experienced player, I know that Thief is a bad card and having opponents trash your coppers is good for you. But this sort of thing is a real turn-off. Thief was just below Sabatouer for card most likely to give people a terrible game, in my experience (Witch and Torturer followed shortly behind, I soon learnt what sort of cards to not bring to the table against players that didnt have experience with deckbuilder games).

91

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Would you give a new player 1st edition cards?

« on: May 17, 2018, 12:42:42 pm »

I always assumed the reason Bandit didn't trash coppers wasn't to teach that coppers are bad, but because those 4 player newbie Thief games where someone gets totally bankrupted are exceptionally unfun for that player.

Then again I also assumed that the reason Encampment got set aside was so you couldn't regain or rebuy it before your opponents got the chance so I usually get this sort of thing wrong.

92

Rules Questions / Re: Sacrifice and Inheritance

« on: May 04, 2018, 08:04:22 pm »

Official FAQ says Inheritance affects Estates when you buy or gain them, so buying an Estate inheriting Port comes with a free Port. So from that I'd conclude that gaining an Estate inheriting Blessed Village gets you the boon.

93

Rules Questions / Re: Sacrifice and Inheritance

« on: May 04, 2018, 03:28:24 pm »

Fortresses "when you trash this" activates before Sacrifice moves on to the next sentence of its card text because you have to resolve each part in full before moving on to the next. During this time the estate comes back into your hand and therefore regains its inherited types before Sacrifice checks them.

94

Dominion Articles / Re: Donate Part 1: The Beginning

« on: May 02, 2018, 02:46:58 am »

Hopefully Part 2 will improve on Part 1 by having some actual content.

Part 1 summarised:

• Donate is strong
• It amplifies first player advantage
• It makes games shorter
• Advice that applies to all boards still holds true for boards with Donate
• Play games with Donate to get better at playing with Donate

Things I would like to know:

• When should you buy your first Donate?
• When is it a good idea to Donate more than once?
• How do you best deal with the early debt? Would you for example buy a gainer and then trash everything else on turn 2 leaving yourself in debt for a long time?
• When should you leave copper untrashed on your first Donate?
• What if junkers are on the board? Are they still worth using? What about ones that do nothing for you, like Sea Hag?
• What about other attacks? Would you leave copper around to trash with Catapult to activate discard attacks?
• Can the above questions even be answered meaningfully? Or is Donate way too board dependant and is simply the strongest accelerator a board can have?

95

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion:Cities

« on: April 18, 2018, 04:36:53 pm »

Matchmaking matches you with people of roughly the same skill level, so someone playing online does not mean they will necessarily play good opponents. There are lots of people who understand nothing about Dominion strategy and if you are someone who understands even basic Eurogame strategy, you will never be close to being matched against them.

It is obvious looking at Chase's post history that when his profile says he is 13 years old that this is accurate. I fully believe Chase has games against his parents where he gets to build up to buy his ludicrously expensive custom cards and still wins.

Chase, I enjoyed reading your cards, another great set along the levels of Dominion: Gunpowder.

96

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Seprix's Tier Lists For Every Dominion Set

« on: November 15, 2017, 12:40:33 pm »

My biggest surprise in this thread is multiple people thinking Artisan is not S tier. I would appreciate some enlightenment as to why the card isn't totally boss, just regular boss.

97

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #2: Shepherd, Pooka, Cemetery

« on: October 29, 2017, 03:10:43 am »

There's another cool facet to Ghost that's easy to not notice in the online implementation. If you draw your deck then buy multiple cards (including at least one action), then when Ghost hunts for an action it will trigger a shuffle containing only the cards you just bought, potentially top-decking them. If all you bought was engine piece action cards, you're guaranteed to have them all of the other actions topdecked for next turn!

Of course this can also result in a chance of cards like Province that you just bought being topdecked which is not so great, but there you go.

98

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Bonus Preview #5: Necromancer

« on: October 27, 2017, 05:49:59 pm »

If I play a Necromancer on another Necromancer in the trash, which then plays a Conspirator that is also in the trash, do I get +1 card and +1 action?

99

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #2: Shepherd, Pooka, Cemetery

« on: October 24, 2017, 06:05:56 pm »

Having just played with these previews, here is my humble opinion on Heirlooms:

OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH MMMMMMMMYYYYYYYY GGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDD YYYYYYEEEEEESSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

100

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #1: Devil's Workshop, Raider, Ghost Town

« on: October 23, 2017, 06:40:36 pm »

While Ghost Town looks awesome, the fact it is a stop card on the turn you draw it could be a significant downside. I predict it will be a card that's easy to overbuy but will be pretty good if you have a few of them. I wonder if you can fall into a trap where the extra draw helps you draw... more Ghost Towns, so you don't really improve your draw at all (but are getting extra actions so that's good). Honestly all these cards seem hard to guage right now, which is awesome. More to figure out through play!

I was wrong, Ghost Town is great. Getting the extra draw and extra action both at the start of the turn is worth having a stop card in the middle of your turn, it's so much better. Consistency!

But like, it's still first and foremost a $3 village. It was never going to be mind-blowingly spectacular, but villages are awesome anyway. You know, because they're villages.