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Messages - jonaskoelker

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51
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which Removed Cards Do You Use IRL?
« on: April 10, 2018, 03:23:17 pm »
Bank makes [...] your other treasures worth $1 more each (effectively).
Wow, you're totally right about Bank.
The on-play ability of Coppersmith is approximately "+$x, where x is the number of Coppers you play later this turn", except you can't determine the value of x when you need to know it. Also, the interactions with Counterfeit and Storyteller are subtly wrong with my phrasing. If you allow an even sloppier approximation, it's "Reveal your hand. +$1 for each Copper revealed".

A crazy comparison just occurs to me: Coppersmith vs. Secret Chamber (or any cards-into-money effect)—in both cases, if you plan to use this as a payload you'll be drawing lots of cards that you either won't play or will play for a very small per-card effect, and that's usually not great; Silver and Gold both offer much greater per-card payload value. The cool thing about Coppersmith that's not true about Secret Chamber is that you can re-use the same card for multiple Coppersmiths but not for multiple Secret Chambers, since you only "reveal" the Copper and don't discard it. (You're then required to play that Copper for the approximation to work, and it's wrong in many ways, but you know, in practice it's pretty close.)

You could phrase Bank as "for the remainder of this turn, when you play a treasure, you first get +". You would want to play it before rather than after your other treasures, and playing a treasure vs. having one in play is slightly different, but it'd be pretty much the same card if done that way.

Likewise, the text of Duke might as well be "Each of your Duchies is worth an additional 1 ". Here it really doesn't matter, since you score all your cards simultaneously—there are no timing problems it could have, and nothing is dependent on the VP value of your cards the way Storyteller is dependent on the money value of your cards.

The general principle is that <X does 1 thing per Y> and <X does 'each Y does 1 more thing'> are equivalent (typically, approximately, [edgecases-edgecaseseverywhere.jpg]).

52
General Discussion / Re: Dominion Cards that put songs in your mind
« on: April 10, 2018, 02:53:35 pm »
Oh, how could I have forgotten Wandering Minstrel?
And here I was expecting Sir Robin's minstrels from Monty Python and the Holy Grail [1].

So often the optimal number of Heroes you want to get is 1 which you exchange into a Champion and you want to keep the Warriors for the draw. This means the right thing to sing when MFs Exchange Screen pops up is: "We don't need another Hero."
... and for those exceptional times: Bonnie Tyler — I need a Hero [2].

In games with lots of Gold-gaining, my friend and I often sing Gold by Imagine Dragons.
When I was 80% of the way through that sentence, I expected it to end with "by Spandau Ballet" [3].



Some of my favorites are:

Masquerade: Rainbow — Black Masquerade [4]
Throne Room: John Williams — Throne Room [5]

[1]



[2]



[3]



[4]



[5]


53
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card
« on: April 10, 2018, 12:59:51 pm »

(in terms of net bonuses)

54
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which Removed Cards Do You Use IRL?
« on: April 10, 2018, 12:41:34 pm »
I've been coming back to this thread and re-reading my post.

[TL;DR: I like Coppersmith, maybe Saboteur, a teensy tiny bit Tribute and Secret Chamber but very meh...]
Locusts provides roughly the same attack as Saboteur. You can't steer the Hex deck really well so you can't build a strategy around it, but it does let you anti-Rebuild your opponent's Provinces.

Also, hey, there's Giant which just trashes almost the same set of cards, and there's Swindler which turns cards into worse cards, and with Highway and Giant you can still trash Provinces.

So I'm totally not going to feel sad that I don't get to play with Saboteur; the similar-enough replacements are there.

Also, Counting House makes your coppers better, though in a different way and in different situations than Coppersmith. Bank makes your coppers better just as well as Coppersmith, although it also makes all your other treasures worth $1 more each (effectively). You can King's Court your Coppersmiths where you can only Crown your Banks, but you'll have a tough time finding that I care about that difference. Bank doesn't say "the meek shall inherit the earth" or whatever the same way Coppersmith does. Meh.

So I'm down to being sad about approximately 0 out of 12 cards. Only Tribute and Secret Chamber are still even considerations, and... yeah, no, I just don't care.

55
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: "Demon", the Druid of Hexes
« on: April 10, 2018, 11:56:26 am »
[Tormentor once did 'victim chooses one of two random hexes'] It was waaaaay too slow. Especially if you didn't have the Hexes memorized. I like the Druid version here better. Specifically one that lets the victim choose between two static Hexes.

Rotating brings back the slowness. Having three static Hexes is maybe too much to think about. Two seems reasonable.
Interesting. So I guess you looked at Pie Rule Demon and instantly concluded that it was too slow? Do you have any insight into what makes things slow and how to avoid it that you can articulate?

I guess "more decisions" and "more hard-to-calculate consequences of each decision (on average)" are two key factors. With a static Hex pool, there are (1) no rotation decisions; (2) that much less to read on each play, because you remember the effect of the two set-aside Hexes; and (3) you can generally estimate which Hex will be strongest against the kind of deck you're building, and quickly estimate whether the evaluation has flipped in each situation. Also (4) with a static pool, figuring out the interactions between the hexes when dealt out sequentially can be done as a one-time thing. (It's always a per-pool thing, but with a static pool there's only one pool, duh.)

Having just one [Hex] can often be too harsh. [...] Obviously if Misery is one of them, I think you just take the -4 VP and call it a day.
Yay, I spotted things on my own that others agree with :)

I don't like that you can just take -4 VP and call it a day when that occurs once every 6 Demon games. That's why I really want Veto Demon to be good.

I think beyond Delusion and Envy, the other one you need to worry about is War.  I just tried flipping up the top two hexes and they were Delusion+War and doesn't that sound nasty?
Uh, yeah. Especially with only one gain per turn—do you give up this turn's action card gain, or do you give up an earlier turn's gain? Demons trashing Demons, Knight-like fight to see who gets to keep a trashing attack, that could get really dicey and insert a long preamble before the real game begins. Except Demon (currently) doesn't have trash-the-attacking-card text, and I think it would be clunky if added. Or you just play Smithy/BM against this combination :D —I recall there was a bit in the pinned thread saying "your card should not excessively encourage players to play uninteresting strategies".

That is definitely a concern. Well spotted. Also, both Veto Demon and Pie Rule Demon face this; one obvious way around this is to change "3" to "4" on Veto Demon, but that makes it weaker and probably slower on average. Another is to buff the non-attack on-play of Demon and bump it up to $5; that way it can't be trashed by War, which... accomplishes something? It makes the very powerful Hex pair Demons stay around longer—which is great, mission success! ;D

Hm. Hmm. Interesting. Well spotted.

56
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion jokes/pick-up lines
« on: April 09, 2018, 01:23:45 pm »
How is that last one suddenly more NSFW than the others?
Thank you for explaining the joke-inside-the-joke, that saves me the trouble ;)

57
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Antidote
« on: April 09, 2018, 12:30:12 pm »
Antidote 1 (Duration Ghost Pawn)
In engines you'll probably almost always want card and action, so this is just an expensive Ghost Town. It can be your +buy if nothing else is around. Seems pretty damn pricey to me at $5.

Antidote 2
[...] Until the end of your turn, whenever you play a card and would take the first + choice, you may take the second + choice instead.
This will turn Squire into Peddler, Forager into approximately Junk Dealer, Embassy into a Grand Forum, Festival into Grand Market and both Margrave and Lost City into a non-terminal +3 cards (not to mention Council Room)?! Non-terminal Wharf?

Holy crap this is B A N A N A S. Would buy, 10/10, such strong, very win. This is Teacher with 90% of the power and 10% of the cost. Find the most B A N A N A S exchange on the board, build your deck around it and pile the key card forever.

Question: can it only convert once per card, or can it also turn Smithy into Village, Cellar into (approximately) Vault, Courtyard into Mandarin? Can it make Goons a village (money to actions)?

If yes: H O L Y  B A N A N A S :o

Quite strong.

58
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: "Demon", the Druid of Hexes
« on: April 09, 2018, 11:27:32 am »
I feel like [Rotating Demon would be] too similar to existing Doom cards. A main point that makes the concept interesting is that you know what you will get, similar to how Druid works.
On each turn you know that as well with Rotating Demon. When the Hex set is static, you also know that from one turn to the next and by induction throughout the game, so you can evaluate how strong it'll be as part of your kingdom evaluation.

I like the static Hex pool better than the rotating one, but if you want rotation I think Rotating Demon is a quite elegant design—incremental drafting of a shared resource can be a very interesting mechanic in general. Maybe fiddle with pre- vs. post-cycling?

I think the fact that you know on each turn what Rotating Demon will do makes it sufficiently different from other Doom cards that it'll be interesting enough. Also, hey, I forgot to add the Doom type :)

59
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: "Demon", the Druid of Hexes
« on: April 09, 2018, 11:20:39 am »
Another idea is that the set-aside hexes could rotate.  Like, whenever someone plays a Demon, they discard a hex of their choice and draw a new one.
That's a cool idea. It's no longer The Druid of Hexes, but that's cool too.

Rotating Demon
Action - Attack
+$2
Each other player receives a set-aside hex of their choice.  Draw and set aside a hex, and then discard a set-aside hex.
-
Setup: Set aside 2 hexes
An easy way of including attacker choice is by cycling a Hex before rather than after the attack. I like attacker choice, and would probably favor that version. It becomes somewhat similar to Veto Demon, where the third set-aside Hex is instead drawn on each play, and the vetoed one is discarded. Are there any problems with doing it this way?

Of course, if you play two Rotating Demons, the post-cycling of the first helps you steer the second attack, and your discard after the last attack helps you defend yourself by setting up a milder attack for your opponent(s). So when mirrored, the attack is stronger with pre-cycling.

If the attacker vetoes the weakest of the three, maybe it'll eventually converge at the strongest pair with pre-cycling, where the incentive to weaken the attack is stronger with post-cycling because stacking Rotating Demons will be rare? ("Strongest" might be ill-defined in case of non-mirrored strategies.)



A bit about phrasing: I copied "(leaving it there)" and the phrasing of "Setup: Set aside the top n Hexes face up" from Druid. It seems to have a proven track record and if it ain't broke don't change it, so I would re-phrase Rotating Demon a little, without functionally altering it.

I think "(leaving it there)" is there to explicate the exception to the rule that Hexes are normally discarded when received. I think "the top n" is a short way of spelling out the method whereby the Hexes are chosen (i.e. randomly), and I dunno why "face up" is necessary, but I figure the most common way of getting Hexes is from a face-down deck so this explicates another exception.

60
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: "Demon", the Druid of Hexes
« on: April 09, 2018, 10:40:44 am »
The first version of Demon is way too weak. [...] This could easily get away with costing $3. [...] Veto demon is similar, but a bit stronger. [stacking and blocking is fun]
Yay, I overcompensated on the side of too weak rather than too strong ;) — it occurred to me after I posted that attacker choice interacts interestingly with idempotent attacks (and limited-stacking ones in general, e.g. Haunting)

So maybe it should be Veto Demon for $4?

An issue is that sometimes, it will be a must-buy if the Hexes are both really strong, but that is only maybe 5% of the time and doesn't really warrant upping the cost to $5.
Okay. That suggests that $4 is reasonable, maybe? Then you can open with one of them, but not two unless Baker, Alms, Cursed Gold or other tricks are around. Pricing it at $4 also helps address the sometimes-weaker-than-Militia problem.

[Pie Rule, analysis paralysis]
I think the attacker should always choose the (situationally) strongest Hex, but picking that consists of comparing six things: A vs. B-then-C, A vs. C-then-B, etc. Veto Demon only requires you to compare three things: weakest among B and C, weakest among A and C, weakest among A and B. Also, estimating the effect of X-then-Y takes more effort than estimating the effect of one Hex.

So I agree, and I had that at the back of my mind: Pie Rule Demon is very likely to be slow. Heck, Spy is slow in multiplayer and that's just a bunch of independent yes/no decisions; or so I hear at least.

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate the time and attention! :)

61
Variants and Fan Cards / "Demon", the Druid of Hexes
« on: April 09, 2018, 10:11:39 am »
The basic idea is this:

Demon
Action — Attack
Cost:
[Some moderate bonus, I'm thinking +]
Each other player receives [some of the set-aside hexes]

Setup: Set aside the top n Hexes face up.

This looks similar to Tormentor. Cool, if you were re-designing Nocturne don't include them both. I don't care that much that it's similar. Demon makes it feasible for the same Hex to be dealt out multiple times in succession, which is different, and when Demon is stacked, it might change which Hex is strongest; Bad Omens followed by Famine seems like a pretty mild attack.

If you set aside the top 1 Hexes and it's Delusion, and the on-play causes each other player to take at least one of the set-aside Hex, I think it's ridiculously powerful. Also, a stackable Demon that always gives out Greed is BANANAS. So it should set aside at least two Hexes, and it can't give out all of them. Which ones should it give out? How should that be determined?

If it's simply "the attacker chooses some subset of a fixed size", we're back at perma-Delusion, so the victim has to make some choices. If both attacker and victim makes choices it might become slow. Let's try out the simplest version of this idea:

Demon
Action — Attack
Cost:
+
Each other player receives a set-aside Hex of their choice (leaving it there).

Setup: Set aside the top 2 Hexes face up.

If the two hexes are Plague and Poverty, this is almost always a Torturer with a +$2 on the first play, but it stacks differently—and a lot of the power of Torturer is the stacking. In fact, any time Poverty is set aside, Demon is weaker than Militia: either it's a $5 Militia—okay, more expensive is not strictly worse, edge cases everywhere—or the other Hex is weaker than the Militia attack in which case it's even weaker. Provided your opponent chooses correctly. Hm. Put that in the "problems" column.

If one of the hexes is Misery and the other is a very strong one, Demon might simply become a terminal Harem. Oh wait, there's Twice Miserable, it might become a terminal Silver worth 4 VP for the first copy (if you get to play it twice) and 0 for each subsequent one. That... sounds fine? I'm not the most expert Dominion player so I might mis-evaluate things, but it seems like it might be slightly bland mandatory buy due to the on-play being worth 4 VP. One of them is definitely better than a Duchy. That is, if Misery is set aside, for which the probability 1 in 6.

Probably the strongest pair is Delusion/Envy—that's bound to hurt an engine one way or the other. Luckily, Demon provides some unenviable virtual money. Self-synergy? ;) — anyways, this combinations seems really strong, but it screws with everyone evenly and is thus balanced (lol), and in any case this pair only comes up 1 out of every 666 66 Demon games.

Let's think up one that involves attacker choice as well. Two modes I can think of are pie rule and vetoing.

Pie Rule Demon
Action — Attack
Cost:
+
Choose a set-aside Hex. Each other player receives that Hex or the two others, their choice (leaving them there).

Setup: Set aside the top 3 Hexes face up.

Veto Demon
Action — Attack
Cost:
+
Choose a set-aside Hex. Each other player receives a different set-aside Hex of their choice (leaving it there).

Setup: Set aside the top 3 Hexes face up.

If they only set aside 2 Hexes, the pie rule becomes victim chooses (which we already did) and the veto becomes attacker chooses (which is bad). So at least 3 Hexes, and that's probably plenty.

With Veto Demon, the attacker vetoes the (situationally) weakest Hex, the victim vetoes the strongest and takes the middle one. With Pie Rule Demon, the attacker chooses as even a split as possible, which if intuition serves is always done by picking the most powerful. So with Pie Rule, the victim takes the middle and weakest Hex. There might be complications, e.g. if the victim takes Bad Omens followed by Locusts, it's close to just being a Locusts, but Pie Rule on the face of it looks stronger than Veto. Also, I'm not quite sure how to compare middle-of-3 vs. weakest-of-2.

However, if it's fairly obvious to both attacker and victim which is most powerful on both the first, second and nth play of Demon, once you think about it enough, the more complex choice rules which include attacker choice might slow the game down for very little benefit, even if picking their poison is fun. So, based on thinking about this and never playing with it, the first design looks best, though the other two should be tried out and probably dropped if they aren't noticeably better.

62
[...] Fur coat [...]
Cute, I like it. If you can't get it off the mat without your opponent playing an attack, the reward to you when your opponent plays an attack includes "you can play Fur Coat" again—similarly to the first version of Shield.

Given that it doesn't interfere with the attack, it might not have the problem Shield would have—although, it does punish your opponent for playing an attack by way of rewarding you, so it might still have a (slightly different) version of the same problem.

Blizzard is a duration attack card. When it’s in play until your next turn no one can buy action cards.
If you build a deck-drawing engine and you get two Blizzards in play on alternating turns, your opponent can no longer build their engine unless there are gainers on the board. If there's also an attack which really hurts money-ish strategies—Militia and Marauder are fine—your opponent is just dead. That sounds pretty powerful to me. Like, bananas broken.

If two players build engines that do this and they get there simultaneously, it's obviously symmetric, so I guess maybe the effect of this lockdown is to amplify the benefit to getting your engine up and running first. If your opponent can't reliably deliver their Blizzard you can still continue building, although more slowly than otherwise.

See also the sticky thread.
(5) Try to avoid cards that encourage uninteresting strategies. You probably don't want to disincentivize creative or otherwise interesting play. As a trivial example, let's say you had a Duration card that prohibited other players from playing action cards while it's in play. This would cause all your opponents' Action cards to be dead cards. How would they defend against this? By not buying action cards and pursuing a money strategy instead. That, in turn, would discourage you from using your new Duration card in the first place, and the game would degenerate into a simple race for money.
Yours says buy, not play, so it's different, but... in strategic impact it might be similar enough that I would encourage extensive playtesting (said the guy from his glass house).

Hmmm, the you-can't-buy-actions thing is a Hex. That gives me an idea...

63
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards
« on: April 09, 2018, 08:29:56 am »
Works well with Talisman and Quarry, if I'm reading this correctly. (Because their fun abilities are while-in-play rather than on-play.)
Indeed, good catch. I think that doesn't make the card overly b0rken—occasional strong synergies help make Dominion more fun and varied.

64
Dominion Articles / Re: Duration Draw and Stop Card Capacity
« on: April 08, 2018, 07:41:42 pm »
Nice article :)

Is your SCC ever different from your handsize* minus one? If so, when?

(* after start-of-turn draw, before you play your first action)

Are Dungeon and Warehouse stop cards?

65
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards
« on: April 08, 2018, 06:11:38 pm »
Quote from: Wikipedia
Alchemy is a philosophical and protoscientific tradition practiced throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. It aimed to purify, mature, and perfect certain objects.[1][2][n 1] Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of "base metals" (e.g., lead) into "noble metals" (particularly gold);

Chrysopoeia (fixed Transmute)
Action
Cost: ?
For the remainder of this turn, when you play a treasure, you get +$3 instead of following its instructions.

It's a throned Coppersmith that works for Silver but b0rks your potion. To make it more flexible, make it a treasure; that way it doesn't have to nerf your fancy kingdom treasures. If you do, maybe name it "Philosopher's Stone".

Quote from: Wikipedia
The philosopher's stone, or stone of the philosophers (Latin: lapis philosophorum) is a legendary alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold (chrysopoeia, from the Greek χρυσός khrusos, "gold", and ποιεῖν poiēin, "to make") or silver.

... oh wait, the rule was that we shouldn't fundamentally alter what the cards do. But, like, man, the set is called Alchemy and there's nothing which turns your base metals treasures into Gold? :o

66
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards
« on: April 08, 2018, 06:00:35 pm »
It's not that joke, it's a new one.
Did the old one Bomb? ;)

67
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: You may turn your journey token over...
« on: April 08, 2018, 05:24:39 pm »
$2 Blinking Castle
Turn your journey token over (it starts face up).
Then if it's face up, +$1, +1 Buy,+2 cards and +2 Actions.
Blinking Castle is on average a Market so definitely too cheap for $2.
By my math, each pair of Blinking Castles cost you 2 actions to play and 2 cards to draw and gives you back those 2 actions and cards, so each pair nets you +$1 and +1 buy. Each pair, not copy, has the same net benefit as one Market.

It interacts really nicely—i.e. powerfully—with Pilgrimage especially, and also Giant to some extent: $0 for $2 or $1 for $5, eh, I probably take the $0 for $2.

68
You can't call [Shield] unless opponents play attacks. [implications ... where's the sweet spot]

Maybe it needs to ability to also just call it for no benefit at the start of your turn or something.

These thoughts were going through my head as I was thinking about the on-play ability. I would prefer a Shield that only lets you take it off the mat when your opponent plays attacks, though balancing the on-play becomes really tricky.

Taking it off the mat: it could also just be discarded?

A cantrip Reserve Moat is probably too strong (you could argue that Shield's on play is situationally weaker than a cantrip). I think there are two principal ways to fix that. Either make the Reserve Moat terminal, e.g. a terminal Silver, or creation some interaction, e.g. a split pile with the Reserve Moats on top and some Attack card underneath and the Reserve Moats have to be called and trashed to defend.
Most attacks are terminal; if I make it a terminal Silver, defending against most attacks will cost the same terminal space as playing the attacks, but Shield will be cheaper than most attacks. That seems okay. Also, Duchess and Embargo are terminals Silvers for $2 with a benefit—but Mountebank is also a terminal Silver with a benefit and it costs a lot more. Eh, the other attack-blockers cost $2, pricing Terminal Silver Shield at $2 is probably a fine place to start.

Speaking of other attack-blockers, I didn't even compare Shield to Guardian. Meh, Guardian is pretty similar to Lighthouse.

[Which attack to play first, whether to block weak attacks or not] Good choices to make.
Oh that's really cool, I hadn't considered that!

[Boons?!]
Moat, Lighthouse and Guardian all provide some small benefit beyond blocking attacks. Boons are small benefits, and there are boons whose benefits are pretty close to exactly those of Moat and Lighthouse. Oh hey, this is also true of Shield. That's really all.

I said that Moat nets you +1 card. Actually you get +1 card twice (gross) and with Lighthouse you get the $1 twice and +1 action only once, so it's not exactly like getting two boons in both cases, but it's close.

[Idea: split pile]
I'm sure one could design a great Reserve moat split pile. In the case of Shield and my one other design, I've tried to make cards that would fit into a single canon expansion; split piles and Reserve cards have not (yet) appeared in the same expansion. My particular aims are really the only reason why I wouldn't do that, and now you know I have those aims :)

Anyways, let me just write up the revised idea:

Shield, Revised
Action — Reserve
Cost:
+
Put this on your tavern mat.

When another player plays an Attack card, you may call this. If you do, you are unaffected by that Attack.
At the start of your turn, you may discard this from your tavern mat.

With the other unmatting mode, the phrase that comes to me is "At the start of your turn, you may call this", and it's not obvious that "if you do, nothing happens" is implicit—it sounds like someone forgot to write the "if you do" part.

I like this version of Shield too. Great inputs, guys :)

69
So I think it's more interesting if the availability of +Buy varies from kingdom to kingdom [...] and [isn't] from Savings.
That's an interesting thought. I think you managed to persuade me.

I observe that 'availability' can be understood both as a yes/no thing and a how-easily thing (i.e. at what cost). So the impact Savings has from kingdom to kingdom can span a non-trivial range, which makes it more interesting.

Cool, that puts $4 for $2 and no +buy to the top of the playtest list. If I ever... :D

70
I think it is OK for Silver+ to cost $4 if the bonus is weak. For example Royal Seal could get away with costing $4. But this looks too strong because it does what Charm is often used for and it has the overpay thingy on top of that.
Oh hey—good catch that its on-play does exactly the same as one of Charm's modes, I hadn't noticed that. I have only played a bit with Charm, but I always figured the "gain another $5'er" ability of Charm was the strongest one; maybe the +buy that allows you to double Province is even stronger in some situations, though :) Also, modality is valuable as such. When Counterfeit trashes a Copper, it gives you $2 and +1 buy above just playing the Copper, but it also costs $5.

So this suggests some different variants to playtest think about:
 - $4 for $2, the first Savings.
 - $4 for $2 and +1 buy, the revised Savings—maybe it isn't a problem after all.
 - $5 for $2 and +1 buy, now the cost matches that of Charm.
 - $3 for $1 and +1 buy, now similar to Pouch, which I think is OK since Pouch is an Heirloom and not a kingdom card and power level depends in part on being able to get multiples.

71
The basic idea is this:

Shield
Action — Reserve
Cost: ?
[some on-play ability]

When another player plays an Attack card, you may call this. If you do, you are unaffected by that Attack.

Regarding the cost and on-play, I'm thinking something like

Shield
Action — Reserve
Cost:
+1 action
+2 cards
Discard 2 cards.
Put this on your Tavern mat.

When another player plays an Attack card, you may call this. If you do, you are unaffected by that Attack.



Where Lighthouse gives you The Field's Gift and Moat nets you The Sea's Gift, this gives you The Wind's Gift. They all cost , and the Boons are balanced so this is balanced, right? ;) — more seriously, Dungeoning seems like a reasonable minor bonus that isn't present on any canon attack-blocker.

The most interesting aspect of Shield that leaps out at me is that it interacts very differently against attacks that are spammed vs. attacks that are played once per turn—archetypal examples are Minion and Mountebank. It's probably fine against Mountebank and not so much against Minion, unless you pick up a large pile of shields.

In deck-drawing engines, it plays different from Lighthouse: you need two Lighthouses to block all attacks, but one Shield per attack you want to block. It also becomes weaker the more players there are: you need one Shield per attack-per-turn per player. The strength of Shield is of course that you can play it any time before the attack happens and be protected, rather than just the turn before or after the attack is played. Also, it has self-synergy: each Shield helps you cycle to your other Shields :)

The on-play effect provides some modest after-the-fact mitigation of topdecking and junking attacks, but it's probably not something you want to keep in hand after being hit by Militia, unless the sifting is key to kicking off. Against Relic, Minion and other random-smaller-hand attacks (such as... I'm drawing a blank), the sifting might be good though. That is, the on-play ability of Shield has a Watchtower-like quality in that it interacts differently with different types of attacks.

72
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card
« on: April 08, 2018, 07:15:27 am »

73
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion jokes/pick-up lines
« on: April 08, 2018, 07:08:57 am »
What's a sweet girl like you doing in this den of sin? 8)

Want to come back to my secret cave? I'll turn on my special lamp and make all your wishes come true. :-*

I'm lighting a bonfire outside my villa tonight. You should join me and get all the action you could ever want. ;)

My gf accuses me of crumpling up the cards—she always says the thing in my 'pocket' is Giant;D

If you'll be my princess I'll be your trusty steed and let you ride me all night. ::)

(NSFW) If you'll be my vassal I'll be your overlord and tormentor. :o

74
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which Removed Cards Do You Use IRL?
« on: April 07, 2018, 02:49:49 pm »
Speaking of Coppersmith being the star of the show (with the aid of some good draw and +buy):


75
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which Removed Cards Do You Use IRL?
« on: April 07, 2018, 02:20:55 pm »
I wish the cards could return to Dominion Online in some way or another.
I don't play online, but if I were to I would definitely like to have those cards available. Make it default-off opt-in, put a big warning message in front of the cards saying "these cards suck, you should only use them for reasons of nostalgia" or whatever, but man, why not make them available? I get that implementing new cards is work, but I recall Stef saying that most cards from... uh, some recent expansion, was simply transcribing the text on the cards into whatever framework they've built.

I don't think the removed cards interact with players' decks or other cards or the rules in weird ways, the ways Possession and Inheritance and Stash do.

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