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26

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

« on: October 25, 2017, 03:50:56 pm »

A five-card hand is more likely to contain no Labs than a seven-card hand is to contain no copies of Caravan+.

A seven card hand with two Caravan- (more appproriate label as the card it is worse than Caravan) is as good as Lab is on the current turn. That's not just semantics, in order to get to this seven card hand you gotta play a dead card in the previous turn. I'd rather draw just one net card for the current turn than transfer my resources into a future that might never come. And Caravan being priced at a lower cost than Lab kinda proves that point.

We can go over all kind of exceptional situations (just because you sometimes might want a Curse in your deck, e.g. to ambassador it, doesn't imply that Curses are in general a great part of a deck) in which a delayed effect is better than an immediate effect. But in general the opposite is true, you want your good stuff immediately; be it in Dominion or in real life. In general Lab is better than Caravan and Caravan is better than Caravan-.

27

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

« on: October 24, 2017, 03:31:28 pm »

And I love the idea of Ghost Town starting every engine turn with 6 cards and 2 actions. It's like Princing an Oasis! For two $3 buys!

At the cost of a dead card in the previous turn,  unless you gained Ghost Town in the previous turn.
The net draw of Ghost Town is zero except for the turn after you have gained it.

That's why JThorne said Oasis, right? The net draw of Oasis is also zero.

The net draw of Oasis is -1.
Back to Ghost Village, I think that it is a pretty good village and could reasonably cost 4. But it is not the utterly brilliant card that some people claim it is, being dead on the turn you play it is a serious disadvantage over a cantrip that provides an action next turn.

28

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

« on: October 24, 2017, 03:20:59 pm »

And I love the idea of Ghost Town starting every engine turn with 6 cards and 2 actions. It's like Princing an Oasis! For two $3 buys!

At the cost of a dead card in the previous turn,  unless you gained Ghost Town in the previous turn.
The net draw of Ghost Town is zero except for the turn after you have gained it.

29

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

« on: October 24, 2017, 02:13:56 pm »

Thought experiment: keep Caravan exactly the same except add a clause "this gets discarded during cleanup on the turn you played it".

Now how does that compare to Lab? I can see a lot of situations where it would be significantly better than a Lab (even if it cost $5).

No disagreement here, being a Night card instead of a plain non-terminal Action is an asset
...
But drawing the card next turn instead of now is a liability.

I don't think so. The easy situation to see how the delayed draw is better is in any draw-your-deck situation. The modified Caravan and a Lab will both draw you the same number of cards each turn. The Caravan+ gives them to you all at the beginning of your turn though, whereas you have to actually find the Labs to get the extra cards. So theoretically you'll draw the same either way, but you're way way more likely to kick off with a 10 card starting hand (assuming an even Caravan+ split).

So you wanna seriously argue that you would buy Caravan over Lab (it is the same difference as between what you label Caravan+ and Caravan) in this situation?
And even if this were the case, Lab would still be on average better than Caravan.

30

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

« on: October 24, 2017, 01:50:23 pm »

Thought experiment: keep Caravan exactly the same except add a clause "this gets discarded during cleanup on the turn you played it".

Now how does that compare to Lab? I can see a lot of situations where it would be significantly better than a Lab (even if it cost $5).

No disagreement here, being a Night card instead of a plain non-terminal Action is an asset:

It is a bit [...] stronger as you can play it after having drawn it and being out of Actions.
This might have been inspired by Sauna-Avanto, a card combo which also enables you to do what you normally can't: first play the terminal draw and then the village.

But drawing the card next turn instead of now is a liability.

31

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

« on: October 24, 2017, 01:02:37 pm »

About Caravan, it is an invisible card on the turn you play it but unlike Lab it draws the good stuff later instead of now so it is worse than Lab. Due to the same logic +1 Action, at the start of your next turn +2 Cards would be worse than Caravan.

I fully stand by my statements.  Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.

As do I. The existence of Lab and its superiority over Caravan makes playtesting an inferior version of Caravan unnecessary.

32

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

« on: October 24, 2017, 12:30:01 pm »

The major advantage of duration cards is that you get some of the benefits before paying the opportunity cost.  With Haunted Woods, you get +3 cards at the beginning of the turn, and then you later pay the cost of -1 card -1 action.

You got the timing messed up. Haunted Woods is dead on the turn you play it and provides the card draw next turn.
What you meant is something like Wine Merchant or Capital: get something great now and pay for it later.

About Caravan, it is an invisible card on the turn you play it but unlike Lab it draws the good stuff later instead of now so it is worse than Lab. Due to the same logic +1 Action, at the start of your next turn +2 Cards would be worse than Caravan.

33

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

« on: October 24, 2017, 11:12:10 am »

You're missing the reason why Caravan is worse than Lab. It's not that the draw is delayed. It's that Caravan is unavailable next turn because it's a Duration.

This is a feature of all Durations and I fail to see what is has to do with the actual issue, whether you want the effect that a non-terminal card provides rather now than later.

You need twice as many of them to get the same number of cards

How many Caravans you need to achieve the same net draw power as x Labs is highly dependent on the Kingdom so this generalization is false. All you can say in general is that Caravan is worse than Lab as you a) get the extra card next turn instead of now and b) because Caravan might miss the shuffle.
A) is the reason why getting the extra card of the two hypothetical Duration villages now instead of next turn is preferrable.

34

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

« on: October 24, 2017, 10:11:32 am »

It is a bit weaker as it is not a cantrip this turn (i.e. you'd usually rather have +1 Card +1 Action; at the start of your next turn: +1 Action than +1 Action; at the start of your next turn: +1 Card +1 Action ) and a bit stronger as you can play it after having drawn it and being out of Actions.

No! You wouldn't rather have the +1 Card on the current turn. We learned this from Tactician - decreasing your current hand strength to improve your next hand strength is a powerful effect. I would argue that's the defining feature of this card.

Tactician is terminal and you gotta differentiate between terminals and non-terminals.
Caravan is worse than Lab so +1 Action; at the start of your next turn +1 Card, +1 Action is worse than +1 Card, +1 Action; at the start of your next turn +1 Action which is again worse than Village. Delayed effects are nearly always worse than immediate effects with terminal draw (Tactician, Haunted Woods, Enchantress) being the only potential exception that comes to mind.

Furthermore, if your argument were correct Ghost Village would be better than Village in several ways whereas in fact it is better in some ways (the quasi-Summon effect, the possibility to play this after having played a terminal draw and not having any actions left) and worse in others (worse than a delayed village).

35

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

« on: October 23, 2017, 10:25:42 am »

Ghost Town is interesting... mechanic-wise, it should be called Fishing Villa. It has the substantial advantage of drawing a card the next turn, but that comes at the cost of no economy (which is fine) and no Village effect the turn you play it (more problematic). I guess overall slightly weaker, but of course Fishing Village is super good, so this is probably still quite good.

I'm surprised you're the only one so far to mention Fishing Village. This is exactly how you should think of this

I don't see the similarities. Fishing Village is degenerate, it doesn't draw.

When you gain Ghost Town you get a Lost City next turn, otherwise it is fairly similar to a delayed village. It is a bit weaker as it is not a cantrip this turn (i.e. you'd usually rather have +1 Card +1 Action; at the start of your next turn: +1 Action than +1 Action; at the start of your next turn: +1 Card +1 Action ) and a bit stronger as you can play it after having drawn it and being out of Actions.
This might have been inspired by Sauna-Avanto, a card combo which also enables you to do what you normally can't: first play the terminal draw and then the village.

36

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

« on: October 23, 2017, 10:17:55 am »

Devil's Workshop seems pretty weak actually, I mean it's a Workshop without mid-turn gain.

It is non-terminal so it is more similar to Ironworks. As you pointed out a bit worse as you don't gain the card mid-turn but also a bit stronger as you can gain Gold or a Lab variant.

Workshop can also gain Lab variants: Advisor, Secret Passage, Herald etc. One other problem is that once you start doing good stuff with your deck, chances are you cannot gain anything but a Lab variant. Talisman is also non-terminal and it's really most similar to that.

Well, if it were better than Ironworks it would be dubious for a price of 4. I like the Cornucopia-esque Imp, it is trickier to play than mass-cards like Advisor and so on (and not being able to play duplicates is not such a big deal if you play with 3+ players).

37

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

« on: October 23, 2017, 09:59:51 am »

Devil's Workshop seems pretty weak actually, I mean it's a Workshop without mid-turn gain.

It is non-terminal so it is more similar to Ironworks. As you pointed out a bit worse as you don't gain the card mid-turn but also a bit stronger as you can gain Gold or a Lab variant.

38

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What do you like/dislike about dominion?

« on: October 20, 2017, 04:47:29 pm »

Games like Mage Knight or Core Worlds that feature deck-building as one among several mechanisms whereas Dominion is a monomechanic game. Such games often feel a bit abstract and are thus fairly skill dependent (the luck vs. skill thing Cookielrod mentioned).

I like the incredibly replayability. An average Euro might become stale and repetitive after a dozen plays or so. It is still a good game but it doesn't surprise you anymore, you know it inside out and only work on being tactically precise. Not so in the case of Dominion. A good player might be able to evaluate the entire Kingdom more or less correctly after setup but I am not good player and am often surprised by something I did not see or evaluated wrongly at the start of the game.

And while the interaction is moderate and indirect in many Kingdoms the newer expansions have made the game more and more interactive. No more mere pile-watching, now you gotta careful watch your opponents' decks to decide whether Chariot Race is good or bad, now that Battlefield and that nasty opponent who buys and later trashes Estate makes you wanna green far earlier than you would have done otherwise.

39

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: CPiGuy's Cards

« on: October 19, 2017, 04:46:04 pm »

Tailor, $2 Action-Reserve
+1 Card
+1 Action
Put this on your Tavern mat.
-
At the start of your turn, you may call this, to trash a card from your hand, and gain a differently named card to your hand of up to the same cost.

I don't know. If you got Curses and Ruins in your deck you rather want a Ratcatcher and if you wanna get rid of your Estates you can transmogrify them into Silvers. With decent 2s around this is of course preferrable to Transmogrify but I don't think that it does enough new stuff (OK, it does provide some 3-pile control) to be worthwhile.

So, I see Transmogrify as being useful for making your deck better but also for insane pile-outs. This card is designed to stop that (or at least make it harder), and my intent for it was really so that you could swap around engine components. Drew two Smithies? Tailor one of them into a Walled Village. Drew a Throne dead? Tailor your Gold into a Nobles!

I don't think that it is much harder to pile out with Tailor than with Transmogrify. Like with all Remodelers you gotta closely watch the Province pile but Tailor is cheaper and draws.

40

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: CPiGuy's Cards

« on: October 18, 2017, 07:15:27 pm »

My initial assessment was wrong. This is a powerful single-card-engine-enabler if you manage to get lots of them. It is also clearly overpowered for 3.
Not sure that it is all that good if you only get 2-4 of them though. Playing them in pairs isn't easy with few of them in your deck and you'd usually rather have an ordinary village than a double Necro.

41

Dominion Articles / Re: Dominion 101: What is an engine?

« on: October 18, 2017, 05:08:22 pm »

Not that engine is Dominion-specific language in the first place

Yes, "engine" is Dominion-specific language.

The term engine is used in other games.
As I already said, it is fine to have a Dominion-is-the-only-game-in-the-world perspective but I prefer a view that focuses on the commonalities among different games.

As far as I know, Dominion is unique among deckbuilding games in having a static tableau.

Nightfall also has draftable cards which are available to everybody without changing throughout the entire game. I am not a fan of the Star Realms like dynamic tableaus in deck-building; as you pointed out they usually lead to less strategic and more random play.

42

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: CPiGuy's Cards

« on: October 18, 2017, 05:00:50 pm »

It does not require additional Village support. It just gets even better with it.

As I already pointed out, if you start your turn with the Journey token being face down all the Pilgrims but the first one are dead without additional village support.
So Pilgrim without other villages is only possible if you manage that the Journey token is always face up at the start of each turn which implies that you should always play an even number of Pilgrims each turn. This might not always be possible and I guess that the reliability of an ordinary draw engine with a non-degenerate village and a Smithy (variant) is higher.

43

Dominion Articles / Re: Dominion 101: What is an engine?

« on: October 18, 2017, 08:28:04 am »

And I don't look kindly upon exclusionary "we do and call things our way in our club so you either comply or STFU" games.

It's normal for specialist domains to have specialist vocabulary.

I referred to the exclusionary game that poster played, not to specialist language. Not that engine is Dominion-specific language in the first place, as I pointed out it is used more generally in virtually all tableau- and deckbuilding games. Of course if you consider Dominion to be something that exists on its own plane, as something that should never be compared to other boardgames, such a perspective is not something you would appreciate. Obviously I have a different view and always, mostly involuntarily, compare boardgames with each other when I play them.

44

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: CPiGuy's Cards

« on: October 18, 2017, 08:24:42 am »

Pilgrim, Action, $2+1D
Flip over your Journey token (it starts face up). Then, if it's face up, +3 Cards. If it's face down, +3 Actions.

This looks a bit strong for its cost.

Well, my thoughts are that it's half a Lost City (since you need two of them to get the same effect as one Lost City).

It looks strong at the first glance but you are right that it is weaker than Smithy as it requires the support of another village. A hand of 5 Pilgrims with the Journey token being face down is not a single card engine, it is a hand of 4 dead cards and a Smithy.

So is a hand of five Smithies. Just that a hand of five Smithies is never anything else and costs more.

No disagreement here, as I said it is weaker than Smithy as it requires further village support.
On the other hand a real half Lost City, i.e.: +1 Card +1 Action Turn over your Journey token (it starts face up). If it is face up, 1 Card +1 Action. is pretty strong as it is a single-card engine (and it is of course far less interesting than a conditional Lost City like Herald)

45

Dominion Articles / Re: Dominion 101: What is an engine?

« on: October 17, 2017, 08:49:07 pm »

I don't care if you are a sect member

We don't look kindly on ad hominem attacks around these parts, mister.

And I don't look kindly upon exclusionary "we do and call things our way in our club so you either comply or STFU" games.

This is, quite literally, exactly what you are doing. You are saying “this is my definition I use in a completely different context and everyone else who uses any other definition is wrong”.

We’re giving you the definition *basically everyone who plays Dominion* uses. There aren’t dozens of threads by other board gaming fans here talking about your specific definition, even though we have dozens of people who play those games. I really don’t think it is nearly as common or universal across all similar games as you’re implying, honestly. But in any case, we are saying, this is what everyone means when everyone says it here, and that’s not going to change because one dude who plays a bunch of completely different games uses it completely differently.

What’s your end game here? What do you hope to get out of this?

I never play exclusionary games, I never claim to be right just because I represent some group opinion and I never speak for anybody but myself.
By the way, I find it revealing that you seem to imply that playing boardgames besides Dominion is a liability.

Anyway, back to the actual topic. Of course I never use the term engine when playing Dominion for the consistent Silver-gaining decks I mentioned which are pretty smooth and reliable. But if you zoom out and think about what engines are really about, that it is not about Treasures vs. Actions (e.g. Relic can be a better engine piece than Lighthouse), then calling such smooth decks engines would make sense.

46

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: CPiGuy's Cards

« on: October 17, 2017, 07:23:36 pm »

Tailor, $2 Action-Reserve
+1 Card
+1 Action
Put this on your Tavern mat.
-
At the start of your turn, you may call this, to trash a card from your hand, and gain a differently named card to your hand of up to the same cost.

I don't know. If you got Curses and Ruins in your deck you rather want a Ratcatcher and if you wanna get rid of your Estates you can transmogrify them into Silvers. With decent 2s around this is of course preferrable to Transmogrify but I don't think that it does enough new stuff (OK, it does provide some 3-pile control) to be worthwhile.

47

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: CPiGuy's Cards

« on: October 17, 2017, 07:20:03 pm »

Pilgrim, Action, $2+1D
Flip over your Journey token (it starts face up). Then, if it's face up, +3 Cards. If it's face down, +3 Actions.

This looks a bit strong for its cost.

Well, my thoughts are that it's half a Lost City (since you need two of them to get the same effect as one Lost City).

It looks strong at the first glance but you are right that it is weaker than Smithy as it requires the support of another village. A hand of 5 Pilgrims with the Journey token being face down is not a single card engine, it is a hand of 4 dead cards and a Smithy.

48

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Card Type in 2nd Stage of Testing: Avatars

« on: October 17, 2017, 07:11:30 pm »

Alright, after continued playtesting despite what josh56 would be saying, all evidence points to the contrary.

At a cost of 8

I never said that 8 is a decent price, only that 5 and 6 is definitely too cheap as the card is an instant Hireling plus some cherry on top of it.
It should be obvious that the way to fix the card is not to increase the cost to Province-level but to make it weaker.

At a cost of 8, Bulgrim was only bought twice, even when i had enough to purchase, because our games have a very short duration & there is hardly enough time to reach a buying power of 8 & already/ instead be buying provinces.

If Xantcha was available and nobody bought it that was either very bad play or a misevaluation of the other Avatars (not buying an instant Hireling for 5 in the hope of soon reaching 7,8 or 9 to activate a stronger Avatar. Either way, Xantcha is strictly better than Hireling (except for beign available only once) and thus underpriced/overpowered.

49

Dominion Articles / Re: Dominion 101: What is an engine?

« on: October 17, 2017, 05:47:38 pm »

I don't care if you are a sect member

We don't look kindly on ad hominem attacks around these parts, mister.

And I don't look kindly upon exclusionary "we do and call things our way in our club so you either comply or STFU" games.

The most common attribute of worker placement games (ignoring the literal placing of workers) is that you get one action on your turn

That's a feature of many games which are not worker placement games and anything but a general feature of all worker placement games. For example in Caylus you first place several of your workers before you later get to execute the actions. In Tzolkin you leave the worker on the slot and execute the action in one of the following rounds.

The key feature of all worker placement games is that there is a competition for slots which are rival in their nature, i.e. me taking doing A makes it impossible for anybody else doing A this round, which makes the game more interactive than a Euro often is. Whether you take one or several actions per round, when they are executed and so on are details which differ over games.

Same in the case of engines. You can get lost in trivial details or care about the general stuff. I am definitely a fan of the latter, especially as the details folks pick out, as we just saw with your dubious worker placement definition, are often simply wrong.

50

Dominion Articles / Re: Dominion 101: What is an engine?

« on: October 16, 2017, 04:45:53 pm »

An engine is something that works reliably all the time. Be it an actual engine, a board game engine or a Dominion engine.

Clearly you’ve never worked on a car before.

No but seriously, your definition isn’t used by anyone else in the Dominion community. Our definition is for our game and is specifically useful for our game because of the way we use it. Let’s not make our communication shitty because you’re stubborn.

I don't care if you are a sect member and cannot accept that the most general (easy to get lost in trivial details) attribute of an engine over all deck- and tableau-building games is reliability and consistency.