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51

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Traveler Line: Orphan

« on: October 16, 2017, 04:59:32 am »

Another problem with distributing Grand Witch as junk: The pile has only five cards and so it's likely there won't be enough Grand Witvhes to give one to every player.

I've thought about this and don't have a good solution. I'm entertaining the idea of making the Grand Witch pile 10 cards and keeping all the rest as is (10-5-5-5-10 respectively). This sounds like a lot of potential Grand Witches in play, but getting to it is still constricted by three 5-pile decks. I would hope going for any more than one or two Grand Witches is foolhardy. I also don't think junking with Grand Witch is as good as it seems. You need to hit an opponent on one of the last few turns of the game to ensure they don't just turn around and use the Grand Witch to net a bunch of VP tokens. Testing surely needs to be done though! Any thoughts on this are appreciated.

At least the maths is simple: when you respectively your opponent will green twice before the end of the game you are indifferent between playing Grand Witch or quasi-Ambassador-ing it your opponent, no matter whether it is the -6/+3 or the -4/+2 version. If the opponent does have a Grand Witch in play he only needs to green once to make Grand Witch provide a net of 0VPs. So I totally agree that Grand Witch will rarely be used as junk and more often be used as something which is a bit better than a perma-double-Groundskeeper.

So I think that the -4/+2 version of Grand Witch is more or less fine. The only card which I consider really bad is Witch Hunter. Sure, the last three cards in this Traveller line are pretty good and the rough guidline is that the second card should be a bit worse than a normal Kingdom card that costs 3 but +1 Action +1 Buy (the Curse-discard thingy will rarely happen) is plain bad.
I'd buff it a bit, e.g.:

+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 Buy
Discard a card. If it was a Curse, +1 Card +$2.

52

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

« on: October 15, 2017, 01:14:50 am »

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

53

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Any joy in putting Player tokens on 1E cards?

« on: October 14, 2017, 06:24:59 am »

That makes it sound quite strong to me.

2 Platinums, 1 Copper, 1 or 2 Adventurers 2.0 and perhaps a sifter and you will get a Colony each turn.
Adventurer is incredibly weak but digging for 3 Treasures would be too strong (and boring).

54

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

« on: October 14, 2017, 06:21:32 am »

I also think that how you achieve the very repetition of a pattern is fairly irrelevant. Decks that heavily rely on Treasures usually green early and then have issues with all the junk, i.e. they behave differently in different phases of the game. But you could e.g. call a deck with lots of Silver due to Delve or Trader or Jack or whatever an engine as all the Silver smooth our your deck and you got enough to buy a Province each turn.
Now I am not arguing that one should call such decks an engine. I definitely don't. But one should keep in mind that such decks provide the same smoothness as a draw-your-entire-deck engine or the 8 Peddler cantrip decks assemble mentioned.

I think that is explicitly not how engines in Dominion work. Big Money decks green early because they can cope with green rather well. Engines green as late as possible because usually they fall apart once green cards are added. That is because in an engine, there are many tiny pieces that have to come together to make it work, and a small amount of stop cards can cause you to draw a dud.

As I tried to point out, that's a narrow Dominion-specific perspective that has little to do with the general use of the term engine in boardgame.
If I play a BM deck which adds Silvers while greening, thus compensating for the adding of green, that's a smoothly running engine. It's like playing Imperial Settlers or Race for the Galaxy and making X VPs each turn. How you achieve something is really not that important, what matters is that is reliable and works every turn.
That's more easy to achieve via Action cards that draw: if you always draw your entire deck you have as much consistency as possible. But it is also possible via having lots of Silver in your deck and buying a Province each turn (and perhaps gaining another Silver en passant).

55

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Traveler Line: Orphan

« on: October 14, 2017, 02:07:05 am »

I don't think that changing Grand Witch to +3VP per green/purple is good. Now the game will even more likely be an Estate/Duchy slog and if you have her fairly late in your game when you don't green at least twice anymore you can still Mountain Hag her as nasty junk. Seems just too swingy (having Mountain Hag and Grand Witch in hand while not wanting to play Grand Witch will happen rarely but if it does it is a very nasty junking attack) to me.
I'd try -4VP, +2VPs per Curse/Victory card.

56

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

« on: October 14, 2017, 01:37:04 am »

In tableau-building games you'd call an engine something that consistently (not necessarily constantly; an engine can start late in the game) provides VPs or something else that is important to win the game.
Usually that "dynamic" way of generating VPs stands in contrast to "static" VPs via something like buildings.

In deck-building games this static-dynamic trade-off is absent but I think the notion that an engine implies consistency, reliability, smoothness or however you wanna call it applies as well.
I also think that how you achieve the very repetition of a pattern is fairly irrelevant. Decks that heavily rely on Treasures usually green early and then have issues with all the junk, i.e. they behave differently in different phases of the game. But you could e.g. call a deck with lots of Silver due to Delve or Trader or Jack or whatever an engine as all the Silver smooth our your deck and you got enough to buy a Province each turn.
Now I am not arguing that one should call such decks an engine. I definitely don't. But one should keep in mind that such decks provide the same smoothness as a draw-your-entire-deck engine or the 8 Peddler cantrip decks assemble mentioned.

57

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

« on: October 14, 2017, 01:12:07 am »

but both leave room for meaningful decisions.

That was precisely my point, that an instant Hireling for 5 plus some provides anything but interesting decisions; you will always go for each when you first reach 5.

58

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Traveler Line: Orphan

« on: October 13, 2017, 02:10:30 pm »

Does Processioning a Heretic effectively turn it into a Hireling?

No, it's better. You get 2 Actions and 2 Cards.

As mentioned, I would suggest using the Archive wording to make the cards double as a tracking method. Here's a wording that keeps the functionality intact (even though I still think it needs severe fixing, but I won't push this):

+1 Action
Set aside the top four cards of your deck. At the start of each of each of your next four turns, put one of them in your hand, and if you do, +1 Action. Otherwise, return this to its pile.
---
At the start of your cleanup phase, you may reveal your hand with no more than two Action and Treasure cards total, to discard the set-aside cards and exchange this for a Mountain Hag.

I like it. That solves the tracking issue and makes the card a bit weaker (you rather want to directly draw a card from your deck instead of drawing card from a set aside pool of cards that could be in limbo for quite some time, especially in Traveller games).

About the general idea, I think that it is good and that unlike other "make Curses good" ideas this could actually work due to all the interconnections in this Traveller line. What I don't like though is the lack of a (direct) Curser; Mountain Hag won't spread the love unless there are Cursers in the Kingdom. So why not spread Curses via an on-gain or on-exchange effect? On-gain for Orphan would probably be too good compared to IGG but on-exchange for Witch Hunter or Heretic might work.

Also, Grand Witch might be too harsh if you get it via Mountain Hag late in the game as junk so I'd definitely test this with -4VP. On the other hand the very presence of Grand Witch will turn lots of games into slogs (Estates and Duchies might very well empty before Provinces) so it might be good enough with -6VP.

Suggestion: If you can, have another player (or yourself, if you play against yourself) play WITHOUT the Traveller line. Even just buying money and Victory cards should easily beat the line and be so fast that Grand Witch will have no chance. The advantage of "Big Money" as a basaline to compare the card with is that it is so trivial to play and so weak usually that IF it beats your line, you know for sure it's too bad.

This is definitely how the line should be tested. But unlike engines Big Money decks might require quite some time to get 6-8 Provinces (no idea how much you need compared to a Duchy- and Estate-buying player with some or several Grand Witches in play). All the BM guidelines and simulations are after all about winning a Province split which is a valid benchmark  unless attack cards or alt-VPs (like here) are present.

In short, this seems very tricky to test as it is not just a Traveller line but also an alternative source of VPs.

59

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

« on: October 13, 2017, 01:55:38 pm »

The challenge is making the avatar is roughly balance among themselves, because it's relatively unproductive to compare the cost of purchasing an avatar to the cost of purchasing a card, other than to make sure that the avatars are worth purchasing at some point in both games (because if they work, it'll be like were playing without them).

That balancing the Avatars among themselves is even more important than balancing a Kingdom card to which everybody has access should be obvious. No disagreement here.
But if an Avatar is cheaper and stronger than Hireling, a card which is a mandatory buy when you hit 6 early in many Kingdoms, it is not balanced from a holistic perspective; it is something you will nearly always go for when you first reach 5.

Powerful options provide pseudo-choices and don't make a game more interesting. It is like the specialists in Russian Railroads, too good to not always be immediately taken and thus a grave design mistake (not to mention that getting access to private action spaces in a worker placement game is contradictory to the very essence of this game subtype).

If Dominion had an Event that costed 1 and said "+1 Buy; draw 10 card at the start of your next turn." you could rightfully argue that an Event cannot be directly compared to Action cards and I could rightfully argue that such a powerful Event would virtually always be bought which makes it bad and boring.

60

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

« on: October 11, 2017, 03:40:30 pm »

The abilities vary too much in strength. Why would you ever choose +1 Card on Bulgrim while Ability3, a half-Golem, digging for an Action card and playing it, is available?
Also, with Hireling in the Kingdom you'd always buy the Avatar which provides +1 Card before you buy a Hireling.

61

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Masquerade

« on: October 07, 2017, 01:53:49 am »

You shouldn't worry to death about the threat of having to pass an opponent good cards because you can normally see it coming for some time when they aim for that.
But the very presence of Masquerade does make junking and thinning a bit less important. That's really all it does in my opinion and it isn't special in this regard (e.g. Chariot Race's strength also depends upon the deck of your opponent). For example the presence of a village does make all terminal draws better and the presence of a junker makes all trashers better. How the evaluate relative card strengths precisely, well, there's no golden rule to that and that's after all the main appeal of Dominion.

62

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kru5h's card ideas

« on: October 07, 2017, 01:38:21 am »

Cooper Action - Reserve,
+2 Cards
+1 Action
Put this on your Tavern Mat.
--
At the start of your turn, you may call this to discard a card.

This is probably only a bit worse than Fugitive and seems like a good 4 to me.
I'd like to point out that Asper's Hunter is a less vanilla-ish and more interesting implementation of a Reserve non-terminal draw that can be called at a cost.

63

Dominion Articles / Re: Common Skill "Plateaus" in Mastering Dominion

« on: October 07, 2017, 12:47:19 am »

Somewhere in the 7000 range is knowing where certain decks and deck matchups are going to end up at the end of the game.  Hearing someone say, "This game will take 11-13 turns" always blows me away.

This isn't as hard as it sounds, and I think has something to do with how long you've been playing Dominion and reading the forums. These numbers came up more in the early days when Big Money was more prevalent.

Big Money only, no attacks: 4 provinces in 17 turns
Smithy only: 4 provinces in 14 turns
Moderately strong engine: 4 provinces in ~13 turns, plus endgame control
Super powerful engine: 11 turns

An example of a "super powerful engine" is the HoP megaturn game posted on the main DS webpage, Annotated Game #9 at https://dominionstrategy.com/2012/01/20/guest-article-annotated-game-9/. Very few games go faster than 11 turns. So someone saying "11-13 turns" is saying that there is a LOT of engine potential on the board and things will go fast. If the engine is weak, it'll be 14-15 turns unless there is duchy dancing.

These numbers also illustrate why Big Money is such a plateau, and why the entire dominion community was "stuck" on BM for multiple years. On many boards with an OK BM enabler (many cards are at least as good as Smithy) and no attacks, the line between great BM play and great engine play is razor thin: one or two turns. Past that, the BM player has 5 provinces and the engine needs 4 duchies to compensate. It's hard to play engines that well, but it's easy to play BM that well.

All of this simultator stuff becoems moot when Attack cards or alternative sources of VPs are present Kingdom. Which is the case more often than not, especially when you play with Empires.

64

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: All the Fan Cards You Could Ever Want! (Almost 400+ Cards!)

« on: October 03, 2017, 03:08:25 am »

It helps a lot to read though Donald's stuff so that you start from a higher plateau and don't have to repeat all the mistakes (like trashing attacks without a Knights-like price range or a Saboteur-like downgrading).

65

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Industrial Revolution

« on: October 01, 2017, 08:19:02 am »

Cathedral is something you should never ever do as you could build a golden deck with only Cathedrals. Note that Groundkeeper is tied to greening.

The notion that Factory is "quite balanced" (how much did you test it?) seems dubious to me. We know from the playtesting of Empire that this very card at a high Debt cost did not work (but that may have had to do with the Debt cost).
Police Station is a Reaction that attacks. Another big no-no.

Supermarket is a Grand Market plus Lab plus Peddler for a mere $9 and thus too cheap (or, as increasing the costs is not something you really want, too powerful). Lab plus Grand Market would probably already be too strong at 9 (just think about how often you'd but this over Platinum).

Metropolis: Village, Lab, Market and Duchy baked into one card in the hope that it will work? Unless there is heavy junking everybody will aim for Metropolises, they are brilliant engine pieces and decent green at the same time.

66

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cards I would ban / errata

« on: September 28, 2017, 09:51:19 pm »

Borrowing from my other post, Sauna just isn't a good dominion card without the "you may play an Avanto from your hand" line of text.

And if you make your opponent buy most of the Saunas, your deck will likely be in good shape to deny most of the Avantos.

Of course, this game I could have ignored Avanto altogether and threatened an Estate pileout with Festival/Hunting Grounds, but I didn't see that until after the game.

I totally disagree with this.

Conditional non-mandatory cantrip (multi-)trashing for 4 is already brilliant in and of itself.
A conditional, retroactive village that makes a draw engine run hyper-smoothly is also brillant for 4.
So that's two great effects combined into one card and it is dubious to claim that one effect is stronger than the other.

The notion that you should allow your opponent to get all of the Saunas such that you can make them worthless via snitching away the Avantos with a deck that has a better economy is only valid if there are other trashers and villages in the Kingdom.

67

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: September 28, 2017, 05:28:38 pm »

I'm testing out the following variant of Digsite:

Digsite - Action + Victory - $8
Reveal the top 5 cards of your deck.
You may trash this. If you do, for each card you revealed...
If it is an Action, Copper, or Silver card, +1VP.
If it is another Treasure card, +2VP.

This gives the player more control over what the card is worth, but makes it a risk-reward choice. Do you buy Province for 6 guaranteed points, or Digsite for maybe $10 -- but not likely.
Yes, I am aware of the insanity of comboing it with Crown.

Seems OK-ish. Even with some Golds or Alt-Treasures in your deck this will on average rarely provide more than 6 or 7 VP.
One problem though is the negative interaction with Victory cards. Now of course you want this before you clog your deck with (unremovable) green anyway but do you really need to make this incentive even stronger? I mean, what's the rationale behind punishing players who still/already have non-Action Victory cards in their deck?

68

Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Events: Lost Arts

« on: September 28, 2017, 05:16:41 pm »

I'm surprised nobody has yet mentioned the humble Steward. I once played a game in which I bought almost nothing else: once you've added Lost Arts, it's thinning, payload and engine in a single cheap card. Add a bit of +Buy and you're sorted.

I guess that's because Lost Arts is arguably best with terminal draw cards anyway. The particular advantage of Steward is unlike other +2 Cards variants you want one or two early for trashing anyway. So even on board without extra buys it could be a Lost Arts target (whereas cards like Moat or Oracle might not be).

69

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cards I would ban / errata

« on: September 28, 2017, 05:10:26 pm »

There are definitely some very strong or overpowered cards in Dominion. But let's not pretend that this is avoidable, even for the best game designers.

About the concrete cards, Possession is not overpowered (it is the most expensive card after Colony) but difficult to understand and arguably unfun for the possessed player. I think that the cards provides a unique form of interaction for the game (you gotta think about counters like greening earlier, taking on some Debt the move before you think you might get Possessed and so on) which more than justifies its existence.
Tournament is only swingy. IGG is not overpowered. Cultist and Sauna-Avanto are definitely overpowered (as are other cards like Scrying Pool and Rebuild) and unlike Possession don't do something particularly unique enough to justify their overpoweredness ... but as DXV has pointed out the simple solution is to not use them.

70

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: CPiGuy's Cards

« on: September 27, 2017, 08:23:58 pm »

I am not sure how many people are fans of split piles, but I got the impression that they are not all that popular. I can say that I don't like them because all official and most fan split piles give you two components that interact positively, and so you want many of both. Lose the split for one of the cards, and your best reason to buy the second half is spite. There was room for more variety here, and I hope in case the mechanic returns in the future, it'll be used.

This would also be my main complaint on the Wanderer pile. It just doesn't do anything interesting. In fact, it looks a lot like a Settlement variant.

I don't think that the second part of the pile is always worthless if you don't get (many) of the first part. The only culprit are Rocks (without any other trasher than Catapult; if there are other trasher it could be OK) and Avanto (Sauna-Avanto is far too powerful IMO: it trashes, draws, potentially provides extra Actions).
Plunder is nice without Encampements, the on-gain effect of Emporium is easy to trigger in an engine independent of whether you have Patricians and Fortune is something you want anyway with that extra Gold via Gladiator just being a cherry on the top of it.

In my opinion this very split pile does fall into the Sauna-Avanto trap: you basically want it all, the synergies between both parts are too strong.

71

Dominion Articles / Re: Cartographer vs. Forum

« on: September 27, 2017, 08:20:59 pm »

Cartographer is a bit like Ironmonger: a good card in nearly every deck. But unlike Forum, which is a double Fugitive (and Fugitive, if it existed as normal card, would be a 4.5), it is not a powerhouse.

Ironmonger is a powerhouse and I don't know where you got Fugitive = $4.5 from. Secret Passage is pretty much as good as Fugitive and it's not a particularly strong $4.

In the secret histories Donald mentions that Fugitive was a bit too good at $4, but obviously not good enough for $5.

This is what I was getting at with $4.5: too good for 4, too weak for 5.

72

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kru5h's card ideas

« on: September 27, 2017, 05:11:42 pm »

The Gift Edict
Once per turn on their turn, a player may exchange 2 for a Coin Token.
Setup: Each player starts the game with 6.

This makes it so that players can only spend one per turn so that they can't do ridiculous openings.

This seems like the best implementation of the idea. The 2:1 ratio makes it a tricky decision and the wacky opening possibilities are eliminated. You could still get a Prince and a Nomad Camp though if Baker is also in the Kingdom (and if you draw the topdecked Nomad Camp together with 4 Coppers).

73

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: CPiGuy's Cards

« on: September 27, 2017, 05:04:07 pm »

Two new cards, forming one split-pile.

Wanderer, $1 Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
---
Once per turn: When you gain this, +1 Buy.

Pack Horse, $4 Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Wanderer. Discard the other cards, and play the Wanderer.

This seems a bit strong. Of course Pack Horse is not necessarily a Lost City, you could have all Wanderers in your hand. But most of the times it is and I guess that buying 2 Wanderers is often the correct opening.
You might wanna make it a 4-4 pile in two player respectively a 6-6 pile in three player games, otherwise the first player could always win the Wanderer split.

74

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kru5h's card ideas

« on: September 26, 2017, 06:56:40 am »

Pyramid Landmark
When scoring, +1 per Coin Token you have, up to 5.
Setup: Each player starts the game with 5 Coin Tokens.

In the absence of cards that provide Coin tokens I am pretty sure that spending all Coin tokens is nearly always better than making VP tokens out of them at the end of the game.

Probably right.

2VP per token seems like they would never be spent, though. Maybe this is just a bad landmark. If I were willing to salvage it, I would probably make it 2VP per token, but only 3 tokens to start with.

I like the general idea of the card, but it has the problem that a card like Baker is a VP token cantrip which does nothing to end the game.

Due to the cap at 5 this is not a problem.

75

Dominion Articles / Re: Cartographer vs. Forum

« on: September 25, 2017, 09:20:50 pm »

Cartographer is a bit like Ironmonger: a good card in nearly every deck. But unlike Forum, which is a double Fugitive (and Fugitive, if it existed as normal card, would be a 4.5), it is not a powerhouse.