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451

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2017 Edition: Potion cost cards

« on: January 21, 2018, 10:55:17 am »

Apothecary too low, Alchemist too high. Possession should be #2 but I didn't rank it.

University should be higher than Alchemist. Alchemist is really not a great card...

No, Alchemist is in fact a great card. A hand of 5 labs is insane. It's very rare to ignore it and still win.

As far as draw goes, it's far from great. I mean it's still non-terminal draw so you get fairly often anyway - it isn't a bad card by any means, but if there's any alternative you're often better off going for that. The main problem with Alchemist is that going for the Potion results in a huge tempo loss, because you're adding what is essentially a dead stop-card to your deck in Potion you basically have to buy 2 Alchemists to actually increase your draw/cycling. That's 3 buys until you actually start seeing the benefits of the Alchemists, and because of the Potion mechanics that's 3 shuffles (top decking an Alchemist can make this less bad, but you can't count  on that in the early turns). That's so slow! Hmm I was planning to write something more concise than this, oh well!

452

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2017 Edition: Potion cost cards

« on: January 20, 2018, 07:29:55 pm »

Apothecary too low, Alchemist too high. Possession should be #2 but I didn't rank it.

University should be higher than Alchemist. Alchemist is really not a great card...

453

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards

« on: January 20, 2018, 06:02:34 pm »

Not being able to trash Estates is a hefty downside for sure, but it can trash Coppers much better than Salvager and is non-terminal. It can also trash itself like a super Death Cart or something, but if that's problematic it's easy to fix. It might be okay as is though, it doesn't seem like a great early buy any more - apart from the self-trashing.

454

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Xerxes's cards

« on: January 20, 2018, 12:03:50 pm »

Stamp Collector:I agree with the others that it's strange to have +1 Action on this, I understand that it means this is a village even with only 1 other action in hand but to me it just destroys all the tension that the fancy action playing ability has. I mean it only costs $2, so you don't want it to do everything for you. I don't love giving it +$1 myself, because this only costs $2, so you don't want it to give too much - it already has the ability to play 3+Actions fairly easily which is powerful! and also because this already draws comparison to Conclave and giving it +$ makes it even closer to Conclave.

Farmer: This is cute, I like it! It seems on the weaker side of things, but next to the nonsense of Cultist and Avanto a more toned down take on this mechanic is nice.

Monk/Reformer: I'm not a fan of Monk, I like Reformer as a super strong "hard to get" card, but if my opponent buys any Monks I'm probably just not touching the treasures for the rest of the game.

Caravel: This seems really weak to me, I think I'd rather have Merchant Ship unless I'm in desperate need of +buy and Merchant Ship sucks! Maybe the on-play could somehow feed into the duration effect so you'll always have cards in the discard pile?

Revolution: This seems broken to me? If there's a $2 in the supply this can give out Curses and gain that $2, while at the same time providing +$2, there are lots of things that make it even better than that, Potion being the most common one perhaps, but Masterpiece and Mint seem like good options too. Not to mention how quickly this can run out piles. It reminds me a bit of Jester, apart from it junks your opponent and gains you a good card at the same time.

Anatomist: This seems incredible once you've drawn your deck, but I suppose most Remodel-type cards are. But if you have 1 card in your discard pile you can just play a bunch of these and upgrade it all the way, or perhaps discard a Province and then just mill a ton of Provinces from the supply, you get the idea. It seems pretty generically strong tbh, I don't really think it needs the +1 action.

455

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Meld

« on: January 20, 2018, 11:22:54 am »

I got chance to do a test game with Meld last night. Unfortunately there was another card we tested at the same time that was completely broken which somewhat overshadowed Meld, but it still got bought and seemed fun. We used a version of Nimble Chimera that was:

+1 Action
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck and put the revealed Actions into your hand.

That was just too strong as the $4 Chimera, it turns out limiting Scrying Pool to 3 cards is still super strong. The other worries with Meld were the swing factor of lining up 2 Estates and the engine-in-one nature of the pile. I might get rid of the Raging Chimera attack and make this Majestic Chimera be the expensive one and think of something new for the $4 one. I am also thinking of changing Meld to trash differently named cards to alleviate the 2 Estates thing.

Finally here is another card that uses a Chimera:
Incubator:


It is a Smithy that Remodels the 3rd card that it draws, if you trash it you get a free Chimera! This was super fun in the game we played  and seemed at a reasonable power. The game we played involved Rats and Forge, even with Rats this didn't seem too over the top.

456

Help! / Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?

« on: January 18, 2018, 05:18:10 pm »

The real question is not which strategy to play but how to approach a mirror match.  The Groundskeeper deck will completely outmatch a Feodom strategy due to the Feodom upper limit of points and the ability to the Groundskeeper deck to control when the game ends.

Port and Groundskeeper are the two key cards with Butcher for support. Port is obviously the ideal Butcher target for gaining Groundskeeper.  Whoever wins the Groundskeeper split should be in prime position to win so that is the first objective.  Secondary is building an engine that reliably draws the deck.   Use Pathfinding on Groundskeeper as it packs all of your point scoring and card drawing on a single card.  This allows Ports to be Butchered into Islands midgame for points and slight thinning.  Thirdly is the Sprawling Castle.  With a 5/5 Groundskeeper split that single card is worth 27 points.  Whomever gains this likely wins the game.  As such, having the Small Castle and potentially 2 Butchers is the ideal composition.

I think you'd rather Pathfinding Ports, you'll have a lot of Silvers sitting around to Butcher into Groundskeepers from Lucky Coin.

457

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2017 Edition: $6+ cards

« on: January 18, 2018, 12:54:56 pm »

I had Border Village right below Kings Court I think, which was right below Goons. You end up spending $6 on $5 actions so often, a free Village is wonderful, it's almost like having a free Lost Arts token on everything. Sometimes it gets even better when you can trash for benefit too.

458

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2017 Edition: $5 Cards, Part 1/3

« on: January 18, 2018, 12:46:28 pm »

Pooka is incredible, a lot of the time it's better to build up a little bit so you can leverage the +cards some more. It can be okay in the opening too for reasons Awaclus outlined, but Cursed Gold makes opening $5's less exciting if you're taking the Curse.

459

Help! / Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?

« on: January 17, 2018, 11:25:28 pm »

The Groundskeeper deck should crush a Silver rush easily. Open 2 Silvers+Port. Port with +1 Card for draw, you can Butcher Estates to Islands and set aside some Coppers with Islands. Butcher alongside Lucky Coin and Bureaucrat to gain Groundskeepers. Uncontested you can get over 100 Groundskeeper points without much trouble (Sprawling Castle alone is 40vp with 10 Groundskeepers in play) and have all the pile control.

If both people go for the thing with Ports and Butchers it probably comes down to who can win the Tower splits so I'd go harder for Ports, Butchering Estates to Ports.

460

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Card Lists 2017 Edition: Prizes

« on: January 17, 2018, 07:07:38 pm »

Compared to other Gold gainers like Explorer, Dismantle and Bandit, Bag of Gold is a poor choice. Sure, Bag of Gold is nonterminal, but Governor provides an additional junking effect which can ruin some combos like Vassal, Baron or Scrying Pool. The topdecking á la Artisan is more a disadvantage than an advantage, because it can actually slow your next turn down as you may miss an engine part. Like Bureaucrat, its a good card for Gardens slogs with large decks, though if Trusty Steed is already taken. Explorer is so much better, because it gives you the Gold into your hand, making +$3 instead of +1 Action. Coincidentally it has a similar Province requirement like Tournament, but if you already have a few Provinces, the +$3 is much more valuable than the Gold. To conclude, I would always skip BoG for a Duchy.

I wouldn't jump to such a conclusion, I mean the very nature of Dominion means there will always be edge cases so saying you will always skip x for y seems a little foolish. Sure if there are other Gold gainers on the board you might not have much need for a Bag, but there won't be another Gold gainer more often than not. I've taken Bag of Gold as the first prize on numerous occasions, usually involving Apprentice.

461

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: January 17, 2018, 05:23:31 pm »

The Workship effect seems too slow to me for constantly helping a engine, but gaining a free 3 cost card after two/three plays might not be that bad. I wonder if saving the coin tokens for a province is decent.

Best case seems to be a useful $2 like Hamlet or something. Maybe it could topdeck the gained card, but it is a terminal Silver so for $3 it doesn't need much extra.

462

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Card Lists 2017 Edition: $5 Cards, 3/3

« on: January 16, 2018, 03:36:23 pm »

The thing with Upgrade is that at it's worst (ignoring Poor House) it's only slightly worse than Junk Dealer and then it really doesn't take much at all for it to do all kinds of things that JD can never do. And then there are games with strong draw or Fortress/Rats when you can go bonkers with it.

I guess it just comes down to whether you value a lower floor higher ceiling card over a higher floor lower ceiling card.

On a different note I don't quite understand Crown being higher than Royal Carriage.

463

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: January 16, 2018, 11:38:36 am »

2nd Signalman attempt. It's now a slow Workshop that can also block attacks. I haven't thought this through much so it might be super strong? Actually it seems reasonable? Still much wore than Lighthouse at blocking attacks, but you get one block for free.

464

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Card Lists 2017 Edition: $5 Cards, 3/3

« on: January 16, 2018, 10:39:52 am »

Junk Dealer isn't too high- Sentry and Upgrade are too low! I actually have Junk Dealer as being the worst of the 3. Upgrade I like the best because it can be the best "payload" on many boards. Even just Upgrading excess Upgrades into Golds is pretty good and that's like the weakest option.

I also like Cultist above Mountebank and Torturer above Witch - the are more boards where you skip Witch/Mountebank and not the other because the others are much better draw. I'd also put Margrave above Witch because the card is unreasonable.

Groundskeeper is top 5 material. Needs to move up more, if you ignore it your opponent will easily get like 100 VP no joke.

Count seems low too, it's a premium trasher. Same for Apprentice except Apprentice is also premium draw so it's even better.

465

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

« on: January 15, 2018, 01:39:32 pm »

If you want it closer to the original wording you could try:

While this is in play, directly after you buy a Treasure, if that Treasure isn't in play, you may discard this to play that Treasure and +1 Buy.

I think that stops you from using multiples at once? Doesn't stop the Venture thing though.

466

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: January 15, 2018, 01:34:58 pm »

I don't think the word "first" belongs on the Beacon text, as it can only be used after the Attack is played but before it can resolve.

I referenced the 2nd edition Moat for that wording, so I assume it's close to how it would be worded in an official set.

I thought Donald said that stuff in the interview thread, but it was actually on Discord. I'm not sure whether I can link to particular things on Discord? If you just search for posts from Donald X. he was talking about it last Tuesday, it shouldn't be too difficult to find.

Gladiator uncovering Fortune and allowing you to be the first to buy it is the most important thing about Gladiator. I had Embargo as the worst $2 on my Qvist card ranking and in my opinion Tax is a much better execution of that concept, so it's a huge dud in my opinion.

Well the reaction to Signalman has been resoundingly negative anyway, so I'd best rethink it because of that.

467

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: January 14, 2018, 11:19:44 pm »

Signalman seems too much better than Pirate Ship, to be honest. It starts at one token, gives +1$ even when you add one, has no risk of whiffing, can use its tokens for other benefits and costs less. The Treasure trashing on PS makes sure it isn't strictly worse, but I would argue that it actually is even another disadvantage most of the time.
 I also think that Outrider could technically work without a state, if it just used special tokens and said something similar to Embargo:

"Setup: Each player takes one Signal token. When another player plays an attack card, players may lose one Signal token to be unaffected by it."

I think "better than Pirate Ship" is something all cards should strive to be...  I mean if you think it's too strong that's fair enough but I don't care for the Pirate comparison. Miser seems like a better comparison and Copper trashing is better than +$1 by at least a mile. I mean I think that Signalman is pretty weak... seems poor compared to Gladiator to me considering you have to play Abandoned Mine twice before it's worth $3. Also no Fortune or free Gold.

I am thinking that the way it is now it sucks as an attack defence, which was supposed to be the main hook of the card. I'm thinking it could just do something generically useful and add a token, and if there aren't any attacks to defend against, well it's still doing something generically useful. I guess it's not like Lighthouse is great without attacks and that's fine too. Or maybe you just start the game with like 3 tokens and then it just does something unrelated so you only have a limited number of tokens? I don't know, lots of ways to take it.

Technically all States could use a token/ tokens, a good example is the Hexes. If Hexes were in Adventures for example I'm sure Miserable and co. would use a token. But Nocturne didn't have tokens, so it uses States instead. Ice Age has Ice and Coin tokens already and other cards that use a State, so using Coin tokens and a State seems more logical to me. Donald has also said that if he did a 2nd edition of Seaside he would update Embargo and Pirate Ship to not use tokens and instead just set aside treasures/put Embargos on piles to track (or probably just get rid of them because they're both duds). The reason why Pirate Ship and Embargo use tokens is because the publisher wanted to justify a higher price point for the expansion by including metal tokens, as seaside had 200 fewer cards than Base and Intrigue. The notion that using tokens is somehow simpler is false, in my opinion. It's nice to have the card there with the rules right on it.

Oh also it turns out that Rediscover gaining Provinces with 3 Ice tokens on them is fairly broken, I'll have to rethink that one...
 

468

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2017 Edition: $5 Cards, Part 1/3

« on: January 14, 2018, 02:24:20 pm »

Merchant Ship and Venture I'd put below Explorer, Gold gaining is good in engines more often than they are the best things to be buying.

I agree with Awaclus that Pooka is criminally underrated, maybe people are blaming Cursed Gold sucking on Pooka or something?

I'd put Rouge above Graverobber, ignore that Rouge is an attack, it's a fairly potent gainer. I'd put Jester down in this tier of cards too as an unreliable gainer with an unreliable attack.

I might prefer Wine Merchant over Sacred Grove, the Boons can be a real drawback, I'd say Grove is slightly better in money and Winey is better in a focused engine. They're very similar in function though so I'd rank them next to each other.

The only massive outlier that jumps out to me is Pooka though, I think everything else here belongs in this group.

469

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: January 14, 2018, 12:37:40 pm »

2 new cards trying to incorporate States. Seer was pretty fun in the 1 game I played with it, so why not try other things? Also if this set wants to be big it could do with 1 more mechanic to explore and States are things to put tokens on so seems like a decent option?

Outrider/Bountiful Wilderness


A non-terminal Survivors with +1 Buy. Survivalist would be a cute name thinking about it. A weakish card, but it has utility. If you have enough spare buys then you find a Bountiful Wilderness...



If you don't use all of your buys you get a Coin token, so hopefully you can use your buys better next turn! I think these will need a bit of tweaking, maybe 4 buys on Outrider is too many. I'm also prone to being an idiot, as we saw with the first new Hunter being a terrible Plaza, so if this is obviously terrible please be as harsh as you like.

Signalman/Beacons


This is a bit more like Seer where you start off the game in a State and tokens track things... Beacons is friendly though, where Avalanche is nasty. Also "each player takes a Beacons" great wording.



Beacons gives you a free Moat, but if you want to keep up the defences you'll have to get a Signalman or two. Also each beacon only defends one attack, this is so that attacks aren't completely useless in Signalman games. Although Lighthouse and Guardian kinda make attacks useless a lot of the time... Signalman does other things with Beacons so it isn't useless in games with no attacks. You don't have to remove tokens for the coin effect of Signalman, so it could potentially be good payload later in the game. Perhaps the +$1 you get for putting a token on Beacons could instead be take a Coin token. Hmmm, what do people think?

470

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2017 Edition: $4 Cards, Part 1 (Bottom Half)

« on: January 13, 2018, 05:53:32 pm »

I buy Curse more often than I buy Bureaucrat.

Curse is in every game though, comparison invalid.

What an awful kingdom card Curse would have been...

Okay I should have been more specific...

I buy Curse more often than Bureaucrat, in games in which both Curse and Bureaucrat are in the supply.

I assumed that was implied but I should have known better I suppose.

471

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2017 Edition: $4 Cards, Part 1 (Bottom Half)

« on: January 13, 2018, 12:22:33 pm »

I buy Curse more often than I buy Bureaucrat.

472

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2017 Edition: $4 Cards, Part 2 (Top Half)

« on: January 13, 2018, 12:19:58 pm »

The thing with the $4's is that they're of  a pretty flat powerlevel. Apart from Rebuild and Tournament being bonkers - I give the edge to Tournament there just because I find games where there is better trashing than Remake more common than games where prizes aren't worth going for.

Sauna does seem too high, I guess it is a bit of the Rebuild effect where it's a decent 1 card strategy, often it's better to go for other things though.

I still don't understand Envoy below Smithy, a lot of the time Envoy is a cheap Hunting Grounds.

Procession should be higher, but it's tricky to use and people don't like trashing their actions I guess.

Also people are crazy Villa is completely broken.
I don't think Ironmonger is top 5 material, Mill has kind of overtaken it as a premier non-terminal opener. Mill should be higher, much higher.

I have Spice Merchant in the top 5, a lot of the trashers seem a bit underrated here. Especially Exorcist, Exorcist feels weaker than it is I think because a lot of it's power is from the Wisps so it doesn't feel like the Exorcist is doing so much because it's the Wisps doing a lot of the work... I don't know though.

Shepherd will probably go down next year, but I haven't quite grasped the card yet. It seems high variance so I tend to avoid it when possible.

473

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards

« on: January 12, 2018, 03:07:52 pm »

I've thought over Inventor and Invention a bit now, Inventor seems like it would be a very good $5 Smithy variant on it's own. Probably not as good as the broken trio (Margrave, Torturer and Wild Hunt) but better than the others. I understand that the Inventions are meant to screw with terminal draw, but they kind of just turn Inventors into Lab/Smithy split cards. Terminal draw also just isn't good very often anyway, even by big money standards.

Trash for benefit doesn't really need much to be the best payload on any board, so I feel like Inventor/Invention will just make the good things better and the bad things worse?

Although this is coming from the viewpoint of a competitive player, it could be possible that Inventor messes with things for less serious players and enables crazy things for serious players though.

474

Dominion General Discussion / Re: $3 Cost Card Rankings Bottom Half

« on: January 12, 2018, 01:38:53 pm »

Fortune Teller is terrible, most games where you don't mind a terminal over a Silver aren't the kind of games where it's attack matters much. I find it's usually a reverse-Chancellor, I think I'd take Duchess over Fortune Teller a lot of the time.

475

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2017 Edition: $4 Cards, Part 1 (Bottom Half)

« on: January 12, 2018, 10:08:35 am »

I had Mission in the top 10. Extra turns are broken, trust me.

Bureaucrat I had as the worst, it's like not even a great money card. Pirate Ship has the potential to be devastating, even though thaat almost never happens in a real game.

I think Talisman is a little underrated, Horse Traders seems too high.

Pretty sure Monument is worse than Navigator. Bard should be higher.

Walled Village is better than Farming Village, it can be nice early in the game and in no-trashing things where you build up but never get under control properly. I ranked all of those weaker villages together and higher up too.

I can't remember ever seeing Rocks in a 2-player game, aside from Black Market.