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Messages - samath

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201
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Extending the game
« on: March 14, 2018, 02:02:46 pm »
That said, if you are just trying to casually extend a non-competitive match between friends, playing an odd number of matches doesn't seem like a big deal, especially if you have more than 2 people playing.

There's also less of a reason to play an odd number of games in that case. If you play 3 games with 3 people, you could each win one (and get second in another if you care about that).

In my opinion, you do need some kind of points handicap for the first player, but I think it very strongly depends on the board. I'm hoping at some point to run a cage match tournament with a point bidding process for the first position on the board, and after that I can tell you how it goes.

202
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Extending the game
« on: March 14, 2018, 11:57:31 am »
Unrelated: why does everyone like best-of-6 for matches? Sure you can tie games and end something like 3.5 to 2.5, but best-of-<odd number> seems more intuitive.

An even number allows you to give both players an equal number of starts.

203
Dominion FAQ / Re: Viewing as a spectator on online client
« on: March 14, 2018, 12:36:15 am »
Another alternative: If there is a big important match with a lot of spectators, you can often find it in the Tables tab by clicking the Spectators column to sort by the number of spectators. (Make sure you check the "Show running games" box first so it even shows up at all.)

204
Dominion General Discussion / Re: What should Dominion do next?
« on: March 13, 2018, 12:22:43 pm »
Dominion Legacy! That might be pretty cool. Although some of the fun of Legacy games is that you don't know what's coming next.

205
Dominion Articles / Re: Salt the Earth and global effects
« on: March 13, 2018, 10:48:47 am »
I think the main downside to Embargo is, as you put it, its timing effect: You have to Embargo a card right before you'll be buying one. So it takes particularly good shuffle luck to have the opportunity to "slam the door behind yourself" so to speak, by embargoing a card that you already have (or have more of) that your opponent doesn't. Even in the best-case scenario -- 5/2 open with a power $5 against, say, Silver/Silver or equivalent, there's a decent likelihood that you draw the Embargo after they get a $5 hand T3/4, especially as player 2. Add onto that the extra economy that Embargo gives and it's more frequently in a hand where you'll be buying a good card, that you then don't want to embargo.

Contrast this with Tax, the other global effect that I thought would have been worth mentioning in this article: It takes place immediately, without the delay of a shuffle like Embargo does, and the person it hurts is less frequently you (though I do see people buying through their own Taxes a lot of the time). It's also a much weaker effect, to be sure, but it's still more frequently bought in my experience because it's easier to time appropriately.

206
Dominion League / Season 26 Champion Match: Tues Mar 20th at 21:00 UTC
« on: March 13, 2018, 12:51:11 am »
This season's Champion Match between markus and Mic Qsenoch will take place next Tuesday, March 20th, at 21:00 UTC. Both competitors won the same number of games in the regular season, but markus enters with the tiebreaker due to having one more win against an opponent who finished higher in the final standings. The match will last six games, as usual; markus will need to win only 3, while Mic Qsenoch will need to win 3.5. If one of them reaches that total before the final game, they will still play all six games out, so you'll get to see six great games of high quality Dominion no matter who wins.

The match will be streamed on Twitch with commentary from aku chi, gloures, and myself. You are also welcome to watch in the client and comment there. Hope you can make it!

207
7-cost cards are pretty rare, though. My main frustration with the 7-2 is that there's often a 5-cost card I'd love to open with, but then that means I'm playing the Cursed Gold as essentially Cursed Copper. That's totally the right move given the board, but it still means I'd prefer to have 6-3 or 5-4 and the chance to get a better card on my other initial turn.

208
Solo Challenges / Re: Buy a Colony on Turn 2
« on: March 12, 2018, 05:50:32 pm »
T1 Open Expedition. T2 Play Cursed Gold, 6 Copper, Baker, Borrow for $11 (or alternately Alms for Villa instead of Borrow).

How do you open Expedition if you aren't drawing any Estates/Shelters on T2?

209
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Best/Craziest Openings
« on: March 11, 2018, 09:32:25 am »
Never actually seen this, but it would be pretty amazing:
T1 Inheritance (e.g. with Cursed Gold + 4 Copper), inherit Tournament
T2 Play 3 Tournaments, drawing Coppers, buy Province.

210
Based on a discussion on Discord, by word of mouth, mostly. If you have more to report, I'm sure breppert would love to know.

211
Dominion League / Season 27 - Signups
« on: March 05, 2018, 12:21:51 pm »
Season 27 will run from Monday, April 9th until Sunday, May 20th and you can sign up until Thursday, April 5th at 19:00 UTC.

Signups for season 27 are now closed. Go here if you would like to sign up for season 28.

Staying in the league
Please don't post here, but either (a) go to your division's Scheduling thread and post a message there stating you will return for the next season or (b) send a PM to your group's moderator.  If your timezone has changed, let us know.  Otherwise we'll assume it is the same.

Returning to the league
Please post a message here stating your ShuffleIT username, your timezone, the last season you were in, the division you played and the place you've finished.

New to the league
Welcome to the League! Please post a message with your ShuffleIT username and timezone. Please make sure to state the exact spelling of your username (upper/lower case, special characters, and so on). You will be placed in an appropriate division according to your rating on dominion.games as seen in the client or here. If you would like to be placed in a lower division or there is a reason to suspect your rating does not represent your skill, feel free to describe it in your signup message.

Please check the welcome thread first and also read the rules to make sure you're comfortable with the format and the time it takes to play a season.

You may also receive a personal message the week before the League starts to confirm your signup. If you do not read the forum regularly enough, please forward your PM's to your email account so you do not miss it.


When specifying a timezone, please use one of these examples or use the same format and look yours up in the complete list.
Code: [Select]
America/Chicago
America/Los_Angeles
America/New_York
Asia/Hong_Kong
Asia/Riyadh
Canada/Eastern
Europe/Berlin
Europe/London
Europe/Moscow
Pacific/Honolulu

Current signups (divisions are tentative):

212
Dominion League / Re: Proposed Change for Season 27: B Champion Matches
« on: February 26, 2018, 06:38:58 am »
Also, to the question of the competitiveness of these matches, I ran the numbers on the 25 seasons we have to date. The average number of games in the champion match that the second-place finisher would need to win is 4.5, or 4.4 with the twist. In 37% of cases (36% with the twist), the underdog would need to win 5 or more matches to promote. (In 4% of cases, i.e. twice, there would be no need for a match.) The full histogram is attached.

213
Dominion League / Re: Proposed Change for Season 27: B Champion Matches
« on: February 26, 2018, 04:36:04 am »
To the question of how to compare divisions with unequal numbers of games played: I think in this case we would just compare the average number of wins, including the final game. For instance, if we had implemented this last season, the two matches would have been PerryGreen (14/24) versus Burning Skull (16.5/30) and tracer (13/24) versus gloures (18/30). If you work it out, this would have meant that Burning Skull would need to win 3.5 to advance over PerryGreen, while tracer would need to win 4 to advance over gloures.

214
Dominion League / Proposed Change for Season 27: B Champion Matches
« on: February 23, 2018, 06:14:05 pm »
Hi everyone! As one of your league moderators, I've been looking at various ways to make the league better. I'd like to share an idea I've had that, if a combination of the players in the league and my fellow moderators agree, wouldn't go into effect until next season. (To be clear, I haven't won them over yet, and opinions here are my own, not the moderator team's as a whole).

If you're new or otherwise aren't aware, at the end of every season, the top two players from A play in a "Champion Match" to determine the league champion that year. The results of this 6-game match are added to the season's results, which just means that sometimes the leader only needs to win one or two of the six games. The Champion Match is a big event at the end of the year; it's usually streamed on Twitch with commentary and lots of spectators.

My proposal is to add analogous Champion Matches to other divisions. That is, for the prize of promoting to the next level, the top two players from each division would play an additional 6-game match, and those results would be added to the final results of the division to determine the winner. To the extent possible, we would also make big events out of these Champion Matches with streaming and commentary.

In particular, I'd most like to see this happen in the B division, where the prize (promotion to A) and quality of play are both highest. If it's successful and scales, we could potentially extend it to C, D, and E in subsequent seasons, but for now my proposal is simply to add a champion match to the two B divisions.

The main reason I'd like to see this is to add more end-of-season events like the Champion Matches in A. Those are nice for building community, showcasing talent, and (to a lesser extent) providing a dramatic finale to the season. B Champion Matches would ideally achieve the same goals, and additionally would also help ensure that those who promote into A are the best against strong competition (not that we've had any problems with that in the past).

There could also be an additional twist: The second-place finisher from B2 could play the top finisher from B1, and vice-versa. We balance the divisions (by rating at the beginning of the season) so there isn't a concern about imbalance, but it could happen that two players from the same division both have exceptionally good seasons, yet (under the current system, and under my proposal without this twist) only one of them may advance. Additionally, this cross-division battle would make for new matches that didn't take place during the season, unlike the current champion's matches.

What do you think? At some point we might hold a vote, but for now I'm most interested in hearing whether this is something that league participants would be interested in.

215
Yeah, I have the same complaint sometimes. One thing top players can do to help is to block spectators on their bot games to save people the effort of coming in and then leaving.

216
Dominion League / Re: Season 26 has started and runs until Mar 25
« on: February 16, 2018, 06:32:06 pm »
Late signups for season 26 are now closed, and the late entrants have been added to their divisions. Best of luck to all League participants this season!

217
Dominion League / Re: Season 26 - Signups
« on: February 13, 2018, 08:39:08 am »
Hi everyone,

We've decided to set the deadline for late signups as Friday, February 16th at 19:00 UTC. We are also exploring the possibility of opening a second E-level division, so we are still open to signups at levels C, D and E. Unfortunately, this also means that we won't have division assignments for the four late entrants so far (Agbag, yahas, xer, AceOf86) until shortly after signups close on Friday.

All signups for Season 26 are now closed.

Sam

218
Dominion League / Re: Season 26 has started and runs until Mar 25
« on: February 12, 2018, 08:08:24 pm »
Not too late, but I see you already did. We'll get back to you soon with your division!

219
Dominion League / Season 26 has started and runs until Mar 25
« on: February 09, 2018, 01:13:38 am »
Hello everyone,

Season 26 is kicking off this week! You may start scheduling and playing matches now. The final deadline for completing and reporting your matches is 26 Mar 2018, 15:00 UTC.

The biggest change this season comes in the way that results are reported. Rather than a results post that is then tabulated by moderators, you will be reporting your scores directly via Google form, which will then automatically populate the standings. Keep in mind that there is a delay of up to 5 minutes for the standings to refresh.

All participants should have received a PM from me (samath) with the link to their division's Google form; we are not releasing these publicly to avoid spam/forgeries. If you are participating in the league this season and did not receive a PM, please send me a message ASAP. Just as with the results post, each match should only be reported once. The form should be pretty intuitive, but if you make any mistakes, contact your moderator and they can fix them.

Without the Results thread, we also need a place to list whether you will be returning for season 27 after all of your matches are completed. You can indicate whether you are returning for next season one of two ways: Either send a private message to your group's moderator, or reply in your group's scheduling thread.

As in the previous season, Nocturne is in by default, although you can still mutually agree to not use it (as is true for any expansion).

We still have openings in divisions C, D and potentially E if you or anyone else you know wants to join! Sign up here by Friday, February 16th at 19:00 UTC.

Have fun, everyone!

Sam

220
Echip
Action–Duration|$2
+e Cards.
+1 Action.

Strictly better than Laboratory

But requires you to destroy some cards *and* make good estimates of what 0.718 of a card is.

Toss up your thousand Echip tokens. If 718 or more of them landed heads-up, draw a card.

Yeah, as others also pointed out, that’s not even 2.718 cards, more like 2.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000923322 cards. (It’s very unlikely that 218 out of 1000 more fair coins than expected come up heads.)

Here’s something elegant you could actually do with expected number of cards drawn of e: Keep picking uniformly random numbers between 0 and 1 until their sum exceeds 1. Draw a card for each number that takes.

You could even approximate this by spinning an object (e.g. a pen or bottle) on the table and tracing the places where it stops around in clockwise order. When those make a complete loop, stop and draw a number of cards equal to the number of spins it took.

(Proof: The probability that k numbers is not enough is the volume of the region in the first orthant of k-dimensional space such that x1 + x2 + ... + xk < 1. You can either do the integral by induction or notice that the partial sums x1 + ... + xi are also distributed uniformly and independently mod 1, and all of them are less than 1 if and only if mod 1 they are in increasing order, which happens with probability 1/k!. Then you sum this from 0 to infinity, getting e.)

221
Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards 2017 Edition: Hexes
« on: January 23, 2018, 03:59:47 am »
At the same time, Delusion is less bad for multiple reasons if Vampire is the hex source: You can gain most Actions you need with Vampire, and you can still buy Vampire if it's early enough that you're buying actions. This effect is even stronger in Nocturne-heavy games where you're more than happy to keep building by buying a couple Dens of Sin instead of Actions. Even without them, many engines can afford to spend a turn buying treasure payload or focusing on other useful things like trashing.

222
Dominion League / Re: Season 25 - Results
« on: January 12, 2018, 04:36:21 pm »
Unfortunately, I won't be returning for season 26 as I'll be busy writing my thesis during that time. Hopefully I'll finish in time for the following season!

223
Dominion League / Re: Season 25 - Results
« on: January 08, 2018, 11:05:12 am »
B2: SamE 4-2 Burning Skull

224
Tournaments and Events / Re: Noctournament (Dualset)
« on: January 06, 2018, 12:31:09 am »
Alas, I had a win in my final turn of Game 2 (though it's super tricky). This is at 1:14:22 in the video, but you probably need to play it out to see what I could have drawn. This was game #10308126 and the turn starts at decision 287. The double Province turn starts, as the commentators noticed, with trashing the Pixie for the Field's Gift to give me more actions.

Here's the log of what could have been that turn:
S plays a Cursed Village.
S draws a Tormentor and a Will-o'-wisp.
S plays a Will-o'-wisp.
S draws a Will-o'-wisp.
S reveals a Pixie.
S puts a Pixie into their hand.
S plays a Will-o'-wisp.
S draws a Will-o'-wisp.
S reveals a Tracker.
S puts a Tracker into their hand.
S plays a Will-o'-wisp.
S draws a Pixie.
S reveals a Pouch.
S puts a Pouch into their hand.
S plays a Pixie.
S draws a Silver.
S takes The Flame's Gift.
S discards The Flame's Gift.
S plays a Pixie.
S draws a Will-o'-wisp.
S takes The Field's Gift.
S trashes a Pixie.
S plays a Will-o'-wisp.
S draws a Cursed Village.
S reveals a Copper.
S puts a Copper into their hand.
S plays a Catapult.
S trashes a Copper.
g discards a card and a Curse.
S plays a Tracker.
S takes The Earth's Gift.
S receives The Earth's Gift
S discards The Earth's Gift.
S plays a Tracker.
S takes The Sky's Gift.
S receives The Sky's Gift
S discards 2 Silvers and a Goat.
S gains a Gold.
S reacts with a Tracker.
S topdecks a Gold.
Tracker loses track of Gold (it moved).
S discards The Sky's Gift.
S plays a Cursed Village.
S draws a Gold, 2 Cursed Villages and a Will-o'-wisp.
S plays a Tormentor.
S takes Greed.
t receives Greed
t gains a Copper.
S discards Greed.
S plays a Cursed Village.
S draws a Province and a Tormentor.
S plays a Tormentor.
S takes Greed.
t receives Greed
t gains a Copper.
S discards Greed.
S plays a Cursed Village.
S draws a Copper and a Province.
S plays a Will-o'-wisp.
S shuffles their deck.
S draws a Silver.
S reveals a Goat.
S puts a Goat into their hand.
S plays a Copper, a Pouch, a Silver and a Gold.
S buys and gains 2 Provinces.


Thanks a lot to tracer for organizing an excellent tournament, and congratulations to the Noctournament Champion, tufftaeh!

225
Puzzles and Challenges / Interesting Donate Board
« on: December 25, 2017, 01:30:25 am »
I rolled this board today, and after discussing it on Discord it seems like a good challenge to put here. How quickly can you win?

Here's the kingdom if you want to try it online: Develop, Storeroom, Bridge, Rats, Sacrifice, Bandit, Hunting Party, Wine Merchant, Altar, King's Court, Alms, Donate (also require Colonies and Shelters)



Here's the best we can do (pretty sure it's best possible): We can get a guaranteed win in Turn 7 from any starting hand.

And here's how:
For a 5/2 start: 1) Donate to 3 Copper, 2) Pay off Debt, 3) Alms for a Bridge, 4) Play Bridge, Alms for a Wine Merchant, 5) Play Wine Merchant and buy King's Court, 6) King's Court the Bridge, Alms for another King's Court, buy two Bridges, and Donate the Coppers away, 7) KC-KC-Bridge-Bridge-Bridge and buy the Province pile (plus a Colony and a Duchy if you want).
For any other start: 1) Alms for a Bridge, 2) Donate to Bridge + 3 Coppers, 3) Pay off Debt, 4-7) Same as above.

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