Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Topics - Davio

Filter to certain boards:

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 ... 8
76
Puzzles and Challenges / Maximum Hand Size Before Turn Start
« on: September 05, 2012, 04:03:20 am »
I can't remember exactly whether this has been done before, but with DA every puzzle deserves to be looked at again.

Anyway, what is the maximum hand size a player can have before he or she starts his or her own turn.
Please note that duration cards and a card like Horse Traders act at the beginning (after the start) of a player's turn and thus do not count.

My current best: 167

I don't know the Possession-Outpost combo in full detail and if something like that gives you infinite cards, please disregard Possession.
In fact, just don't use Possession, it's messy.

77
Dominion World Masters / Dutch Dominion Championship 2012 Report
« on: September 02, 2012, 12:23:06 pm »
Short version: I won.

Long version starts here.

Disclaimer: I may not have been the best player in the room today (which was probably -Stef-), nor the most lucky (don't know who that was), but I had a pretty good combination of both.

My day started at about 8 AM. As I will tell anyone who will listen, I am the proud father of a young baby boy called Noah (not because of the ark, but we like the name) who is now 2 weeks old. So you can imagine it's been a while ago since I had a good night's sleep and these convention days can be very exhausting. But as I took a shower I remembered the fun I had last year and decided to go and if I would be out of the tournament quickly and get too tired, I would just go home.

I fired up my trusty steed (a Citroën Xsara), pulled out the navigation kit and entered the address. I was a bit sleepy still and took a wrong exit and ended up in Rotterdam instead of The Hague. Luckily, my navigation corrected me and sent me back the right way. Finally I had arrived at my destination, but I couldn't find any sign of the convention. I looked at the streetname: Colensenstraat. Doh! I had punched in the wrong street name as I had to go the Colijnplein! At this point it was already a couple of minutes since the registration had "closed" so I hoped I could still make it on time and that they would go easy on the people who were late.

Miraculously, the right address was only ~10 minutes from my current address, it could have been the other end of the city and cost more than 20 minutes. I turned up at 10.45, got a stamp and reported to the tournament officials. Pfew, I was still on time.

At this point I had no idea whether Stef or Geronimoo would be there, but I thought that they might as I knew Stef was Dutch and would probably like to grab this title.

There were 46 entrants with fourteen tables of 3 and one of 4.

I will now start going through the matches and try to remember the cards, but I have forgotten some.

Time for round #1: Base only
Setup: Chapel, Library, Thief, Militia, Council Room, Market, Gardens, Moat, Smithy, Feast

As you can see, I've already forgotten some cards, but it was base game only, so let's say Mine was also in there. I had seat #2 and my opponent opened with Chapel. I had 3 and chose Silver. I often take Chapel, maybe too often, but I let it go here. Don't know exactly why, but it was the first game and I was rusty with 3p. Hadn't really practiced before the tourney as I wasn't really sure that I would go. Seat #3 took Library or Chapel, don't know which order but they both ended up with Chapel/Library and I had Militia/Silver.

Militia, so so with Library as a nice counter, but it would be useful if I could cut down on their Chapel hands. So the #1 seat continued Chapeling and Librarying and broke his deck down to the bare essentials pretty fast. In an effort to make him stall I took a Thief on the first reshuffle, but it was a dubious buy and netted me only 2 Silvers. The Chapeled guy just showed Coppers, I hit none of his crucial Golds.

I was struggling, but crawled my way to 2nd place by buying the last Province, before seat #3 could.

Gardens was not really an option here, I think.

Last year I started with a win and now I had just a 2nd, so I knew I pretty much had to win the other matches to go through to the semis.


Game #2: Intrigue only
Setup: Swindler, Torturer, Nobles, Saboteur, Masquerade, Secret Chamber, Courtyard, Steward, Bridge, Great Hall

Torturer always stands out, but you have to look for support, otherwise it's not as game warping as usual. I thought Nobles would be way too expensive to use as a village for a Torturer chain. I opened Masq/Silver and bought another Masq and basically just money. Masq is a nice soft counter to Torturer and everytime my right neighbor played Torturer, I was lucky enough to have Masq in hand.

Swindler is okay in the beginning, but I thought double Masq would be able to counter Swindler nicely and it worked out.

In the end, I won this one pretty easily.


Game #3: Base + Intrigue
Setup: Adventurer, Throne Room, Bridge, Laboratory, Militia, Library, Masquerade, Shanty Town, Trading Post, Steward

The setup for this game had been sent out a couple of weeks before the tournament and in the mail it said that Donald X. had also used this setup for GenCon. We could all practice at home and give it our best in the tournament.

I had not practiced at home. I pit some BM+X's together in Geronimoo's simulator, but that was it.

Sitting down at the table and looking at the cards I thought: "There's got to be an engine here." I decided to go for broke and build it. I opened Shanty Town/Masq to clear out some stuff and my opponents didn't go heavy on the Militias and played some money decks.

I ended up with 6 Bridges, a bunch of Labs and Throne Rooms. In my last turn I had started with TR-TR-Lab in hand after a Militia and ended with a TR-Bridge and all of my other Bridges in play for -$7 to costs and 8 buys. I took the last 5 Provinces and 3 Duchies for a high scoring final turn.

My opponents' jaws almost dropped to the floor as I completed my megaturn.


Now I had to await my fate. Three straight wins would have gotten me in the semis for sure, but you never know with 2 wins and a 2nd. Luckily, I went through.



At this point I peeked at the tournament official's screen and saw -Stef-'s name. So I asked them: "Which one is Stef?" "The guy in the black-and-white striped shirt", they said, but he was away for the moment. When he finally showed up, I introduced myself and also met Geronimoo who tagged along with Stef to write an article for his blog or these forums.

As you would expect they're both really nice guys and it's always fun to meet the faces behind the name. When you're playing a random guy over the internet, you don't have a clue who you're actually playing. And in your mind a highly rated guy like Stef is like a monster pouncing on innocent BMU newbies. In actuality, as I said, he's a nice guy and I'm honored and happy I could meet him. Geronimoo likewise. I had already missed him last year, so finally we got a chance to shake hands. Too bad the Belgians couldn't compete this year. I also met Dubdubdub who was a real jerk! Just kidding, also a nice guy of course.

In the semis I met ArjanB and his girlfriend Loes. Loes had three wins under her belt, so she would be a fierce opponent for sure.


Semis: Base + Seaside
Setup: Chapel, Festival, Smithy, Library, Caravan, Lighthouse, Moneylender, Remodel, Laboratory

I was lucky enough to open 5/2 here and chose Festival/Chapel. ArjanB did the same and Loes had 4/3 and chose Chapel/Caravan. Festival/Library seems like an obvious strategy here, but I ended up with Festivals and Smithies, but that's just because I often drew the right amount to take the Smithy with something else and taking the Library would have meant taking a Silver I didn't want.

I had a fortunate start with Chapel on T3 with CCCE and Festival+4C for Gold on T4. Loes was not so fortunate as she trashed 4 Coppers. ArjanB's deck never really got going, that happens sometimes.

I didn't trash as aggressively as I usually do with Chapel, since I felt I could always trash those Coppers later. With a deck that draws itself pretty reliably an extra Copper isn't going to hurt and I could use them to buy more components for my engine.

I ended up with exactly 6 Provinces for 36 VP, on to the finals!


Final: Base + Seaside
Setup: Workshop, Gardens, the rest doesn't matter

It was me, Stef and a guy named Stephan or Stefan Steven in the finals. The cards were drawn randomly and Workshop came out first and I remember saying "you'll see Gardens will be in there" and then it happened. What was to be the epitome of a battle of wits between the best players (and I think we three were certainly among the best if not that) turned out to be a boring three way Workshop/Gardens mirror. Geronimoo who was keeping up with the action for his blog and sitting next to me could have probably put his laptop with his simulator on my chair and it would have played the same.

The finesse is in the details in these kinds of games and at some point I had 2 Workshops and my hand was Workshop+4C. I decided to go for a third Workshop and a Gardens instead of 2 Workshops or 2 Gardens. I think 3 is enough and you have to try to win the split. Later I found myself with $3 and where I had taken an Estate earlier I chose a Silver this time. It payed off in a $5 hand which allowed me to grab a Duchy. Stefan also grabbed a lucky Duchy so we both ended up with 18 points.
Stef was unfortunate this game and ended with 15 points.

Our tie meant we had to play an extra game heads-up for the trophy and it would be a lot more interesting!


Final: Part Two
Setup: Native Village, Library, Sea Hag, Salvager, Moat, Smugglers, Embargo, Market, Remodel, Moneylender

I opened Sea Hag which I think is the default move heads-up even with Moat. To my surprise my opponent opened Salvager. With Sea Hag games, a card like Native Village is more interesting because of all the junk. NV is a card I rarely buy on Iso, no particular reason why I do it, I know it can be good, but I just have to find a really good reason to get it or I won't. In this case, I could see its potential, especially with Library. On one hand I had Salvager-Silver-3C and options. Salvage the Silver, get a Gold? I Salvaged a Copper and got 2 NVs. I only got one Library because I had $6 or $4 more often than $5 and for $6 I really wanted Golds.

On my last turn I Salvaged a Gold to pick up the last Province and as I had 5 Provinces, my opponent kindly told me I had won. Hooray!

I was so happy of course!


Parting Thoughts

Does a tournament with a structure like this always crown the best player? Probably not, but I'd like to think I played well enough to have a shot at least and it paid off in the end.

I tried to go about things my way and if that wasn't good enough, well, someone else had to prove it to me by beating me. In the final game I said "what would Stef do?" but I didn't try to emulate Stef, I wanted to play as well as I could with my own game plan and it proved sufficient to beat my opponent in that decisive match.

I felt kind of bad for Stef that he went out on such a lame board and felt kind of dirty opening Workshop/Workshop, but what are you going to do?

Whoever organizes the tournament gets to choose the rules and if you don't like them, don't compete. I would have liked it better if they had predetermined sets for the semis and final. They got one from Donald X. for round 3 of the regular matches so why not the semis and final? They didn't have to publish them ahead of schedule, but it could have made it more fair.

Special thanks goes out to my lovely wife who made it clear she didn't have a problem with me going.

I had a blast playing and it was even more fun winning and now I get to call myself Dutch Champion for a year! For whatever that's worth.  ;D

Hey, Theory, do I get a cool forum title now with a blue star?  :P

78
Variants and Fan Cards / A New Look on Cursed Gold
« on: August 31, 2012, 07:44:36 am »
As long as I can remember, fans have tried to create a X-Curse dual-type card and I think we've gotten to the conclusion that it doesn't work.

What will these cards cost? Can you gain them over regular Curses when an opponent plays a Witch? Too many weird stuff, too little advantages.

With Dark Ages out, I'd like to take a new look on Cursed Gold, but not as a dual-type, but as a (self-)Curser.

How is this for a start?


Cursed Gold
Treasure - $5


$3

When you gain this, gain a Curse.
When you trash this, each other player gains a Curse.


I really like the DA on-trash abilities and wonder if something like this is fitting for a card such as this.
Why would you want to trash it? You might be trashing it for a benefit anyway so handing out Curses is a nice little extra. The sad part is you can't Remodel it to a Province, but hey, you can still Expand it. And you could alway Remodel it to a regular Gold if you wanted to.

79
Dominion General Discussion / Advanced Kingdom Selection
« on: August 30, 2012, 03:45:44 pm »
I have this idea in my head to create an advanced kingdom selector.
I doubt whether I'll actually make one, because I'm very good on starting new things and very bad on completing them, but it might make a fun experiment.

There are purists among us who say "Every Dominion kingdom should be random!". Well, I'm not a purist and I'm not entirely on the other side, so I don't really care.

To me, a kingdom should be interesting. It should provide multiple options. The plethora of ways one could go about a kingdom were what sucked me in when I started playing. It's fun to discover new things! I'd rather succeed greatly or fail horribly with a Rube Goldberg engine than toss a coin on an uninteresting mirror board.

I actually feel kind of bad when I fire up my Torturer chain or play my 7 Hunting Parties + 1 Terminal over and over and over and over. These games are not fun.

So, in an effort to make kingdoms fun (and provide multiple roads to victory) I'd like to see if we can find some partners for otherwise sad pandas.

Our mission: Remove dead cards from the kingdom!

There is no point in having a card in your kingdom that's never going to get bought, you might as well play with a stack of napkins. It is an inevitable aspect of having so many cards to choose from, but still...

A simple example is Tunnel, it has a reaction to discarding, so the obvious thing would be: If we select Tunnel from our random list, select a discarder, like ... (it's a long list).

We could even add weights to the list. Warehouse is a better discarder than Spy, so they could be given different weights. And maybe we don't want super obvious combos like this, so we could tweak it some. You have to watch out for the really dominant combos.

The point is that some cards need partners to be considered for a strategy and that's what we're trying to achieve, they should be at least considered by both players.

It could also be tuned for 3p and 4p (no Pirate Ship, Tom Vasel?).

We could also let users fill in their own preferences. Torturer likes villages combowise, but players don't necessarily like having Torturer always come with a village.

So the partnership doesn't have to be bidirectional per se. I mean, a card that reacts to attack cards is probably more useful with attack cards around than without them, exceptions noted. On the other hand, attack cards don't really need reaction cards.

At this point I'm pretty much at the end of what I came up with at this time, but I'd like for you guys to keep spitballing along and seeing where it goes.

80
Mini-Set Design Contest / My Challenge #12 Card: Thrift Shop (Ozu)
« on: August 28, 2012, 06:38:03 am »
This was my entry for challenge #12:

Thrift Shop / Ozu
$5 - Action


+1 Action

Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck.
Put 2 cards in your hand that do not share any type or subtype.
Discard the rest.

--
(Rule clarifications:  As always you try to do as much as you can. So if you reveal 3 Treasures, you can put 1 in hand and have to discard the others.)


So there was a lot of confusion, what is a subtype anyway? I designed this card with Dark Ages around the corner and feared there might be more funky types and subtypes in there, so I put this in. Afterwards, I think just "type" would have sufficed. What I meant was basically "don't share any words on the bottom" so with 2 Shelters you can only keep 1.

I thought about putting "you may" in there with the "put 2 in your hand", but I didn't want to put an unnecessary "you may" in for no good reason. But I guess it doesn't sit well with a lot of people if they often can't do what the card says., so in hindsight "you may" might have been better here.

I liked this card, but hey, I designed it!
But the comments were like "often you have to discard a good card and this is frustrating".

I look at this another way: You can always keep the best of the three cards, this is great! So even if you draw "Gold-Copper-Copper" you can keep a Gold and cycle those Coppers. And this brings me to another point: there's a small cycling effect going on here. You always cycle at least one and sometimes two cards. No, it's no Warehouse, but I think it's useful.

The obvious thing to do is to compare it to Lab. Lab draws 2 blind cards, this draws at least 1 good card  , but not more than one unless they are of a different type. So it's not that great in pure action engines but I thought it would be good enough in mixed decks with maybe a couple of terminals and a couple of treasure cards. The hard part was to not make it strictly better than Lab.

What do you guys think? Would this card be better with "reveal 4" or something?

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with 10th place! But I'd just like to know what you guys think.

81
Rules Questions / Counterfeit Questions
« on: August 16, 2012, 04:55:12 pm »
So how does Counterfeit interact with Horn of Plenty when gaining a Victory card?

HoP wants to trash itself due to gaining a VP card.
But Counterfeit just wants to play it again and only then trash it.

If we look at TR+Feast, TR plays the card twice even though you can only trash it once, so it gets two $5 cards.
TR+Mining Village gets $2 one time when you trash it, but +2 Actions, +1 Card twice.

Can we assume that this is the same as Feast and that it's some super sneaky way to get even more Provinces with it?

82
Puzzles and Challenges / Oh noes, Something is missing again!
« on: August 15, 2012, 06:45:44 am »
Scooby and Shaggy are on the hunt!

They have found the following cards so far:
Bureaucrat
Moneylender
Transmute
Talisman
Counting House
Goons
Cartographer

But oh noes! There's still a card missing!
What is it?

Disclaimer: There may be more than one card missing due to a mistake on my part.  :)
PS: This is pretty hard and hints will surely follow if no one gets it.

83
I wanted to make my 100th topic something special.

What follows is the History of Dominion, Isotropic and Funsockets in Dominion Card Images (as told by me).
The text and names of the cards have nothing to do with the story, focus on the images.

In the beginning there was this guy named Donald. He thought: "Well I'm no cartoon character!", added an X. to his name and declared himself God.


He invented a great game called Dominion where you would own your own kingdom and slowly but surely expand it to make your neighbours jealous. You can see him hard at work here:

He's already got the first letter!

After a while most players discovered the awesomeness that is Chapel and an epidemic was spreading: the EDIS-virus, EDIS standing for "Everyday I'm Shuffling".

Here you can see a victim who's recovering in the fresh air of the Alps, just look what shuffling did to his hand:


So people did what they always do in these modern times, they took to the internet! And BSW was kind enough to offer players the opportunity to play for free. All was well.

Come one, come all!


Soon enough, the best players found themselves without friends yet again and without cards. A lot of cards hadn't been implemented on BSW so a crazy scientist had a vision, came forward and declared: "I will create my own Dominion website!" This madman we now know as DougZ.


Programming your own Dominion server takes a lot of time and, apparently, Potions.

What a great website thought Theory and Rrenaud and they created a forum and statistics site to go with it.

I'll let you decide who's who.

Isotropic, as the site was called, was thriving and a lot of good, average and horrible players could be found there.

Players from all regions enjoy a thriving Isotropic.

It even had a leaderboard for all the alpha males (and women).

Way in the back you can see jonts26 on his throne.

But behind the scenes the mighty distributors of Dominion thought: Why aren't we making more money?
They looked in their treasure cave and thought it rather empty.


So they decided to do something about all this freedom.

We shall create our own version -evil laugh-


Jay says: Here, go program something.

A year goes by without anything of interest happening and suddenly the announcement came: Funsockets beta is now open.
The community could hardly contain itself so anxious were they to get into the beta, but it was only available to an elite few.

"The password to the beta?" "I know it, it's `WW`" "Which one? Don't know, you've got me there."

Soon the elitists realized: "Wait a minute, this isn't Isotropic, I must be lost, where are all the good things from Isotropic?"


The angry voices got even louder when it was announced that the Funsockets version would go live in a few days and Iso would be closing down.

Noooooooooooooooooooo!!! It's not ready yet!

What will the future have in store for us?


I guess it will either be:

Shut up and take my money!

Or...

Anybody home?

84
Puzzles and Challenges / The New Golden Deck Puzzle
« on: August 13, 2012, 09:53:12 am »
Graverobber is an interesting new card in that it allows Bishop to gain an infinite amount of points by trashing cards every turn and gaining the cards back from the trash.

Here's my question for you: What is the maximum number of points that you can gain per turn (indefinitely) by using this Bishop + Graverobber trick?
  • You are playing solitaire
  • You can handpick your starting deck and hand
  • You're not allowed to buy/gain any cards other than those that have been trashed by you this turn
  • Even though you are playing solitaire you can not leave cards in the trash to pick up later
  • You should be able to repeat the same turn indefinitely
  • Deck size is unlimited (only limited by availability of a legal setup)
Basically, the solution should be: Trash a couple of cards for X VP, get the cards back with Graverobber, be able to set up the exact same situation for your next turn.

Normal mode: No Durations
Insane mode: Durations

Simple example:
Village-Bishop-Graverobber, Adventurer
Play Village, play Bishop to trash Adventurer for 4VP, play Graverobber to get Adventurer from the trash pile.
Rinse and repeat.

85
Goko Dominion Online / Funsockets Payment Model
« on: August 13, 2012, 09:42:09 am »
What do you guys think about the payment model they are going to use for online Dominion?

Apparently you get to play the base game for free, but you have to pay for the expansions.
I have searched for topics with solid info on this, but didn't find a topic devoted to this aspect, so if anyone has some quotes or valid sources, that would be fantastic.

I'm a fan of just paying a one time fee for everything that's available (from base to Dark Ages) and what's going to come next (Guilds). The other option is of course a monthly or even annual fee and the last option is to charge for extras like the expansions.

What's your preferred payment option and how much would you be willing to pay?
  • One-time fee, up to ... $*
  • Monthly / Annual fee, up to ... $* per month/year
  • Free base game with up to ... $* for big expansions (Intrigue, Seaside, Prosperity, Hinterlands, Dark Ages) and up to ... $* for small expansions (Alchemy, Cornucopia, Promos)

* Fill in what you think is fair


Please keep in mind that I would like to know this info about a solid, finished and well polished version of the product and please don't be too judgmental about the current state of the beta. In fact, forget about the beta for a moment.

Just think to yourself: A good online version of Dominion is worth X to me and I would like to pay in form Y.

86
Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Previews Done?
« on: August 13, 2012, 09:03:25 am »
Are the 5 Preview sets all we're going to get?

I thought they might continue after the weekend, but I guess not.
Has anything official been said about the number of previews and when they would appear?

87
Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / The New Golden Deck
« on: August 11, 2012, 06:51:53 am »
I was wondering if something like this would be practical:

Any Village-Bishop-Graverobber, $6 card

You just play Village, Bishop the $6 card for 1+3 = 4 VP and play Graverobber to get it back.
With this combo it's possible to score unlimited points at 4 points a pop. In comparison, it takes 4 Monument plays to get 4 VP.

You could of course expand on this with a crazy KC-scheme combo, it might make a nice puzzle, how many points can you gain per turn indefinitely with Bishop-Graverobber?

But the question is: Is this a new golden deck that we might see?

88
Dominion Isotropic / Isotropic Farewell Topic
« on: August 10, 2012, 04:23:09 pm »
As we now know that Iso will be closing down on or before August 16th when the Goko version launches I would like all of us to take a moment and say farewell to Iso.

Being a software programmer myself I understand how hard it is to create a decent product and Dougz came through with flying colors time and time again. And he hosted it himself in his basement! Thousands of players, thousands of games and the downtime was minimal.

I salute you, Dougz, Isotropic has provided a lot of fun and frustration, it was an amazing feat of spare time programming.

Hurray, hurray, hurray!

89
Game Reports / Finally a game where Spy and Scout were key!
« on: August 10, 2012, 02:08:18 pm »

90
Mini-Set Design Contest / My Challenge #5 Card: Seer (Laurel)
« on: July 27, 2012, 03:53:30 pm »
This was my entry for challenge #5 and it got ranked quite low.

Seer / Laurel
$5 - Action

Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Discard any number of them. Put the rest back on top in any order.
+1 Card for every card discarded.

I'm not upset about its ranking, because, well, I only spent a few minutes talking about it.
But I would like to know why you guys think it's a good or bad card. Is the price too high?

I thought it would be strictly better than Smithy which draws 3 blind cards. If you discard 4, you then draw 4 blind cards and this cycles 8 cards!!!

I did think I had a nice mechanic and a nice card, so please tell me what you think.

Why is it horrible? Why is it overpowered? Or was it just too boring?

91
Game Reports / Fortune Teller/Familiar?
« on: July 26, 2012, 10:01:08 am »
So I recently played a Province game where Golem, Familiar and Philosopher's Stone were all nice Potion targets.

My opponent went first and opened Potion/Silver.
I, realizing that I wouldn't have many terminals in the beginning anyway, opened with Potion/Fortune Teller.

I thought that the disadvantage of cycling Curses into his deck would be bigger than the positive advantage from the usual cycling that he would get. Any thoughts about this?

As it turned out, he ended up with 6 Curses to my 1 by turn 10 and resigned after I had played 3 Familiars that turn.
I also hit an early Apprentice which sped my development.

92
Dominion General Discussion / A Discussion about Cutpurse
« on: July 26, 2012, 07:04:03 am »
Cutpurse is a card I may open with if it's going to be one of very few terminals, like in a money-based deck with, say, Hoard and Harem. Those decks where you would even consider getting a Chancellor.

Donald X. says this in the secret history about Cutpurse:
Quote from: Donald X.
Cutpurse: This started out as "Cards cost $1 less this turn, then $1 more until your next turn." That doesn't have the same timing as the other duration cards - it goes away at the end of the previous player's turn, rather than at the end of your turn. The developers didn't like that. I replaced it with "+$2, name a treasure card, each other player discards it." That was quite strong. You don't have to discard Gold very many times before you're sick of it. I reined it in by having it only hit Copper. It's still quite annoying if multiples get played against you early on.

Okay, so Cutpurse is too strong if the attacker can choose the Treasure to discard.

But what about simply: Each other player discards a Treasure card (or reveals his hand with no Treasure).

I don't think it would immediately boost the card to the higher $5 echelons, but it may lift it from the lower $4 regions to the mid or even high region. I wonder why the card wasn't designed this way and focused on Copper instead. Most of the times, the opponents would discard a Copper anyway.

Would a modification like this break the card or make it just slightly better?

93
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Diplomacy: Game Over!
« on: July 24, 2012, 02:16:41 pm »
Hi there, Diplomats!

Welcome to play-by-forum Diplomacy.
Remember: Only the main players should post in this topic.

I have drawn your countries and they are as follows.
Austria-Hungary: Theorel
England: cayvie
France: Robz888
Germany: Galzria
Italy: Grujah
Russia: jotheonah
Turkey: shraeye <--- WINNER

The starting situation can be seen on the attached screenshot.
I have also attached the jDip file.

Deadline Rules
  • Submitting moves is done by a PM to me, specify the current season and your country in the subject, e.g. "Diplomacy Spring 1901 Moves for England"
  • Submit your Spring Moves by Friday 19:00 Central European Summer Time (CEST)
  • If needed, you will get a day for retreats, until Saturday 19:00
  • Submit your Fall Moves by Monday 19:00 CEST
  • If needed, you will get a day for retreats first, followed by builds, that is until Tuesday 19:00

Syntax Rules
  • Use the official abbreviations in your orders or specify the full name, i.e. the abbreviation for North Sea is Nth and not Nor, so be careful
  • A move order is specified as: A/F StartingRegion - EndRegion. i.e. F Edi - Nwg for a move of a fleet from Edinburgh to the Norwegian Sea, or A Mun - Bur for a move of an army from Munich to Burgundy
  • A hold order is simply specified as: A/F Region H(olds), so A Mun H or A Mun Holds
  • A support order is written as: A/F Region S -Full order it supports-, so if you support a move, you need to list the entire move. Example: F Hol S F Eng - Nth, a fleet in Holland supports the moving of a fleet from the English Channel to the North Sea. Example 2: A Mun S A Bur H, an army in Munich supports the Hold order of an army in Burgundy
  • A convoy order is written as: F Region C -Army move it convoys-, example: F Nth C A Edi - Nor, A fleet in the North Sea convoys an army from Edinburgh to Norway. When using multiple fleets in a convoy, each fleet needs to specify this order

Gameplay Rules
  • Moves that are incorrect or too late will be forfeit and they will default to Hold orders
  • If you don't specify a retreat on time, I will pick the most logical one
  • If you don't specify a build, you won't get one!
  • Once I have entered all of your moves, I will show the moves as an image and the results both as text output and as an image
  • I will update the topic title accordingly to remind you in which season we are

Other Rules
  • Have fun!
  • Trust everybody, but prepare to be backstabbed
  • Please respect the fact that only main players and the GM(s) can post in this topic, if you would like to discuss this game, use the general topic, found here
I will expect your first moves by Friday 19:00 CEST!

Good hunting, everybody!

94
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Diplomacy
« on: July 23, 2012, 03:46:47 pm »


Hey guys,

I am currently hosting a play-by-email Diplomacy game for my friends. It's great fun and I didn't think it would be such a success, but anytime we are all together this is what everyone is talking about. Seeing the game map as a desktop background or on a smart phone makes me giggle. Emails have been flying everywhere. "Let's get Bill! Let's get John!" etc..

I am playing England and are seriously trying to hold off France as long as I can, while fearing the inevitable backstab.

I wonder if any of you would be interested in a play-by-forum game hosted by me.

General details, not yet set in stone:
  • 2 seasons (= 1 year) per week
  • It will be a standard game with positions drawn from my imaginary bag (online randomizer)
  • I will be using an offline Judge program called jDip to enter and resolve all the moves
  • Experience with Diplomacy will be useful, but it's not required, just make sure you know the rules

What I need is basically 7 people willing to play. I will close the subscription by Tuesday 24th 19:00 Central European Daylight Savings Time, about a day from now. If we don't reach 7 players by tomorrow, I won't organize it, but if we are at something like 6, I might extend the deadline. If we get more than 7 players, the winners will be drawn from my magical bag.

So if this seems like fun to you, just post that you're willing to play and you're (almost) in!

Also, I might need an assistant to take over from me once our firstborn child arrives (in 3 weeks or so). I have no idea what life is going to be like then, so it would be good if someone could continue the game without me worrying about it. Then again, it might be nice for me to do something else than feed the baby, just have to see how it goes.

Links

95
Game Reports / Your Favorite In-Turn Combos and Tactics
« on: July 23, 2012, 05:55:37 am »
Dominion is not entirely about "what to buy/gain". It's true a lot of games are like that where you can play your turns on semi-autopilot and only have to think during the buy phase. Luckily, not all games are like that.

Sometimes, during a long turn, you can combine some of the cards in a variety of different and fun ways. Trash for benefits are nice catalysts here especially when they combine with topdeckers, but other such nifty combo's exist.

Did you play a fun combo where you thought: "I'm striking at the core of Dominion here, combining these cards in a beautiful way, it's almost like a symphony." I'm talking about specific (parts of) turns here, not an overall strategy like: "Hey, Ironworks/Gardens is a combo." This is about tactics.

Here's an example of mine to get things going:
Code: [Select]
— Your turn 12 —
You play a Highway.
... All costs are reduced by $1.
You play a Highway.
... All costs are reduced by $1.
You play a Highway.
... All costs are reduced by $1.
You play a Highway.
... All costs are reduced by $1.
You play a Remake.
... You trash a Menagerie.
... You gain a Highway.
... ... You reveal a Watchtower.
... ... You put the Highway on your deck.
... You trash a Menagerie.
... You gain a Highway.
... ... You reveal a Watchtower.
... ... You put the Highway on your deck.
You play a Watchtower.
... You draw 2 Highways and 2 Woodcutters.
You play a Highway.
... All costs are reduced by $1.
You play a Highway.
... All costs are reduced by $1.
You play a Woodcutter.
... You get +1 buy and +$2.
You play a Woodcutter.
... You get +1 buy and +$2.
You buy a Province.
You buy a Province.
You buy a Province.

So I play a couple of Highways to bring Highways down to $1 and Menageries to $0. I Remake two Menageries into two more Highways and put them on top with Watchtower. Then I use that same Watchtower to draw the Highways along with a couple of Woodcutters. The versatility of Watchtower shows here.

It was a Fishing Village/Watchtower/Library based engine. My opponent didn't have the Watchtower, only a Library. I won't go as far as saying that the Watchtower was the reason I won the game, but being able to both topdeck and draw with it in the same turn is a thing of beauty. I stripped out the FV and Library plays from the log, because they're not that interesting.

96
Puzzles and Challenges / Guaranteed Delayed Provinces
« on: July 20, 2012, 03:09:36 am »
In a solitaire Province game, starting with a custom 5 card deck that you pick, find a way to be sure that you can buy a single Province on both your next turn and the turn after that, but you shouldn't be able to buy one this turn.

To clarify, starting with something like KC-KC-Bridge-Bridge-Bridge doesn't qualify because you could play them this turn and buy a bunch of Provinces. You should not be able to produce more than 7$ this turn or gain a Province in any other way.

Limitations:
- No mats (TR, PS)
- Assume horrible shuffle luck

I wonder what creative solutions you guys can come up with.

I started this challenge, because I had one particular solution in mind and I wonder who will be first to find it. There's also quite an easy solution that someone's sure to find pretty soon...

97
Dominion General Discussion / Bad Beat Thread
« on: July 17, 2012, 04:37:47 am »
Dump all of your rage in this thread, instead of on the poor beginners on Isotropic.
They can't help it that the universe is taking a dump on you.

I want to know who has stolen all of my luck, someone must be getting all the right shuffles, because I'm not getting them.

For example: I have a couple of Cities, opponent empties 2nd pile, Cities are at the bottom of my deck, not only missing a reshuffle, but I draw them with Young Witch. I guess I could have let them there and not play YW (it gave a Curse though), but man, come on!

98
Dominion Articles / Possible Combo: Scrying Pool - Secret Chamber
« on: July 13, 2012, 06:01:24 am »


I recently played a game where these two cards appeared together, they formed an interesting combo.

It's not a straightforward combo as many of the other combos that have been posted are, because it needs some support to set it up. But when the support is there, it's really fun to play.

The main trick of the combo is: Discard all of your action cards with Secret Chamber (SC) and use Scrying Pool to draw them again. You can repeat this process as long as you have actions, SC's and SP's remaining. Vault can work also, but it's more expensive and lets your opponent possibly benefit as well.

First and foremost you need a Village. SC is a terminal. Villages enable you to play more SC's and they serve as extra draw cantrips when you get them off a SP chain. Border Village is a nice target as you can grab an extra Action card with it. The SC->SP trick only works when you're able to draw your entire deck otherwise you're not guaranteed to draw everything off your 2nd or 3rd SP. This means heavy trashing and/or draw assistance like Lab.

Then there's the +Buy. It's fun to generate tons of money, but you need Buys to spend them. Something like Worker's Village can help here as it provides both the Village and the +Buy component. +Buys also help when gaining Scrying Pools early with cheap action cards like Pawn and Hamlet.

All in all it's an interesting combo, but not one you're likely to come across often, because of the needed support. Still, it's always fun to let a bad card like Secret Chamber have its moment of glory.

99
Dominion General Discussion / Minimum Requirements for Fool's Gold
« on: July 06, 2012, 03:31:33 am »
What's the minimum requirement that makes you consider going for Fool's Gold?

Do you need at least a +Buy to both get them faster and get more out of them?
Do you need a trasher to get more of them together or a drawer?

100
Variants and Fan Cards / Treasure Card: Tax
« on: July 05, 2012, 05:53:42 am »
I had this funky idea for a card.
I don't really play with fan cards myself, but sometimes I get crazy ideas in my head and I need to get them out so that maybe some other players will like them and play with them.

I think the name Tax may have been used a couple of times before, but I can't come up with anything better.

Tax: $5
Treasure

$1

When you play this, choose one: +$1 for every card that has been gained by a player this turn; or gain a card costing up to $3.


Explanation
It doesn't matter who gained the cards. If you had played a Mountebank in a 4p game and dealt out 3 Curses and 3 Coppers, this card would be worth $7. Hell yeah, it scales hard in multiplayer games with Cursers, but I don't think that breaks the card necessarily; you still need to draw it in the same hand as the Mountebank if you want that combo and you need a +Buy to make full use of it. You could also for instance buy/gain a Cache first and with your regular buy/extra buy and have $3 more to spend. The card needs to self-synergize a bit to not make it worthless in games without gains or +Buys, that's why I added the Workshop-type action. I'm not too good with prices, so if this needs to be $6, it could be $6. It's just that a couple of alternative treasures are at the $5 point too.

Even if no one had gained anything, it would still be at least a Copper.

When you have both this and Horn of Plenty, you can just choose which you want to play first. If you pick HoP you get an extra $ for this card. Or you could gain a card costing more with HoP if you play this first.

I like having it as a Treasure instead of an action so you can always play it. That's why I made it gain only cards that are $3 or less where the cheap villages and cantrips are, so it couldn't be abused that hard.

What do you guys think?

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 ... 8

Page created in 0.197 seconds with 16 queries.