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626

Game Reports / Re: Stupidest game I have ever played...

« on: April 19, 2012, 06:01:00 pm »

or you could use it to grab copper.  i've heard WW say before that copper is useful to have in duchy/duke games .

Only if you've run out the silver or have less than $3. Unless you're playing Counting House and have extra buys.

627

Game Reports / Re: Great Lookout moment

« on: April 19, 2012, 05:59:00 pm »

Yes, I did. Although Lighthouse was also in the game, and that's what gave me a poor curse split.

628

Game Reports / Great Lookout moment

« on: April 19, 2012, 04:43:12 pm »

Just had a game with Lookout and Familiar where I lost the curse split 6-4. Then, later in the game, I played Lookout and got this:


You play a Lookout.
... You get +1 action.
... You draw 3 Curses.
... You trash a Curse.
... You discard a Curse.
... You put the remaining Curse on top of your deck.

Here is the game log:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/19/game-20120419-134009-6f46a968.html

That was my turn 26. The text I posted came from the game as it was happening, so it shows that I drew 3 Curses rather than just 3 cards.

629

Dominion Articles / Re: When is Pearl Diver (or spy) any good?

« on: April 17, 2012, 03:51:49 pm »

So, what I'm getting from this is that they're both useful as support for other combos, but that you probably won't find a combo that hinges around Pearl Diver or Spy. Is that correct?

630

Dominion Articles / Re: Is develop REALLY that awful?

« on: April 16, 2012, 07:19:21 pm »

A Develop combo I saw once and really liked was developing a gold into a Duchy and Expand. The next turn, the Duchy can be expanded into a Province. (And then, when your Expand and Develop run into each other you develop the Expand into a Province and a Gold)

631

Dominion Articles / When is Pearl Diver (or spy) any good?

« on: April 16, 2012, 06:55:25 pm »

I was thinking about some cards which have a bit of a bad reputation and I was trying to think about which of those I've used successfully in some sort of combo. I've used Apothecary, Wishing Well and Coppersmith together and I've used both Secret Chamber and Oasis as part of a double-Tactitian engine, but I've never used Pearl Diver except to pick it up for lack of any other $2. It doesn't hurt your deck, but does it ever help your deck? And by extension, does Spy ever help your deck?

632

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Apothecary, Wishing Well, Coppersmith

« on: April 16, 2012, 06:10:56 pm »

I also played with this combo in a non-online game recently. This combo actually turns up in one of the "recommended sets of ten" for Alchemy with Intrigue (in the Alchemy rules). In that one, the only "village" is Nobles and the only source of plus buy is Baron.

Edit: The recommended set is the one entitled "Pools, Tools and Fools." The cards in it are: Apothecary, Apprentice, Golem, Scrying Pool, Baron, Coppersmith, Ironworks, Nobles, Trading Post and Wishing Well.

633

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Some cards my brothers and I came up with

« on: April 08, 2012, 10:48:31 am »

Yeah, I think that the main idea to get from these cards is really how much support you need to really use a plurality of buys and actions. Very rarely would you ever use two extra buys except maybe to buy copper for a Gardens or Goons deck. The +4 actions would be good only if you could reliably have a hand every turn with a slaves and some drawing power. Even with only one smithy in hand, if a single slaves were played first, a smithy could draw some strong cards to play. However, that would be if the deck were dense enough to be an engine. Smithy lends itself to Big Money much more than it does to engine decks except as drawing support.

634

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Some cards my brothers and I came up with

« on: April 07, 2012, 11:57:00 pm »

What I meant in terms of new ideas was basically a card providing one potion, cards providing 2 buys and then a card which provides way more actions than you need unless you have some sort of adequate drawing support. Although, there are some obvious correlations between my cards and existing cards. The observations about Secret Council, Grand Lab, Chainsaw and Storage facility are all very accurate and that's exactly how I named them. Maybe "Logger" or "logging corporation" would be a better name for chainsaw. I came up with some of the names just off the top of my head.

Like I said in my initial post, I haven't tried playing with any of these yet. So, I hadn't even really thought much about peon at all, especially multiples and tracking. I agree that it would have tracking issues, but I really hadn't thought about that one. (By the way, peon is quite obviously inspired by pawn.) I had also noticed the dangers of +2 buys, mostly in context of a Gardens or Goons strategy.

The motivation for Secret Society was Conspirator, and so the idea that it would act a lot like a Grand Market seemed natural to me. The idea was to create some sort of card which provided a potion. However, if this card is the only card in the game with potion in its cost, it still needs to be worth buying. So, the card needs to be powerful on its own. Grand Market and Conspirator are both quite powerful as cantrip silver so that's the ability I thought would work well. I had also noticed the comparison between Potion and Silver, although I thought of potion mostly as $2+ rather than strictly $2.5. That was not only motivation for cost, but also for the choice between $2 and a potion.

As pointed out, the Bull is basically a chapel. One interesting idea I had thought of was Bull as a defence against Torturer. You just take the curses, and then trash 5 cards, gaining a gold in hand. Another possibility with the Bull to emphasize its ability would be to make it cost 5 where it can only be opened with on a 5/2 split. However, then I think its ability would have to be stronger to make it worth getting. Just a thought.

635

Variants and Fan Cards / Some cards my brothers and I came up with

« on: April 07, 2012, 12:20:15 pm »

Here are just a few random and assorted cards my brothers and I came up with. We haven't playtested any of them, we've just thought about strategies and interactions. As you can probably tell from reading them, there is a strong emphasis among these on trying out ideas which don't appear on any existing cards. Feel free to share your thoughts.

Salesman $3 (maybe even just $2)
Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
+2 Buy

Bull in a china shop $4
Action
Trash as many cards as you like from your hand. If you trash 5 or more cards, gain a gold in hand.

Slaves $3
Action
+4 actions

Peon $4
Action-Duration
Choose two: +1 Card, +1 Action, +$1, +1 Buy. The choices must be different. At the start of your next turn, you get the other two.

Storage Facility$5
Action
+3 cards
+1 action
Discard two cards.

Chainsaw $5
Action
+$3
+2 Buys

Secret Council $5
Action
+3 cards
+2 buys

Grand Lab $6
+2 cards
+1 action
+$1
__________________
You can't buy this if you have any copper in play.

Secret Society$3 and a potion
+1 card
+1 action
Choose one: +$2, +1 potion.

636

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Rating the Expansions

« on: April 03, 2012, 05:17:59 pm »

Yeah. Do you have some sort of rating idea, your own opinions or a new category to rate expansions?

637

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Rating the Expansions

« on: April 01, 2012, 10:31:50 pm »

Tables, I like your thoughts on the ratings. That was a much more objective way than my off the top of my head answers.

WanderingWinder: If no one identified the inspiration for the topic, then you wouldn't know that the topic was based on a topic that had been inspired by a third topic. You'd just see it as a topic.

638

Dominion General Discussion / Rating the Expansions

« on: March 31, 2012, 06:05:52 pm »

This was inspired by the topic discussing the best expansion for a beginner to get after the base game. So, I think it would be interesting to see what people think about the expansions in each of the following categories on a scale of 1 to 10.

Complexity: (1 simple, 10 complex.) How complicated are the cards and their interactions? Is there a lot to keep track of?

Learning Curve: (1 learns easily, 10 takes several plays to understand cards) Do the cards lend themselves easily to learning? Would you use many of this expansions cards for someone's second game (After the recommended first game)?

Enjoyability: (1 miserable, 10 really fun) Do the cards in this expansion create fun situations or brutal slugfests where someone wants to quit? After playing with a bunch of cards from this expansion, do you want to play the expansion again or stop playing Dominion altogether?

Replay Value: (1 play once, 10 play forever) Do the cards have enough interactions that you can play with them again and again without adding more expansions? How quickly do you get sick of the expansion?

Balance: (1 weak and strong cards, 10 fairly balanced cards) Are there a lot of "power cards" in the game that overshadow the others? Are their some cards which never shine? Do some cards just take over if they're in play? Do some cards add in quite a bit of luck?

Personal preference: (1 I hate it, 10 I love it) Do you like this expansion?

Feel free to add your own categories and post your own ratings!!!


Here are my personal ratings:

Base Game: Complexity 4
Learning Curve 6
Enjoyability 8
Replay Value 7
Balance 9
Personal preference 9

Intrigue: Complexity 7
Learning Curve 8
Enjoyability 7 (Torturer, Saboteur and Swindler can really wreck games)
Replay Value 8
Balance 7
Personal preference 8

Seaside: Complexity 8
Learning Curve 8 (Quite a few new concepts)
Enjoyability 9
Replay Value 10
Balance 8 (A few game defining cards (Wharf, Ambassador, Sea hag, Ghost ship)
Personal preference 10

Alchemy: Complexity 8
Learning Curve 6
Enjoyability 8 (The only things which wreck it are poor luck with Familiar or Possession while your opponent gives you all the curses or takes all your province turns)
Replay Value 7
Balance 4 (Familiar and Possession can really mess stuff up)
Personal preference 7

Prosperity: Complexity 5
Learning Curve 7
Enjoyability 7
Replay Value 8 (lots of interactions between the power cards)
Balance 5 (Lots of power cards: KC, Grand Market, City, Goons, Peddler (if you have the buys). Games are often defined by their prosperity cards)
Personal preference 5 (I don't like all the power cards)

Cornucopia: Complexity 7
Learning Curve 6
Enjoyability 9
Replay Value 6 (Simply because its so small)
Balance 4 (Lots of power cards. I played a game with just Alchemy and Cornucopia. We all drew our entire decks multiple turns in a row.)
Personal preference 8

Hinterlands: Complexity 10
Learning Curve 8
Enjoyability 9
Replay Value 8 (Because of the complexity, it's fun to try cards again and again)
Balance 8 (I haven't played it much, but the only really powerful cards are Jack of All Trades, Highway and Haggler)
Personal preference 5 (I haven't played it enough to really appreciate it)

639

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Let's talk about - the most difficult card in Dominion

« on: March 30, 2012, 06:15:32 pm »

This was already touched on with the comment about Shanty Towns being like labs and the comment about using them in a non-terminal engine, but Shanty Town seems to me like you could build your deck around it and only it and draw a whole bunch of cards. Maybe. If you're lucky. And then, it would benefit, logistics of getting it aside, from Diadem. Unless you  have some sort of terminal in your deck. I think you'd want it to be non-drawing. Hey, maybe Mandarin could go here! But really, I haven't tried this at all.

Regarding Develop, it really just needs the board. My brother won a game (IRL) by using develop to increase his deck size and win with Gardens since it was the only card in the game increasing your number of cards. (No plus buys, no gain cards, a whole whack of trashers). In the same game, we noticed an interesting combo with Develop and Expand: Develop a Gold into a Duchy and an Expand, both of which are on top of your deck. Next turn, Expand the Duchy into a Province. (In this game, some of the golds were supplied by Upgrading, Remaking or Developing Upgrades. I told you there were a lot of trashers.) That being said, I don't think develop works much of the time.