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[DG]

We've got all the expansions out. We've had plenty of time to play with them. What do we think is the best designed Dominion card?

This doesn't have to be the most powerful. It can be the most elegant. The most fun. The most ingenious. The simplest. The most game changing. Anyone can bring their own ideas to the debate. Just to provoke some ideas, I'll suggest that farmland is a well designed card. Absolutely fit for purpose, simple to play, a unique effect, but perhaps not exciting enough for most people's tastes.

No variants please. Most people don't know the variants.

[mail-mi]

I really like develop. I don't really know why, but it's fun to find ways to use it really well.

And counterfeit.

[SirPeebles]

I like Menagerie a lot.  It isn't going to win the game for you on its own, but it has fun interactions with lots of cards and has the potential for a happy little boost without ever really backfiring.  It's also cheap enough that I can get it without agonizing much.

[Awaclus]

I'm going to say Count. It does a lot of things quite elegantly.

[BraveBear]

My vote would be for Fortress.

There were only a couple ways to look at trashing before fortress (TFB, gaining and trimming) but I keep finding new ways to use trashing when fortress is on the board.

A lot of these interactions are elegant e.g. Lookout, Mercenary engine, defense against governor, and the list goes on. 

[Jack Rudd]

I like City. It has an interesting decision attached (can I get these Cities active in time for them to make a difference?), has interesting timing issues (is it worth emptying a pile now to activate my Cities and run the risk of my opponent's getting the initiative by getting his off first?) and is wonderfully thematic.

[mustang255]

I personally really like Apprentice.

He's non-terminal trashing and drawing, that forces you to make interesting and game-changing decisions.

He can set up mega-turns, or just help you trim your deck. Almost every board benefits from having it in some way, and best of all, despite all these good things, it isn't even overpowered.

Kind of ironic that he comes from the worst set.

[Teproc]

<=

Double Tactician gets all the love because it's cool and stuff, but really the card in itself is great in that it highlights a major thing in Dominion strategy : wasting a turn to get a "double turn" is very powerful. Even if you're not abusing it, Tactician makes you feel like you're cheating, which is what I look for in a card of Dominion.

Menagerie and Apprentice are also great though.

[Polk5440]

Tactician is a great choice. The "it's better to have one great turn and one dud turn rather than two average turns" revelation was a great moment in my learning of the game.

[markusin]

<=

Double Tactician gets all the love because it's cool and stuff, but really the card in itself is great in that it highlights a major thing in Dominion strategy : wasting a turn to get a "double turn" is very powerful. Even if you're not abusing it, Tactician makes you feel like you're cheating, which is what I look for in a card of Dominion.

Menagerie and Apprentice are also great though.

I feel like most Alchemy cards make you feel like you're cheating, and yet they end up oddly balanced.

I'll second City as being a really neat card. It really makes you think about what the game will look like in the long term.

Personally, I really like the way Horse Traders plays out. It defends against attacks in a cool way, even benefitting from weak attacks like Spy. The on-play effect has all around good utility. Though the +buy seems to come from nowhere, the slog strategies that benefit fromnthe coin effect tend to like extra Copper.

And yeah, Tactician has a habit of making the seemingly impossible possible.

[silverspawn]

definitely menagerie. honorable mentions to watchtower and tactician

[TheMirrorMan]

I get back to base ... Chapel. It's elegant, simple, powerful and can be tricky at the same time (with Pirate Ship, thief, Rogue, Saboteur and the like). But there is rarely a board where you can "just skip it" and if it is on the board, you better look at it!

[scott_pilgrim]

Procession: it's the TfB card where the B is dependent on what the card does, and not just on its cost or type.  And it's just so hard to play well, and how (or whether) to play it varies enormously depending on the rest of the board.

[c4master]

At the moment, I think, "best designed" is likely to be Margrave because it does a lot of cool stuff, yet has a drawback, especially if you play several of them.

I'd also like to mention Watchtower is it really is what a good reaction card should be. It counters nearly every attack and is still useful if there are no attacks at all.

[Marcory]

Jack of All Trades--looks super-complicated, but is actually quite simple, and does so many powerful things (draw, curse/ruins trashing, economy-boosting) in a deceptively understated fashion.

[Moneymodel]

Monument. It's just two vanilla effects, but the VP chips weren't something we could expect only knowing the previous expansions, and the points can seriously amass in an engine

(Kind of cheating, but I also want to say Butcher, but in a totally different way. It takes the remodel concept and the coin tokens concept to create a really unique strategy with a lot of different options)

[Burning Skull]

*Scout joke*

[AdamH]

Jack, Tactician, and Embargo all get my vote. Which one do I think is the best designed? That's a tough call. Let's say Tactician with Embargo a close second.

Also, the fact that Chapel exists means that Dominion was well-designed. That's the answer to a different question but still interesting IMHO.

[SirPeebles]

Jack, Tactician, and Embargo all get my vote. Which one do I think is the best designed? That's a tough call. Let's say Tactician with Embargo a close second.

Also, the fact that Chapel exists means that Dominion was well-designed. That's the answer to a different question but still interesting IMHO.

So many of my fan card ideas slowly evolve into Embargo.

[shark_bait]

I love Embargo.  Nothing flashy, only $2, but it does a phenomenal job at impacting how players approach a Kingdom.

[silverspawn]

Jack, Tactician, and Embargo all get my vote. Which one do I think is the best designed? That's a tough call. Let's say Tactician with Embargo a close second.

Also, the fact that Chapel exists means that Dominion was well-designed. That's the answer to a different question but still interesting IMHO.

So many of my fan card ideas slowly evolve into Embargo.

so many of my ideas are menagerie variants

[cayvie]

Best designed card in a vacuum is a weird idea.

I vote for Copper, or maybe Estate.

[KingZog3]

Jack, Tactician, and Embargo all get my vote. Which one do I think is the best designed? That's a tough call. Let's say Tactician with Embargo a close second.

Also, the fact that Chapel exists means that Dominion was well-designed. That's the answer to a different question but still interesting IMHO.

So many of my fan card ideas slowly evolve into Embargo.

so many of my ideas are menagerie variants

So many of my ideas are variations on being awesome.

[KingZog3]

I'm a big fan of the new Factory promo, its like a more fun labratory, and lab was my previous favourite

Wait, the new promo is out?

[SirPeebles]

I'm a big fan of the new Factory promo, its like a more fun labratory, and lab was my previous favourite

Wait, the new promo is out?

Haven't you heard?

[KingZog3]

I'm a big fan of the new Factory promo, its like a more fun labratory, and lab was my previous favourite

Wait, the new promo is out?

Haven't you heard?

I heard it will exist at some point.

[SirPeebles]

I'm a big fan of the new Factory promo, its like a more fun labratory, and lab was my previous favourite

Wait, the new promo is out?

Haven't you heard?

I heard it will exist at some point.

You should probably go make a topic asking about it.  Mention that you got the news from Ozle.

[KingZog3]

I'm a big fan of the new Factory promo, its like a more fun labratory, and lab was my previous favourite

Wait, the new promo is out?

Haven't you heard?

I heard it will exist at some point.

You should probably go make a topic asking about it.  Mention that you got the news from Ozle.

I totally should.

[Marcory]

Apparently Factory is so well designed that it would permanently blow the minds of mere mortals. But brilliant people like Ozle, who also know the secret password, can revel in its ineffable superiority.

[brokoli]

There are probably lot of cards that could fit. But I will mention a few very different ones. Also, it's worth mentionning that well designed cards depends on the other dominion cards. For example, I think silk road is a well designed card but could make some games boring due to a workshop/silk road or IW/silk road combo.

Duke : For the game-changing criterion. It completely change the balance of the cards, and still you'll rarely play an annoying game because a Duke/something is too powerful and uninteresting. From all the alt-vp card, it's in my opinion the most interesting (yet not my favourite !)
Develop : So fun and so hard to play at the same time. It adds very cool tactical plays sometimes.
Embargo : Just for the mechanic and simplicity. I mean, it's not the most balanced card of the world, it can depends a lot on luck, but still it adds so much to the game.

Overall, I think the best designed cards are the trashing cards. All are so interesting in their own ways. And I have a particular love for Menagerie, Island, Farmland, Horn of plenty, Baron and Coppersmith…

[Ozle]

There is no post where i posted anything like that.....

[Marcory]

Sorry, I meant it tongue in cheek. It's hard to show facial expression with text; nothing but pure facetiousness was intended.

[AJD]

Ill-Gotten Gains!

We all of us predicted that there would be an on-gain curser in Hinterlands, but none of us guessed what the card would actually be... and yet "Copper-gaining copper" has such perfect, though subtle, self-synergy with the on-gain cursing effect that it's hard to imagine any other effect for it being anywhere near as elegant.

[Gherald]

I'm startled no one in this thread has mentioned: Masquerade, Scheme, nor Ambassador.

Those are all runners up for me.

But my answer is: Silver.

[liopoil]

Rats!!

[Burning Skull]

I'd say Governor has a really tricky design hidden within it.
You really need to play lots of games with it until realizing it is actually a junker.

And ambassador, of course!
At first you may think you play it to thin your deck and junk your opponent deck, but it's true nature lies in it's ability to steal your opponent's coppers while possessing him.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I'm going to go with Horn of Plenty. It basically shares a name with its expansion and does exactly what you'd like it to do: encourages you to find a way to play a large number of different cards on your turn AND provides a mechanism by which to gain said cards.

[Wrclass]

I'm startled no one in this thread has mentioned: Masquerade, Scheme, nor Ambassador.

Those are all runners up for me.

But my answer is: Silver.

Province

[eHalcyon]

At the moment, I think, "best designed" is likely to be Margrave because it does a lot of cool stuff, yet has a drawback, especially if you play several of them.

I'd also like to mention Watchtower is it really is what a good reaction card should be. It counters nearly every attack and is still useful if there are no attacks at all.

Watchtower counters junkers and discard attacks, which is not nearly every attack.

[LibraryAdventurer]

I couldn't choose just one favorite. Tactictian, Count, Masquerade, and Watchtower are all among my favorites.
Storeroom and Haven are ones that haven't been mentioned. They're not great in every situation, but it's fun to put them to good use. Also Market Square is fun with its reaction.

[ashersky]

Curse.

[KingZog3]

Great Hall. It's just such a cool way to have VP not take up space in your deck.

[GendoIkari]

Great Hall. It's just such a cool way to have VP not take up space in your deck.

I wonder if Great Hall helped some new players realize that having +1 card / +1 action was almost like the card wasn't in your deck at all (thus helping to realize that things like lots of villages and no terminals were pointless).

[ehunt]

Candlestick maker

[Titandrake]

I'm fond of Develop because it's amazing when you know how to play it, yet it's still ridiculously hard to play right. I think I have to go with Tactician  or Embargo though.

[Davio]

Fishing Village, very useful, very cute, but not overpowered.

[terminalCopper]

Vineyard!

Sometimes, it changes the nature of the game completely, but it doesn't make the other kingdom cards dispensable like e.g. Rebuild/IGGs/Cultist often do.

[ycz6]

Put me down as another Embargo lover. It's just such a neat idea.

[theJester]

Graverobber, perhaps. Introduces very cool idea of interacting with the trash pile and enables tons of different combos. Graverobber+Border Village is awesome, for example.

Other than that, I find concept of alt-Vp quite interesting, as it provides ways to play your deck it different ways than standard Province rush. So, cards like Gardens, Silk Road, Fairgrounds, Vineyard.

[Drab Emordnilap]

I worry this thread will devolve into "what cards do I like the best". It's a challenging question to answer.

My answer for today will be Moneylender. "Bribe new players into doing powerful things so they can see what makes them powerful" is a really neat design trick. Really, how many people get at first glance that the benefit of the card is that you trash the Copper? Most players grab it because it says +$3 on it, and then they worry about what's going to happen when they run out of Coppers to trash. Only after actually playing with it for a while does the true benefit become apparent.

[brokoli]

Fishing Village, very useful, very cute, but not overpowered.

I would say it is, not the same way as rebuild because the player with the most fishing villages doesn't win necessarily. But overpowered because almost every game you want to get at least one… so, not really a problem, but I don't agree saying it's not overpowered.

[LastFootnote]

My answer for today will be Moneylender. "Bribe new players into doing powerful things so they can see what makes them powerful" is a really neat design trick. Really, how many people get at first glance that the benefit of the card is that you trash the Copper? Most players grab it because it says +$3 on it, and then they worry about what's going to happen when they run out of Coppers to trash. Only after actually playing with it for a while does the true benefit become apparent.

I would say Moneylender could easily be more elegant by saying "Treasure" rather than "Copper".

[silverspawn]

Fishing Village, very useful, very cute, but not overpowered.

I would say it is, not the same way as rebuild because the player with the most fishing villages doesn't win necessarily. But overpowered because almost every game you want to get at least one… so, not really a problem, but I don't agree saying it's not overpowered.

yes, fw is most definitely op. in games using them, you are often never out of actions, and all you have to do is buy slightly worse versions of silver. +3 actions, +2$ on a $3 card is insane. i don't know if there is another card which is so clearly underpriced. it could honestly cost 5$ and would be alright

[Awaclus]

Yet it still isn't even the most powerful card at its cost, if Qvist's rankings are to be believed.

[silverspawn]

Yet it still isn't even the most powerful card at its cost, if Qvist's rankings are to be believed.

well, i have it on #1. but being the strongest and being most noticably underpriced is not the same thing. if workers village costed 3$, it would be the most obviously underpriced card, because it's stricktly better than village, but it wouldn't be one of the best $3's anyway. fishing village is just really close to festival, so it's easy to see that it's unerpriced at 3$.

[Drab Emordnilap]

My answer for today will be Moneylender. "Bribe new players into doing powerful things so they can see what makes them powerful" is a really neat design trick. Really, how many people get at first glance that the benefit of the card is that you trash the Copper? Most players grab it because it says +$3 on it, and then they worry about what's going to happen when they run out of Coppers to trash. Only after actually playing with it for a while does the true benefit become apparent.

I would say Moneylender could easily be more elegant by saying "Treasure" rather than "Copper".

More elegant, sure, but elegance is not the entirety of design. If it didn't call out Copper by name, it wouldn't be as strong of a hint that Copper's actually a bad card.

[terminalCopper]

I don't think that fishing village is overpowered. Does anyone have access to the old stats on councilroom? As far as I can remember, the win rate with or without it was almost the same, at least the gap was way smaller than e.g. with swindler.

+3 actions, +2$ on a $3 card is insane.

No, it's not. It would be insane if it was "+3actions, +2$", but being a duration card is a big downside because of the huge risk to miss a shuffle - I guess you know why Lab costs so much more than Caravan and why Council Room gets a nerf but Wharf doesn't ...
Moreover, Fishing Village is often used in the context of a "draw your deck"-Engine, which raises the risk to miss a shuffle to almost 100%.

A more realistic way to think of fishing village is "Squire for actions + bazaar" when it's played and "neither nor" when it missed the shuffle. Its true strength lies somewhere in between these, which is a strong 3$, but not a terrible one.

[LastFootnote]

I don't think that fishing village is overpowered. Does anyone have access to the old stats on councilroom? As far as I can remember, the win rate with or without it was almost the same, at least the gap was way smaller than e.g. with swindler.

+3 actions, +2$ on a $3 card is insane.

No, it's not. It would be insane if it was "+3actions, +2$", but being a duration card is a big downside because of the huge risk to miss a shuffle - I guess you know why Lab costs so much more than Caravan and why Council Room gets a nerf but Wharf doesn't ...
Moreover, Fishing Village is often used in the context of a "draw your deck"-Engine, which raises the risk to miss a shuffle to almost 100%.

A more realistic way to think of fishing village is "Squire for actions + bazaar" when it's played and "neither nor" when it missed the shuffle. Its true strength lies somewhere in between these, which is a strong 3$, but not a terrible one.

I think this whole "weaker because it can miss a shuffle" thing is overblown. Yes, it makes Duration cards weaker than they would otherwise be. But a better way to think of it is, Fishing Village never actually nets you more than 1 Action and $1 per turn, even if you draw your deck. Silver actually adds $2 to the total amount your deck can produce.

[silverspawn]

actually, splitting the +3 actions over two turns is often an advantage, because the gap between 1 action and 2 is much bigger than the gap between 2 and 3. if you have 2, you can play your draw, and are likely to draw another village anyway

[LastFootnote]

actually, splitting the +3 actions over two turns is often an advantage, because the gap between 1 action and 2 is much bigger than the gap between 2 and 3. if you have 2, you can play your draw, and are likely to draw another village anyway

Agreed. Usually it's nicer to smooth out your +Actions over multiple turns. That's why Fishing Village is so good. But smoothing your Coins over multiple turns is usually bad. For most decks, you want to spike a few good buys multiple times during a game.

[Awaclus]

actually, splitting the +3 actions over two turns is often an advantage, because the gap between 1 action and 2 is much bigger than the gap between 2 and 3. if you have 2, you can play your draw, and are likely to draw another village anyway

It's advantageous, but also disadvantageous. You could play more Goons (or terminals in general) per turn with a +3 actions that isn't split over two turns. It would make winning the village split much less important in some games.

Mostly it's advantageous, though.

[serakfalcon]

Fishing village isn't overpowered because of three related things: It doesn't draw cards, it doesn't have a buy, and to break the game with fishing village you need an inordinate amount of them, and there's only 10 in the supply. (Contrast a deck of 4 silvers vs. 8 fishing villages).

Vanilla village has less variance because it replaces itself, fishing village costs you a card, which makes it less feasible without draw-- without a trim deck and a source of draw, it's a lot harder to consistently play fishing village. Likewise, there's not much point to get a mega engine going if you don't have buys or some other source of extra cards (e.g. haggler/remodel). Also, you need 2 of them for the consistent benefit, doubling the amount you need as opposed to non-duration cards you can play every turn-- there just isn't enough in the supply to break the game, and it takes too long to buy enough to break the game.

Ok, compare to game-breaking fishing village (Let's call it Ninja Viking Fishing Village)
+2 Actions +1 card (+1 Action,+1 buy next turn) (On your turn, while this is in play, all cards cost 1 less)
What do you think Ninja Viking Fishing Village should cost?

[Jimmmmm]

Vanilla village has less variance because it replaces itself, fishing village costs you a card, which makes it less feasible without draw-- without a trim deck and a source of draw, it's a lot harder to consistently play fishing village.

I think Fishing Village has way less variance than Vanilla Village, since one play of FV gives you a second action on two separate turns, so you're twice(ish) as likely to actually make use of it. This is especially true with terminal draw.

[eHalcyon]

Fishing village isn't overpowered because of three related things: It doesn't draw cards, it doesn't have a buy, and to break the game with fishing village you need an inordinate amount of them, and there's only 10 in the supply. (Contrast a deck of 4 silvers vs. 8 fishing villages).

Vanilla village has less variance because it replaces itself, fishing village costs you a card, which makes it less feasible without draw-- without a trim deck and a source of draw, it's a lot harder to consistently play fishing village. Likewise, there's not much point to get a mega engine going if you don't have buys or some other source of extra cards (e.g. haggler/remodel). Also, you need 2 of them for the consistent benefit, doubling the amount you need as opposed to non-duration cards you can play every turn-- there just isn't enough in the supply to break the game, and it takes too long to buy enough to break the game.

Ok, compare to game-breaking fishing village (Let's call it Ninja Viking Fishing Village)
+2 Actions +1 card (+1 Action,+1 buy next turn) (On your turn, while this is in play, all cards cost 1 less)
What do you think Ninja Viking Fishing Village should cost?

Start testing at $7.  It's probably going to cost more.  It's better than Highway on both turns, and the +Buy on the next turn means that it has incredible self-synergy.  It connects with itself even easier thanks to being a duration.

Note that it probably doesn't have a workable price point.  It can't be too low for obvious reasons, but at a higher price it gets swingy.  It's tough to get the first one, but whoever gets the first one has a much easier time getting more because of the duration price reduction and +Buy.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Ok, compare to game-breaking fishing village (Let's call it Ninja Viking Fishing Village)
+2 Actions +1 card (+1 Action,+1 buy next turn) (On your turn, while this is in play, all cards cost 1 less)
What do you think Ninja Viking Fishing Village should cost?

Start testing at $7.  It's probably going to cost more.  It's better than Highway on both turns, and the +Buy on the next turn means that it has incredible self-synergy.  It connects with itself even easier thanks to being a duration.

Note that it probably doesn't have a workable price point.  It can't be too low for obvious reasons, but at a higher price it gets swingy.  It's tough to get the first one, but whoever gets the first one has a much easier time getting more because of the duration price reduction and +Buy.

It costs $3, but in order to buy it you have a trash a province.

[Drab Emordnilap]

Ok, compare to game-breaking fishing village (Let's call it Ninja Viking Fishing Village)
+2 Actions +1 card (+1 Action,+1 buy next turn) (On your turn, while this is in play, all cards cost 1 less)
What do you think Ninja Viking Fishing Village should cost?

Start testing at $7.  It's probably going to cost more.  It's better than Highway on both turns, and the +Buy on the next turn means that it has incredible self-synergy.  It connects with itself even easier thanks to being a duration.

Note that it probably doesn't have a workable price point.  It can't be too low for obvious reasons, but at a higher price it gets swingy.  It's tough to get the first one, but whoever gets the first one has a much easier time getting more because of the duration price reduction and +Buy.

It costs $3, but in order to buy it you have a trash a province.

Go go workshop

[c4master]

Fishing village isn't overpowered because of three related things: It doesn't draw cards, it doesn't have a buy, and to break the game with fishing village you need an inordinate amount of them, and there's only 10 in the supply. (Contrast a deck of 4 silvers vs. 8 fishing villages).

Vanilla village has less variance because it replaces itself, fishing village costs you a card, which makes it less feasible without draw-- without a trim deck and a source of draw, it's a lot harder to consistently play fishing village. Likewise, there's not much point to get a mega engine going if you don't have buys or some other source of extra cards (e.g. haggler/remodel). Also, you need 2 of them for the consistent benefit, doubling the amount you need as opposed to non-duration cards you can play every turn-- there just isn't enough in the supply to break the game, and it takes too long to buy enough to break the game.

Ok, compare to game-breaking fishing village (Let's call it Ninja Viking Fishing Village)
+2 Actions +1 card (+1 Action,+1 buy next turn) (On your turn, while this is in play, all cards cost 1 less)
What do you think Ninja Viking Fishing Village should cost?

Start testing at $7.  It's probably going to cost more.  It's better than Highway on both turns, and the +Buy on the next turn means that it has incredible self-synergy.  It connects with itself even easier thanks to being a duration.

Note that it probably doesn't have a workable price point.  It can't be too low for obvious reasons, but at a higher price it gets swingy.  It's tough to get the first one, but whoever gets the first one has a much easier time getting more because of the duration price reduction and +Buy.

Absolutely. It's Highway and Market Square in one card and it gives +2 Actions over 2 turns. $7 might not even be enough.

Since Province costs $8 there is clearly a point where action cards cannot be useful if they're not silly. An action card for more than $8 must be so powerful that it evens out the Province you do not buy this turn. This means, if you spike this card early, you basically win the game because it's so amazing. This would increase luck factor to a point where Dominion is no fun any more - and you are also tempted to buy lot's of money cards just to get this amazing card as early as possible.

Fishing village is very strong, because you can load up on them without buying any treasure cards and still increase your economy. It enables strong $5 cards - which are likely to work in an engine anyways. If I'm going to build an engine I would almost always buy Fishing Village over Village just because it saves you 2 turns of building up your economy.

[Davio]

Fishing Village, very useful, very cute, but not overpowered.

I would say it is, not the same way as rebuild because the player with the most fishing villages doesn't win necessarily. But overpowered because almost every game you want to get at least one… so, not really a problem, but I don't agree saying it's not overpowered.

The lack of +Card can really hurt if your draw is less than stellar. It's a bit better than Festival for starting a chain, but suffers from the same problem a bit.

[hvb]

For me cards are really good designed, if they have a huge impact on many kingdoms and how games develop, without being a superstrong card for itself. They often open strategies that can compete with the usual powercard-strategies. For that reason i go with cards like Trader, Embargo, Masterpiece, Menagerie, Tunnel, Crossroads, Apothecary, Bishop or Fairgrounds.

[MarkowKette]

I'm gonna jump on the rats bandwagon.

The card is so thematic and can be so cute when given the right kingdom. Sometimes you think the card can never
really work here but when you actually try it you will be surprised.

You feel left alone inhabiting 3 estates with nobody there to play? Just invite a rat and share your things.
You will never be lonely anymore now, now you have a friend and soon two, three or more, up to even 20!


But i also really love Menagerie no other card is so satisfying when activated.

[RD]

I always thought Inn was a pretty piece of work. If you're buying Inn for the on-buy it probably means you have some trouble putting combos together otherwise, so a little sifting is probably welcome. Then the handsize reduction keeps big topdecked Inn stacks from being too good (although I guess I don't know if that would really be an issue or not). It all seems to click nicely.

[popsofctown]

Outpost.

[Stealth Tomato]

I don't think that fishing village is overpowered. Does anyone have access to the old stats on councilroom? As far as I can remember, the win rate with or without it was almost the same, at least the gap was way smaller than e.g. with swindler.

That stat is going to be really deceptive. FV is an extreme card in that you almost universally want one... its %+ on Councilroom is 92.1, highest in the game by over 2%... FV, Border Village, Caravan, and Goons make up the "more common than Silver" club. It has the unique property among those cards of costing only $3, making it available to nearly any deck (as opposed to Goons, which has a horrible Win Rate Without because often "I didn't buy it" is equivalent to "I wasn't able to buy it until it was too late to even bother buying it")... the only other cheapie is Caravan, which also has essentially equal win rates with/without.

Win rates with and without are the same because everybody buys it, except in the extremely rare case where it isn't useful.

[sitnaltax]

In a slightly different vein, I want to praise Chancellor and Swindler for wording choices that made Tunnel and Market Square work correctly all those years and expansions later.

(Chancellor: "put your deck into your discard pile" where it might otherwise have said "discard your deck"; Swindler: "Each other player trashes the top card" vs. "Trash the top card of each other player's deck")

[silverspawn]

yea, there are lots of impressive things about the game which show themselves only in the absence of problems that most people playing the game never even thought of

[Awaclus]

In a slightly different vein, I want to praise Chancellor and Swindler for wording choices that made Tunnel and Market Square work correctly all those years and expansions later.

(Chancellor: "put your deck into your discard pile" where it might otherwise have said "discard your deck"; Swindler: "Each other player trashes the top card" vs. "Trash the top card of each other player's deck")

"Each other player trashes the top card of his deck and gains etc" is obviously much more elegant than anything with "Trash the top card of each other player's deck". I don't think it could have been any other way.

[amalloy]

In a slightly different vein, I want to praise Chancellor and Swindler for wording choices that made Tunnel and Market Square work correctly all those years and expansions later.

(Chancellor: "put your deck into your discard pile" where it might otherwise have said "discard your deck"; Swindler: "Each other player trashes the top card" vs. "Trash the top card of each other player's deck")

An alternative wording on Swindler would make no difference to Market Square: Market Square reads "When one of your cards is trashed...", so it would activate even if another player trashed one of your cards. The card that really benefits from the carefully-worded Swindler is Fortress! If Swindler said "Trash the top card of each other player's deck": we'd have situations like "Okay, I trash your Fortress...putting it into my hand...and you can have a Scout in return".

[c4master]

That's why Magic has the Controler/Owner wording. This would be equally fine here.

[Awaclus]

That's why Magic has the Controler/Owner wording. This would be equally fine here.

Who would be the owner in Dominion? The guy who actually owns the game?

[sitnaltax]

An alternative wording on Swindler would make no difference to Market Square: Market Square reads "When one of your cards is trashed...", so it would activate even if another player trashed one of your cards. The card that really benefits from the carefully-worded Swindler is Fortress! If Swindler said "Trash the top card of each other player's deck": we'd have situations like "Okay, I trash your Fortress...putting it into my hand...and you can have a Scout in return".

Oh. Yes, you are totally correct. 

[papaHav]

Watchtower.
After buying the base game and playing it to pieces, watchtowers design proved to me the game had long-term potential

[Holger]

In a slightly different vein, I want to praise Chancellor and Swindler for wording choices that made Tunnel and Market Square work correctly all those years and expansions later.

(Chancellor: "put your deck into your discard pile" where it might otherwise have said "discard your deck"; Swindler: "Each other player trashes the top card" vs. "Trash the top card of each other player's deck")

Well, Tunnel could also work "correctly" with the other Chancellor wording, just differently from the way it is now (in the non-German versions ). I don't think it would have overpowered either card. But I also prefer the actual wording.