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[blueblimp]

MTG makes a distinction between design and development, which are roughly "make it fun" and "make it balanced", though I don't know MTG super well so I may be a little off. (Edit: Well, now that I look up these terms, I'm pretty wrong, so maybe somebody who knows how MTG R&D works could help clarify.) From that perspective, Adventurer's design is OK, but its development is lacking: it's fun enough, but far too weak. On the other side, Spy's development is OK, but its design is lacking: although it's weak, it's usable often enough, but it's a pretty tedious card to play or play against.

(It's hard to find a lot of examples of either of these since Dominion+expansions is such a well-designed game in general.)

[AJD]

Adventurer needs an action at that price

Eh, I think +buy.

[Awaclus]

Adventurer needs an action at that price

Eh, I think +buy.

I agree. (And it still could probably cost $5 with the +buy). A +action would just make it very similar to Gold, and a +buy fits better with the idea of digging for more Treasures.

[Gherald]

My discussion of a card's design can be informed by something like the secret histories, in that they might reveal something I've missed in my analysis.  And those are certainly interesting as history. They can tell us some why's and how's of Donald's process, which is cool and all.  I love that he took the time to share that with us.

But when I talk of design and intent, these are abstract concepts that aren't necessarily tied to what actually went through a person's head when they created the cards.  Rather, I look at Dominion as a system and am like: "Alright most of this seems designed to work pretty well and be fun and varied and competitive and apolitical, but here are some issues that could be tweaked to make it better."

I'm not sure what the best fixes would be for things like Cultist, IGG, Duke, and Fool's Gold.  Those cards aren't inherently broken, but they do make for more monotonous and less strategic games.  Well, Fool's Gold has enough flavor and strategic considerations that I can maybe give it a pass, but the other 3 are the most problematic 5 costs

Can something be done to make Chancellor less ignorable? Maybe just an action.

+buy for Adventurer sounds like a good idea.  That would give variety to games in ways an action doesn't

[eHalcyon]

That definition of "intent" isn't really useful then.  Your idea of the intent behind a card may not match what others see.  Given that, it makes no sense to say that silverspawn's conception of a card's "design" is incorrect. 

Let's consider what spawned this discussion -- Possession.  You said that there is no "design" reason to not like it, and that silverspawn merely dislikes what it does.  What is the difference?  What is your definition of "design" and "intent" that differentiates it from what the card does?

[Beyond Awesome]

Honestly, I really would argue that Possession is a poor design choice. Like DVX. said, the card practically takes up several pages explaining every interaction. For players not experienced like us, say causal players, this card really pisses players off like no other. I have read stories of people who quit Dominion because of that card. My brother (who did not play against me) played his first game with Possession in it and never played again for that reason. He hated Dominion.

I don't think good design should ever make someone hate a game so much. I don't hate the card. Many of us on these boards see strategic depth with this card, but we are a minority.

[Donald X.]

MTG makes a distinction between design and development, which are roughly "make it fun" and "make it balanced", though I don't know MTG super well so I may be a little off. (Edit: Well, now that I look up these terms, I'm pretty wrong, so maybe somebody who knows how MTG R&D works could help clarify.)

Magic design is about coming up with ideas and building an environment, and development is about balancing multiple environments that include that environment, and solving problems. I don't use the term "development" for Dominion because Valerie and Dale were credited as developers but did not balance cards at all. For most games people do not make the distinction that Magic makes, probably because it tends to be the same guy. For a Magic card, there's the idea, and then there's what it looks like after the various knobs are fiddled with, the cost and power/toughness and evergreen abilities and sometimes other numbers or even just any change, any change at all can be made to "develop" the card. Power level is entirely a development thing; something weak or strong isn't "poorly designed." For Dominion, there are way fewer knobs and it was all up to me anyway.

A trickier point is that Magic design/development isn't about designing/developing individual cards. The goal is to have the various environments play well - limited formats, constructed formats, casual play. A given card might be weakened, not because it's too strong, but because its color is too strong in that limited format, or a deck built around it is too strong in a constructed format. Other changes could have been made instead, but something was changing somewhere, and this time it was this card. There isn't so much of that in Dominion, although there is a little. I know people own cards in set-sized lumps, and that's all I know about what they've got. To make the game work when you have whatever random collection of expansions, each expansion wants to offer up certain amounts of certain things.

[silverspawn]

Adventurer needs an action at that price

Eh, I think +buy.

I think adventurer should dig for 3 instead of 2. I don't think a buy, or an action, is enough.

[silverspawn]

Chapter 2: The Weak Cards (And Outliers) - Part two

	193. Thief There is something to be said about how a low powerlevel increases the variance of different player's experiences with a certain card. If a card is strong, and everyone has lots of games with it, most players will come to similar understandings of how the card works. For cards like Thief or Pirate Ship, you might only have played a hand full of games where the card was good, and how much you like it will depend heavily on these few games. Me, I remember two types of games where I went for Thief, so that's all I really have to go on. One, games with strong engines, strong trashing, but no virtual $, no gain, and limited trash-for-benefit. Both players only have a couple of high-value treasure cards in their decks, replacing them takes at least one turn each, and stealing one of them is huge. Two, games with weak trashing, weak draw, no apparent payload for an engine, but Thief and KC (or at least TR). Here, it really gets interesting if one Player goes for BM, and the other one builds the engine. Even if doing so takes a very long time, as long as your opponent doesn't have 50% of all VP's, you can still win, by removing every last treasure card from his deck. Theoretically, this should also be possible with Pirate Ship, but because of how Pirate Ship works, it's more likely that both players will go for pirate ship right away on such a baord, and then you really have virtual coin in the form of Pirate Ship, and it plays out very differently. I have positive memories of my few Thief games, which is why I kind of like the card, even though it's obviously too weak. And man, the image looks awesome, I never noticed that before. That almost makes me want to move it another rank upwards.
	192. Contraband The idea behind Contraband is probably to make you gain unconventional cards, kind of like Swindler, rewarding your creativity, and causing you to have a different type of game. I can appreciate this intention, but like many cards on this list, it fails due to the fact that it's just too weak. For this one, I can't help thinking that an extra coin would solve everything. As is, it's just not a factor in most games. I find that, what Contraband needs in order to be viable (aside from multiple cheap engine components), is a way to remodel it into a better card, because it's just so weak in the end game. Upgrade is ideal here; play Contraband to build your engine, then upgrade it into a gold, and profit.
	191. Harvest When I look at Harvest, I can't help thinking that the way in which it works makes unusable for exactly the type of deck in which it would otherwise be pretty good. I'm of course talking about treasure-less decks that draw itself every turn. Harvest could be nice here, especially when throned, but it stops doing anything once you have your whole deck in hand. With that, all we have left is a support card for BM, which is rarely what you want, because there are so many better alternatives. Aside from that, I found that it's sometimes useful to trigger tunnels. It looks at 4 cards, so you'll hit tunnels just as often as you do with Horse Traders, and it'll also provide a similar amount of money on average.
	190. Transmute I will say right away that I think Transmute is underrated, at least among good players. Does that mean it's strong? Well no, it's pretty weak. In fact it's so weak that it's #190 on this list. It's just not as weak as some people think. Going into any detail here would be more suited for a strategy article, but really, whenever Transmute is usable, it's pretty cute. What bothers me about this card is the lack of a +Action. Alchemy makes a point to have most cards be non-terminal, so why make Transmute of all cards the exception? Being non-terminal would both solve some of it's powerlevel issues, and stop it from being an outlier.
	189. Sea Hag Sea Hag is, for me, by far the least exciting Junker in the game. Part of that is the fact that it doesn't produce any resources, which causes games to drag out longer than they have to, and then there's the discard effect. There is a reason why it's there: to prevent you from piling multiple curses on top of your deck in 3+ player, and that's certainly a good thing, but it's still game ending if it hits another Player's Hag. I don't like Spy, so I naturally don't like a forced discard either.
	188. Herbalist If a strong potion card and Herbalist are on the same board, I'll often open Herbalist/Potion over Silver/Potion. If I'm playing an Alchemist stack, I'll sometimes use Herbalist to ensure I can topdeck my Potion, and in extension my Alchemists. But aside from that, I almost never use the Scheming ability. Is that just me? Well, maybe. Topdecking treasures sounds really nice, but when is it really useful? In an engine, you don't want treasures on top of your deck. In BM, you rather have other support cards. For the most part, Herbalist is just a far inferior version of CSM. If the ability was useful more often, I'd also like the card more.
	187. Cache Cache, just like Talisman, is guilty of being almost strictly worse than another card, and in both cases, I also like the other card a lot more. For Cache, that card is Masterpiece. Buy a Cache, have 5$ in 3 cards. Buy a Masterpiece for 5$, have 5$ in 3 cards. There is a difference in money variety, but really, it's not that significant. And yes, Cache combos with both Trader and Watchtower, more so than Masterpiece. It's not enough. Prior to Guilds, I didn't mind Cache, but now, I think it has been utterly outclassed.
	186. Secret Chamber I don't really know what to say about Secret Chamber, except that it's not very good. The reaction doesn't usually defend against attacks, but I think that's okay. It's low for being weak and not very interesting, and that's really it.

[blueblimp]

Couple comments:

Transmute -- I would have put this lower than Thief. Thief, although underpowered, is an elegant design. Transmute, on the other hand, although more often useful, has a bunch of different effects, but would arguably be _stronger_ without the gaining text, since then at least you could trash coppers to thin your deck. I consider Rats a fixed version of Transmute: a more elegant and more useful version of the trash-and-gain-self idea.

Secret Chamber -- You didn't mention the huge problem with Secret Chamber, which is the analysis paralysis from the reaction. Picking 2 cards to put back out of 7 in your hand, and the order, is up to 7*6 = 42 possibilities, maybe the worst AP of any Dominion card. I think the idea was to provide defense against Swindler and Saboteur, which are in the same set. In that sense, I consider Beggar's reaction to be a fixed version of Secret Chamber's reaction, since it also defends against trashing attacks, with far less AP.

[Witherweaver]

I think Contraband is actually designed pretty well.  The +buy helps to ensure you can pick up two cards you need as long as you need at least three.  It just doesn't work in monolithic strategies, but that's okay.  It makes alternate VP better.

[Hydrad]

I think Contraband is actually designed pretty well.  The +buy helps to ensure you can pick up two cards you need as long as you need at least three.  It just doesn't work in monolithic strategies, but that's okay.  It makes alternate VP better.

doesn't it make alt VP worse? as if you are going for it they will just stop you? Or do you mean you can choose between fairgrounds or provinces when they take one of them away.

(I tried contraband with gardens and it totally failed as he just said I couldn't buy gardens... I'm so bad at this game)

[Witherweaver]

I think Contraband is actually designed pretty well.  The +buy helps to ensure you can pick up two cards you need as long as you need at least three.  It just doesn't work in monolithic strategies, but that's okay.  It makes alternate VP better.

doesn't it make alt VP worse? as if you are going for it they will just stop you? Or do you mean you can choose between fairgrounds or provinces when they take one of them away.

(I tried contraband with gardens and it totally failed as he just said I couldn't buy gardens... I'm so bad at this game)

I mean if all you can buy is Provinces, they can deny key (Gold, whatever) and then deny Provinces.  If you have options between Provinces, Duchies, Dukes, Fairgrounds, Silk Roads, whatever, it's not so bad if you can't buy one of them. 

[silverspawn]

I think Contraband is actually designed pretty well.  The +buy helps to ensure you can pick up two cards you need as long as you need at least three.  It just doesn't work in monolithic strategies, but that's okay.  It makes alternate VP better.

I think it's a cool idea, I just think it should have +4$ instead of +3$. I mean, I almost never buy it, do you?

Secret Chamber -- You didn't mention the huge problem with Secret Chamber, which is the analysis paralysis from the reaction. Picking 2 cards to put back out of 7 in your hand, and the order, is up to 7*6 = 42 possibilities, maybe the worst AP of any Dominion card. I think the idea was to provide defense against Swindler and Saboteur, which are in the same set. In that sense, I consider Beggar's reaction to be a fixed version of Secret Chamber's reaction, since it also defends against trashing attacks, with far less AP.

I never really thought about that, but you're totally right.

[Merudo]

I mostly agree with silverspawn's ranking, although I do have a few disagreements,

Chapter I: The Bad Cards
205. Masquerade
Masquerade is entry #2 in the previously mentioned list. For a while, I thought this card was actually worse than Possession, but it's absolutely not. Really, it's not even close. The only reason I ever thought so was that I had forgotten how bad Possession really is. I probably was lucky not to play with it for a while.

That said, I still hate it, and the reason for that is that pass mechanic is not designed to hurt your opponent, so when it does, it feels unjustified and unfair quite similar to possession. They are my cards. Not yours. *sigh*

In my experience, it is very rare that a good card is stolen with Masquerade. The cards I mostly see changing hands are copper/estate - and, later in the game, silver/$3 actions.

Does anyone have stats on how often a good card gets passed through Masquerade?

My feeling is that although Masquerade can be quite unfair, it's unfair so rarely that it doesn't belong to the list.

Chapter 2: The Weak Cards (And Outliers) - Part one
199. Adventurer
Adventurer is the same as Scout, really. It costs 6$, even though it could easily cost 3$, making it probably the second weakest card in the game. Digging for Treasure cards as a concept is okay, but again, that doesn't help if the card is too weak to ever get bought.

I know I'm in the clear minority here, but I believe Adventurer gets to really shine if not outright dominate on some boards - which should at least rank it above Duchess.

Adventurer is quite nice if you get to trash the copper early, if the other terminal actions on the board are weak, if Platinum is available, and if there are strong junkers.

Just think about - if you get to trash all the copper, each Adventurer is guaranteed to give at least $4. This means in the absence of good terminal actions, getting 1 Adventurer is strictly better than getting 1 gold. In Colony games you can easily get 6+ gold by playing an Adventurer, which is invaluable when you draw a hand full of provinces/curses/ruins.

Adventurer also has a nifty interaction with tunnel, and with cards that make you put your junk on top of your deck such a Pearl Diver.

I know adventurer is a terrible card nearly all the time, but in the few cases it is bought it can be devastating.

Plus, it is always nice to beat down someone with a card widely seen as utterly mediocre .

Chapter 2: The Weak Cards (And Outliers) - Part two
192. Contraband
The idea behind Contraband is probably to make you gain unconventional cards, kind of like Swindler, rewarding your creativity, and causing you to have a different type of game. I can appreciate this intention, but like many cards on this list, it fails due to the fact that it's just too weak. For this one, I can't help thinking that an extra coin would solve everything. As is, it's just not a factor in most games. I find that, what Contraband needs in order to be viable (aside from multiple cheap engine components), is a way to remodel it into a better card, because it's just so weak in the end game. Upgrade is ideal here; play Contraband to build your engine, then upgrade it into a gold, and profit.

I find the Contraband +buy to be invaluable on boards without other +buy and many engine pieces to buy - in fact I'd much rather buy Contraband instead of, say, Woodcutter.

Moreover, if you play Contraband before your other treasures, the other person has no idea how much $ you really have, meaning they may often ban the wrong item. Even late game, you can often buy double Duchies if they ban Provinces.

I'm also surprised you didn't mention Chancellor/Feast/Saboteur. Maybe in the next list?

[faust]

Oh, this is tedious. I'm not so much interested in the bottom of this list, because well, most of us know about the flaws some of the cards have, there won't be many surprises. I'm much more interested in the top part of this list - which cards are best designed? That's a discussion I look forward to. But that's still a long way to go.

[Witherweaver]

Oh, this is tedious. I'm not so much interested in the bottom of this list, because well, most of us know about the flaws some of the cards have, there won't be many surprises. I'm much more interested in the top part of this list - which cards are best designed? That's a discussion I look forward to. But that's still a long way to go.

I'd be interesting in your ranking of how well designed the various ranking lists are.

[Awaclus]

I'm also surprised you didn't mention Chancellor/Feast/Saboteur. Maybe in the next list?

Ranking Chancellor pretty low is reasonable because Scavenger exists, but why Feast and Saboteur?

[faust]

Oh, this is tedious. I'm not so much interested in the bottom of this list, because well, most of us know about the flaws some of the cards have, there won't be many surprises. I'm much more interested in the top part of this list - which cards are best designed? That's a discussion I look forward to. But that's still a long way to go.

I'd be interesting in your ranking of how well designed the various ranking lists are.

9. Goko Casual Ranking List
8. Goko Pro Ranking List
7. silverspawn's overpowered/underpowered ranking
6. JSH's art rankings
5. silverspawn's card list
4. WW's power rankings
3. Qvist's Dominion Card List
2. Isotropish rankings



1. SirPeebles' Dominion Top Ten: Facial Hair

[soulnet]

9. Goko Casual Ranking List
8. Goko Pro Ranking List
7. silverspawn's overpowered/underpowered ranking
6. JSH's art rankings
5. silverspawn's card list
4. WW's power rankings
3. Qvist's Dominion Card List
2. Isotropish rankings



1. SirPeebles' Dominion Top Ten: Facial Hair

You forgot to rank faust's raking's ranking.

[silverspawn]

WW's power rankings

the one where forager was above fishing village?

[GeoLib]

9. Goko Casual Ranking List
8. Goko Pro Ranking List
7. silverspawn's overpowered/underpowered ranking
6. JSH's art rankings
5. silverspawn's card list
4. WW's power rankings
3. Qvist's Dominion Card List
2. Isotropish rankings



1. SirPeebles' Dominion Top Ten: Facial Hair

You forgot to rank faust's raking's ranking.

Well he was ranking all rankings that don't rank themselves.

[jsh357]

9. Goko Casual Ranking List
8. Goko Pro Ranking List
7. silverspawn's overpowered/underpowered ranking
6. JSH's art rankings
5. silverspawn's card list
4. WW's power rankings
3. Qvist's Dominion Card List
2. Isotropish rankings



1. SirPeebles' Dominion Top Ten: Facial Hair

You forgot to rank faust's raking's ranking.

His raking would have to go before #1 because he clearly didn't get all the fuzz off of Transmute guy's beard.

[liopoil]

9. Goko Casual Ranking List
8. Goko Pro Ranking List
7. silverspawn's overpowered/underpowered ranking
6. JSH's art rankings
5. silverspawn's card list
4. WW's power rankings
3. Qvist's Dominion Card List
2. Isotropish rankings



1. SirPeebles' Dominion Top Ten: Facial Hair

You forgot to rank faust's raking's ranking.

You can't have a ranking of all rankings.

[Witherweaver]

WW's power rankings

the one where forager was above fishing village?

No, the possessive there is a typo.  This is a ranking of how powerful the various WWs on this forum are, in terms of who would win in a gauntlet of events, including, but not limited to, a bare-knuckle boxing match, Soduko, Dominion, Twister, and interpretive dance.