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[timchen]

After almost two years and more than 2000 games, I think it's time to complain...

This game is the most interesting board game I have ever played. The major appeal, after so many games, is... actually hard to quantify. The biggest part may be the near-infinite possibility of setups. Consider that you may not encounter a five-card combo once in your life time. Seeing how cards come to work together is really fun. Maybe some other satisfaction comes from proper management? As a experienced player with familiar cards (no, not the one you buy with potion) sometimes the fun comes from buying things at the right time, to out manage your opponent. Maybe, in a small portion of the game, the satisfaction comes from control. The way you mess up your opponent's deck and consolidate your own is just really enjoyable.

However, the more serious effort you put into the game, after some time, at least to me, makes the game more painful. There is only a single problem: luck. Somehow the luck in Dominion behaves in a very different way comparing to the only other board game I have played for a comparable time: bridge. In bridge, luck is certainly very important. But for reasons I don't understand, I never feel as disgusted when I lost a bridge game/tournament, due to my bad luck. In Dominion, watching your opponent use his turn 1 witch/tactician kill you with his good draw from turn 3 to 6, or when both of you did the same thing, but you didn't draw your cards until it's too late, is just unbearable for me. Probably it's due to the fact that in bridge, the luck factor at least will not spit directly at your face as sometimes how it just happens in a dominion game? For me, when I am not in a good mood, the bad draw is just mocking at me on how pointless you are to study the probabilities and expectations of different choices. Double jack is a good strategy? How can it be better than a single Jack if you draw them together in your first 3 shuffle?

[HiveMindEmulator]

When you go to the bridge club, you play 30 hands in one afternoon. You never play that many games of dominion at once. If you did, the bad beats probably wouldn't bother you as much. Also, while there are many bad beast in bridge, everyone is aware of them, so there is immediate sympathy, and even if you lose the MPs to that guy who made the "wrong" play, you're okay with it because you can look at the hand and confirm you did the right thing. It's a bit harder to get that in dominion. The best you can do is post a bad beat here on the forum and try to sim it up to make sure. But probably the better thing to do is just treat it more like poker than bridge. Accept the bad beats, but be assured that you are playing well by the fact that you're winning most of the time. It doesn't matter how every individual hand in poker goes, if you end up making more money than you lose, you're doing something right.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

I believe there is a direct correlation between posting authoritative Dominion strategy articles and bad shuffle luck.  Or perhaps it is just hubris?

Okay, so the Poker analogy is right on but you could draw a line to Blackjack in the sense that the house has a small but tangible advantage and will in due course win more money than it pays out unless the player can count cards well enough to swing that tangible advantage to himself.  Even the most skilled counters, and casinos, must hold a reserve in order to weather swings in luck but repetition breeds constancy and the truth is clearly revealed with a large enough sample size.

But we know all of this. So wtf, I hate losing to variance but it is what it is.  I agree with Tim.

[WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE]

I like posts like these. If you've ever read the twoplustwo forums (poker strategy), the posters have a practice where they make their 1000th post, called Pooh-Bah posts (because that's when their forum title changes to Pooh-Bah), a long post bearing wisdom that they've accumulated on their poker journey. I always liked the idea of making a post like that about Dominion on this forum (well, except I haven't hit any kind of landmark besides being a lv40).

[Toskk]

I personally agree with you that I find the luck-based factors in Dominion quite frustrating. From the quantifiable first-turn advantage, to getting a 3P Familiar at turn 3-4 or two Treasure Maps together in the early game, to the advantage of a simple 5/2 split or shuffle luck keeping a superior deck from purchasing the right cards, there are times where I really do long for a game that minimizes luck more than Dominion does.

I like the Bridge parallel (I play Bridge too).. and I realized that while "good" Bridge deals themselves may be subject to just as much luck as Dominion decks, competitive Bridge (i.e. Duplicate) also is very different in that you aren't scoring based on winning/losing, but on how you played the deal vs. how some other partnership played the exact same deal. It would be sort of (but not really) like getting a score based on the final point difference between yourself and your opponent, rather than a 'win' or a 'loss'.

[Geronimoo]

two players go all-in and both have Aces = two players go for Familiar
two players go all-in and one has Aces and the other 72 offsuit (despite seeing the Aces) = one player goes Witch and the other Familiar

What happens is that in the last situation the Familiar player might complain of bad luck while he actually didn't have a clue.

Just pointing out that you should be really critical about your play before calling it bad luck.

Oh, and if you're upset when you lose at Dominion, don't take up poker...ever... you'll have a heart attack in no time

[theory]

I felt this way at 1000 games, 2000 games, and 3000 games.  The only cure is to appreciate that it happens and accept the bad beats.  Dominion will never be duplicate bridge, and it becomes much more fun once you appreciate that.

[WanderingWinder]

When you go to the bridge club, you play 30 hands in one afternoon. You never play that many games of dominion at once. If you did, the bad beats probably wouldn't bother you as much. Also, while there are many bad beast in bridge, everyone is aware of them, so there is immediate sympathy, and even if you lose the MPs to that guy who made the "wrong" play, you're okay with it because you can look at the hand and confirm you did the right thing. It's a bit harder to get that in dominion. The best you can do is post a bad beat here on the forum and try to sim it up to make sure. But probably the better thing to do is just treat it more like poker than bridge. Accept the bad beats, but be assured that you are playing well by the fact that you're winning most of the time. It doesn't matter how every individual hand in poker goes, if you end up making more money than you lose, you're doing something right.

This. I HAVE played 30+ game strings. And I don't really get frustrated at the luck that often because it comes and goes. But okay, sometimes I still do, when I get a very long string of it, like I did last week, where I had like 7-8 games a day, 2 days in a row, where I lost 'on turns'. And not good luck besides that. At least, so I perceived. But then it seemed to start turning to even again in my match with you, and an upswing since. I presume it always will even out in the long run, because I trust in the inherent balance of the random number generators.

[Lekkit]

I tend to prefer playing games (of any kind) with people who enjoy playing the game. Be it chess or Yahtzee. Luck will always be a part of some games, and Dominion is one of them. I've played a lot of games that are considered bad because luck plays a big part of the game and thus is not as strategical as other games (again, chess comes to mind). Generally I find those people really competitive oriented players who almost always play to win. Some of them can accept being defeated by a better player and some of them don't, but that's not really the point here. I play mostly socially and therefore I don't really mix well with the competitive players. I'm not saying that I don't like them as persons, I'm just saying that I just want to play and most of them just want to win, even if both goals are to have fun.

I've accepted the fact that luck plays a part in Dominion, just like a lot of other games that I enjoy, and I still like the game. A lot.

[DrHades]

I really hate the game when I lost because of the bad luck (or even win because of the good luck seeing my opponent had a better strategy). But every time this happens to me I always remember this:

1. A night back in September 2009 when I was introduced to this game and didn't win a single game out of around 20 in 3 players.

2. Many nights I played it with my friends and losing most of the games, but never knew why the hell did I lost.

3. How I thought sometime in spring 2011 that I finally understand the game and got beat up by my friend two times and again - totally no idea why.

When I lose nowadays, I almost every time know why it was. That makes me cool after a "bad luck lost" 

[Karrow]

I'm so sick of the 5/2 start with a Mountebank or Witch against 4/3 that I'm ready to implement a house rule variant.  My house rule would be that players can stack their starting 10 cards any way they chose at the start of the game.

[GendoIkari]

I'm so sick of the 5/2 start with a Mountebank or Witch against 4/3 that I'm ready to implement a house rule variant.  My house rule would be that players can stack their starting 10 cards any way they chose at the start of the game.

I have friends who usually play this exact rule. I prefer it as well.

[Kuildeous]

I'm so sick of the 5/2 start with a Mountebank or Witch against 4/3 that I'm ready to implement a house rule variant.  My house rule would be that players can stack their starting 10 cards any way they chose at the start of the game.

I keep getting vetoed by the wife on that house rule. I think it'd be very equitable and fair. She believes that whatever luck you're handed, them's the breaks. Of course, I do point that out when she gets a 5/2 split with nothing good in 2s and 5s or when I trounce her with a first-turn Witch.

Perhaps if she thinks that the choose-your-hand option is too "easy" for others, I'll see if I can implement a rule for mirrored hands. The first person to draw determines what everyone gets. If he draws 3 Coppers, then everyone gets 3/4. If he draws 5 Coppers, then everyone gets 5/2. No variation at all. Your luck begins when you shuffle those ~12 cards.

I'll ponder on that one.

[Razzishi]

If this was about Magic, it'd be complaining about mana screw/flood.  And in those cases, it's almost always done by intermediate players who recognize their bad luck, but don't recognize the 3 mistakes they made that exacerbated the problem.  I don't mean to say that players who complain about luck are poor players, but that the best players just take good with the bad and recognize luck as an integral part of what makes the game interesting and are less likely to really complain about it.  Play to your outs and don't give up; I've won and lost a lot of games I thought were decided by not giving up/thinking I'd already won and not playing hard enough.

As to whether to require 5/2 or 4/3 hands, are you going to also require that both of a player's first buys can't be cards 11 and/or 12?  Or go further and let them decide whether they collide or not?  There's just as much luck there: you can open two Silver equivalents and not hit $5 turns 3 or 4 even with only one missing the shuffle (SCCEE/CCCCE/SC) and still not be guaranteed $5 turn 5, or you can hit $6/$5 (SSCCE/CCCCC/EE) with GSC filling out turn 5 for another $6.  I see the merit to requiring the same opening hands, but it's really a slippery slope and you can't exactly have Magic's mulligans.

[guided]

Choosing your opening split is a bad rule, full stop. Bootstrapping to $5 when it's important to do so is a critical element of opening strategy. Now forcing everyone to have the same (randomized) opening split, that's a fine house rule IMO.

[play2draw]

Probably the only way to deal with this problem is to have more cards that allow for people to aggressively come back from behind. Dominion already has cards with this capacity, but the problems with them would be:

• They are universally disliked. Whether it's due to a card's weakness or cheapness or, as the popular phrase goes, "high variance", it's often viewed as uncouth to play these cards (e.g. possession, saboteur).
• They can be readily used by an opponent who is already ahead without much issue (though possession has a higher cost-of-entry).

With this said, I don't think that this is a very serious problem, and it's entirely possible that a future expansion will mitigate this issue. If not, well, that's what fan cards and variants are for.

[dondon151]

Choosing your opening split is a bad rule, full stop. Bootstrapping to $5 when it's important to do so is a critical element of opening strategy. Now forcing everyone to have the same (randomized) opening split, that's a fine house rule IMO.

Yeah, the group that I play with mandates 4/3 openings (in either order, so 4/3 or 3/4) as a house rule. I think I'll make the suggestion of Kuildeous's modification (that we mimick the same opening as the first player) so that we can do a 5/2 opening 1/6 of the time.

[Piemaster]

Another thing that nobody has mentioned is the the luck factor allows weaker players to win occasionally, which is a good thing.  My friends and I never play chess against each other.  There isn't much point in playing because it is almost certain who will win even before the pieces are set up.  Yet we're happy to play Roborally, Carcassone, Peurto Rico, Flux, Poker and a bunch of other games because even though some of us are better than others at these games, the luck factor ensures that everybody at least has a chance.  Sure it sucks in the short term when I feel I lose to variance in these games,  but it keeps the games far more enjoyable in the long run.

[Octo]

Regarding fixed openings: sometimes you get $5/2 and you actually want $4/3. As mentioned, the same starting hand will move closer to mirror strats - rather than being forced to come up with a response and having a varied game, you have the liberty of simply copying. Sometimes you come up with something surprising which you wouldn't have done normally.

Also, the luck is more persistent than that so it's a bit of an exercise in futility - to expand on Razzishi's example, the 5/2 opener's witch can arrive as late as turn 5, and you can buy your witch on turn 3 and also have it arrive in turn 5. Or with both 5/2, player 1 can play their witch twice before you even play it once, and so have you two curses in your third time through the deck, and they have none.

I guess just because there's still luck doesn't mean we should just roll a dice to see who wins, but still, the opening is such a key part of the game. You do get screwed sometimes, sure, but it (as mentioned) just becomes an issue of where do you stop? If you could remove literally all the randomness from the game, would you?

[Kuildeous]

Choosing your opening split is a bad rule, full stop. Bootstrapping to $5 when it's important to do so is a critical element of opening strategy. Now forcing everyone to have the same (randomized) opening split, that's a fine house rule IMO.

Yeah, the group that I play with mandates 4/3 openings (in either order, so 4/3 or 3/4) as a house rule. I think I'll make the suggestion of Kuildeous's modification (that we mimick the same opening as the first player) so that we can do a 5/2 opening 1/6 of the time.

Unfortunately, Hinterlands makes even this house rule a pain to implement. We used to play our first two hands at the same time. You draw your first hand, see that you have 2, 3, 4, or 5 Coppers and then choose your first two cards and shuffle. That shaved a little time in the grand scheme of things, and it wasn't that big of a deal in terms of seeing what others buy first (in our group anyway).

Hinterlands changed that. If you buy a Mandarin, Noble Brigand, or Nomad Camp in your first hand, you no longer can rely on having a 5/2 or 4/3 split.

So, mirrored hands of 5/2 and 3/4 are not specific enough. Now, you would have to mirror CCEECECCCC or CCCCCCCEEE.

Unless you're willing to go through and stack all the decks the same after revealing one, mirrored hands may not work out anymore. It'd be fine for Isotropic, of course.

[ackack]

It's unclear what "this problem" is, but given the OP . . .

Probably the only way to deal with this problem is to have more cards that allow for people to aggressively come back from behind.

Huh? Since on average the better player is the one who suffers against these cards more often than not, this seems like it would worsen OP's frustrations. I certainly wouldn't be happy to see such cards.

I liked the OP. I recognize that given the structure of the game luck and randomness are the only way to provide depth, but it sure does give me the hate sometimes.

[play2draw]

It's unclear what "this problem" is, but given the OP . . .

Probably the only way to deal with this problem is to have more cards that allow for people to aggressively come back from behind.

Huh? Since on average the better player is the one who suffers against these cards more often than not, this seems like it would worsen OP's frustrations. I certainly wouldn't be happy to see such cards.

I liked the OP. I recognize that given the structure of the game luck and randomness are the only way to provide depth, but it sure does give me the hate sometimes.

I figured that the problem with the OP was how 'critical' the opening is in Dominion and how getting that first turn tactician/witch or third turn familiar can immediately put a player at a great disadvantage. If that's the case, then cards that help the losing player more than the winning one would be a way to mitigate this.

[Jorbles]

Unfortunately, Hinterlands makes even this house rule a pain to implement. We used to play our first two hands at the same time. You draw your first hand, see that you have 2, 3, 4, or 5 Coppers and then choose your first two cards and shuffle. That shaved a little time in the grand scheme of things, and it wasn't that big of a deal in terms of seeing what others buy first (in our group anyway).

Hinterlands changed that. If you buy a Mandarin, Noble Brigand, or Nomad Camp in your first hand, you no longer can rely on having a 5/2 or 4/3 split.

So, mirrored hands of 5/2 and 3/4 are not specific enough. Now, you would have to mirror CCEECECCCC or CCCCCCCEEE.

Unless you're willing to go through and stack all the decks the same after revealing one, mirrored hands may not work out anymore. It'd be fine for Isotropic, of course.

The order people buy things in can determine strategies, for example you might not want to buy that Library if no one opens with a Militia. Perhaps more importantly though, can't you just spend the first two hands talking with your friends?

[Kuildeous]

The order people buy things in can determine strategies, for example you might not want to buy that Library if no one opens with a Militia. Perhaps more importantly though, can't you just spend the first two hands talking with your friends?

I'm not sure if there's an assumption that we don't talk during the opening hands. We're a sociable group, so we do.

There is an advantage to see what others buy, but we were willing to forego that for the sake of efficiency. And it possibly could offset some of that first-player advantage if the last player saw the first two cards everyone bought.

Again, that's a moot point now. We do our first two hands as normal. Briefly, we considered playing out both hands separately only when there were cards out there that would affect that, but that meant auditing each kingdom selection before making that decision. It was just easier to go back to the original rule.

The fact is that the game is filled with luck. We can strategize all we want to weather the storm, but some days we get really lucky and some days we don't. It should balance out in the end. When we play, the winner of the last game goes last in the new game. Is everything equitable? Probably not, but it's close enough.

[timchen]

After posting this (and watching the thread drift away...) I think now I understand why the luck factor in dominion is so frustrating.

The key factor is that the luck factor does not cancel out in one single game. And different from bridge, one has to play on, sometimes for a long time, after the deciding luck factor. After the initial bad draw, a good player would want to play on to overcome the bad luck; but facing a reasonable opponent, very often one can only watch the initial bad luck snowball.

Probably, one variant to mitigate this aspect of the game is to allow a once-per-game opportunity for a player to re draw his hand from the deck (ie, put his hand in the deck, reshuffle and draw the same number of cards?)