Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Pages: [1]

Author Topic: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms  (Read 5916 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

iguanaiguana

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 600
  • Shuffle iT Username: iguana iguana
  • Respect: +1044
    • View Profile
Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« on: June 01, 2015, 07:00:12 pm »
+1

So, I tried making this as a thread for people to post if they wanted to play each other's designed kingdoms, but there was nothing to discuss there really, and it did not take off. This is take two.

Let's post and discuss designed kingdoms! If you have been working on a kingdom, you can post it here in order to get feedback. If you see a kingdom in this thread, feel free to talk about how you think it should be played, what cards are best and what cards are probably not a serious consideration, what other cards could be interesting in the kingdom instead, etc. As an aside to that, if anyone is interested in playing the kingdoms, post that also and maybe we can make some games happen.

Okay, to start things off, here is a kingdom I have been working on:

Provinces/Estates



Code: [Select]
Hermit, Baron, Bureaucrat, Farming Village, Horse Traders, Counterfeit, Journeyman, Mystic, Rabble, Nobles
To be clear, this isn't the most polished kingdom I've created; I think cards can be swapped here to make it more fun. I'd be eager to here what people think about that.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2015, 08:12:59 am by iguanaiguana »
Logged
Point iguana. Not that points really matter with a result, but still.
Igu is town or trying the hardest he ever has as scum.

Deadlock39

  • Torturer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1722
  • Respect: +1757
    • View Profile
Re: Designed Kingdom Matches for feedback/criticism?
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2015, 08:28:36 pm »
+1

Hey iguanaiguana,

I'd be interested in playing and discussing designed kingdoms.  I've actually been trying to get my act in gear to start doing something interesting on a stream since Adam posted this back in the Hunting Grounds article discussion:

...Of course I'm biased, because my main contribution to the community has been through video and live streams, but I think there's a ton of value in this kind of stuff. I know there's been value for me and I know several people have commented on my videos or messaged me saying how much they've learned from watching me. I've been toying with different ideas for different types of videos I could make, but that's another thread.

I'm not saying video is the only thing, but it certainly has its place for many people. Finding out new ways to have Dominion content might be something worth trying in the near future.

I'm not into Kingdom design, but would definitely play and discuss them.  A similar idea I had was to take games from the game reports and help sections that generated discussion and try out strategies found there. This may or may not be able to generate any definitive conclusions about the strategies, but I think it would be interesting nonetheless.

iguanaiguana

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 600
  • Shuffle iT Username: iguana iguana
  • Respect: +1044
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2015, 10:32:05 pm »
0

Deadlock, thanks for responding. I'd be up for streaming with you, I'm sending you a PM.

I got very few responses to the initial version for this thread, so I changed the OP into a discussion about designed kingdoms and started things off with one of mine. Hopefully people will want to discuss!
Logged
Point iguana. Not that points really matter with a result, but still.
Igu is town or trying the hardest he ever has as scum.

faust

  • Cartographer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3377
  • Shuffle iT Username: faust
  • Respect: +5142
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #3 on: June 05, 2015, 04:59:09 am »
+1

Some commentary on the kingdom:

I think it a bit too "obvious". There's no way around the engine here, and any engine is going to look more or less the same. Bureaucrat as treasure gaining for Counterfeit is a neat idea, but I don't think it'll work out. First it will be very late when it's useful, as all your Coppers should already have gone. Second, the attack is pretty insignificant with Farming Village and Horse Traders around. Third, at best it gives you +4$ (gain a Silver, play it twice with Counterfeit) - that's also what Baron does, and there you get a much-wanted +buy as well. I also think there's too much draw - Rabble is completely outperformed by Journeyman, no need to have it in here. Mystic I doubt I'll ever get over the other payload.

Tl;dr: This board seems too focused on a single strategy. I don't know what your intention was designing this, but I think a key feature of well-designed kingdoms is that there are multiple viable strategies.

PS: You probably want to state whether the game has Shelters and/or Colonies.
Logged
You say the ocean's rising, like I give a shit
You say the whole world's ending, honey it already did

Chris is me

  • Margrave
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2745
  • Shuffle iT Username: Chris is me
  • What do you want me to say?
  • Respect: +3457
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #4 on: June 05, 2015, 10:41:57 am »
+1

I think the posted kingdom is "obvious" in that you're going to want to build an engine if you can, Farming Village is gonna pile out, etc. but aside from that there's some variance in how you accomplish that, and what works well with what.

The Rabble attack is somewhat offset by Baron making use of topdecked Estates, Mystic getting a free card draw, Horse Traders getting a card to discard, or Farming Village sifting past junk. There aren't a ton of good ways to get those starting Estates out - Hermit makes you gain Silvers or more Hermit, neither of which are necessarily bad but both require some thought. However Journeyman can skip right over them if you aren't using Baron for some reason. Bureaucrat against a non-Baron player might actually not be absolutely terrible if you have Counterfeit and Mystic in your hand... yeah, probably still bad.

All that said, I think the differences in engine strategies might be a bit too subtle and irrelevant for this to be a super fantastic kingdom, but it's certainly a good start. In general, I seem to enjoy designed kingdoms that give you most of what you need to make a few strategies work, but each strategy needs a little bit more than is given to them in order to be overwhelmingly dominant. I'll have to post some of my (badly designed) kingdoms at some point.
Logged
Twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

bug me on discord

pm me if you wanna do stuff for the blog

they/them

iguanaiguana

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 600
  • Shuffle iT Username: iguana iguana
  • Respect: +1044
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #5 on: June 05, 2015, 12:28:59 pm »
+1

Thanks for the responses. This is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.

I think the main offender in this kingdom is actually hermit. Hermit/Counterfeit is too neat and easy a way to get rid of your starting cards, and trashing hermit for madman does even more to help you set up the engine. What this kingdom wants is for the engine to look difficult and for big money/a slog to look tempting. So hermit is out, and some kind of junker is in. Here, I'm thinking Jester, which is normally a really unreliable curser, but gets a lot of help dealing out curses with rabble. On top of that, Farming village is super powerful here and a really automatic buy, and the two roles that it is performing here may be more interesting if split across two different cards. Mystic does neat things here with topdecking in the kingdom, but at 5 you're paying too much for it, so now vagrant is auditioning for that part. Finally, all of that makes a slog look a little too good, so a weak trasher like Island may help. This is the revision:

Provinces/Estates

Vagrant, Island, Plaza, Bureaucrat, Horse Traders, Jester, Rabble, Venture, Counterfeit, Nobles
« Last Edit: June 05, 2015, 12:30:16 pm by iguanaiguana »
Logged
Point iguana. Not that points really matter with a result, but still.
Igu is town or trying the hardest he ever has as scum.

Awaclus

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 11809
  • Shuffle iT Username: Awaclus
  • (´。• ω •。`)
  • Respect: +12848
    • View Profile
    • Birds of Necama
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #6 on: June 05, 2015, 01:08:22 pm »
+4

Tl;dr: This board seems too focused on a single strategy. I don't know what your intention was designing this, but I think a key feature of well-designed kingdoms is that there are multiple viable strategies.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I like kingdoms with obvious strategies that are hard to execute right.

That said, the engine here is both obvious and pretty easy to execute. Changing Hermit for Vagrant, Baron for Island and Farming Village for Plaza doesn't really help, the best strategy is still an obvious engine which is not too difficult to build. EDIT: I missed a couple of changes you had there. Now the engine is significantly stronger and also significantly more interesting, which might not be a bad thing.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2015, 01:11:55 pm by Awaclus »
Logged
Bomb, Cannon, and many of the Gunpowder cards can strongly effect gameplay, particularly in a destructive way

The YouTube channel where I make musicDownload my band's Creative Commons albums for free

iguanaiguana

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 600
  • Shuffle iT Username: iguana iguana
  • Respect: +1044
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #7 on: June 05, 2015, 01:49:40 pm »
0

Tl;dr: This board seems too focused on a single strategy. I don't know what your intention was designing this, but I think a key feature of well-designed kingdoms is that there are multiple viable strategies.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I like kingdoms with obvious strategies that are hard to execute right.

That said, the engine here is both obvious and pretty easy to execute. Changing Hermit for Vagrant, Baron for Island and Farming Village for Plaza doesn't really help, the best strategy is still an obvious engine which is not too difficult to build. EDIT: I missed a couple of changes you had there. Now the engine is significantly stronger and also significantly more interesting, which might not be a bad thing.

Do you mind saying how you would approach building the engine here?
Logged
Point iguana. Not that points really matter with a result, but still.
Igu is town or trying the hardest he ever has as scum.

Awaclus

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 11809
  • Shuffle iT Username: Awaclus
  • (´。• ω •。`)
  • Respect: +12848
    • View Profile
    • Birds of Necama
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #8 on: June 05, 2015, 02:11:32 pm »
+1

Tl;dr: This board seems too focused on a single strategy. I don't know what your intention was designing this, but I think a key feature of well-designed kingdoms is that there are multiple viable strategies.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I like kingdoms with obvious strategies that are hard to execute right.

That said, the engine here is both obvious and pretty easy to execute. Changing Hermit for Vagrant, Baron for Island and Farming Village for Plaza doesn't really help, the best strategy is still an obvious engine which is not too difficult to build. EDIT: I missed a couple of changes you had there. Now the engine is significantly stronger and also significantly more interesting, which might not be a bad thing.

Do you mind saying how you would approach building the engine here?

Open Horse Traders/Silver, get two Counterfeits as soon as possible, then pick up Plazas with $4 hands, Rabbles with $5 hands and Nobles with $6 hands. Get a Jester when your engine is sort of starting to come together, and depending on what your opponent does, you might want a Bureaucrat when you start running out of stuff to trash for Counterfeits (it's a bit difficult on paper, but in practice you'll probably have a pretty good idea of if you want a Bureaucrat or not). Double Plaza turns are conceivable for $8 when you have 2 buys; you should consider the implications of winning or losing the Plaza split, taking into account the fact that Nobles is another splitter on the board if you need it, but it's expensive and using it as a splitter is not really what you want to do. I would pick up Silvers with early $3 hands here, because you can easily trash them later with Counterfeit. Then you probably want some Golds too in the late game.

Something like that.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2015, 02:12:46 pm by Awaclus »
Logged
Bomb, Cannon, and many of the Gunpowder cards can strongly effect gameplay, particularly in a destructive way

The YouTube channel where I make musicDownload my band's Creative Commons albums for free

iguanaiguana

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 600
  • Shuffle iT Username: iguana iguana
  • Respect: +1044
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #9 on: June 05, 2015, 02:28:24 pm »
0

Tl;dr: This board seems too focused on a single strategy. I don't know what your intention was designing this, but I think a key feature of well-designed kingdoms is that there are multiple viable strategies.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I like kingdoms with obvious strategies that are hard to execute right.

That said, the engine here is both obvious and pretty easy to execute. Changing Hermit for Vagrant, Baron for Island and Farming Village for Plaza doesn't really help, the best strategy is still an obvious engine which is not too difficult to build. EDIT: I missed a couple of changes you had there. Now the engine is significantly stronger and also significantly more interesting, which might not be a bad thing.

Do you mind saying how you would approach building the engine here?

Open Horse Traders/Silver, get two Counterfeits as soon as possible, then pick up Plazas with $4 hands, Rabbles with $5 hands and Nobles with $6 hands. Get a Jester when your engine is sort of starting to come together, and depending on what your opponent does, you might want a Bureaucrat when you start running out of stuff to trash for Counterfeits (it's a bit difficult on paper, but in practice you'll probably have a pretty good idea of if you want a Bureaucrat or not). Double Plaza turns are conceivable for $8 when you have 2 buys; you should consider the implications of winning or losing the Plaza split, taking into account the fact that Nobles is another splitter on the board if you need it, but it's expensive and using it as a splitter is not really what you want to do. I would pick up Silvers with early $3 hands here, because you can easily trash them later with Counterfeit. Then you probably want some Golds too in the late game.

Something like that.


Ok, this is similar to how I have been playing the board. Don't forget that bureaucrat can stick nobles on your deck. That makes nobles a problematic card here. (It also completely shuts down farming village's counter to rabble,   if that should go back in for plaza.)

Also, Does big money with counterfeit and venture to counter rabble get totally crushed?
Logged
Point iguana. Not that points really matter with a result, but still.
Igu is town or trying the hardest he ever has as scum.

Jack Rudd

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1323
  • Shuffle iT Username: Jack Rudd
  • Respect: +1379
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #10 on: June 05, 2015, 02:39:10 pm »
+1

Also, Does big money with counterfeit and venture to counter rabble get totally crushed?
Yes, because it doesn't work the way you want it to. You draw the green junk into your hand at the start of your turn, so Venture has no chance to skip over it.
Logged
Centuries later, archaeologists discover the remains of your ancient civilization.

Evidence of thriving towns, Pottery, roads, and a centralized government amaze the startled scientists.

Finally, they come upon a stone tablet, which contains but one mysterious phrase!

'ISOTROPIC WILL RETURN!'

pubby

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 548
  • Respect: +1046
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #11 on: June 05, 2015, 04:10:52 pm »
+1



Code: [Select]
Squire, Hermit, Baron, Conspirator, Farming Village, Counterfeit, Duke, Embassy, Jester, Rabble
How about something like this?
Logged

iguanaiguana

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 600
  • Shuffle iT Username: iguana iguana
  • Respect: +1044
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #12 on: June 07, 2015, 08:22:52 pm »
0



Code: [Select]
Squire, Hermit, Baron, Conspirator, Farming Village, Counterfeit, Duke, Embassy, Jester, Rabble
How about something like this?

I like the rewrite a lot! Hermit is obviously really strong here, since it can both gain squires and trash them for rabble or jester. So you want to do that, but each time you do, you're sacrificing an engine piece, especially if you lose the farming village split. Going for duchies early here without an engine is a horrible idea, but later in the game duke could very well come into play. The embassy rabble decision is pretty tough. Would you rather junk up your opponents or sift through your own junk, and Jester/rabble for reliable cursing is held more in check with hermit (which also means you may not want to play Jesters for curses as much when you could gain something good from them instead).

Axing the nobles/bureaucrat part hurts, since that was the original inspiration for the board, but maybe that's for the best? I am going to playtest this version and see how it goes.
Logged
Point iguana. Not that points really matter with a result, but still.
Igu is town or trying the hardest he ever has as scum.

iguanaiguana

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 600
  • Shuffle iT Username: iguana iguana
  • Respect: +1044
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #13 on: June 08, 2015, 09:29:15 pm »
0

This is what I ended up with. The trashing is good. The draw is pretty weak. The attacks are strong, as can be the other payload.



Code: [Select]
Native Village, Squire, Hermit, Bureaucrat, Conspirator, Counterfeit, Duke, Jester, Rabble, Nobles

Does anyone else want to keep this thread alive and post one of their kingdoms?
Logged
Point iguana. Not that points really matter with a result, but still.
Igu is town or trying the hardest he ever has as scum.

Jack Rudd

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1323
  • Shuffle iT Username: Jack Rudd
  • Respect: +1379
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #14 on: June 11, 2015, 12:02:44 pm »
+3

One of my friends-of-a-friend was having a bad time with depression recently, so to cheer him up I constructed a kingdom based on his interests. I don't know how it would actually play.

Alchemist
Masterpiece
Gardens
Library
Silk Road
Magpie
Knights
Haunted Woods
Border Village
Pirate Ship
Logged
Centuries later, archaeologists discover the remains of your ancient civilization.

Evidence of thriving towns, Pottery, roads, and a centralized government amaze the startled scientists.

Finally, they come upon a stone tablet, which contains but one mysterious phrase!

'ISOTROPIC WILL RETURN!'

XerxesPraelor

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1069
  • Respect: +364
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #15 on: June 28, 2015, 09:42:25 am »
+1

I've done some normal ones and ones with fan cards. Here's a normal one, just designed to have interesting interactions.

Food Market:
$3-Market Square, Fishing Village, Great Hall (Bane)
$4-Spice Merchant, Bishop, Young Witch
$5-Butcher, Mountebank, Cache, Library
$3P-Alchemist
Logged

iguanaiguana

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 600
  • Shuffle iT Username: iguana iguana
  • Respect: +1044
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #16 on: July 01, 2015, 06:52:24 pm »
+1

I've done some normal ones and ones with fan cards. Here's a normal one, just designed to have interesting interactions.

Food Market:
$3-Market Square, Fishing Village, Great Hall (Bane)
$4-Spice Merchant, Bishop, Young Witch
$5-Butcher, Mountebank, Cache, Library
$3P-Alchemist

I played this board a few times and had fun. I mainly went for the library engine, getting a ton of FV and using young witch + library for draw. I found it goes bad if you totally ignore mountebank, but once the curses are low, you can butcher them into libraries. You want spice merchants, but once you thin copper you can butcher those into bishops to trash curses/estates and start scoring. I like how you can discard market square for gold with a library in hand and redraw the card you lost, like how an opponent's bishop can make your library turn better (that only happened once in three games though). Great hall is a neat bane, hard to decide how many to get (though later on you can always butcher them into something else too!). I guess the main neat thing for me about the board is how you want to change your cards into other cards at the same price point as you move from early game > mid game > late game and how butcher facilitates that and lets you really load up on coin tokens for points.

 Alchemist looked kind of weak here to me because of all the library synergies, and I didn't see the point of cache (too much junking to need coppers to feed spice merchants, and you can butcher spice merchant into whatever else you want anyway after you copper-thin)  What were you thinking with those two cards?

I play a lot of mountebank slogs, this was a cool mountebank influenced engine (but still very likely to end on low cost piles if you are not careful!)
« Last Edit: July 01, 2015, 07:07:35 pm by iguanaiguana »
Logged
Point iguana. Not that points really matter with a result, but still.
Igu is town or trying the hardest he ever has as scum.

iguanaiguana

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 600
  • Shuffle iT Username: iguana iguana
  • Respect: +1044
    • View Profile
Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms
« Reply #17 on: July 01, 2015, 06:59:08 pm »
+2

One of my friends-of-a-friend was having a bad time with depression recently, so to cheer him up I constructed a kingdom based on his interests. I don't know how it would actually play.

Alchemist
Masterpiece
Gardens
Library
Silk Road
Magpie
Knights
Haunted Woods
Border Village
Pirate Ship

I haven't had a chance to play this; obviously you can't do it online because of the adventures cards. But at first glance....

Gardens has support in masterpiece, magpie, and border village, and silk roads get more powerful if you go for gardens, but a haunted woods/knights strategy can shut any kind of slog down hard here. With alchemist to add reliability, you have to go engine and contest knights, but what you do after that is more interesting (assuming someone doesn't completely destroy the other person by winning the knights split).

I'm guessing you go for provinces, but if both players are close then they will probably both dip into gardens/silk roads to catch up on points, and the game could go from engine > slog because of all the alt VP. Which makes it a pretty cool board overall. But maybe it just ends on piles before any of that happens (magpie and border village both contribute a lot toward pile endings, and you probably want to empty the knights).

Library anti-synergizes with haunted woods, alchemist and magpie, and doesn't synergize with anything else, so I don't think anyone's buying that card here.

Pirate ship looks about as glorious as it usually does.

Masterpiece, magpie and border village all defend somewhat against knights, and there's even a mild masterpiece/magpie synergy (well those cards always synergize, but still), so that's cool too.

Sorry for not responding for a long time!
« Last Edit: July 01, 2015, 07:00:58 pm by iguanaiguana »
Logged
Point iguana. Not that points really matter with a result, but still.
Igu is town or trying the hardest he ever has as scum.
Pages: [1]
 

Page created in 0.311 seconds with 20 queries.