Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

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

Author Topic: I taught 2 people to play Dominion today  (Read 1624 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Titandrake

  • Mountebank
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2210
  • Respect: +2854
    • View Profile
I taught 2 people to play Dominion today
« on: July 18, 2015, 04:41:54 am »
+3

I'd say it was pretty successful. We played the first game set, then a full random set out of the Base game.

The first game set ends up being really nice. It's pretty easy to explain, because most of the cards are straightforward, and the only things I needed to explain were the 1 action limit, 1 buy limit, and what gaining/trashing meant. They knew going into it that I had played a lot before, but since it was a 3 player game I didn't bother holding back, and I basically played the first game engine. It wasn't optimal, I made some building mistakes and skipped Militia because I didn't want to make it too painful, but 3 player is a nice dynamic for learning - I can have fun building up the engine, and the other 2 compete against each other and get their minds blown by my Village + Smithy + Remodel engine that's getting $13+ a turn. Then after the game I got to explain how my Remodel open let me change Estate into Village/Smithy early, how my actions let me shuffle cards into my deck faster, etc.

The second game ended up being a nice random set, because it included Village, Smithy, Throne Room, and also Witch, Bureaucrat, Gardens, with no trashing besides Remodel. So, after that engine game I got to show off a slower Bureaucrat + Witch + Gardens based deck that beat the engines both of the other players tried to build, which was a nice way to show that different approaches are better on different boards.

I'd definitely recommend teaching in a 3+ player game first, I didn't appreciate how multiple players lets you have tiers of competition until now. For the interested, our 2nd board was
Code: [Select]
Moat, Chancellor, Village, Throne Room, Bureaucrat, Gardens, Smithy, Remodel, Library, Witch

(Note: in 2 player, I actually wouldn't be surprised if an engine gaining VP through Remodel could beat out the Gardens deck. It's definitely an uphill battle, but Throne Room puts in a lot of work here.)
Logged
I have a blog! It's called Sorta Insightful. Check it out?

Eran of Arcadia

  • Apprentice
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 278
  • Respect: +513
    • View Profile
Re: I taught 2 people to play Dominion today
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2015, 12:40:00 pm »
0

I've taught a bunch of people - but I only recently got the original game, so only once have I played with the "first game" kingdom.

Next time I want to be much more specific in the whole "you get 1 action, you show all your treasures when you are in your buy phase, etc." aspect. My stepmother-in-law still has a tendency to put all her actions down at once and let us be the ones to tell her what order to play them in.

(Of course, the last game we played, she opened Squire/Duchy and won so I dunno.)
Logged

mameluke

  • Duke
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 377
  • Respect: +442
    • View Profile
Re: I taught 2 people to play Dominion today
« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2015, 01:49:33 pm »
+2

I find that Oasis is a good card to teach people with -- it forces them to realize that discarded cards go into a different pile than cards that you have played -- that's the biggest issue I think with new players -- keeping "in play", "discard pile" and "in your hand" separate from each other (esp when players just lay down their hand in the buy phase)
Logged

ancientcampus

  • Navigator
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 76
  • Respect: +52
    • View Profile
Re: I taught 2 people to play Dominion today
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2015, 04:30:48 pm »
0

I find that Oasis is a good card to teach people with -- it forces them to realize that discarded cards go into a different pile than cards that you have played -- that's the biggest issue I think with new players -- keeping "in play", "discard pile" and "in your hand" separate from each other (esp when players just lay down their hand in the buy phase)
That's a really solid choice. Also it gives a good non-terminal $3 action, which is very new-player friendly.

I make a point to enforce the difference between the discard pile and "in play" when teaching, but it looks like I'm being nitpicky.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2015, 04:33:18 pm by ancientcampus »
Logged
Pages: [1]
 

Page created in 0.209 seconds with 20 queries.