Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[NateDominion]

I taught my mom how to play dominion. She wins cause I try out random things each game. She plays smithy bm. She says I get to many actions and not enough money. I tried to tell her about engines and combos but she doesn't listen. I got fed up. I used my smithy village engine and played really well. I won.


Now she doesn't like villages. what do I do?

[Grujah]

How is that a problem?

She is actually right if you are playing the base game

[NateDominion]

How is that a problem?

She is actually right if you are playing the base game

Village Smithy Engine>Smith BM

[drsteelhammer]

How is that a problem?

She is actually right if you are playing the base game

Village Smithy Engine>Smith BM

If all you play is villages +smithy, I doubt it's better than smithy bm

[Awaclus]

How is that a problem?

She is actually right if you are playing the base game

Village Smithy Engine>Smith BM

Well, this is why it's useful to think of engines as "<payload> engine"s rather than "<engine components> engine"s. An engine with Village and Smithy as your engine components can be incredibly strong if your payload is something like Goons or Horn of Plenty, or it can be much worse than Smithy+BM when your payload is the basic Treasures.

[funkdoc]

yeah, in the base game you really need trashing and +buy for village/smithy to be good. the +buy isn't even so important for the double-province turns - you want it in the early-mid game so you can buy multiple engine pieces at once.  without that, you typically can't build quickly enough.

attacks like witch & militia also favor engines over BM...discard attacks in particular are nasty for any BM strat, since it's really hard to buy a province with just 3 cards.

altogether, that's a lot of pieces that need to be in place for the engine to win (even considering that you could get by without, say, an attack).  and base dominion is especially short on villages, good trashing, and good attacks.  this is why so many people still think dominion is a big money game period, because the base game largely is

[Grujah]

How is that a problem?

She is actually right if you are playing the base game

Village Smithy Engine>Smith BM

Village + Smithy is not an engine by itself, it needs more component.

Smithy BM > Village Smithy BM

[UmbrageOfSnow]

To actually address the OP question, rather than nitpick his phrasing:

Try beating her with a couple other non-BM strategies, so she can see that it isn't just Village in particular, that other things can beat BM as well.

Expansions will absolutely help with that, but if you're looking at base only (and other people can probably suggest some additional options)

Gardens + Workshop
Library + Festival
Laboratory + Chapel + Market + Witch (or something like that)

Try to prove that it's not that Village is too amazing a card, it's that BM isn't always the best strategy.

Even things that really aren't that exciting can help: Ill-Gotten Gains and Fool's Gold did wonders for getting one of my friends to at least branch out from +Draw money.

[NateDominion]

How is that a problem?

She is actually right if you are playing the base game

Village Smithy Engine>Smith BM

Village + Smithy is not an engine by itself, it needs more component.

Smithy BM > Village Smithy BM

I had way more actions than just villages and smithys, I had markets, cellars, a workshop, and a remodel

[NateDominion]

How is that a problem?

She is actually right if you are playing the base game

Village Smithy Engine>Smith BM

If all you play is villages +smithy, I doubt it's better than smithy bm

I played more cards I just call it village smithy because thats the core concept

[dondon151]

Just playing more cards doesn't guarantee that you win in Dominion...

[NateDominion]

Just playing more cards doesn't guarantee that you win in Dominion...

They were asking me if I bought more cards besides smithy and village, so I was saying I bought markets, cellars, a remodel, workshop and militias.

[Awaclus]

Just playing more cards doesn't guarantee that you win in Dominion...

They were asking me if I bought more cards besides smithy and village, so I was saying I bought markets, cellars, a remodel, workshop and militias.

Well, in that case, the key card of your engine would be the Militia.

[NateDominion]

Just playing more cards doesn't guarantee that you win in Dominion...

They were asking me if I bought more cards besides smithy and village, so I was saying I bought markets, cellars, a remodel, workshop and militias.

Well, in that case, the key card of your engine would be the Militia.

look, when I mentioned an engine, I was talking about the first game engine.

[Asper]

Long story short, with just the base game, Big Money + X usually is a save, stable strategy that will beat most engine attempts. If you don't intend to get an expansion or two (i recommend Prosperity), then you have to accept that Treasures have to be part of your strategy part of the time.

[Roadrunner7671]

Some people just don't like Dominion once it gets advanced. Maybe your mom is there.