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[Chris is me]

So it's 2016! I've got some ideas and suggestions and thoughts for lists this year. Of course everything here is at best just a suggestion, as Qvist does all the work (thank you!) but I'm bored and want to share some thoughts.

This year's list situation is similar to last year's - a new expansion has been out for a whole summer, but isn't out online yet and won't be this calendar year. Additionally we have gotten a lot more experience with the previous expansion since the last lists came out! Would it be valuable to make a list of our impressions of the cards before the game comes out online? I sure think so.

Especially because, we will never have a gap between online and offline releases again! Stef and SCSN "will never be late with an expansion". So it would be cool to get one last snapshot of this gap in our stats, so we should do one in 2016.

I'd also be for starting the lists a wee bit earlier next year, because, and this is pure speculation, if a new expansion comes out in 2017, at around the same time of year Adventures and Empires did, we'll have a few months of experience with it online by this time next year. I find value in getting a list done before we are all experts on the new cards, and I think others do too, so in order to do this with actually timely online releases lists would get started sooner after their release than we otherwise do.

This is rambley and doesn't make much sense, I know. Just throwing things out there.

[werothegreat]

That just leaves us with two (and a bit) questions:
-How to rank cards
-How to rank split piles
** How to rank the Castles

I think it's pretty obvious that Landmarks should just get their own list.

[ThetaSigma12]

That just leaves us with two (and a bit) questions:
-How to rank cards
-How to rank split piles
** How to rank the Castles

I think it's pretty obvious that Landmarks should just get their own list.

How do landmarks get ranked? Since it's mostly equal opportunity, is it a ranking of how many VP you can get from it?
should be converted to coin costs IMO. Split piles should be seperate, and so should castles. I also would love it if the base cards were thrown in for comparison.

[Chris is me]

Landmarks shouldn't even get a list, in my opinion. What exactly are you ranking? What is strength in terms of a landmark? It's like saying what is stronger, Province games or Colony games. Any Landmark ranking would not strength, it would be preference.

Debt conversion to Coin isn't stellar, because Debt and coin costs are totally different. You wouldn't buy an $8 and a D8 at the same time in the game, you'd buy the D8 sooner. I would prefer eithe ranking debt cards at their Coin cost (mostly $0) or divide their debt by 2 maybe I guess?

There was a debate about this, Split piles, and also Potion cards in another thread I can't immediately find. I would be fine with separate rankings for split pile halves and I would also support including potions in coin lists by converting P to $2 (not even close to perfect or equivalent but whatever)

[Deadlock39]

I agree with ranking Engineer with the $4s, and The <8>s with the $8s, because that fits them from a power level standpoint in my opinion.

[traces Around]

Debt cards: add up coins and debt, call it that price. The fact that you can pay in debt may be accounted for just as the fact that you can pay 0 for Peddler or as overpay is accounted for.

Split Piles (the type with 2 cards): rank each card individually. Obtaining the bottom is not contingent on you having gained the top (somebody maybe, but not you). What goes under or what is on top is accounted for by the voter, though I think with one (or two) exceptions is not exactly necessary.

Castles: put them at 4 or 5 (probably 5) to compare to other major alt-VP cards. Then rank them individually like is done for Knights. If this means it takes effort to properly interpret their rankings, oh well.

Landmarks shouldn't be ranked.

[Chris is me]

I agree with ranking Engineer with the $4s, and The <8>s with the $8s, because that fits them from a power level standpoint in my opinion.

Totally disagree. Overlord would be pretty shitty if it cost $8, and Royal Blacksmith is not significantly different from Hunting Grounds. City Quarter sure is ridiculous, yeah.

If you consider the list "what is the strongest buy I can make on average with $X?", then Debt cards should be 0 cost, because you can buy them with nothing.

[drsteelhammer]

I agree with ranking Engineer with the $4s, and The <8>s with the $8s, because that fits them from a power level standpoint in my opinion.

Totally disagree. Overlord would be pretty shitty if it cost $8, and Royal Blacksmith is not significantly different from Hunting Grounds. City Quarter sure is ridiculous, yeah.

If you consider the list "what is the strongest buy I can make on average with $X?", then Debt cards should be 0 cost, because you can buy them with nothing.

so you agree that they'd be $6+ , right?

[werothegreat]

I think the lists started off being "What should I get if I have $X", but I think now they serve more as convenient categories, because costs serve other functions as well.  You'll never buy Peddler for , but we rank it with Prince and Pathfinding.  And while is orthogonal to when you're using, say, Remodel, at the end of the turn you're still paying for these cards.  So while it makes sense to rank cards separately since you're actually spending a separate resource, I think it does make sense to put cards on the list of their converted cost.  So Engineer at , Triumph at , and the rest at +.  Even though you're buying half of your Wedding on layaway, it's not a ; it's clearly a .

[Dingan]

Similar discussion:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=15652.0

My vote is also to rank x cards as x, and to rank xy cards as (x+y), etc.  We can always revisit if, say, the data doesn't make sense or shows obvious correlations distinguishing debt vs. non-debt.

Also, to my understanding, the card strengths are "normalized" with respect to their cost, right?  So like what werothegreat said about Peddler, or how Grand Market is slightly weaker than it otherwise would be if it didn't have the no-Coppers part, etc.  I would think people would similarly take debt into account.  At least I would.

[ben_king]

I think a ranking for landmarks could make sense if you think of it from the perspective of "How much do I change my strategy because of this landmark?"

For example, I've found that Palace rarely factors into either my strategy or the outcome of the game, whereas Wall forces me to rethink whatever I was doing and is almost always a factor in final scoring.

[Deadlock39]

I agree with ranking Engineer with the $4s, and The <8>s with the $8s, because that fits them from a power level standpoint in my opinion.

Totally disagree. Overlord would be pretty shitty if it cost $8, and Royal Blacksmith is not significantly different from Hunting Grounds. City Quarter sure is ridiculous, yeah.

If you consider the list "what is the strongest buy I can make on average with $X?", then Debt cards should be 0 cost, because you can buy them with nothing.

so you agree that they'd be $6+ , right?

Yeah, this was a mistake in my post.  I meant to say $6+ since that is the category they would be in.

[Donald X.]

I think the lists started off being "What should I get if I have $X", but I think now they serve more as convenient categories, because costs serve other functions as well.  You'll never buy Peddler for , but we rank it with Prince and Pathfinding.  And while is orthogonal to when you're using, say, Remodel, at the end of the turn you're still paying for these cards.  So while it makes sense to rank cards separately since you're actually spending a separate resource, I think it does make sense to put cards on the list of their converted cost.  So Engineer at , Triumph at , and the rest at +.  Even though you're buying half of your Wedding on layaway, it's not a ; it's clearly a .

I mostly agree.

You aren't ranking $2's on the $4 list, though $2's get bought with $4 all the time. The idea is to compare stuff in a way that's easier than having everything in one big list. To do overpay or debt justice by considering them at every cost is too much work.

However, I personally would rank overpay cards twice - at cost and at $6+. I'm not sure it's worth it to rank debt cards twice; the other entry would be $0-$2 and well that ranking probably won't mean much.

I would rank Peddler in the $0-$2 category, that's right. The main reason not to is "but we want simple rules for where the cards are listed and Peddler says $8 on it." Man there's an asterisk there.

I would rank both cards separately for each two-card split pile; that seems pretty clear. I would not separately rank Knights; they'd clutter up the list a lot, just so you can point out that trashing two cards is better than 2 VP.

Castles are a question. I might just stick them at $6+ as one pile, since the majority cost $6+. It's more work to separately rank them, and many of them you only want if you're going for Castles.

I like ben_king's notion of ranking Landmarks by impact on the game.

[Seprix]

I'm going to be making a tier system for ranking cards soon, because I am not sure ranking cards by cardinal order is very useful anymore.

[Chris is me]

I'm going to be making a tier system for ranking cards soon, because I am not sure ranking cards by cardinal order is very useful anymore.

There already is that old card grades thread that's basically what tiers are.

Tigers are just Cardinal order plus arbitrary cutoffs anyway.

[Seprix]

I'm going to be making a tier system for ranking cards soon, because I am not sure ranking cards by cardinal order is very useful anymore.

There already is that old card grades thread that's basically what tiers are.

Tigers are just Cardinal order plus arbitrary cutoffs anyway.

Not quite. The tier system I would propose wouldn't have a cardinal order. Cards in a tier list aren't better or worse than another. The tier list would merely be measuring relative card strength and how often it was used in comparison to other cards.

[AJD]

Tigers are just Cardinal order plus arbitrary cutoffs anyway.

St. Louis team moves to Detroit, wears denim shorts

[Aleimon Thimble]

I would support card tier lists. It would be somewhat similar to what Smogon does with competitive Pokemon (for the people who know what I'm talking about: the viability rankings, not the actual OU/UU/etc tiers).

[Seprix]

I would support card tier lists. It would be somewhat similar to what Smogon does with competitive Pokemon (for the people who know what I'm talking about: the viability rankings, not the actual OU/UU/etc tiers).

Yes, that would be the idea. Except no dumb bans. It would be more like SSB tiers actually, but without ordered rankings within the tiers. If anyone wants to volunteer to help, let me know. I start tomorrow. I'll probably organize the cards into Events, Landmarks, and Kingdom Cards as their own entities. I'll have rules for consideration and stuff. There won't be tiers until later, but rather a numbered system. Cards will be grouped into tiers after that.

[Qvist]

Seprix, if you want to you can start another list, but I just don't see the point.

My list starts probably in October and you can do tiers as I stated earlier in one of the threads. You can assign values (like 1-5, 1-10, 1-20, 1-100, whatever you like) to the cards or rank them just like before.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Can we have more time than last year to do our rankings? I barely got through the $3s and $4s last year. I didn't have time do much at all with the others, and now we have even more cards.

[Seprix]

Seprix, if you want to you can start another list, but I just don't see the point.

My list starts probably in October and you can do tiers as I stated earlier in one of the threads. You can assign values (like 1-5, 1-10, 1-20, 1-100, whatever you like) to the cards or rank them just like before.

Not that I needed your blessing to go off and do my own thing, but it does mean a lot. I think that more than anything else, it will be a learning experience for me. Even if nothing comes of it for anyone else, I will become a better player for it.

[Qvist]

Can we have more time than last year to do our rankings? I barely got through the $3s and $4s last year. I didn't have time do much at all with the others, and now we have even more cards.

Is 3-4 weeks enough?

[LibraryAdventurer]

Can we have more time than last year to do our rankings? I barely got through the $3s and $4s last year. I didn't have time do much at all with the others, and now we have even more cards.

Is 3-4 weeks enough?

hopefully

How much time did we have last year? I only remember that it wasn't enough.

[Beyond Awesome]

I know my lists are mostly ready to go. Last year, I made a word document, so all I really need to do is adjust some cards on the list. I most likely won't be ranking any Empires cards since I've played less than 10 ganes with them.