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[mameluke]

I figured we should get back to real discussion. Apologies if I'm stepping on anyone's toes by starting this topic.

Cost: $5, Action/Reserve/Victory
Card Text:
Put this on your Tavern mat.
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Worth 4 VP if on your Tavern mat at the end of the game (otherwise worth 0 VP).


Discussion: At what point in the game do you want to go for DL vs. Duchy? Is DL a strategy in of itself, where you want to get as many as possible as soon as possible (turning into a Duchy/Duke type of slog that will eventually leave your deck), or do you just want to sprinkle them into an engine where you can play one each turn or so, but still focusing on Provinces?

How does the high cost compare to other Alt VP like Gardens and Silk Roads? How about with Fairgrounds, which is more expensive but with no real effort is also worth 4 VP?

Any good combos? University and Altar can gain them. You can also put it on the Tavern mat with Procession, and also gain a $6 cost (Procession of course will also gain them).

[enfynet]

I feel like DL is more similar to Island than the other alt-VP cards, because it removes itself from your deck when played. I have only played 2 or 3 games with it, and have only used it as extra points when I had +Actions to spare.

[schadd]

    distant lands is maybe my favorite adventures card that isn't amulet, and it might be the last card the robots will be able to use perfectly.

    it's already difficult to tell when to get provinces, and a lot of the time you just sort of have to have a sense for it, especially in the case of bm. in engines, it's still difficult, but in the event that you're drawing your deck it becomes sort of a simple question of, will buying engine components/payload reduce the amount of turns it will take me to get 5 (give or take) provinces (or foster some other goal, like attacks or alt-vp), or can i get a significant amount this turn? (also the special case where, if i get provinces this turn will it prevent my opponent from 3-piling and winning next turn?)

    we don't have any thing like this privilege with distant lands. clearly it is a good card—it is more cost efficient for VP than province as long as you can play it and it gets rid of itself; however, it doesn't advance you in the game, really, in any direction. provinces, when those are gone the game ends and they make it more difficult to do your engine; for distant lands, the first is only 1/3 true, and the second part, it is only true for your first order of distant landses but for the several  turns you're getting and playing distant lands, nothing really changes unless you're unable to play some of them.

    so when do you start doing it? who knows, is my initial impression. it depends on how good the villages and draw are, if sparing several actions to play them is difficult (see: nobles, ironmonger engines, although it's nice with ironmonger because of the dual-type) then go for it once you think you would reasonably be able to buy and play 2 a turn, but with king's court sort of things you might even do, like 4 a turn, because the engine strength will carry over to provinces, if that makes sense.

@ mameluke's questions: i am pretty confident that DL and duchy is one or the other. DL clearly stands out, to me at least,  as stronger if you think you can routinely play them. as well, i am pretty confident that it would be distinct from provinces in a consistent engine, but in an inconsistent one you would get whichever combination you can afford, probably even favoring provinces because of the whole inconsistent engine thing.

i would say that it is as efficient or more efficient than a lot of alt-vp, but it's more of a different sphere that a lot of them because it is much more suited to engine than bm or slog. strong alt-vp enablers like ironworks/$4 will probably beat most of what uses distant lands, but something that can go for DL and then provinces will probably beat, like, any duke-duchy. but who knows.

it doesn't seem like much of a combo card. university, altar, and procession will love it, especially the former, and it seems like a really good third pile for upgrade/rats/fortress and similar combos, and also a good target for ironworks+cost  reduction, but other than that it's just a solid engine payload, like monument or something.

[drsteelhammer]

Obviously the coolest Adventurer card

I've never tried Distand Lands as a strategy on its own, and I don't think it can work like the other Vp cards. Firstly, it's only 32VP overall, and more importantly, the enabler would all have to be non-terminal to avoid awkward collisions.

That said, it accompanies engines pretty well in my experience. Usually, In most of the games I didn't get more than three of these, which is already pretty nice against an opponent who goes for provinces right away. In one game I managed to get 6 of these on the mat whereas my opponent ignored them, that made greening afterwards a lot of fun

I don't think they are that great in non-engine boards, atleast that was my experience so far.

Duchy -Distand Lands is tricky, I've overestimated my ability to put them on the mat so far.

[Dingan]

I've never played with it yet, but my gut tells me it's pretty weak.  When you're greening, and especially when you're spending <$8 for green cards, the game is usually close to over (exceptions: Gardens rush, Fairgrounds rush, etc.).  I would not pick these up when the game is close to over, for fear that I won't be able to play them.  The only scenario I can think of off the top of my head is one where you can reliably, and at no opportunity-cost waste, pick one up and play it in the same turn.  And being terminal is also an obvious pitfall.  Comparing Island, Gardens, etc. -- I just feel that those cards are stronger in most situations.  (Again, I'm not basing this on actual experience, just instinct.)

Completely unrelated, but I just noticed most (but not all) alt-VP cards have a land-theme among them.  Vineyards, gardens, fairgrounds, distant lands, silk road, and farmland are all things I can ride a horse upon.  I assume this is intended.  Just happened to notice now though haha.  Is it because alt-VP cards are green, and grass is green?  Hmmm..

EDIT: I guess in an IGG-Curse-<x> three-pile ending, I might prefer <x> to be Distant Lands over Duchy.

[enfynet]

I've never played with it yet, but my gut tells me it's pretty weak.  When you're greening, and especially when you're spending <$8 for green cards, the game is close to over.  I would not pick these up when the game is usually close to over.  The only scenario I can think of off the top of my head is one where you can reliably and easily pick one up and play it in the same turn (University, Highway-Ironworks, etc.).  But even still, in such scenarios, I would think there are better $5 cards.  And being terminal is also an obvious pitfall.  Comparing Island, Gardens, etc. -- I just feel that those cards are stronger in most situations.  (Again, I'm not basing this on actual experience, just instinct.)

Completely unrelated, but I just noticed most (but not all) alt-VP cards have a land-theme among them.  Vineyards, gardens, fairgrounds, distant lands, silk road, and farmland are all things I can ride a horse upon.  I assume this is intended.  Just happened to notice now though haha.  Is it because alt-VP cards are green, and grass is green?  Hmmm..

I tink it's because, thematically, the victory points measure how much land you control. Dominion is like Risk.

[Limetime]

Rebuild into distant lands is pretty good. Distant lands is pretty good for engines because you can almost always Tavern mat them and because it's more vp for the engine player to get.

[DG]

Distant lands adds a lot of potential vp to a game and makes provinces less important so the game can last longer. As a result, if you can keep control of your deck while scoring vp with distant lands you should be stronger in the end game. Clearly there is an overhead in using terminal actions to get the lands onto the mat, so you need to have the right sort of deck to do this.

I don't think there is any specific need to gain distant lands mid-turn, although clearly that's nice. If they fit into a strategy they will be worth buying in their own right.

[AdrianHealey]

It synergizes with scout, btw.

[AdamH]

It synergizes with scout, btw.

I thought we had a thread for this now.

[WanderingWinder]

Full disclosure: I've never played a game featuring this card.

This has to be an engine card, and quite a decent (though not great) one.

It's enough points to make a slog kind of strategy work: 4 points per plus your Duchies means you need probably a province and maaaybe two, which isn't good for a slog, but it is a possible thing. But the real problem is, you need to pick it up with enough time to play it, which takes quite a long time in those kinds of decks, and it's a terminal, so if it collides with your other enabler terminal, that's pretty much disaster (or you need to get it even earlier so you'll have another shuffle to get it stored away and scored). In a standard kind of Big Money deck, it's even worse.

But in an engine, it's a pretty sizable reservoir of points you can spend a couple turns hacking away on without hurting your deck too much. This means a non-engine player has to get a massive amount of points to overcome. 6 Distant lands on the mat will cancel out a 6-2 Province deficit! Basically, this means you can spend a lot of time building building building up your deck, because there is plenty of time to get enough points to come back: they really need to empty out ALL the provinces. Of course, this doesn't really help you in your mega-turn engine, and it's not so great when 3-pile endings are happening in the engine mirror, but it promotes a 'normal' kind of engine against other strategies. When you're drawing your deck every turn, it isn't a big problem to get these things on your mat.

[werothegreat]

Highway + Summon =

Also, you can Ferry these.  Ferry just says "Action card".

[Limetime]

Highway + Summon =

Also, you can Ferry these.  Ferry just says "Action card".

I think there will be better things to do with both highway and summon

[AdamH]

Highway + Summon =

Also, you can Ferry these.  Ferry just says "Action card".

I think there will be better things to do with both highway and summon

I mean, I'm actually not sure about this. Highway + Summon a Distant Lands is actually really good and probably appropriate in many cases. The only sad thing is that Highway doesn't reduce the cost of Summon so you still need economy and you can't just spend that second-to-last turn scoring massive amounts of points that don't hurt your megaturn deck unless you have some other source of economy.

[Chris is me]

Thanks for starting this thread; I've been too busy with work and other stuff to get these up and running. My plan was to just go alphabetically each weekday.

Distant Lands is, like, really really good. So much better than Island. Like, it's worth delaying Province pickups for several turns to grab Distant Lands if you can have multiple Province turns after you finish building up. If you can set aside Distant Lands while still building an engine (gainers, +Buy, etc) it skews the game heavily toward engines. It's a little bit like how Fairgrounds skews games toward engines, but without the clogging.

[Roadrunner7671]

It synergizes with scout, btw.

I thought we had a thread for this now.

Wow, I'm super famous now.

Anyway, in my experience, Distant Lands is really powerful. This is probably just because of the way I play in real life, apparently I green earlier than most. But if there isn't another spammable $5 that you need, Distant Lands in an excellent pickup. The difference between four VP and three VP is pretty significant. I've played two games with this, and we've piled them both times (in two player games).

And it synergizes with Scout, I'm glad people recognized this. By far the most important aspect of the card, you can draw and play this with Scout for a tactical 4 VP right before you end the game.

[Mavy2k]

I recently had a 4p game with Distant Lands, Chapel and Festival.
I had a 5/2 and opened Festival/Chapel. I quickly trashed everything besides one copper and got a silver along the way and set aside 4VP every turn.
Was an interesting game ;-)

[Asper]

I always perceived it as rather strong. The amount of points you can get without clogging your deck is very noticeable. It's an entirely different kind of VP in my opinion, and i think it's a mistake to compare it to any other alt-VP card. If you have a way of picking these up without losing too much of you building speed, you can easily go into a lead big enough to win with even just 2, 3 Provinces. And the point that people often forget is that, thanks to DL leaving your deck, this is quite doable.

[ConMan]

Another way of looking at it is that the effect is practically the same as "Trash this. If you do, +4 VP". Even just spiking a few of these early on changes the dynamic of the game, especially if your opponent doesn't follow. However, the trick is in the timing - you have to be able to get them and play them fast, which either means a strong engine or a means of guaranteeing that you'll play them soon after gaining them. So Summon + cost-reducer, Royal Seal, Watchtower, all pretty good enablers. Scout could help, I suppose, but it's definitely a lot slower. I reckon a Native Village engine would not do too badly with DL as the payload. Armory with a cost reducer is probably fine.

[Davio]

An upside of taking an alt VP route is that it takes longer for your opponent to drain the Province pile, thus prolonging the game and giving you more time to excommunicate the DLs to your tavern.

[Dingan]

Perhaps I underestimated Distant Lands.  It seems its ability to remove itself from your deck, and how it's worth 2/3 of a Province, gives it a sort of Island-on-steroids appeal.  I would probably not buy it during end game desperation, but it seems it can fit in nicely to many decks (mostly engines).

[crlundy]

I like Distant Lands when there's also a top-decker (Watchtower, Royal Seal, etc.) to make sure I play them before the end of the game. Distant Lands + Watchtower was useful in a slog game I played where I couldn't get to $8, but also rarely cycled through my deck. My opponent was already doing Duchies, so I had to top that.

[Chris is me]

The thing about Distant Lands that most people mess up on is that they buy them only when they would buy a Duchy. Distant Lands you basically want to only buy when you would not want a Duchy! It's a card that lets you green while you're building and makes the rushing opponent have to work harder to end the game.

[convolucid]

I'm late!

I just played a DL game last night! Maybe my Dominion group has no guts, because in several games with the card, we've never ignored it. Unless there's a solid megaturn strategy, there's just so much pressure on a no-DL player. It's hard to end the game with a lead when your opponent(s) have racked up lots of Victory points, but haven't injured their own deck strength besides the lost opportunity cost from buying DL instead of more 5s. In a way, it feels almost like a +VP card.

[jomini]

There are very, very few classic engines that cannot make use of these points. Say it is a board that otherwise suggests building out to $16, 2 buys. Swap a coin (say a Bazaar) for an extra +buy (say a Worker's village) and you can churn the same points a turn later with no permanent deck clogging (assuming you have some extra villages for deck reliability). After 2 runs of 12 VP with minimal clogging you can swap to Prov/Land or make a a run for the Duchy pile.

What does become problematic is the threat of a quick pile out. Ending the game sooner now can be an 8 or 12 VP swing without batting an eye. That is often enough for the other guy to pile the curses or to clean out piles that are not that close to ending, not to mention the ability to downgrade Provinces into pile killers (e.g. buy a Stonemason for $4, next turn Prov -> Gold x2 -> Mason x4; buy Mason for $4). While many engines do not dip heavily into three separate piles, Lands engines are going to most of the time (+action to play the lands, draw, and Lands).

Lands are also extremely vulnerable to wiffed hands and bad card distribution. Pillage can be just brutal as draw failure means you either have to forgo buying points or deal with more dead cards that might result in your current Lands points not getting banked. Conversely, Outpost is very nice at letting you quickly lock in Lands with any sort of engine that likes Opost (e.g. Menage or Lib).

The premium for engine reliability is much higher for a Lands game as whiffs are even more costly than normal.