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[rod-]

Embargo. As second player, you have a good chance of knowing your opponent's strategy, and you may be able to disrupt his purchase of a key card. The most obvious situation is when first player opens Potion, seeking Alchemist, or Scrying Pool, or Familiar.

~1/3 of the time, your 1p opponent will get their 1st alchemist/scrying pool/familiar before you get your embargo.  Is it worth making your starting silver a one-shot to hand out a curse 2/3 of the time?  Often(alchemist, yes, others...probably not)...but the 1st player has a higher chance of making such a strong embargo play, although it's possible they will have to make their embargo buy "in the dark" as to their opponent's strategic plans.   

Essentially i think it would please the hard corers (which in my view is anybody who regularily visits forums about Dom) and would impact the game for the casuals

As far as casual players are concerned, every casual game of dominion i've played has resulted in the game ending with almost NO idea who is in the lead, with the player who ends the game just doing it without any real concern for the score except to say "well i got a province this turn".    Not much difference there.  And as for "feeling dirty" for winning a close game as 2nd player, I ALWAYS feel dirty winning a close game as 1st player.  When i squeak out a win (on provinces) by less than 7 points, I know that it probably wasn't deserved.  I've grown used to it.

[ftl]

A big effect it would have is making ending the game on piles not make sense, ever. Because if you're in a remotely close game, if you spend a buy to end the game on piles, the other person will have presumably an equal turn, and not spend any buys on anything but green.

Makes mega-turn games really weird - you can't pull the trigger until you can buy up more than half the points, not until you can end the game on piles as now.

Actually, would give p2 a BIG advantage in mega-turn games! Because p2 can end the game on piles while buying just the minimum amount of green, whereas P1 would never have that option.

Would be interesting, but I don't think it would necessarily make the game more fair. I suspect that p1 vs p2 advantage would then vary based on the cards in the set.

Dominion is a short enough game that an easy way to to balance out first-player advantage is to 'play to X games, loser of the previous game goes first, have to win by two.'