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Author Topic: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!  (Read 16726 times)

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elehmann

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We bought dominion last night, tore into it and couldn't put it down.  Amazing fun with seemingly endless gameplay.

THEN...

I quickly found the best way to get all the province cards was simply to just buy up coin and ignore action cards entirely.  Latter refined to ignore all action cards other than "draw more cards" type(which increases likelihood of getting more coin in hand to buy province cards).  The game unraveled.  As soon as others started to play similar to compete, the games just started to be determined mostly by chance (and turn numbers). 

There doesn't seem any motivation to actually play how the game was designed if you want to win....  We started to think up modifications to help motivate us towards buying the actions cards.  Maybe you have to have at least one of each in your deck before you can win.  Maybe non card drawing actions are doubled.

PLEASE tell me I'm missing something.  This started off so fun!

Thanks.
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Volkmar

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2012, 08:37:45 pm »
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The strategy you've discovered is known as Big Money, and knowing about it is maybe the first step towards becoming a better Dominion player. It's pretty decent, certainly if you only have the base game, but if you keep playing you'll find out that on most boards there's a better, faster strategy, or maybe something that slows the Big Money player down (attacks). In fact, new strategies are compared to the average amount of turns it takes for a Big Money or Big Money + Smithy deck to reach 4 provinces (17 and 14 turns if I'm correct). Reading the articles on the website and this forum will certainly help you find these different strategies. This article might be a good place to start, as it talks about the problem you've encountered. And here's an article about a few basic strategies for the base game.

Edit:
Forgot the article about Big Money itself.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2012, 08:40:56 pm by Volkmar »
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DG

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2012, 08:38:41 pm »
+2

A while ago someone coined a phase about the "stages of Dominion" for a play group. I can't remember them exactly but they were along the lines of

Stage 1 :Everyone buys lots of action cards and they all combine badly and fail
Stage 2: Someone realises that just buying money isn't so bad and wins a lot of games
Stage 3: Players add some action cards that improve the money strategy and learn to play these actions better
Stage 4: Players put their new knowledge to use and put together good decks with a balance of treasure and actions

I'm guessing that you're entering stage 3. Your sort of question hasn't come up too often on these forums however it used to come up on general gaming forums (such as BoardGameGeek) quite often.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2012, 08:48:52 pm by DG »
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philosophyguy

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2012, 08:45:30 pm »
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Play a game with Workshops and Gardens in the Kingdom.

It's good that your group has recognized the value of money-based strategies. Believe it or not, it takes a lot of play groups a long time to make that realization. However, there are a lot of boards on which those strategies are not dominant. The base set has a couple of cards that change things up (Gardens being the obvious example, but Witch and Chapel are also worth mentioning). Later expansions add in even more. But, even in the base game, there's a lot of nuance beyond just playing draw + Big Money. A +Buy, for instance, can change the game by allowing you to get an extra point off of $7 (Duchy + Estate rather than just Duchy).

So keep playing and try different strategies. A danger a lot of playgroups face is that they will all decide a strategy is dominant and so everyone will play that strategy. (Pirate Ship, from Seaside, is a common example of that groupthink). Often times there are strategies that are strong against specific strategies. If your opponent is going for a lot of drawing, you might be able to build a better deck by Chapeling away weak cards. If your opponent is playing a thin deck, attacks like Thief or Militia hurt much more. If everyone else is attacking, a Moat may give you a huge edge. Play around and see what else you can figure out!
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A_S00

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2012, 08:45:34 pm »
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The strategy you're describing is usually referred to as Big Money (see this article on the subject); adding a +cards is a common addition to BM strategies (Smithy BM and Envoy BM being common ones).  But the good news is, playing with randomized cards (like on Isotropic), BM-style strategies are only dominant about half the time (the other half of kingdoms being dominated by action-card heavy engines), and going pure or nearly-pure BM is dominant only very rarely (occasionally I'll see a board where Envoy BM seems to be the best, and there's been some discussion since Hinterlands came out about how double Jack of All Trades + BM seems to be really good, but that's about it).  Almost always, even when buying lots of money is important, it's best to buy more than one action card to supplement your deck.

So, to get to a more practical point of view, it sounds like you think BM is boring.  So do lots of people.  There's a few things I can suggest to help out with this:

-Play boards that favor engines.  If you're playing on Isotropic, you can use card constraints (though a lot of people don't like to).  The Alchemy expansion is also very engine-dominant; you can buy it and use lots of its cards if you're playing in person, or check the box to bias selection toward it when playing on Isotropic.

-Play engines a lot, regardless of board.  While sometimes a given board will obviously favor either engines or BM, lots more boards have viable ways of playing either style.  If you think playing engines is more fun, play more engines!  You may not always win, but sometimes you will, and you'll get better at figuring out how to best construct an engine (here's an article with a few tips on that subject).

-Learn to appreciate BM.  It might seem stupidly simple at first (buy one action card, then buy Province>Gold>Silver), but there's actually a lot of subtlety to how to best play BM-style strategies.  Some people over in the Simulation subforum have been working on optimizing that kind of play for a long time, and it's still not a solved problem.

-In addition to there being a lot of skill and nuance associated with playing BM, there's a lot of skill involved in deciding whether to play BM-style or an engine.  This kind of decision-making (looking at a board and figuring out what the best way to play it is) is really where a lot of the fun of Dominion is.  Once you get good at figuring out whether BM is a good idea or not, there's a nice feeling of satisfaction that comes with picking out the optimal strategy for a board and beating your sub-optimal opponent with it, even if the actual strategy you end up playing is kind of boring.

Hope some of that helps you out!

(unsurprisingly ninja'd)
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elehmann

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2012, 09:01:48 pm »
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Thanks to all for your quick replies:

Quick question:
Does "engine" mean a strategy opposite to BM where you're hoping to string together a select group of actions?

I don't really like the idea that expansions may be the answer to a BM being a dominant strategy a majority of the time (Seems kind of like a flaw in the original game design).  But with that said, which expansion do you think is best..I can likely return and exchange.

The BM+ strategy has been so impressively dominant on all the games we've played so far that I have a bit of a hard time thinking there's that many times when it won't be in the original version.  But..I guess I'll keep at it and see.  Onto reading these links!
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A_S00

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #6 on: January 19, 2012, 09:14:45 pm »
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Thanks to all for your quick replies:

Quick question:
Does "engine" mean a strategy opposite to BM where you're hoping to string together a select group of actions?
An "engine" is a strategy where your goal is to chain a lot of actions together (usually using cards with +cards and +actions in some combination), often to draw all or most of your deck each turn.  The +cards/+actions article I linked includes examples, but there are also engines that use Lab or Hunting Party to draw a whole lot of cards, and you could even consider a deck that relied on chaining cards like Venture with themselves to be a kind of engine.

Re: Expansions, although some expansions (like Alchemy) are more engine-focused than others, there are plenty of combinations of cards in the base set where pure BM isn't optimal.  Try the Workshop/Gardens combo suggested by philosophyguy above (for an example of a strategy which is neither BM nor an engine), or try a setup that includes Chapel, Village, Festival, and Council Room, but doesn't include Witch (cursing attacks tend to hose engines).
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Saucery

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #7 on: January 19, 2012, 09:27:37 pm »
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funnily enough gardens rush was considered the overpowered strategy in my play group very early on.
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buggibum

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2012, 09:34:36 pm »
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Witch, Chapel, Thief, Gardens -> Base Dominion has enough to offer to discover. If you don't like base dominion i wouldn't recommend buying other expansions. It's still the same game. If you can't beat Big Money on base or appreciate the simple cards, you're not likely learn to value the new cards.

Otherwise try the new cards or your strategy on iso. You won't get above Lvl5.
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A_S00

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2012, 09:46:54 pm »
+4

Witch, Chapel, Thief, Gardens -> Base Dominion has enough to offer to discover. If you don't like base dominion i wouldn't recommend buying other expansions. It's still the same game. If you can't beat Big Money on base or appreciate the simple cards, you're not likely learn to value the new cards.

Otherwise try the new cards or your strategy on iso. You won't get above Lvl5.
This seems...unnecessarily combative.  I think you're responding to a different thread, whose title is "Big Money beats everything and I'm not open to the idea that I might just need a deeper understanding of the game, so I'm going to post a thread about how your game sucks."  And I understand; I've read that thread before.  But if you'll check again, the title of this thread includes the phrase, "I must be missing something, HELP!!!"

So, I think, rather than talking about how our new member "can't beat Big Money on base or appreciate the simple cards," it might be more constructive to point him toward card combos in base which can beat Big Money, or ways to use those simple cards he might not have thought of yet.  Because we all need help to get better at the game now and then; that's why this website exists, right?
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Gansura

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #10 on: January 19, 2012, 09:58:27 pm »
+1

Assuming more than two players, my favorite play with the base game and new players who are just buying up big money is to take a thief. A single thief won't often beat a big money strategy. But just having the thief in play can make others hesitate before buying gold and encourages them to try other cards.
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werothegreat

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #11 on: January 20, 2012, 01:56:13 am »
+2

I don't really like the idea that expansions may be the answer to a BM being a dominant strategy a majority of the time (Seems kind of like a flaw in the original game design).  But with that said, which expansion do you think is best..I can likely return and exchange.

The creator of the game, Donald X, created it with most of the expansions in mind.  The expansions aren't just tacked on like a hastily made movie sequel - they're really more of additional volumes in a larger story planned out from the beginning.  Each expansion complements the original game in its own special way, and successfully adds a paradigm shift as well.  So the expansions aren't corrections to some flaw, though they still can fundamentally change the game and how you view it.

Personally, I would recommend all the expansions (eventually), so there's no need to try to return any you may have already purchased.  That being said, there is certainly a particular order in which to get them.  First, get Intrigue - more than any other expansion, it is a pure extension of the original game, while still adding quite a lot of additional complexity.  There are definitely plenty of cards in it to discourage big money, particularly the attacks, namely Minion, Torturer, Swindler, and Saboteur.  All of these, in their own way, can destroy a player relying solely on money and a few drawing cards.

Next should be either Seaside or Prosperity.  Seaside adds a whole lot of cheaper cards, and introduces the Duration card mechanic (cards that last until your next turn).  Prosperity adds a whole lot of expensive cards, and introduces both Victory tokens (points that don't clog your deck) and special Treasure cards, which can, perhaps, be viewed as supplements to big money.

After that, Alchemy, Cornucopia and Hinterlands all add more complexity, and it's certainly up to you what you want to get first.

But even just staying with the base set, there are plenty of ways to discourage big money.  Just as an example, play a game with Chapel, Throne Room, Laboratory, and Festival.  Anyone who goes for those four cards will wildly outpace anyone going for just money. 

But trying different strategies, and seeing them succeed or fail is part of the fun of Dominion.  Even if your strategy fails spectacularly, it's still fun trying to put all the pieces together.  And when it does work, playing an entire deck's worth of Actions is so much more satisfying than just throwing down $8 worth of Treasure.
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Wingnut

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #12 on: January 20, 2012, 02:02:37 am »
+2

My group had this problem too. Oddly, the card that changed everything was Adventurer. For the most part we had completely ignored it. Then it came up with Chapel, Festival and Village and one of the guys ended up with a double province buy after his two Adventurer's found 4 golds. Even though that was totally lucky (4 gold and 4 silvers in the deck and Adventurer gets all 4 golds), it got us to start trying different things and try to build engines with some of the weaker cards (I went through a phase trying to make Chancellor powerful, to hilariously bad effect). Had it not been for that one game, we probably would have given up not long after that and never would have bought all the expansions. Sometimes, all it takes is one game.

For a kingdom just out of the base that should get some divergent strategies, try Cellar, Village, Throne Room, Remodel, Moneylender, Gardens, Militia, Laboratory, Festival and Adventurer.

Also, when trying to get away from the pure-BM strategies IRL, I've found playing without the big card drawers with no extra actions like Smithy and Council Room helps the game quite a bit. Once the group has gotten used to not playing BM decks, then Smithy and Council Room can be reintroduced.
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jonts26

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #13 on: January 20, 2012, 02:04:59 am »
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If you want an expansion which really loves actions, try alchemy. Though it does have a tendency to get mixed reviews.
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ftl

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #14 on: January 20, 2012, 02:58:30 am »
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Quick question:
Does "engine" mean a strategy opposite to BM where you're hoping to string together a select group of actions?

I don't really like the idea that expansions may be the answer to a BM being a dominant strategy a majority of the time (Seems kind of like a flaw in the original game design).  But with that said, which expansion do you think is best..I can likely return and exchange.

The BM+ strategy has been so impressively dominant on all the games we've played so far that I have a bit of a hard time thinking there's that many times when it won't be in the original version.  But..I guess I'll keep at it and see.  Onto reading these links!

I recommend AGAINST getting better just by reading articles on your own! Best to learn with your playgroup! Might be too late though, if you've started on that road already.

In the base set, there's one recommended set of cards that has Witch, Chapel, Workshop, and Gardens, and Lab. It's called Size Distortion. That set has lots of ways to beat BM. Try it out and try going for different things there!

Try games that involve Chapel and either Militia or Witch. In those, it is sometimes the case that building an engine that can play a Militia and Witch every turn will slow BM to a crawl.

Gardens games add in complexity, in general. Gardens can be super-powerful. Try some games with Gardens.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2012, 03:43:24 am by ftl »
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brokoli

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #15 on: January 20, 2012, 03:28:29 am »
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It's more difficult to learn how to set up an action engine, than a big money strategy. More fun, too.
I advise you to train yourself to look for others strategies, even if you lose. After you'll be more experienced.

For insistance : Witch and Militia are both really powerful. Gardens are sometimes very good, mainly the workshop/Garden combo. And obviously, chapel.

All expansions are excellent. But you should firstly try Seaside, or Intrigue.
Then, Prosperity.

Alchemy, Hinterlands and Cornucopia are more advanced.
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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #16 on: January 20, 2012, 04:25:17 am »
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I mostly agree with the expansion advice, but would like to give Hinterlands a leg-up. Hinterlands may be hard to play perfectly, but the card rules themselves aren't that complicated. I personally think Base->Intrigue->Hinterlands->Seaside would be a great way to go. Maybe switch Seaside and Hinterlands around, I don't know.

I usually advise people to stay away from Alchemy until they are sure they like the game. I've seen lots of sour faces from people losing to Familiars and IRL-Golems. Prosperity has lovers and haters - it has some powercards that make for fewer, but way-longer turns, which means a lot of downtime when it's not your turn. Adding Colonies (which lengthen the game) only drags out the agony, then.

Just for completionist's sake: Cornucopia is really great, but I think it would be nice to buy one or two big expansions first. It's just so much fun to go trough 25 new kingdom cards and thinking up all the great engines you might build :)
(man I can't wait for Dark Ages!)
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theory

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #17 on: January 20, 2012, 06:16:00 am »
+3

I don't really like the idea that expansions may be the answer to a BM being a dominant strategy a majority of the time (Seems kind of like a flaw in the original game design).  But with that said, which expansion do you think is best..I can likely return and exchange.
The dirty secret is that base Dominion does end up being various optimizations on BM.  Of course, you can keep optimizing until around 1000 games or so before Dominion becomes 'solved', but if there weren't any Dominion expansions this site would not exist.

That having been said, the expansions make Dominion exponentially more fun.  And I mean that literally: Dominion by itself is a decent game, but Dominion with expansions become a game that you can play over 5,000 times (as many on this forum can attest) without mastering.
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Geronimoo

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #18 on: January 20, 2012, 06:27:57 am »
+1

I'd suggest to get Prosperity first. That way you can add Colony to all your games which will mostly favor building an engine (even if it's not a super strong one).
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Octo

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #19 on: January 20, 2012, 06:40:18 am »
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Hmm, personally I would favour Intrigue second I think. Prosperity changes the game a fair bit, and in a really good way, but it's only after playing with the others that this is really refreshing (I went Base, Int, Prosp, Seas, Corn, Hint - no Alc). Intrigue has the bonus of not really altering the rules in anyway, which I quite like.

Is it cheap that the base game needs expansions? Perhaps. However, compare this to other card games like CCGs - they have hundreds of cards in the base sets, and then hundreds more each time. This has 25 - with that restriction there's only really so much you can do. Lots of the fun comes from the sheer amount of possible combinations and interactions that might come up when you add expansions - cards you didn't value before have a whole new perspective with different cards on the table, but there's only so many fresh perspectives that 25 cards can offer.

If you really need convincing, then heck, hop onto isotropic, try big money and see how it goes. Try some other cards out, etc whatever, it's free after all. :)
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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #20 on: January 20, 2012, 06:51:02 am »
+3

I think we're drifting into the territory of telling the OP that he needs to buy all the expansions to get much out of the game here, which is not only off-putting, but also very misleading.  The fact that BM+ is so dominant in their playgroup suggests that they haven't got the most from the base set yet.  I would say the time to invest in an expansion would be when you look at every board and have seen something very similar before and everyone knows immediately roughly what cards to go for.
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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #21 on: January 20, 2012, 07:13:02 am »
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I personally think curses will make games more fun! You will know getting money is just simply not enough  :) Knowing when to attack and defend I think is the most fun in this game
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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #22 on: January 20, 2012, 07:18:09 am »
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It's maybe worth mentioning some good combos in the base game that can beat BM, especially when good trashers or filters (Cellar) are available:

- Laboratory
- Festival/Library (this is a bit tricky though and might be too slow on some boards)
- Village/Council Room/Milita
- Gardens with Workshop, Woodcutter, or Bureaucrat
- some tricks with Remodel (Smithy/Village; Chapel ...)

Sometimes those can beat BM easily, sometimes not. But it's worth trying them to get a feeling for action chains and engine building (especially for #2 and #3). Be aware that Witch hurts those engines much more than it hurts BM strategies.
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Mean Mr Mustard

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #23 on: January 20, 2012, 01:27:01 pm »
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I have to echo Geronimoo and suggest Prosperity; adding Colonies and Platinum really throws a wrench in playing Big Money. 

When I first bought Base I had the exact experience you did, and like you I went online (bgg I think) to find out if this money strategy was indeed unstoppable, and like you found out that Big Money was the baseline for all other decks.

The problem is Base doesn't support a lot of strategies that can blow away Smithy/treasure.  There are some, yes, but besides Gardens and the cards that enable it, it gets kind of thin.  Laboratory is a star, and Militia and Witch are important cards in this set.  Unfortunately, though, I think adding an expansion is needed to flesh out the game enough to get a large variety of robust, divergent strategies to make this game shine.

So, Prosperity.  In my opinion, adding $11 10VP Colonies and $9 Platinum, and the depth of strategy involved with Prosperity Kingdom Cards, is an awesome way to get great mileage out of Base.
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vulturesrow

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Re: I really want to like this game - I must be missing something, HELP!!!
« Reply #24 on: January 20, 2012, 01:49:48 pm »
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I have to echo Geronimoo and suggest Prosperity; adding Colonies and Platinum really throws a wrench in playing Big Money. 

When I first bought Base I had the exact experience you did, and like you I went online (bgg I think) to find out if this money strategy was indeed unstoppable, and like you found out that Big Money was the baseline for all other decks.

The problem is Base doesn't support a lot of strategies that can blow away Smithy/treasure.  There are some, yes, but besides Gardens and the cards that enable it, it gets kind of thin.  Laboratory is a star, and Militia and Witch are important cards in this set.  Unfortunately, though, I think adding an expansion is needed to flesh out the game enough to get a large variety of robust, divergent strategies to make this game shine.

So, Prosperity.  In my opinion, adding $11 10VP Colonies and $9 Platinum, and the depth of strategy involved with Prosperity Kingdom Cards, is an awesome way to get great mileage out of Base.

I'll tell you in a couple days how well this works. I let my 9 year old daughter, my primary Dominion play partner, pick out which expansion we were going to buy first. I gave her the card lists for Intrigue and Prosperity; she chose the latter. We just received it a couple days ago but havent had the opportunity to play yet. FWIW, she is quite good and has a real knack for starting duchy buys at the correct time. ;)
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