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[schadd]

they pulverized these natives so hard that all of their victory spewed out

i told my friend who plays magic that there was a superevent that cost 14 big ones, and mentioned that some of the forum people conjectured that it would be something to the effect of gain two provinces. and then once we learned what it actually was he was all like, the gain two provinces thing was more elegant. and i was like no, you dorko. this is cool because it's like another thing after colony that uses the same pile as provinces, incidentally. and also, $14 gain two provinces isn't really that impressive. you would get it pretty often as engine in sort of the same way that you get harem pretty often in the one other strategy. that event rewards you for doing engine by giving you $2 and a buy once you want to get provinces, whereas merchant guild rewards you by giving something like 4 coin tokens each turn more or less indiscriminately (well, less indiscriminately. but still.)
  but the dominate we see printed really makes any strategy that can condense its cash dominate a simple money strategy. 2 dominates and 2 duchies goes even with 6 provinces—that's $34 and 4 junk cards that you get slowly versus $48 and 6 junk cards that you get linearly. what is a lot less clear about it, though, is how it affects engine mirrors. i mean, we already have colony games to compare it with somewhat but i mean dominate is still very much different than that. in a game without alt-vp then i would conjecture that the game proceeds as normal, except you maybe just want to spend more time building. with alt-vp, it is of course just another interesting option. with vineyard, all the sudden buys and gains are more important than money, usually, but then dominate is an option that might be better than that.


-so how interesting is it when it's clearly the way to go? we've learned colony already, is dominate gonna be all that different?
-how strong is the swing towards engine compared to power engine cards, like remake, bridge, border village, etc? or is it possible that you could attempt to pick up a few of them in a money strategy? i've randomly gotten to $14 in e.g. embassy games before
-was it just the one guy holding an axe in some field that they dominated? i don't think that's worth 15 victory points, usually you count how many guys there were at least on each side to determine how much victory there was instead of just total guys

[jomini]

// miscalculated so this is wrong: The most fun aspect of Dominate is that in very rare situations, the correct move is Ambassador two Provinces back, giving one to your opponent, and then Dominating for a net 3 VP gain (Duchies are empty, you Swindle Province -> Province, and have 1 buy & $14).

//Still hilarious to Amb -> reveal Moat (sucker) -> return province -> Dominate

Unlike with Colonies, Dominate adds far less catch up potential to the game. 80 VP in the Colonies and 42 in the Provinces meant that you could drop all the way to a 6/2 Colony split and still make it back if you could pile the Provinces and the last Colony. In a Dominate game, there is no "make it up later". The province pile is now worth 120; losing the Dominate split even 5/3 means that you are down 30 VP - just barely less than all the green left on the board (32 in the Duchies & Estates; excluding starting estates).

Also on a Dominate board the actual Provinces only hold 40% of your VP; it can be quite worth it to trash them out so you can more reliably Dominate. You would rarely whip out a Stmsn to get two Plats from a Colony as you would need a huge turn to make up the lost VP. With dominate I would expect to see a lot of TfB on Provinces become viable - downgrading them into engine components (like Hparty or Lib) should be the right move at least some of the time. Certainly a Golden deck that TfB's a province so it can Dominate is going to be a strong option.

Perhaps the biggest difference in game though will be the lack of Plats. Two Plats and a copper buys a Colony so you can go colony without net draw (just trash away your junk and maybe your silvers). With Dominate you need to hit GGGGS or GGGGG or some action-cash. This means that dominate will not work for decks that are remotely sloggy or even BM-ish. Sure some non-engine setups can work (e.g. Chouse, Venture, Kc/Harvest), but even with basic BM/draw that is a stupendously high treasure density (e.g. with Smithy you are looking at needing a Silver as your average card).

As far as engines go, I think Dominate makes going beyond $16 far less effective. After all, two Dominates and then two provinces is 42 VP. Unless you can get 4 Dominates immediately after their third payout turn, you are at high risk of them piling the Provinces with a win. That said, assuming you have the +buy it is literally just another Silver you have to shoe-horn into your engine to have a huge amount of end-game flexibility.  You can much more easily control the end game if you have the option of taking the space efficient points or milling space efficient points out of the game.

Of course there are the trivial things because this is an event - no Kc x2 -> Brg x3 auto-win from cost reduction, no Forging your way to victory (though TfB can mill away 15 VP from the supply), it cannot be Embargoed, and you can double your payout on a Mission board.

[pacovf]

Jomini has pointed out two differences I hadn't thought of, the lack of platinum and that cost reduction doesn't work, which already makes Dominate pretty different from Colony+. But another important difference is that you can ignore Dominate much more easily than Colonies, because you don't have to buy all the Provinces by yourself to end the game. Buying 6 of them instead of all 8 is a pretty big difference.

[singletee]

The most fun aspect of Dominate is that in very rare situations, the correct move is Ambassador two Provinces back, giving one to your opponent, and then Dominating for a net 3 VP gain (Duchies are empty, you Swindle Province -> Province, and have 1 buy & $14).

You: -6-6+6+9=3
Opponent: +6=6

You get 3 points, but your opponent still gets 6.

[ConMan]

Hmm. Can anyone set up a CHouse/TFair/Dominate board in a simulator and see how good it is compared to the same without Dominate?