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[Personman]

Hey, we have a thread about which cards people hate, so it's only fair :)

I'm going to use this little format to classify the different kinds of awesome that a Dominion card can be, feel free to use it or not:

Best Design -- These cards are balanced and interesting. They interact in many and sometimes unexpected ways with other cards, and go up and down in value depending on what else is in the spread.
Most Fun -- Actually using these cards is a joy, even if maybe they're a little too good or not good enough.
Most Powerful Yet Underrated -- The cards that make me happy when I see them, because I'm probably going to win.
Important -- I see these as solving problems, filling holes, and generally making the game go, despite not being uniquely as awesome as the others.

So.

Best Design
1. Watchtower. I can't get over how beautiful this card is. It does so many useful things and has so many great interactions without even coming close to being overpowered (except maybe with University). AND IT LETS YOU BUY ALL THE COLONIES ON TURN 5.
2. Steward. Imo, the perfect execution of Intrigue's 'choices' theme. A recent thread attests to how nonobvious early decisions with it can be.
3. Tactician. Really effectively teaches the principle that one great hand is better than two good ones. Also a really interesting limited way to get 2 actions but not more. Also has ridiculous awesome combos with Golem and Black Market.

Most Fun
1. Fairgrounds. I cannot express how much I adore this card. Figuring out which four cards in a normal spread you're going to not have, getting them to 10VP with Black Market, buying that clutch Curse at the end of the game to ratchet them up for the win... Fairgrounds is just awesome.
2. Native Village. I just really like this card! Gives unprecedented deck control, many cool combos, and an interesting decision (AND two actions!) almost every time you play it.
3. Apprentice. I love the agonizing decision of whether it's time to start trashing your Golds, and I love deciding to throw away a guaranteed Province and being rewarded with two.

Most Powerful Yet Underrated
1. Wishing Well. I will be writing and article (hopefully soon) on this subject with copious example games that I've been collecting for a while.
2. Scrying Pool. God damn this card is amazing, and at 2P you don't usually get screwed by Alchemy variance. You can do amazingly well buy just buying as many of them as possible and almost nothing else -- not that you can't do better by buying other things too!.
3. Conspirator. I've read several people recently talking about how it's 'hard to make them go off' or how they can 'never get them to work'. I really don't get it. In my earlier Dominion days, I thought this card was stupidly broken and should cost 5. I don't think that anymore, but damn it's a good 4. And with #2 and #1 on this list? Hellooo!

Important
1. Horse Traders. A great card in it's own right, it solves the Minion problem beautifully, while providing an interesting sliding scale of usefulness against the other attacks.
2. Chancellor. One of the two real 'wtf' moments for new players, and an ongoing source of disagreement for experienced players, this card is valuable more for the thought it provokes than the gameplay it creates, though there are certainly situations where it creates great gameplay. Also, the key ingredient in most 'perfect shuffle luck' puzzles!
3. Lighthouse. An all-purpose attack-stopper that's actually good enough to put in your deck without being sad about it. Totally necessary in a game with attacks as good Mountebank in it.

Honorable Mentions (Things I'm sad didn't make it into any of the above):
1. Goons. This card just does EVERYTHING! It's a little too mean, I think, and a little too good, but it's SO COOL!
2. Horn of Plenty. I think this card might have the widest and most filled-out range of power levels depending on the spread. I've seen it be utterly worthless, not very good, a solid 5, the best 5 by a long shot, and game-breakingly combotastic. Also a really unique concept.
3. Bishop. Plays a couple different roles, pretty polarizing in terms of community reactions, all-star in one of the coolest decks I've ever made, interesting choice of how heavily to trash estates to your opponent's bishop when waiting for your own would be 2 points better.

[Eagle]

I'm going add "Interesting"...

Tournament changes the way the game is played.  It makes me choose to buy provinces I wouldn't normally buy, keep provinces in my hand that I would normally discard, and curse at people I wouldn't normally curse at when they manage to activate it before me!

I really like menagerie also..  especially in games where your opponent forces you to discard or change your hand around and you can do so to activate the menagerie.

[krawhitham]

I'm finding it hard to name a specific card, but I would say I enjoy cards that give you a dilemma.

Take Council Room, you will draw four cards but also help your opponent(s) in most cases (except when you can follow up with a hand reducing attack of course).

[Death to Sea Hags]

1. Wishing Well. I will be writing and article (hopefully soon) on this subject with copious example games that I've been collecting for a while.

Didn't want you to miss this in the other WW thread:   WW + Stash  (starting turn 16)
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110614-072658-be442c8b.html

[rinkworks]

You named a lot of my favorites.

Conspirator is a beauty.  I love how it takes some coordination to make them work, but once you do, it's amazing.

Native Village.  No other card offers the many specific strategic opportunities this one does, nor such a diversity of strategic opportunities in general.

Island.  There is beauty in its simplicity.

Grand Market.  I actually like the vanilla cards in general -- an all-vanilla board actually makes a great if unchallenging game.  But the reason I'm mentioning this one is the dimension the "no coppers" clause adds to the game.  Suddenly I find myself more interested in strategically angling to acquire Grand Markets instead of, you know, Provinces.  I wish there were more cards with purchase constraints like this.

Peddler.  For much of the same reasons I like Grand Market:  obtaining them is its own special challenge.  And then, once you have them, they do really interesting things with the cards that care about cost.

City.  The gradual elevating of their power adds yet another dimension of play.  The only problem is I wish I could play my fully-activated Cities more times than most games allow.

All the duration cards, with a special nod to Haven.  Just a cool game mechanic with those.

I also really like two cards that people commonly dislike:  Smugglers may be hit-or-miss, but it's delicious when it hits.  And Treasure Map.  I've learned not to use Treasure Map without enablers, but if you've got those enablers, then working out those logistics can be a lot of fun.

I haven't played Alchemy or Cornucopia, so I've mentioned no cards from there, but a lot of them look promising.  Cornucopia's diversity cards look especially nice.

[michaeljb]

I love Wharf (probably could have guessed that from my avatar ) and most of the other Duration cards. When I first got Seaside, I thought Wharf was pretty good, not great, and I never touched Caravan. Now, they're two of my favorites.

Steward's been one of my favorite cards from my very first games of Dominion. (Base and Intrigue mixed, playing with my uncle. He put in Steward instead of Chapel for my first exposure to trashing)

I've always been attracted to fun action chains, so Conspirator's a fun card for me.

I have a lot of fun in games where I go for Duchy/Duke, they can be really interesting.

I love stacking up on ~3 Upgrades and trimming my deck down to size, then turning the Upgrades themselves into Golds.

My favorite attack to use is Ghost Ship (I'm guess that makes me a mean player). I love how its power is magnified in the presence of other attacks.
The meanest deck I've ever had featuring Ghost Ship was a Double-Tactician deck where the only +Coins were Salvager and Mountebank, and well you need 4 Mountebanks to get to $8...that was a really nasty pin to lay down on someone.

Apprentice is an awesome card. When Prosperity first showed up on Isotropic about a year ago, I was super stoked to toss a Colony for the huge draw.
More recently, it saved my bacon after I had bad early draw luck and at least one misclick to really thwart my Chapel's strength, but I was able to connect my Apprentice with a Peddler and recover.

Venture is one my favorite cards from Prosperity. I really like being able to build small decks that can handle a lot of green.

Forge is probably my favorite trasher to date. My favorite is being able to build a good drawing deck before laying down a Forge on all my Estates and a bunch of Coppers, or quickly jumping to that scenario with Tactician.

[Amaranth]

I have an irrational love for Scrying Pool. The sheer volume of card draw you can get from it is outrageous, though you need some kind of trashing or gaining and ideally an action based source of cash and/or vps in other to really exploit it.

[ARTjoMS]

My favorite cards:
Nobles.  - often get free wins without buying one.
Island.  - somewhat underrated card, sometimes it is worth buying some early.
Chancellor.  - slightly underrated.

[Teproc]

Best Design :
- Tactician. I mean really, this card is so beautiful. You "pass" your turn to take a double turn after. Simple enough, even if it ends up being so much more than that. It also teaches players that one big turn and one horrible turn is better than two mediocre turns.

Most Fun :
- Gardens. I love how it sometimes warps the game and I remember, back when I learned the game, when we somehow ended up with 60-card decks in a Garden battle. It was pretty hilarious when we realized we had passed the 100 points.

Most Important :
- Village. I don't think I really need to explain why, but whitout Villages, the game would suck. That's why I'm happy to see Walled Village as another Village variant outside of the traditionnal 1-per set. Also, newer players love it.

Honorale Mentions :
- Apprentice, apparently everyone loves it and, well, so do I. Trashing enormous things is always fun, especially Peddlers or Forges .
- Venture. Not sure why, but I love it.
- Steward. Again, already mentioned, but a very elegant card, competing with Tactician for best design.
- Embargo. Rewards, well, thinking intelligently.
- Remodel. Again, not sure why, but I love building Remodel decks, even when they're terrible. obviously good on it's own as both an early trasher and a end-game accelerator too.
- Duration cards in general. Seaside was my firt expansion, and it remains my favorite one so far mainly because of them.

[chwhite]

Hey, we have a thread about which cards people hate, so it's only fair

I'm going to use this little format to classify the different kinds of awesome that a Dominion card can be, feel free to use it or not:

Best Design -- These cards are balanced and interesting. They interact in many and sometimes unexpected ways with other cards, and go up and down in value depending on what else is in the spread.
Most Fun -- Actually using these cards is a joy, even if maybe they're a little too good or not good enough.
Most Powerful Yet Underrated -- The cards that make me happy when I see them, because I'm probably going to win.
Important -- I see these as solving problems, filling holes, and generally making the game go, despite not being uniquely as awesome as the others.

First off, I really agree with a lot of the cards you've listed.  Watchtower is also my vote for "best-designed Dominion card"- it does so many things well- substitute it for Library in a Festival/Hamlet engine, stop Ambassadors and cursers in their tracks, use it as a cheap Royal Seal, beef up your Goons engine, etc.  And yet, as you mentioned, it's not actually the most powerful of cards.  Knowing when to get one, and how to use it, is really subtle and fun.

Tactician is also up there for me.  It's an odd card in that the right answer to "how many to buy" is quite often exactly two.

Horn of Plenty is another one I find myself nodding in agreement with.  It doesn't have a great win rate on Isotropic overall, but I've found it to be utterly essential a lot of the time, and it seems to figure prominently in many games with higher-ranked players.  Easily the best Workshop variant we've seen so far, and possibly my vote for Dominion card which best rewards skill.

Durations and VP chips are probably my favorite mechanics in Dominion.  I love them all, except maybe the noob-trap Outpost.

There are a lot of cards in Dominion which are probably too powerful, obviously and game-changingly powerful as long as there's any support at all, but powerful in really fun ways.  You more or less have to go for these cards, but it's fun to do so anyway.  Goons (with Villages), Tournament (almost all of the time), and Scrying Pool (with money-giving actions) are these cards for me, also maybe Menagerie (with any trashing).

There are other cards which are kinda underpowered most of the time, but are really fun to use all the same, to try and create some sort of alternative engine.  I don't do a very good job winning with Trade Route, but there's an excellent tension within the card that I like trying to manage.  Coppersmith is normally a garbage card, but I love the occasional times it's actually useful (for example, as a combo with Apothecary or as a Bridge/NV kicker).  Apothecary is itself great as an alternative to trashing Coppers, and unlike the 'smith is actually a good card much of the time.  And, of course, Gardens.  I go for Gardens decks way more than I ought.

Cards which do weird things with costs, either buying or trashing!  I love these too.  Salvager, Apprentice, Peddler, Grand Market.  All very powerful, too.


But the card I am happiest to see in a random Dominion setup, the card I have the highest opinion of relative to the rest of Isotropic, probably my favorite Dominion card in fact... is Festival.  Plain old base-set Festival.  Plus-two actions, plus-two coin, plus-one buy.  It's my highest "effect with", and third-highest "win rate given available", behind Young Witch and Scrying Pool.  It's in my top ten for "win rate with" despite being a card that most people lose with.  And unlike Bureaucrat (which I actually win with on the very, very rare occasions I buy it- mostly Gardens and Duke games), I buy it a lot.  Like in over 90 percent of games a lot.  Festival is my secret weapon.

Why?  More than any other basic card, Festival provides an interesting tradeoff- you get money, and actions, and buy, but you lose a card.  I've found that the trick to using Festival effectively is to a) find ways to mitigate the loss of card, and there are many of them, not just Library; and b) actually take advantage of the buy.  And Festival makes it easy to do that, being the only +Buy card which also gives action and money.  Festival is an engine builder, Festival is a card that loves double-Province turns, I love double-Province turns, and man I love Festival.

[papaHav]

Best Design -- Mint
Buy/Use synergy that puts hinterlands to shame.
Brute force card in some decks, in others, fastest refiner in the game (see puzzle #2!)

Most Fun -- Bishop
Who said we couldn't race in peace? whilst helping each other?
or conversely, my engine will crush yours even with bishops helping ability =]

Most Powerful Yet Underrated -- Outpost
Sure the downside is obvious and horrible - a clumsy expensive terminal that does nothing for you this turn (i.e. just like saboteur...) might as well spend 5$ on a curse?
Wielded poorly leads to alot of extra pearl divers/silvers... but what part of "take an extra turn" doesn't make you look twice?

Definitely qualifies for both "Most powerful" and "...yet underrated" in my book... it more than doubles the pace of some refined engines

Important -- City, Embargo
These two cards build an unparalleled meta-game in most kingdoms..  Can you play in a way that makes your mid-game unpredictable to embargo? (i.e. not open workers/traderoute on a peddler board) Will my opponent skip an opening potion if I opened embargo? 2nd player can even have an advantage in these meta-games.
Meanwhile city is the only card I've ever bought as a bluff and not even used the extra action... =]

[greatexpectations]

my favorite card is gardens, hands down.

i try to play a garden strategy (almost) every time i see them.  according to councilroom, i buy and gain a total of 5.07 gardens per game. this is my second/first place for all cards in buys/gains per game. i wouldn't know how to check this, but i'm gonna go out on a limb and say this is the highest (or close to it) of any player out there.

[Jimmmmm]

I really like Swindler. Sure, it's swingy, but if you play it enough times you're bound to hit something good, whether it just be a bunch of Coppers or a crucial $5. The most interesting cards to hit, I  think, are the $3s, or sometimes $4s, and trying to figure out which card would be the worst in your opponent's deck.

Apprentice can be awesome. Combine it with (for example) Hoard and a +Buy, and you're set.

Bishop is cool. Always a non-trivial decision when (and if) to buy it. You don't want to help your opponent too much but you also don't want to get too far behind in the VP chips. Some of my most fun games have involved massive Apprentice + Bishop turns. Also, KC + Bishop is an awesome way of catching up, provided that your deck is big enough that it's okay for you to destroy it card by card. And there's always those 5-card Bishop decks.

King's Court is probably my favourite card in the game. I love to play action cards, and playing them three times is at least three times as good and often three times as fun. If I could choose any three-card hand at any given time, I would probably choose KC+KC+Torturer (if there are still Curses).

Hunting Party's fun. I find it works well with some kind of Curser  (I've done this with Witch and Sea Hag). I tend to get my hands on the Curser ASAP and then buy only Hunting Parties and Silver, and then I'm pretty much guaranteed to play the Curser every turn. Then when the Curses are out, I can start buying Golds and other action cards, and pretty soon my HP deck will be looking pretty good.

A nod to Goons and Torturer with some kind of Village support. Both can be painful on the receiving end, but lots of fun to unleash.

Generally I tend to like attack cards, in fact most cards that have some form of interaction, or whose presence changes the game in some big way. I tend to dislike non-tradition Victory cards like Gardens, Fairgrounds, Duke etc, although possibly I just need to learn to play these games better.

[meshuggah42]

AND IT LETS YOU BUY ALL THE COLONIES ON TURN 5.

Can someone give me clarification on this one?

Also as 'Important' cards I would say Farming Village and Venture. They solve the 'deck really clogged up with junk' problem. It's just beautiful in a heavy-cursing game, when you can dig through all those curses and estates to find those few valuable cards.

[DStu]

AND IT LETS YOU BUY ALL THE COLONIES ON TURN 5.

Can someone give me clarification on this one?

Can't find the thread anymore, but there is a (theoretical) chance that in the right kingdom with perfect shuffle luck you can grap all Colonies by turn 5. There is a truly marvelous proof of this, which this post is too narrow to contain...

[ftl]

Can someone give me clarification on this one?

There was a puzzle posted - assuming you have perfect shuffle luck (i.e. always draw exactly what you want, as if you get to rearrange the deck), can you devise a way to gain all the colonies by the end of turn 5 in a solitaire game?

The puzzle is posted at http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/04/29/dominion-puzzle-1/ and solutions are at http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/05/06/dominion-puzzle-1-solution/ . Watchtower was used in the solution.

[blackb]

Ill-Gotten Gains - just because of this awesome picture.

[guided]

The puzzle is posted at http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/04/29/dominion-puzzle-1/ and solutions are at http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/05/06/dominion-puzzle-1-solution/ . Watchtower was used in the solution.

I'm still quite proud of my overly-complicated solution (buried way down in the comments - I'm cited for being first to send in a Nobles-based solution, but theory went with a simpler version for the blog post). I was so determined to find a way to do it by dropping Quarries on Black Market in the middle of the turn (as my way to drop $7 action cards to where they can be gained with Ironworks), and I finally made it work. I also really enjoyed pulling Upgrade from the Black Market, then using it with KC to turn my 3 initial Estates into more $7 action cards. Expanding Copper into KC was fun too

Code: [Select]

Kingdom:

Black Market (BM)
Bridge (Br)
Chancellor (Ch)
Ironworks (IW)
Quarry (Qu)
Throne Room (TR)
Watchtower (Wat)
Nobles (Nob)
Expand (Exp)
King's Court (KC)

The first 2 Black Market pulls will include Upgrade (Upg) and Library (Lib).

Opening: IW1/Ch

Turn 3: IW1 (Wat1), Ch. $5. Buy TR1.

Turn 4 Hand: TR1/IW1/Wat1/Ch/Cop.
Play TR1/IW1, gain TR2/IW2 on top of deck. 2 actions left.
Play Wat1. Current hand: TR2/IW2/Ch/3xCop
Play TR2/IW2, gain Qu1/BM.
Play Ch, discarding the deck.
Buy Qu2.

Turn 5 Hand: TR1/TR2/IW1/IW2/Wat1
Draw pile: Qu1/Qu2/BM/Ch/3xEst/7xCop

Play TR1/TR2/IW1/IW2 to gain 4 cards, top-decking the first 3 with Wat1.
1. Wat2
2. TR3
3. IW3
4. Wat3 (discarding it)

*4 actions remaining.

Play Wat1, drawing 6 cards: Wat2/TR3/IW3/Qu1/Qu2/BM.
Play TR3/BM.
Play Qu1/Qu2.
Buy Upg for $1, top-decking with Wat2.
Buy Lib for $1, top-decking.
Play IW3, gaining KC1 ($3 value), top-decking.
Play Wat2, drawing 6 cards: KC1/Upg/Lib/Ch/2xEst

*1 action remaining. $4. Action cards reduced $4.

Play KC1/Upg:
1. Draw Est. Trash Est. Gain KC2.
2. Draw Cop. Trash Est. Gain KC3.
3. Draw Cop. Trash Est. Gain Exp.

Play Ch, discarding the deck. +$2.
Play Lib, drawing 5 Cards: KC2/KC3/Exp/Wat3/Cop

*1 action remaining. $6.
Hand: KC2/KC3/Exp/Wat3/3xCop
Draw pile: 4xCop

Play KC2/KC3, allowing 3 action cards to be played 3x:
1. Exp
a. Cop->KC4, top-decking with Wat3.
b. Cop->IW4, top-decking.
c. Cop->IW5, top-decking.
2. Wat3, drawing 6 cards: KC4/IW4/IW5/3xCop
3. KC4:

Three more action cards 3x:
1. IW4, gaining IW6/KC5/KC6
2. IW5
a. IW7
b. Nob1, drawing Cop.
c. Nob2, reshuffling and drawing Nob1.
3. Nob1, drawing all cards.

*6 actions remaining. $6.
Hand: KC5/KC6/IW6/IW7/Nob2/4xCop

Play KC5/KC6:
1. IW6, gaining KC7/KC8/Br1
2. IW7, gaining Br2/Br3/Br4
3. Nob2, drawing all cards.

*11 actions remaining. $6.
Hand: KC7/KC8/Br1/Br2/Br3/Br4/4xCop

Play KC7/KC8/Br1/Br3/Br3.
Play Br4.
Play 4xCop.
Have $20 and 11 buys. All prices reduced by $10.
Buy 8 Colonies for $8 and 3 Provinces for free.


[ChaosRed]

Best Design -- Chapel
Simple elegance at a bargain price, arguably the greatest Dominion card ever.

Most Fun -- Ambassador
I should probably put the "fun" in brackets, because when your opponent is using it effectively, the "fun" can be quite frustrating. Masquerade and Torturer go on this list as well.

Most Powerful Yet Underrated -- Trading Post
I really believe this is a must buy on almost all boards, just one, early in the game can surge you ahead and keep you there. I'd also put Harem and here's a weird one, I'd also put Silver on the list. Silver isn't powerful, but it is, at times, underrated. When I beat novice players, one of the most common threads I see about beating them is they just didn't reach for Silver enough in the early rounds. Silver gets you where you need to go sometimes.

Important -- Witch, Mountebank
These two cards immediately warp the board. Hate them or love them, they are arguably the two most important cards in the game. I'd put Gardens on this list as well and possibly Familiar.

You didn't have this category, but I'm putting it in anyway...

Good Cards, You Love to Hate -- Saboteur, Tournament, Baron
I can't get these cards to work for me. Saboteur is just streaky and even when it goes off for me, I feel kinda guilty about it. Tournament seems to be largely about who gets the first two prizes and Baron never functions for me, yet others pull this card off to stunning effect. The first two I hate because there's a bit of a lottery involved, the last I hate, because I've had it used against me to devastating effect, but when I reach for it, it tends to be a cluster.

[guided]

Trading Post is an absolutely elite opener. It's good but not overwhelming in Province games (shading toward excellent in many Colony games without other trashing) if purchased at turn 3/4 when no other major power 5s are available and no cheap fast trashing is available (Chapel, Steward, Remake). And in most circumstances, starting at turn 5 Trading Post is a black hole of awfulness from which you should run away screaming.

[AJD]

My vote for Most Fun is Jester: a little bit Ambassador, a little bit Smugglers, and always a surprise.