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Author Topic: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds  (Read 6598 times)

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smuggler

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Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« on: October 03, 2016, 01:11:09 pm »
+8

Hello, as you can see, i am a completely new User.

I have read months now, visiting this forum and the wiki, always just as a bypasser, reading all and every tiny bit about dominion.
I fell in love with this game, i guess like nearly everyone else here, right then in just one game. And the good thing is: my girlfriend as well.
And nowadays, i am reading a lot about bad and very very bad cards, as well.
So i thought by myself, to leave some thoughts about that. As a ambitious casual gamer.

I am starting with a recent game: One of the funniest i had so far, a game with thief. It was hillarious. It was just pure fun. We had just one option for virtual money, and that was pirate ship. So there were two cards, considered to be actually "bad". But as soon, as everyone realised, that we actually needed to rebuy coppers and silver (gold was out of the reach  ;D) it got the pirates coming in again ... and then again there were thiefs, so silver and some gold was being exchanged back and forth until it was destroyed by one one the many ships. BM was no option. The other cards weren't really good for any kind of engine.

I know that there are cards, which are just better than others. But all comparison happens every time in a vacuum where each and every card is compared to 300 (400?) other cards. When we play, you just compare it to the other 9. And nobody thinks about cards, which are not in play. When was the last time, you had 2 villages in one set? Where it "really matters" comparing these two. In the end, you have to stick, to what you get...or not? You want actions: buy that village, with an embargo token on it.
So, the unfun part of some cards is more the set-up than the cards themself.
(We played one game with 40 curses, in a two player game, and the (only) curser was embargo. In the end Provinces had 3 tokens, Duchies 1 or 2 ...)

I am no pro. I havent played like 1000 games. Honestly, i dont want to. We play for fun. We make misplays in buying cards who are suboptimal just for the sake of playing them, trying new tactics (why i love coppersmith f.i.) and because it is fun. As soon as we realised that some combos are way too good, we tried to mix them with other cards, so that the advantage will not be that prominent, or we played some weeks without them (village&smithy - its boring, its more "bad", in my eyes, that getting rid of thief) - playing with cards where you make this "woooohoooo" because you just hit his gold or platinum...

Maybe, you will laugh about this, maybe some will try to lecture me, or so. I don't know.
I freaking love this game, i have 6! expansion. Come on that means something  :D (and thank you Mr. Vaccarino - my GF kinda "hates" you: ANOTHER EXPANSION??? :P)

I will stick to the old cards, okay maybe not Spy but hey, you still can go like:
If Spy is the only card with +1 action, and there is throne room - you actually buy that MoFu as part of an engine ...

i think , my point is clear. You may now convince me, that all changes are just for the better (which truly is, for new players - but i was a new player back then, and did not need a better base set - which one the "game of the year" and not the 2nd version ...)
and yes: i am freaking looking forward to the new cards as well :-)
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AdrianHealey

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2016, 01:12:02 pm »
+3

A 4 player game with thief, pirate ship, no virtual coin, would be one of the biggest nightmare of the users of this forum, I think.

Probably also needs cursing and hand reduction, just to be on the safe side.

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tristan

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2016, 01:29:14 pm »
+1

Spy is just never worth it. Any cantrip serves as a pseudo-village if you throne it.
Thief and Adventurer on the other hand are fine. They are rarely good but this is not a problem IMO (I have a much larger problem with overpowered and game - dominating / -breaking cards like Scrying Pool, Goons, Rebuild, 2P Fool's Gold and so on). Interestingly they are more likely to be good in Colony than in Province games.
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Davio

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2016, 01:32:47 pm »
+1

A 4 player game with thief, pirate ship, no virtual coin, would be one of the biggest nightmare of the users of this forum, I think.

Probably also needs cursing and hand reduction, just to be on the safe side.
Seems like he played a 2p game with 40 Curses... ???
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drsteelhammer

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2016, 01:44:38 pm »
+4

Hello, as you can see, i am a completely new User.
I am starting with a recent game: One of the funniest i had so far, a game with thief. It was hillarious. It was just pure fun. We had just one option for virtual money, and that was pirate ship. So there were two cards, considered to be actually "bad". But as soon, as everyone realised, that we actually needed to rebuy coppers and silver (gold was out of the reach  ;D) it got the pirates coming in again ... and then again there were thiefs, so silver and some gold was being exchanged back and forth until it was destroyed by one one the many ships. BM was no option. The other cards weren't really good for any kind of engine.

I also remember a game wehere I gained 2-3 Adventurers and almost won with them. That game was a lot of fun, but I also remember the 100 games I played a nine card Kingdom because of it. The peak of any card is not that interesting when it is almost never reached and the other games are worse due to it. I don't even have a problem with a card being awful half of the time but if it's almost never better than nothing...

Quick not to your story: The way you describe it, there is NO WAY that you get a Thief over Pirate Ship. That just looks terrible.

 
I know that there are cards, which are just better than others. But all comparison happens every time in a vacuum where each and every card is compared to 300 (400?) other cards. When we play, you just compare it to the other 9. And nobody thinks about cards, which are not in play. When was the last time, you had 2 villages in one set? Where it "really matters" comparing these two. In the end, you have to stick, to what you get...or not? You want actions: buy that village, with an embargo token on it.
So, the unfun part of some cards is more the set-up than the cards themself.
(We played one game with 40 curses, in a two player game, and the (only) curser was embargo. In the end Provinces had 3 tokens, Duchies 1 or 2 ...)

Exactly that's the problem. Compared to the other nine cards on the board, they are still super awful. The problem was that Scout was never better than buying nothing at all and you might see why that was a problem.
Also, all the cards have atleast one spiritual successor who's just better for the game. (since you love thief so much: there is noble brigand, pirate ship and two trashing attacks in dark ages!

I am no pro. I havent played like 1000 games. Honestly, i dont want to. We play for fun. We make misplays in buying cards who are suboptimal just for the sake of playing them, trying new tactics (why i love coppersmith f.i.) and because it is fun. As soon as we realised that some combos are way too good, we tried to mix them with other cards, so that the advantage will not be that prominent, or we played some weeks without them (village&smithy - its boring, its more "bad", in my eyes, that getting rid of thief) - playing with cards where you make this "woooohoooo" because you just hit his gold or platinum...

And here is why you're wrong: Eliminating bad cards provides you with more strategic options, not less. Especially if you're trying out suboptimal strategies, you should look forward to retiring these cards.

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tristan

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #5 on: October 03, 2016, 01:49:35 pm »
0

Noble Brigand suffers from only stealing Silver and Gold. Of course it is often better than Thief but as it cannot steal Platinum and Kingdom Treasure cards it feels like a bad Thief fix to me.
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Triumph44

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #6 on: October 03, 2016, 02:48:17 pm »
+1

My friend who I play Dominion with often once suggested the idea of a 2nd edition of Base but he was opposed to it - he thought that the bad cards offer education to the new player about what's good and what isn't.  As you're learning the game you buy stuff with no real plan and hope that things work and eventually you realize that most of the Base cards that got eliminated are not worth playing in a huge % of games.

Regardless, while it is fun to make a card that doesn't work in 99% of games work for you (I remember evading a Rabble pin with Adventurer, e.g.), it's not worth the tradeoff of having a garbage card in the Supply when there could be something that makes the game that much more interesting.

Also, I wonder how many games of Dominion are played Base only.  I'd guess it's a pretty high percentage both online and IRL and having that be the weakest overall set of Dominion is a bad sell for the rest of the game.

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Polk5440

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #7 on: October 03, 2016, 03:41:23 pm »
+7

It seems to me that you do Dominion right -- play with friends; play with some expansions; play for fun.
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Donald X.

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #8 on: October 03, 2016, 04:27:58 pm »
+9

i think , my point is clear. You may now convince me, that all changes are just for the better (which truly is, for new players - but i was a new player back then, and did not need a better base set - which one the "game of the year" and not the 2nd version ...)
For me the key thing is to calculate (as if you could) the difference in fun between the new version and old version, rather than the fun of the old version.

I have had this argument at length on BGG, about Feast, without convincing someone. So maybe I will just sum it up here and well I already have, hooray, but again: whatever fun times you might have with Feast, I bet you can have more fun times with the replacement. The fun times are what matters, not that Feast in particular was providing them.

I do think there is a place in Dominion for cards that are weak enough that you usually can't win with them; it's fun to win with a card you usually can't win with, and you can only do that if I provide such cards. But I think very few cards should fall into that category, and there are still enough of those left.

Obviously Dominion did well enough as it was. We can't run the experiment to see how well it would have done with the changes. I think it would have been an improvement - more gameplay before you need an expansion, less "oh just buy money, this game is broken." I'll never really know though.
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gloures

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #9 on: October 03, 2016, 06:40:16 pm »
+7


I freaking love this game, i have 6! expansion.

You have 6! expansions!? Now that´s a lot of expansions....

(Sorry, just had to make this joke...)
« Last Edit: October 03, 2016, 06:41:21 pm by gloures »
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Deadlock39

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #10 on: October 03, 2016, 07:38:06 pm »
+1


I freaking love this game, i have 6! expansion.

You have 6! expansions!? Now that´s a lot of expansions....

(Sorry, just had to make this joke...)

inb4 Awaclus 8)

Doom_Shark

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #11 on: October 03, 2016, 08:09:10 pm »
+3

May I also point out that although I agree with many of your sentiments, Donald himself has said that what you do with the removed cards doesn't matter; if you rip them up (!) then that's fine, if you keep playing with them all anyway (like I plan to do) then that's also fine. Also, in response to one of my posts he said:
Quote
There's nothing "unofficial" about the removed cards...
So whatever you do about it, just make sure you are having fun.
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Davio

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #12 on: October 04, 2016, 06:53:45 am »
0

i think , my point is clear. You may now convince me, that all changes are just for the better (which truly is, for new players - but i was a new player back then, and did not need a better base set - which one the "game of the year" and not the 2nd version ...)
For me the key thing is to calculate (as if you could) the difference in fun between the new version and old version, rather than the fun of the old version.

I have had this argument at length on BGG, about Feast, without convincing someone. So maybe I will just sum it up here and well I already have, hooray, but again: whatever fun times you might have with Feast, I bet you can have more fun times with the replacement. The fun times are what matters, not that Feast in particular was providing them.

I do think there is a place in Dominion for cards that are weak enough that you usually can't win with them; it's fun to win with a card you usually can't win with, and you can only do that if I provide such cards. But I think very few cards should fall into that category, and there are still enough of those left.

Obviously Dominion did well enough as it was. We can't run the experiment to see how well it would have done with the changes. I think it would have been an improvement - more gameplay before you need an expansion, less "oh just buy money, this game is broken." I'll never really know though.
Weak cards can be fun in kingdoms especially crafted around them.
Altough creating a kingdom around Scout is pretty hard.
I once had a kingdom with Ironworks, Great Hall, Crossroads and Scout, didn't work. :(

But I mostly play online with random kingdoms, so the closer every card is to the average power level/fun, the better it is for me.
Opinions may differ of course and some people derive fun from pummeling unsuspecting players with power cards.
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Roadrunner7671

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #13 on: October 04, 2016, 07:08:31 am »
+1

Wow people are actually trying to change your mind. No, man. You do you. Whatever floats your pirate ship!  ;)
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allanfieldhouse

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #14 on: October 04, 2016, 12:34:31 pm »
+2

Just to reiterate, ONLY USE 10 CURSES IN A 2 PLAYER GAME!
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Davio

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #15 on: October 04, 2016, 01:37:15 pm »
0

And only 8 VP cards, like... not 12 Provinces/Gardens/etc.
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JThorne

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #16 on: October 04, 2016, 04:57:10 pm »
+1

Quote
(village&smithy - its boring, its more "bad", in my eyes, that getting rid of thief)

???

The ability to draw your entire deck into your hand every turn and execute whatever specific strategy you have in mind is the cornerstone of Dominion.

So much so that there are many, many +2 Action cards in Dominion, many +3 Cards, and a smattering of handsize-increasers that do both, such as +2 Cards +1 Action, or Stables (discard a treasure, +3 Cards, +1 Action.) If that's a "boring" combination, then 2/3 of Dominion is boring.

It's so often the dominant strategy in the kingdom that really, that's what Dominion is all about; there's a phrase that circulates here: "You Make Your Own Shuffle Luck." Dominion isn't about that surprise excitement of drawing a good card. It's about building your deck so that you get consistency. That moment when you draw every card in your deck into your hand, the world is your oyster. Cue evil laughter. Draw ALL the cards!

I just played a lovely engine today, even in a 5-player game. Shanty Town/Catacombs/Nobles/Fool's Gold/Merchant Guild (Sacrifice for trashing, which made me a little nervous; trash-ones are slow.) But I waited and watched and built up as other players bought a few Provinces one at a time, then a run of four turns: Double-province, Double-province, Province/Duchy, Province, Game over. Now THAT's fun.

Some new players feel that long action chains take the fun out of the game because they make the game longer, but trust me, once you've played a little while, they speed up dramatically.  That 5-player game drained a 20-Province pile (I always play with 4 Provinces per player, as suggested by DX himself) in less than an hour. None of my turns took longer than 15-30 seconds, even with all the cards flopping down on the table.

It's the inevitable end-game of Dominion, even for casual players. The beauty is that the immense variety of cards give you many fascinating ways to get there, with many great things to do once you have your whole deck in your hand (including going for a megaturn buying all the remaining provinces, or unleashing a string of attacks every single turn to keep your opponent limited.) If you think Pirate ship is fun, isn't playing two or three or four Pirate ships in the same turn even better?

And the problem with the weak cards that were eliminated is that the really were bad. I tried to make them work. Some in my group tried to make them work. They simply didn't work, and they would nearly always get vetoed or just never bought. They really did result in 9-card Kingdoms, fewer strategic decisions, and less overall variety and fun. That's even for casual players who most play multiplayer IRL games, not just the hardcore competitive dualists.

The problem with the idea of thinking of "casual Dominion" in the same vein as "casual Magic" is that everyone has access to the same cards. Casual Magic players build fun decks that don't have power cards and aren't tuned for maximum beatdown, but you just have to play the best you can with what you draw; those decks are often fun to play, if they're balanced, even if you use optimal playing strategy. If you sit down and play a game of "casual Dominion" you have access to the same cards as your opponent, and bad cards just don't get bought once both players know what they're doing and are using optimal buying and playing patterns.

...which brings us to a big question: How do you treat games in general? If you're winning a game like Monopoly, do you give a losing player money so that they can stay in the game longer and continue having fun? Do you ever deliberately misplay something in order not to offend or upset another player? There are plenty of people who do. Personally, I never do, because that's a political/emotional metagame that I don't believe ends well. The fact that Dominion lacks targeted attacks is one of my favorite things about it that helps prevent that sort of nonsense at the table; you can't single out a player for help or harm.

My recommendation: Keep playing, keep learning, and above all else, share what you learn with your SO so that you can learn and get better at the same pace. I've taught a lot of people to play, and for beginners, I always point out any combos, synergies and different strategy options on the table. (I only ambushed someone by piledriving the Provinces with KC-KC-Bridge-Bridge-Bridge once because it was quick and the sheer jaw-dropping was worth it.)

Trust me, the more you learn, the more fun it gets, even for casual players, and you won't miss the cards that went away.
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smuggler

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #17 on: October 04, 2016, 05:08:19 pm »
0

Yes i know about 10 curses 8 vp cards....
But we change even that. You play different for 8 then for 12 provinces in 2p....
Anyway: i wanted to contribute sth positive and not just complain about shitty cards.

Thx for replying and yes: some points are right. With better cards you have more strategies / more fun to play. I see that.

And a really big thank for all the long long replies. I do appreciate them!
You hardly find a game where the developer is that active.

And to sum it up: i will of course include the new cards. And play them ;)

(I didnt get the joke with the 6 expansions... So much for that)
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NolanA

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #18 on: October 04, 2016, 05:56:51 pm »
0

(I didnt get the joke with the 6 expansions... So much for that)
Quote
I freaking love this game, i have 6! expansion.

6! = 720 (link).  With owning so many expansions, it makes your estimate of 300 other cards seem low.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2016, 06:01:40 pm by NolanA »
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Doom_Shark

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #19 on: October 04, 2016, 06:01:18 pm »
0

(I didnt get the joke with the 6 expansions... So much for that)
Quote
I freaking love this game, i have 6! expansion.

6! = 720.  With so many expansions, it makes your estimate of 300 other cards seem low.

6!=6×5×4×3×2×1 just in case you didn't know where he got that number

Note: this was posted before he added the Wikipedia link
« Last Edit: October 04, 2016, 06:02:46 pm by Doom_Shark »
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trivialknot

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #20 on: October 05, 2016, 12:27:03 am »
+3

If that's a "boring" combination, then 2/3 of Dominion is boring.
No one on f.ds is allowed to dislike any fraction of Dominion (unless we're talking about BM or slogs or anything other than an engine really, in which case hate away).
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tristan

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #21 on: October 05, 2016, 02:36:00 am »
0

Yes i know about 10 curses 8 vp cards....
But we change even that. You play different for 8 then for 12 provinces in 2p....
Of course you can play with whatever houserule you like. But I am pretty sure that adding half of the amount of green to the already existing one in 2P games will change the game for the worse. Games will be longer, engines will become even stronger relative to BM, rushes will become more difficult.
With 12 Provinces you will never have tense games in which one player is still building up while the other is already greening; here both will have to built up longer.
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Davio

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Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds
« Reply #22 on: October 05, 2016, 02:52:47 am »
+1

If that's a "boring" combination, then 2/3 of Dominion is boring.
No one on f.ds is allowed to dislike any fraction of Dominion (unless we're talking about BM or slogs or anything other than an engine really, in which case hate away).
Hate is a strong word.

I dislike playing a bunch of Rebuild games back to back, but I do enjoy the occasional Rebuild game. Although admittely when reading the kingdom my eyes go like: "fun card, fun card, fun card, oh.... Rebuild" Games with such dominant cards and in-your-face strategies are not about choosing the correct strategy (since it's pretty obvious), but about micro-optimizations. When do I get Duchies over more Rebuilds? If I hit a fortunate $8, do I buy a Province or an extra Duchy to deny my opponent an extra Duchy? And micro-optimization can be fun at times. Trying to increase your chances of winning by mere percentage points.

Fun takes many forms. I like variety, so that's why I often play random. I want to be surprised by kingdoms. I want to play a lame dominant strategy and be beaten by something highly unorthodox. And I want to try something unorthodox and beat my opponents the same way. And sometimes, I just play double-Jack and win that way, proving it's better than some Rube Goldberg engine my opponent is putting together.
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