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Author Topic: Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners  (Read 2237 times)

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JW

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Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners
« on: November 26, 2018, 01:32:47 pm »
+4

With the addition of Renaissance, we now have a cornucopia of simple, interesting Dominion cards. So I’ve tried to update how I introduce beginners to the game by creating my own versions of Base, Intrigue, and Seaside that take advantage of cards from across the Dominion sets. For total beginners, I’d probably play a game or two with just “Base” set cards, and then start to add cards from one of the other “sets.” After a few games, I’d plan to randomize among all three “sets.”

I am trying to make the sets simpler without decreasing how interesting they are. For example, 1e Base is simpler than 2e Base, but for the wrong reason: it’s less interesting. This is related to a few things, including less trashing, the higher number of terminal actions, and having weak cards that skilled players almost never buy.

A high-level overview of my changes: All three sets could use more +Actions, particularly Intrigue. Seaside could use more +Buy and more draw. Intrigue and Seaside have some overly punishing or slow to resolve attacks that should get replaced. Overly punishing attacks extend the game, which tends to be a negative for beginners.  Some cards have simpler equivalents and can be replaced by them. There are also a few weak or uninteresting cards to replace.

Base set (2e):
Remove: Bureaucrat, Library, Sentry, Cellar, Harbinger
Add: Hoard, Scholar, Junk Dealer, Warehouse

Intrigue (2e):
Remove: Mining Village, Pawn, Wishing Well, Torturer, Swindler, Harem
Add: Farming Village, Crossroads, Market Square, Old Witch, Jester, City

Seaside:
Remove: Warehouse, Treasury, Merchant Ship, Sea Hag, Pirate Ship, Ambassador, Explorer, Navigator, Pearl Diver
Add: Dungeon, Hireling, Cargo Ship, Soothsayer, Distant Lands, Remake, Enchantress, Worker’s Village, Research

Detailed explanations of changes follow.

Base:

Bureaucrat: replaced by Hoard which is a better (and non-terminal) treasure gainer, and doesn't have Bureaucrat's attack which slows down play.
Cellar: replaced by Warehouse (getting to draw before discarding makes Warehouse simpler to decide on how to play).
Sentry: replaced by simpler Junk Dealer.
Library: replaced by simpler (to resolve) Scholar.
Harbinger: a relatively weak card that takes a long time to look through the discard pile and resolve. Cut without replacement.

Intrigue:

Pawn: replaced by Crossroads to add more +Actions. Crossroads is a natural fit in Intrigue and Pawn is complex to play and track because of the six different options.
Wishing Well: For beginners, it can be frustrating/time-consuming trying to remember what cards they’ve seen this shuffle for Wishing Well. Replaced by Market Square to add another +Buy now that Pawn has been removed. It also adds another gold gainer, which is a popular effect. 
Mining Village: replaced by simpler Farming Village. Farming Village also has a useful combo in the set with Courtyard.
Harem: weak card, plus I dislike the flavor and I wouldn't want anyone to dislike Dominion because they feel similarly. Replaced by City to add more +Actions and provide a counterpart to Poacher from Base.
Torturer: replaced by Old Witch, which is less oppressive and requires fewer decisions.
Swindler: replaced by Jester, which hurts opponents less and helps you more. Jester can be overpowered in 4-player games, but it doesn’t seem worse than 4-player games with Swindler ending in very few turns on three-piles.

Seaside:
Warehouse: with Warehouse moving to Base, Dungeon is a natural replacement.
Treasury: replaced by Hireling, which has an easier to remember duration effect, and adds more draw.
Pirate Ship: replaced by Distant Lands which is a simpler card utilizing a mat. Distant Lands mentions the Tavern mat, but stays on it and doesn’t do anything, so it has the same mechanics as Island but with an extra (and, frankly, unnecessary) keyword. Seaside still has three attacks even without Pirate Ship.
Merchant Ship: replaced by more interesting Cargo Ship.
Sea Hag: replaced by Soothsayer which helps you and hurts your opponents less, which leads to shorter games.
Explorer: Soothsayer added a gold-gainer, so Explorer is cut without replacement.
Ambassador: slows games down too much; replaced by Remake, a strong trasher. Also add Enchantress to add an interesting attack (in place of Ambassador) and add more draw.   
Navigator: not interesting enough or strong enough, needing to order 5 cards can also be too much when you have actions remaining in your turn.  Replaced by Worker’s Village which adds more +Actions and more +Buy.
Pearl Diver: doesn't impact the game enough. Replaced by Research, which is an interesting duration card, and adds trashing and draw.  Seaside has five $2s, so having one fewer isn’t a problem. 

A few concluding thoughts: Even people who have played several games of Dominion before but play infrequently may benefit from reducing the number of mechanics. I own all of the sets but Alchemy and Nocturne, and the variety of mechanics can be overwhelming. That's true not just in a single game, but over time as well (playing only cards from two sets at a time avoids having, say, travelers, VP tokens, Ruins, and coffers in the same game, but can be an overwhelming amount to learn on an ongoing basis).

Once various randomizer websites/apps get updated for Renaissance, it will be straightforward to create a customized randomizer option for these “sets.” In the meantime, it’s few enough cards that I can shuffle all of the randomizers together and do it that way. Thoughts?
« Last Edit: May 07, 2021, 12:30:40 am by JW »
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Holunder9

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Re: Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2018, 01:41:33 pm »
0

A few concluding thoughts: Even people who have played several games of Dominion before but play infrequently may benefit from reducing the number of mechanics.
Well, something like swapping Harem for Distant Lands does not do that trick. The latter uses an additional mechanic and is also harder to understand.
If your sole goal is simplicity, just playing the Base game and the add one expansion after the other is the best way to go. But you seem to aim for several goals beyond simplicity like strength, time it takes to play a card and so on.
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JW

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Re: Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners
« Reply #2 on: November 26, 2018, 02:43:46 pm »
+1

I made more explicit my premise that I'm trying to make the sets simpler without decreasing how interesting they are. I’ll admit to also disliking Harem for the flavor, and I don't want anyone to dislike Dominion for the same reason.

The length of time to resolve a card is related to complexity: all else equal, the more decisions, the longer a card takes to resolve (and think about how to play in the first place), and the more complex it is. That’s why Junk Dealer, which only requires you to identify the single card you most want to trash, is simpler and faster to play than Sentry, which offers many more decisions. And if Base had come with Junk Dealer and Dark Ages had come with Sentry, no one would say that it would be better to reverse which sets they appear in.
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Holunder9

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Re: Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners
« Reply #3 on: November 26, 2018, 03:11:53 pm »
0

I made more explicit my premise that I'm trying to make the sets simpler without decreasing how interesting they are. I’ll admit to also disliking Harem for the flavor, and I don't want anyone to dislike Dominion for the same reason.

The length of time to resolve a card is related to complexity: all else equal, the more decisions, the longer a card takes to resolve (and think about how to play in the first place), and the more complex it is. That’s why Junk Dealer, which only requires you to identify the single card you most want to trash, is simpler and faster to play than Sentry, which offers many more decisions. And if Base had come with Junk Dealer and Dark Ages had come with Sentry, no one would say that it would be better to reverse which sets they appear in.
My point is that you have more than just one goal and thus trade-offs. If you only cared about simplicity you would have chosen the simple Harem instead of the complex Distant Lands. Same with Cargo Ship which you choose instead of the more simple Merchant Ship because it is more interesting.

While it is totally fine that the criterion of "time it takes to resolve a card" should be taken into consideration when choosing cards for your hypothetical sets I disagree that it is always correlated with simplicity. Spy is an obvious example of a simple card that sucks because it takes long to resolve and doesn't do anything interesting.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners
« Reply #4 on: November 26, 2018, 06:36:47 pm »
+2

Some of these ideas are good: Warehouse and Scholar make for good simplifications.

Adding Squire to Base though: Bad idea. Squire gives you a bunch of choices, and then it has the on-trash thing which wasn't introduced until Dark Ages. If you want to add another village to Base, maybe pick something like Farming Village or Wandering Minstrel.

I'm also not a fan of Replacing Sentry with Junk Dealer because that adds another cantrip $ to a set that already has a whopping three of them.

I'd recommend replacing Wishing Well with Mystic, which has less guessing overall.

Giant absolutely does not belong in Seaside. Adding a single card that using the Journey Token is just confusing.
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William Howard Taft

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Re: Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners
« Reply #5 on: November 26, 2018, 07:06:08 pm »
0

I enjoy Harbinger but I never include it in a first time kingdom for noobies. Since it only costs $3 people tend to buy a lot of them and then half the game is them looking through the discard pile figuring out what to topdeck.
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LibraryAdventurer

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Re: Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners
« Reply #6 on: November 26, 2018, 07:48:12 pm »
+3

I mostly agree with the changes to Seaside, but I don't understand most of your changes to base. I agree with removing Harbinger but Squire is more complicated, not less. Taxman is just a horrible card. I don't see why you'd want to remove Mine. I don't see how Warehouse is simpler than Cellar.
Scholar and Junk Dealer may be simpler to play than Library and Sentry, but Library and Sentry are strategically simpler IMO.
I don't see any reason to remove Warehouse and Merchant Ship from Seaside for simplicity (especially just to move Warehouse to base). You can always add Dungeon and Cargo Ship to your rotation without removing anything. I like Soothsayer to replace Sea Hag, but I agree with Chuckles that Giant doesn't belong there. Just take out Pirate Ship without replacing it.

When I do this kind of thing, I don't associate cards with particular sets. I just start new players with simple cards from any set and introduce them to one new mechanic at a time.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2018, 07:51:23 pm by LibraryAdventurer »
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JW

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Re: Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners
« Reply #7 on: November 27, 2018, 09:30:52 am »
+2

I agree with removing Harbinger but Squire is more complicated, not less.

That's fair, and there's no reason why the "sets" need to stay the same number of cards. You're right that I could just use simple cards from all of the sets. I changed it to remove Harbinger without replacement. I wanted another source of +Actions for the sets, so I added City (in Intrigue), which is a nice counterpart to Poacher.

Quote
Taxman is just a horrible card. I don't see why you'd want to remove Mine.

I think I was too faithful to keeping a fourth attack in "base." But three attacks is plenty, I took out Taxman and put Mine back in.

Quote
I don't see how Warehouse is simpler than Cellar.

With Warehouse there's a lot less agonizing over how to play it. You don't need to decide how many cards to discard or try to remember what is left in your deck ("do I have a village, or should I discard this extra terminal?" etc.).

Quote
I agree with Chuckles that Giant doesn't belong there. Just take out Pirate Ship without replacing it.

I took out Giant and moved Distant Lands to Seaside. Distant Lands is another card that uses a mat in place of Pirate Ship. Distant Lands is the most similar to Island, which makes the mechanic feel more in place in Seaside.

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