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Author Topic: Why is Possession hated so much?  (Read 16330 times)

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LittleFish

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Why is Possession hated so much?
« on: December 09, 2018, 11:24:50 am »
+3

Why is Possession hated so much? I don't have Alchemy, but it still seems like a decent card.
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Holunder9

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2018, 11:28:38 am »
0

I dislike it because I simply don't understand it, it went through numerous rule changes and is by far the most complicated Dominion card (and I love complex cards).
I guess most folks who dislike it do so because the card allows somebody else to do something with THEIR deck.
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LittleFish

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2018, 11:30:29 am »
+1

I dislike it because I simply don't understand it, it went through numerous rule changes and is by far the most complicated Dominion card (and I love complex cards).
I guess most folks who dislike it do so because the card allows somebody else to do something with THEIR deck.
So the people that hate it are the ones that it get's used on?
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Dylan32

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2018, 11:38:22 am »
+3

I dislike it because I simply don't understand it, it went through numerous rule changes and is by far the most complicated Dominion card (and I love complex cards).
I guess most folks who dislike it do so because the card allows somebody else to do something with THEIR deck.
So the people that hate it are the ones that it get's used on?

I don't like it whether I'm the one who's deck is being used or if I'm using the other person's deck.  For one thing, about the best way to counter possession is to use it yourself and have a crappy deck so that you benefit from your opponents good deck while they don't get to do much when they use yours. Of course if both people are doing that, both decks are crappy, neither person can do much, and it ends up just being an incredibly slow, sloggy, miserable game.  It just literally is not a fun card to play with. It is interesting and potentially even fun initially, but once you've seen it several times and are playing against people that also know how to use it, it just becomes boring.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #4 on: December 09, 2018, 11:53:04 am »
0

In general, having to sit back and watch someone else play with your carefully-built deck is super unfun. And as has been pointed out, not bothering to build a good deck because you know you'll get possessed isn't very fun either.
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Watno

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #5 on: December 09, 2018, 11:55:17 am »
+11

It leads to stalemates (where no player has an interest in changing the gamestate) a significant amount of times.
I think it would be perfectly fine if it was possible to agree on a draw.
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Chris is me

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #6 on: December 09, 2018, 12:18:21 pm »
+2

I dislike it because I simply don't understand it, it went through numerous rule changes and is by far the most complicated Dominion card (and I love complex cards).
I guess most folks who dislike it do so because the card allows somebody else to do something with THEIR deck.
So the people that hate it are the ones that it get's used on?

Not exactly. It's mostly that in a lot of two player games, the optimal play on a Possession board is to build a really boring, shitty deck that takes forever to play.

On any Donate board: you want to get at least 1 Possession, then Donate so your deck has nothing in it except Possession and can never pay off the debt. Then your opponent's Possesions are worthless and yours work until your opponent does the same.

On other trashing boards: you want to never build up past 6P to get your Possessions, then if mirrored,  slowly trash out any cards that let you do anything other than play Possessions.

Masquerade, Amb boards - give yourself free Provinces.

Any board with coin tokens or villagers: always spend all of your opponent's tokens so they can never do anything.

Some games are okay, these games suck though.
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LittleFish

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #7 on: December 09, 2018, 01:37:22 pm »
+1

On any Donate board: you want to get at least 1 Possession, then Donate so your deck has nothing in it except Possession and can never pay off the debt. Then your opponent's Possesions are worthless and yours work until your opponent does the same.


This sounds almost fun for the person who's doing it at least.
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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #8 on: December 09, 2018, 02:30:48 pm »
0

Possession creates a form of anti-Dominion, as other has pointed out, it's pretty fun the first few times but it's just get old in a way other types of games doesn't and even if I never hated Possession I don't miss it the slightest not being available on DO.

Possession and KC is a crime however. The fact that I never experienced it is perhaps why I don't hate the card.
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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #9 on: December 10, 2018, 03:44:20 am »
+2

On any Donate board: you want to get at least 1 Possession, then Donate so your deck has nothing in it except Possession and can never pay off the debt. Then your opponent's Possesions are worthless and yours work until your opponent does the same.


That's not a winning strategy. It just leads to a guaranteed stalemate if mirrored. Any winning strategy involving Possession (if there is one) must keep your own deck good enough to still do something if the opponent nukes his deck the way you describe.
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greybirdofprey

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #10 on: December 10, 2018, 08:29:03 am »
0

It's not fun to see your good turn pass by and another player getting all the rewards.
Plus Possession takes pretty long (although its price mitigates this).

There's probably a better way to do "get a benefit based on how good the deck of the player to your left is". Or a better way to do extra turns.
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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #11 on: December 10, 2018, 08:54:18 am »
+6

There's probably a better way to do "get a benefit based on how good the deck of the player to your left is". Or a better way to do extra turns.

And they're known as Smugglers and Outpost, respectively.
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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #12 on: December 10, 2018, 09:49:55 am »
0

On any Donate board: you want to get at least 1 Possession, then Donate so your deck has nothing in it except Possession and can never pay off the debt. Then your opponent's Possesions are worthless and yours work until your opponent does the same.


That's not a winning strategy. It just leads to a guaranteed stalemate if mirrored. Any winning strategy involving Possession (if there is one) must keep your own deck good enough to still do something if the opponent nukes his deck the way you describe.

So Possession makes Dominion more chess-like.
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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #13 on: December 10, 2018, 10:00:50 am »
+9

There's probably a better way to do "get a benefit based on how good the deck of the player to your left is". Or a better way to do extra turns.

And they're known as Smugglers and Outpost, respectively.
In the case of Smugglers, we have to remember that the player to Awaclus' left and the player to Awaclus' right are in fact one and the same.
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trivialknot

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #14 on: December 10, 2018, 10:34:44 am »
+3

I wish I could find the video, but there was a Dominion League finals game way back that had Possession, Mining Village, and Storyteller.  Neither player could do anything except play Possessions, because Storyteller would use up all their money.  And with Mining Village as the only village, you could sprinkle a few in to play multiple Possessions, but if you had too many then your opponent would get more out of them than you.  The game was stuck in quasi-stalemate for over an hour.

Sure, the game was memorable in its own way, but that's only because it was the very worst.  There were lots of other unmemorable competitive games where Possession just dragged the game down, resulting in a long and tedious slog.  And I say this as someone who typically likes slogs.

Banning Possession was great as someone who spectates competitive games.  And if you wish to play with Possession in your own casual games, well you can still do that.
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tripwire

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #15 on: December 10, 2018, 11:23:14 am »
+5

Keep in mind that people in this forum are going to generally be coming at things from a competitive standpoint. Possession can be a lot of fun if people aren't trying to maximize their win rate. Around the kitchen table, I've even used possession as a means for people to experience how fun playing a strong engine can be. I'll ignore it completely and build the best deck I can, and they buy possession and then get to try out my cool deck. It can also be fun to just throw possession in decks and not worry about protecting yourself from it.

If you are playing as competitive as possible, it can be fun when you figure out how to use it and other people haven't yet, but once everyone wraps their head around it, things can quickly became degenerate and unenjoyable. And you'll find particular card combos that make it oppressive.
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Holunder9

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #16 on: December 10, 2018, 11:26:35 am »
0

Any board with coin tokens or villagers: always spend all of your opponent's tokens so they can never do anything.
I understand that post-Empires rule change but previously Possession was much more fun as there were such soft counters in the presence of Coin and VP token gaining cards.
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DG

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #17 on: December 10, 2018, 01:12:42 pm »
+2

Possession was good in the way it changed the effects and value of kingdom cards to create unique games.
Possession was bad as the unique games it created could be degenerate, for lack of a better word, and less enjoyable than games without Possesion.
Possession was also bad for rule adjudications but that could have been managed.
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Chappy7

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #18 on: December 10, 2018, 03:44:31 pm »
0

Even Outpost can be frustrating at times.  Your opponent(s) getting two turns in a row sucks, even if you're also getting two turns in a row.  It sucks even harder when they use the deck that you have been building all game.
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Titandrake

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #19 on: December 11, 2018, 04:09:25 am »
+2

Even Outpost can be frustrating at times.  Your opponent(s) getting two turns in a row sucks, even if you're also getting two turns in a row.  It sucks even harder when they use the deck that you have been building all game.

I don't get why you're bringing Outpost into this. Outpost is fine, it's a bit inconsistent starting from a 3 card hand but it adds an interesting deckbuilding restriction of making a deck that can go off from 3 cards often enough.

Taking extra turns is fun but taking extra turns through Possession can lead to degenerate things. That's why we have things like Fleet now, the people who like taking extra turns can do so in a way that doesn't lead to sad gameplay.

I remember playing a game where my opponent was playing at most 1 Possession a turn with a deck that could just barely make $8, and I was playing 4 Possessions a turn with a thin deck that couldn't even buy Duchy. That was a funny game because it was basically a race to see if I could catch-up in VP if I got to take 4x as many turns. But it wasn't really that interesting because all the buy decisions were autopilot, and it took about 15 minutes of going through the motions before I got enough VP to make my opponent to concede.
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greybirdofprey

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #20 on: December 11, 2018, 05:16:29 am »
+1

There's probably a better way to do "get a benefit based on how good the deck of the player to your left is". Or a better way to do extra turns.

And they're known as Smugglers and Outpost, respectively.

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crj

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #21 on: December 11, 2018, 12:05:43 pm »
0

I don't get why you're bringing Outpost into this.
My guess: because opponent taking a turn then you taking a turn is more fun than opponent taking two turns then you taking two turns, in terms of how long you sit around twiddling your thumbs.
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Chappy7

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #22 on: December 12, 2018, 12:45:58 pm »
0

I don't get why you're bringing Outpost into this.
My guess: because opponent taking a turn then you taking a turn is more fun than opponent taking two turns then you taking two turns, in terms of how long you sit around twiddling your thumbs.
Yeah I thought I made that obvious.  Part of why Possession is hated (or at least why I hate it) is because you can end up sitting around forever while your opponent takes multiple turns.  Especially when Throne room variants are involved.  Outpost is much MUCH less hate-able, but my point was that it is even not fun to watch your opponent take two turns in a row with outpost.  It isn't uncommon to get a full turn out of your 3 card turn.  Possession just takes the not fun part of Outpost and magnifies it.  A lot.
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jomini

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #23 on: December 12, 2018, 05:32:23 pm »
0

Possession also is terrible in multiplayer games. The classic example is player A goes Gardens on a bad Gardens board, Player B wins the game by playing Possession/the next best option, and player C is simply screwed. If they build a good deck, Player B just Possesses their deck every turn, often multiple times per turn. If they build a bad deck, Player C can go for a good deck. Yeah other cards, like Smugglers and Contraband can have similar problems, but there are often far more ways around those issues.

The other big problem with Possession not yet mentioned is its space efficiency. It is pretty rare in Dominion for one or even two cards in hand to be sufficient to gain a colony, let alone gaining two or more per turn. Possession can do it easily.

For instance, getting a province from treasure requires that you draw 3 stop cards on a standard board. Their minimum cost is $15. They take three gains to get. Possession is one stop card. It takes a single gain, and yeah $6P is high, it takes exactly one more turn that a gold in a thin/reliable deck. Worse, multiple province gains just require +action (and as pointed out become insanely powerful with Tr variants). Outpost, at least, requires overbuilding your draw to turn up a province equivalent. You can quite easily gain a province with a deck of Prov x4/Possession. And will gain a prov every other turn up until the Prov pile is empty.

All the tradeoffs in building up a deck go out the window if Possession is remotely viable. How do I draw all my treasures and power terminals at the same time? Who cares, gain Possession and trash the rest. How do I deal with the influx of green making combos less likely to hit? Who cares, gain Possession and trash everything else. Balancing draw, actions, gains, and coins for a Possession deck is so idiotically easy. When decisions become this trivial, strategy goes out the window.

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crj

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #24 on: December 12, 2018, 05:59:29 pm »
0

I've only played with Possession in a multi-player game twice, which was probably two times too many.

One game was four-player. I was player A. Player B Possessed player C and "for fun" had them play King's-Court Possession. Player C then took three turns as player D and not surprisingly won.

Normally, Dominion is relatively immune to that kind of asinine kingmaking. If you play stupidly, it's you who suffers.
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ackmondual

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #25 on: December 13, 2018, 10:53:06 pm »
0

Any board with coin tokens or villagers: always spend all of your opponent's tokens so they can never do anything.
I understand that post-Empires rule change but previously Possession was much more fun as there were such soft counters in the presence of Coin and VP token gaining cards.
I guess you could always house rule it that Debt goes to the Possessor, while all the good things (VP, Coffers, Villagers) go to the Possessed.


There's probably a better way to do "get a benefit based on how good the deck of the player to your left is". Or a better way to do extra turns.
And they're known as Smugglers and Outpost, respectively.
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ConMan

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #26 on: December 14, 2018, 12:21:34 am »
+2

Any board with coin tokens or villagers: always spend all of your opponent's tokens so they can never do anything.
I understand that post-Empires rule change but previously Possession was much more fun as there were such soft counters in the presence of Coin and VP token gaining cards.
I guess you could always house rule it that Debt goes to the Possessor, while all the good things (VP, Coffers, Villagers) go to the Possessed.
You mean like the Alchemy 2nd edition version?
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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #27 on: December 14, 2018, 01:42:19 am »
0

Possession creates a form of anti-Dominion, as other has pointed out, it's pretty fun the first few times but it's just get old in a way other types of games doesn't and even if I never hated Possession I don't miss it the slightest not being available on DO.

Possession and KC is a crime however. The fact that I never experienced it is perhaps why I don't hate the card.

you can play with it on DO, but it doesn't come up in random games—you have to select it
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LittleFish

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #28 on: December 14, 2018, 07:48:47 am »
0

For instance, getting a province from treasure requires that you draw 3 stop cards on a standard board. Their minimum cost is $15. They take three gains to get.
Actually it's to get money for a province because Platinum and Gold is also.
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Dwhit

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #29 on: December 14, 2018, 08:12:14 am »
0

Still $15
Gold costs $6
Platinum costs $9
=15
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LittleFish

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #30 on: December 14, 2018, 02:01:36 pm »
0

I can't add
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GendoIkari

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #31 on: December 14, 2018, 03:23:23 pm »
+1

Any board with coin tokens or villagers: always spend all of your opponent's tokens so they can never do anything.
I understand that post-Empires rule change but previously Possession was much more fun as there were such soft counters in the presence of Coin and VP token gaining cards.

I know ConMan mentioned this, but to be clear, that post-Empire rule change has been changed again, and Possession does not cause the possessor to get the Coin tokens or VP tokens. The version you are thinking of was never actually printed, and that rule fortunately doesn't exist in print anywhere. I do think it's the version that still exists online, which is strange.
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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #32 on: December 15, 2018, 01:03:28 pm »
0

Any board with coin tokens or villagers: always spend all of your opponent's tokens so they can never do anything.
I understand that post-Empires rule change but previously Possession was much more fun as there were such soft counters in the presence of Coin and VP token gaining cards.
I guess you could always house rule it that Debt goes to the Possessor, while all the good things (VP, Coffers, Villagers) go to the Possessed.


There's probably a better way to do "get a benefit based on how good the deck of the player to your left is". Or a better way to do extra turns.
And they're known as Smugglers and Outpost, respectively.
Tribute!

It doesn't matter where debt GOES when you take it. If you HAVE debt and no way to pay it off, your opponent can't do anything with your deck. The house rule doesn't fix it.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #33 on: December 15, 2018, 01:13:13 pm »
0

Any board with coin tokens or villagers: always spend all of your opponent's tokens so they can never do anything.
I understand that post-Empires rule change but previously Possession was much more fun as there were such soft counters in the presence of Coin and VP token gaining cards.
I guess you could always house rule it that Debt goes to the Possessor, while all the good things (VP, Coffers, Villagers) go to the Possessed.


There's probably a better way to do "get a benefit based on how good the deck of the player to your left is". Or a better way to do extra turns.
And they're known as Smugglers and Outpost, respectively.
Tribute!

It doesn't matter where debt GOES when you take it. If you HAVE debt and no way to pay it off, your opponent can't do anything with your deck. The house rule doesn't fix it.

It does matter where the debt goes, because if it goes to the possessed you can shut them down completely by buying a bunch of debt cards and not paying it off.
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ackmondual

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #34 on: December 15, 2018, 04:54:07 pm »
0

Any board with coin tokens or villagers: always spend all of your opponent's tokens so they can never do anything.
I understand that post-Empires rule change but previously Possession was much more fun as there were such soft counters in the presence of Coin and VP token gaining cards.
I guess you could always house rule it that Debt goes to the Possessor, while all the good things (VP, Coffers, Villagers) go to the Possessed.
You mean like the Alchemy 2nd edition version?
Yes. 

I was not aware there was yet another errata to this.  So Empires Errata vs. Dom. Alchemy 2nd edition errata
http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Possession
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allanfieldhouse

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #35 on: December 18, 2018, 02:03:57 pm »
+1

Why is Possession hated so much? I don't have Alchemy, but it still seems like a decent card.

"Because it leads to degenerate games." This has been mentioned several times, but I wanted to show a clear explanation of why this is the case.

If player A goes for a normal strategy (say 1 province per turn), player B can simply go for a strategy of "play more than one possession per turn". Since both players are using the identical deck to score points (player A's deck), player B will basically always win because they get to take more turns with that deck.

Keeping that in mind, both players will try to build a deck that can't do anything except play possession. Which leads to a stalemate. Even when stalemates don't happen, the games tend to not be very fun because you're playing with decks that were designed to not be good.
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jomini

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #36 on: December 19, 2018, 07:31:40 pm »
+1

Why is Possession hated so much? I don't have Alchemy, but it still seems like a decent card.

"Because it leads to degenerate games." This has been mentioned several times, but I wanted to show a clear explanation of why this is the case.

If player A goes for a normal strategy (say 1 province per turn), player B can simply go for a strategy of "play more than one possession per turn". Since both players are using the identical deck to score points (player A's deck), player B will basically always win because they get to take more turns with that deck.

Keeping that in mind, both players will try to build a deck that can't do anything except play possession. Which leads to a stalemate. Even when stalemates don't happen, the games tend to not be very fun because you're playing with decks that were designed to not be good.

It is even worse than that. Suppose Possession is the only way to gain an extra card each turn - no other +gains in the kingdom at all. You gain your first prov, I get Possession (swapping a Silver to a Pot).

With reliable decks you get prov 2, I get gold/prov 1. You get prov 3, I get prov 2(my deck) and prov 3 (your deck).

Now it is back to you. You can get prov 4, I go duchy/prov 4 and win.

It gets worse building out to double prov engines. I get my Possession when you get to $12. You get two prov, I get two prov/duchy.

Even when the decks are unreliable, Possession typically wins. After all, Possession can trash or discard-for-sift more as it needs only one card to gain whatever the other guy gets, worse with 2 gains the Possession player can opt to buy reliability cards (Scheme, Haven, Forum, etc.) on busted hands and still maintain score parity.

It is freakishly hard to outrun Possession when your points are coming from standard green, colony, or the current online implementation. Gardens and slogs can make a go of it because that such an easier price point to hit than $6, but there really is no card in Dominion that can be more space efficient than Possession. Sure, the odd money board can outrun it when you cannot build an engine or otherwise make Possession reliable ... it is just that Possession is literally the easiest card in the game to make reliable if your opponent doesn't degenerate.

Trash the rest of your deck? You can easily gain a province/turn. Run with playing 4 Warehouses a turn? Sure, whatever.

Back in the day it didn't seem so bad, but back in the day people had not figured out how quickly engines could get up and ruining. As money strategies have increasingly declined Possession has gotten stronger. I mean when you can legitimately run Wisp engines it has to be a pretty bad board for Possession not to be idiotically strong. 


Ultimately Possession was supposed to be held back by the opportunity costs of buying a Pot, having it in your deck,  buying a Possession, and carrying it in your deck ... but it just doesn't work with efficient engines as buying the Pot eats one turn, buying the Possession eats another ... and then gives it immediately back next go round. After two rounds, Possession has the whip hand. Carrying around two stop cards is a bit harsh ... but not insurmountable (particularly as you can trash the Pot back out sometimes with non-terminal trashers). And you have to be awfully ballsy to trust that your deck will win just because you won the "Lab split" 6:4.
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Holger

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #37 on: December 22, 2018, 09:00:30 am »
0

Ultimately Possession was supposed to be held back by the opportunity costs of buying a Pot, having it in your deck,  buying a Possession, and carrying it in your deck ... but it just doesn't work with efficient engines as buying the Pot eats one turn, buying the Possession eats another ... and then gives it immediately back next go round. After two rounds, Possession has the whip hand. Carrying around two stop cards is a bit harsh ... but not insurmountable (particularly as you can trash the Pot back out sometimes with non-terminal trashers). And you have to be awfully ballsy to trust that your deck will win just because you won the "Lab split" 6:4.

Is Possession really so strong? In Qvist's last card ranking, it was only #5 out of 10 potion cards, behind Alchemist. So there should be many boards on which Possession can be ignored, or where you at least have to carefully decide whether to go for it.

FWIW, you could easily remove practically all stalemate situations by adding a "Once per turn" clause to the card text, though it would substantially weaken the card. Has someone tried this as a  house-rule? You could even do this online by mutual agreement on most boards (whenever there's no Throne Room variant or forced action play like Golem, agree to never play a second Possession in one turn).
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crj

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #38 on: December 22, 2018, 09:41:16 am »
0

As discussed, it's dominating rather than strong.

It would be strong if your opponent built a deck worth having, but an serious and experienced player won't if Possession is on the table, preferring a horrible game to a losing one.

I guess limiting Possession to once per turn would help a bit, but I don't think it's enough to save the card.
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aku_chi

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #39 on: December 22, 2018, 11:03:40 am »
+1

Is Possession really so strong? In Qvist's last card ranking, it was only #5 out of 10 potion cards, behind Alchemist. So there should be many boards on which Possession can be ignored, or where you at least have to carefully decide whether to go for it.

The Dominion Discord community recently ranked Possession as the second strongest card in Alchemy, behind Scrying Pool (ahead of Familiar and Apprentice).  Almost any time you can reliably play more than one Possession per turn, it dominates the game.  This is possible pretty often.
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jonvs

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #40 on: December 29, 2018, 02:24:31 pm »
0

Part of why Possession is hated (or at least why I hate it) is because you can end up sitting around forever while your opponent takes multiple turns.  Especially when Throne room variants are involved.
This is pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Possession is very polarising. In England, it'd be known as a Marmite card: you either love it or you hate it. I have friends that refuse to play with Alchemy unless Possession is involved, and there are others (like me) who'd really rather avoid it. Here are my reasons for disliking it:

  • My biggest complaint is that it lengthens the game considerably. The player has to get out of their seat, peer over their neighbour's shoulder, make all their decisions, and wait for clean-up, sometimes more than once. Then the Possessed player has to take their own turn. In multiplayer games, you can usually go make a sandwich and eat it by the time it's your turn again.
  • It's such a dominating strategy that as soon as someone buys Possession, their neighbour needs to buy it too for fear of having their own strategies turned against them.
  • Combinations not covered by the rules can lead to absolutely devasating consequences, so you have to suddenly be picky about your Kingdoms instead of relying on random selections. Yes, I'll admit to a certain degree of hypocrisy here, because occasionally I will request new Kingdoms when certain combos come up, such as Apprentice and Rats, or Shepherd and Tunnel. But those combos aren't nearly as devastating as when Possession is combined with Throne Room variants (especially King's Court) to give the opponent multiple turns with their opponent's hands. But those aren't the only cards to avoid with Possession. Masquerade and Ambassador are especially evil in two-player games, when Possessing players can steal Victory cards (or even other Possession cards) from their opponents. They could also Inherit a useless card to steal their opponent's chance at something better. They could even activate Cathedral to force their opponents to trash something every turn for the rest of the game. So if you don't want a complete runaway victory every time, you have to cherry-pick your Kingdom, which flies in the face of the intercompatibility that makes Dominion so great.

For these and many other reasons, I avoid Possession. I have enough base cards for multiple games, so I usually let my friends play with Possession while I play with a different Kingdom around the corner. ;)
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crj

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #41 on: December 29, 2018, 03:24:52 pm »
+1

The player has to get out of their seat, peer over their neighbour's shoulder, make all their decisions, and wait for clean-up, sometimes more than once.
Wait... people don't literally do that, do they? On those rare occasions when I've played using Possession, the Possessed player has just passed their hand to the Possessor who's taken a turn then passed back the discards. The phrasing about the Possessed person taking a turn and the Possessor making the decisions is just to make clear who "you" is in card text!
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ackmondual

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #42 on: January 03, 2019, 10:41:44 pm »
0

As discussed, it's dominating rather than strong.

It would be strong if your opponent built a deck worth having, but an serious and experienced player won't if Possession is on the table, preferring a horrible game to a losing one.

I guess limiting Possession to once per turn would help a bit, but I don't think it's enough to save the card.
Possession more dominating than Dominate  ;D
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Sheogorath

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #43 on: January 04, 2019, 12:33:35 am »
0

I guess limiting Possession to once per turn would help a bit, but I don't think it's enough to save the card.

I have always wondered this, but why doesn't Possession limit itself to once per turn similar to Outpost? Similarly, unable to play Possession during a possessed turn? My guess is space availability on the card since there is so much more explaining to do and it's at a limit already.

Also, while I understand the logic to it not being an Attack, would giving it an Attack type help make it less dominating in games since you could use Moat/Lighthouse/Guardian etc?
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Donald X.

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #44 on: January 04, 2019, 06:14:50 am »
+2

I have always wondered this, but why doesn't Possession limit itself to once per turn similar to Outpost? Similarly, unable to play Possession during a possessed turn? My guess is space availability on the card since there is so much more explaining to do and it's at a limit already.
I didn't think it would be as much of a problem as Outpost, given how expensive Possession is. It didn't come up as a problem for us. I wasn't yet thinking in terms of how much text would fit well on a card; Possession has especially small text to get all those words on there, and that's just because, those were the words I handed over.

Sure if you couldn't play two in a turn the card would be some amount less of a problem, but as usual the real fix is to not do Possession.

Also, while I understand the logic to it not being an Attack, would giving it an Attack type help make it less dominating in games since you could use Moat/Lighthouse/Guardian etc?
Making it an attack doesn't work at all. It's too big of an effect for you, the person playing it, to let it sometimes be shut off by your opponents; if I had felt it had to be an attack back when, I would have successfully not made the card.
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Sheogorath

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #45 on: January 04, 2019, 05:12:55 pm »
0

I have always wondered this, but why doesn't Possession limit itself to once per turn similar to Outpost? Similarly, unable to play Possession during a possessed turn? My guess is space availability on the card since there is so much more explaining to do and it's at a limit already.
Sure if you couldn't play two in a turn the card would be some amount less of a problem, but as usual the real fix is to not do Possession.

That's unfortunately an unsatisfactory answer, but I understand. Was there any thought about limiting it for the 2nd edition of Alchemy (a la Masquerade's major change), or was that going to be too dramatic of a change?

Also, while I understand the logic to it not being an Attack, would giving it an Attack type help make it less dominating in games since you could use Moat/Lighthouse/Guardian etc?
Making it an attack doesn't work at all. It's too big of an effect for you, the person playing it, to let it sometimes be shut off by your opponents; if I had felt it had to be an attack back when, I would have successfully not made the card.

Ahh...yeah that makes total sense. It's a very expensive card and turning them into a completely useless card for your turn would be terrible and probably not worth the risk of even buying a Possession.
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Donald X.

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #46 on: January 04, 2019, 05:25:40 pm »
0

That's unfortunately an unsatisfactory answer, but I understand. Was there any thought about limiting it for the 2nd edition of Alchemy (a la Masquerade's major change), or was that going to be too dramatic of a change?
No, the intention was not to just change cards functionally, because some people would feel like we had to sell those changed cards separately, and that would be an awful product.

Masquerade's change almost never comes up, unless you set up a board to prey on people. Most players would never have known it could do that trick anyway. So I would not call it major.
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Holger

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #47 on: January 13, 2019, 04:39:51 am »
0

Also, while I understand the logic to it not being an Attack, would giving it an Attack type help make it less dominating in games since you could use Moat/Lighthouse/Guardian etc?
Making it an attack doesn't work at all. It's too big of an effect for you, the person playing it, to let it sometimes be shut off by your opponents; if I had felt it had to be an attack back when, I would have successfully not made the card.

Ahh...yeah that makes total sense. It's a very expensive card and turning them into a completely useless card for your turn would be terrible and probably not worth the risk of even buying a Possession.
It depends on whether your opponent can draw Moat as reliably as you can play Possession. (Prince and KC can also be totally useless if you draw them without other Action cards, but you can do something about the chances.) So I suppose Possession would be too swingy rather than too weak in such kingdoms.

Back when, I had the idea that in multiplayer games, Possession could be an Attack applying to the first other player in turn order that is affected by it (i.e. if your left neighbor reveals Moat, you just possess another player, similar to the updated Masquerade). This would mitigate the swingyness somewhat, but probably not enough.

But anyway, most kingdoms don't contain an anti-Attack Reaction, so making Possession an Attack would usually just be psychological. It would be most interesting in kingdoms containing Secret Chamber/Diplomat, where the Possessed could mess up their hand before the extra turn...  ;D
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #48 on: January 13, 2019, 12:38:58 pm »
0

Back when, I had the idea that in multiplayer games, Possession could be an Attack applying to the first other player in turn order that is affected by it (i.e. if your left neighbor reveals Moat, you just possess another player, similar to the updated Masquerade). This would mitigate the swingyness somewhat, but probably not enough.

You could have it so that if everyone reveals a Moat it circles all the way around and you Possess yourself. At least then you'd get the extra turn :P
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LittleFish

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Re: Why is Possession hated so much?
« Reply #49 on: January 13, 2019, 03:06:11 pm »
0

Back when, I had the idea that in multiplayer games, Possession could be an Attack applying to the first other player in turn order that is affected by it (i.e. if your left neighbor reveals Moat, you just possess another player, similar to the updated Masquerade). This would mitigate the swingyness somewhat, but probably not enough.

You could have it so that if everyone reveals a Moat it circles all the way around and you Possess yourself. At least then you'd get the extra turn :P
Would be great with cards with trashing when all you have is good cards. you could forge every thing and then get all your cards back.
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