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Author Topic: Kingdom recommendation : Base + intrigue + prosperity or Adventures or DA ?  (Read 2894 times)

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lillu99

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Hi everyone,

as I said in another topic, I introduced the game to 2 friends and we played 2 base game kingdoms, and they did not like it.
I may have the opportunity to do a 2-player game with one of them, and I am considering "upping up" the ante, with a more complex kingdom, including cards from Base, Intrigue, and potentially Prosperity and/or Adventures and/or Dark Ages.
I am looking for a kingdom with potentially multiple strategies, interaction and "original" cards, such as the "level up" cards in Adventures (although I am not sure how competitive they are).
The idea would be to show that Dominion can be much more than just "Draw 2 cards +1 Action" or "Draw 3 cards"...
Maybe adding some events from Adventures as well, although I have never tried them for now (only in a few games online).

thanks for any suggestions/feed back !
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pst

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I'll say the same thing which I said when you asked before. Just bring your cards, mix them, and play with a random setup. That's showing what Dominion is.
Depending on the players you can choose to pass by some cards because you don't want to introduce too many new concepts at once, for example skip Night cards if there are already many new things to learn from previously chosen cards.

Don't play with a kingdom you have selected that "shows off" what you want to show off. That will probably mean a kingdom where you can show off that the strategy you had thought would be the best when you selected this kingdom is better than what your friends can think of at the moment. What you were describing in a previous thread was that you made your friends compare Dominion-with-a-particular-kingdom with other games. Dominion-with-a-particular-kingdom can be a good game, maybe Dominion-with-kingdom-43314432 is really good, but it still can have a hard time being compared to some other games. You would probably get tired of playing Dominion-with-kingdom-43314432 before you got tired of playing Game X (one of your friends' favourite game), and you don't want your friends to make that comparison.

So don't try to show off Dominion-with-kingdom-43314432, try to show off Dominion instead. That's the really really great game that you want them to experince. So do the random kingdom at the table when they are there. They can see how it's done. They can hear you say that "hm, maybe we'll skip Night cards" and get to say "no, that sounds interesting, bring it on!". They know that you haven't thought about this particular kingdom in advance. They really grok that everything could have been different. And the very next game it is.


« Last Edit: October 07, 2019, 06:38:53 am by pst »
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lillu99

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Thanks for your reply.
In principle, I agree with you but : (i) I have most expansions, and lugging all of them to my friends' house is not practical; (ii) the variability of Dominion benefits immensely of combinatorial maths; however, it can also be its "demise" at times if the combination of 10 cards is not "fun" (I agree, the definition of fun is not the same for everyone)

My idea was to find a few interesting kingdoms without me having to search for them and think about them, indeed not to have any preconceived idea of the relevant strategies, as I will already probably be able to discover some before them as we play (although I have mostly played the base game online for now).

I could use some of the recommended setups but I mostly see combos of 2 sets whereas I think a combination of 3 would probably be more fun.   
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pst

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Thanks for your reply.
In principle, I agree with you but : (i) I have most expansions, and lugging all of them to my friends' house is not practical;

So bring fewer cards but enough for an evening of fun. That is not the important thing. The important thing is that you don't get your friends to think that this game is about playing certain fixed kingdoms.
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theorel

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I don't see any reason why a combination of 3 sets would be more fun than a combination of 2 sets.  In particular, I think that the recommended sets are probably actually more fun than what someone here is going to haphazardly come up with, although there may be some kingdoms that someone has found fun that they could share, but what's fun for some people that like and have played Dominion for a while may not be fun for your friend that has so far not enjoyed the game.

If you want to do random sets, but not take everything, I'd just take 2 sets with you, shuffle the randomizers together and deal out some random kingdoms.  When restricted to 2 sets, it is unusual for a kingdom to be completely not fun...but if you happen to get a set-up with no +2 action cards, or too many attacks or whatever, just say that looks overly skewed, let's adjust it, and take the next random card that meets your criteria.

I'm a bit confused about their reaction to the previous game, specifically the Workshop-Gardens comment. I think you would have been better served playing workshop-gardens than telling them about it afterwards...and even better served by changing the set as I mentioned in my post in that thread :)

One thing in particular I would like to know, you said "Everyone got Chapel". Did everyone (anyone) trash all their coppers and estates?
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segura

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a more complex kingdom, including cards from Base, Intrigue, and potentially Prosperity and/or Adventures and/or Dark Ages.
As you wrote in the other thread that your fellow players have experience with deck builders, yet were underwhelmed by the lack of complexity, the obvious path forward is to throw all expansions together and play total random.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2019, 12:10:38 pm by segura »
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lillu99

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Thanks for your reply.
In principle, I agree with you but : (i) I have most expansions, and lugging all of them to my friends' house is not practical;

So bring fewer cards but enough for an evening of fun. That is not the important thing. The important thing is that you don't get your friends to think that this game is about playing certain fixed kingdoms.

I see your point, but I don't think they got this idea and that was not really the issue at hand.
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lillu99

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I don't see any reason why a combination of 3 sets would be more fun than a combination of 2 sets.  In particular, I think that the recommended sets are probably actually more fun than what someone here is going to haphazardly come up with, although there may be some kingdoms that someone has found fun that they could share, but what's fun for some people that like and have played Dominion for a while may not be fun for your friend that has so far not enjoyed the game.

If you want to do random sets, but not take everything, I'd just take 2 sets with you, shuffle the randomizers together and deal out some random kingdoms.  When restricted to 2 sets, it is unusual for a kingdom to be completely not fun...but if you happen to get a set-up with no +2 action cards, or too many attacks or whatever, just say that looks overly skewed, let's adjust it, and take the next random card that meets your criteria.

I'm a bit confused about their reaction to the previous game, specifically the Workshop-Gardens comment. I think you would have been better served playing workshop-gardens than telling them about it afterwards...and even better served by changing the set as I mentioned in my post in that thread :)

One thing in particular I would like to know, you said "Everyone got Chapel". Did everyone (anyone) trash all their coppers and estates?

Well, the idea was to use Base + intrigue at least, to have a few cards they may know and also these are among the expansions I have sorted and printed/laminated dividers. Then, I wanted something a bit more complicated such as duration cards, or events...to showcase what dominion can be.
But maybe I am overthinking things.
I could also do something like intrigue + prosperity for instance. However, I was also thunking that having a few events from adventures might be a good idea to show that there are other types of cards...

I think one of them did trash pretty much everything but I am not sure about the other. I think he did because he used Chapel a lot but also because he got a lot of curses.

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hhelibebcnofnena

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http://inprogressgaming.com/dominion-card-picker/ is a really great randomizer website. It lets you pick which expansions you want to randomize from, and includes other options (such as always including a village, always including a trasher, min/max number of attacks, etc.) which you can customize. In my experience, it very rarely produces a dud kingdom.

In terms of expansions, Renaissance does a great job at providing new concepts with (somewhat) simple cards. If you want complex cards with fewer additional concepts, Dark Ages might be good. If you want new concepts with complex cards, I would go with Adventures or Empires. I would recommend going with the new concepts and simple-ish cards, so Renaissance would be my choice.
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Worblehat

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On the logistical front, I bring the base set plus two expansions (counting Alchemy, Cornucopia, and Guilds as half-sized) to the table. That usually gives a nice amount of variety without too much effort to carry. Sometimes the randomizer doesn't pick cards from one of the expansions, but that's randomness for you.

When I started with my regular group, we did recommended sets for quite a while before switching to random. Either approach works. Since you mentioned Dark Ages, perhaps consider a kingdom of Rats plus 9 random cards, since it's Donald X.'s favorite card. Showcase the pinnacle of Dominion card design! :D Probably best to warn your friend that Rats must be handled with care, else it will eat their deck, though. If you're interested in recommended sets, one of the most memorably enjoyable I've tried was Infestations (Dark Ages + Alchemy).

You asked about the Travellers in Adventures - both lines are quite good. The Peasant line might be a good choice for strategizing, since it can be non-obvious whether to promote your first Disciple to Teacher or keep it as Disciple. Though maybe the slower pace of 2-player makes Teacher usually correct, I'm not sure.

Adventures and Dark Ages are my two favorite expansions, but they're all good, so you should be fine whatever you choose to do.
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lillu99

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http://inprogressgaming.com/dominion-card-picker/ is a really great randomizer website. It lets you pick which expansions you want to randomize from, and includes other options (such as always including a village, always including a trasher, min/max number of attacks, etc.) which you can customize. In my experience, it very rarely produces a dud kingdom.

In terms of expansions, Renaissance does a great job at providing new concepts with (somewhat) simple cards. If you want complex cards with fewer additional concepts, Dark Ages might be good. If you want new concepts with complex cards, I would go with Adventures or Empires. I would recommend going with the new concepts and simple-ish cards, so Renaissance would be my choice.

thanks that's indeed a cool randomizer ! I have some on iOS and android but I am not sure they are as flexible.
Anyhow, I have generated 2 kingdoms from a few sets, and I hope we will be able to try them tonight!

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