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Author Topic: A card which helps whoever is losing the game  (Read 3018 times)

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Carline

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A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« on: May 28, 2020, 03:07:36 pm »
+1

Is it possible to create a good, fair and balanced card with the goal of being a card which helps whoever is losing the game?

What I thought is a kind of Banish which returns any number of cards with the same name from your hand to the supply, delaying the end of the game. Would it work?

Any other idea?
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D782802859

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #1 on: May 28, 2020, 03:23:24 pm »
0

Do you mean indirectly, as in an effect that is better for the player who's behind, or an effect that only works if you're behind, as a conditional? The latter is difficult to track. The example given seems like it would just delay some games for an absurd length, especially with Goons or Groundskeeper or curse/ruins slogs.
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Carline

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2020, 03:28:52 pm »
0

Do you mean indirectly, as in an effect that is better for the player who's behind, or an effect that only works if you're behind, as a conditional? The latter is difficult to track. The example given seems like it would just delay some games for an absurd length, especially with Goons or Groundskeeper or curse/ruins slogs.

I meant the first case (an effect that is better for the player who's behind). The second case (tracking who is winnng at some point) is not only difficult, it's impossible in some cases.
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Awaclus

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #3 on: May 28, 2020, 06:14:26 pm »
+2

Anything with a lot of RNG.
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Carline

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #4 on: May 28, 2020, 08:25:09 pm »
0

Anything with a lot of RNG.

How could be generated a random number in Dominion? I saw some fan cards which tell you to role dice or flip a coin, but I think they aren't in the spirit of Dominion.
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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2020, 08:32:02 pm »
0

Anything with a lot of RNG.

How could be generated a random number in Dominion? I saw some fan cards which tell you to role dice or flip a coin, but I think they aren't in the spirit of Dominion.
Maybe set aside a deck of card-shaped things, flip the top one and shuffle it back in, similar to Boons/Hexes
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D782802859

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #6 on: May 28, 2020, 09:19:34 pm »
+2

Anything with a lot of RNG.

How could be generated a random number in Dominion? I saw some fan cards which tell you to role dice or flip a coin, but I think they aren't in the spirit of Dominion.
RNG is likely meant in a metaphorical sense, referring to things like Wishing Well and Harvest that are mostly out of the players' control.
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pubby

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #7 on: May 28, 2020, 10:11:56 pm »
+1

Of the existing cards, I think Masquerade is the closest that exists. With Masquerade, the better player is more likely to be forced to pass away a good card than the worse player. It's random, but still slightly helps players behind.

Some ideas:

- Foo - Project - At the end of the game, if you do not have the most amount of VP, +6 VP.

And for 3P+ games:

- Valley Pass - Landmark - When you are the first player to gain a province, each player picks a player besides themselves to gain 3 VP tokens.
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Carline

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #8 on: May 28, 2020, 11:12:58 pm »
0

Of the existing cards, I think Masquerade is the closest that exists. With Masquerade, the better player is more likely to be forced to pass away a good card than the worse player. It's random, but still slightly helps players behind.

Some ideas:

- Foo - Project - At the end of the game, if you do not have the most amount of VP, +6 VP.

And for 3P+ games:

- Valley Pass - Landmark - When you are the first player to gain a province, each player picks a player besides themselves to gain 3 VP tokens.

I think Valley Pass is a political card, a kind of feature which I think also isn't in the spirit of Dominion.

Foo is intersting. It is like to buy 6 conditional VPs. How much do you thing it would cost?
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GendoIkari

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #9 on: May 29, 2020, 04:46:16 pm »
+2

Another tricky thing is defining "behind" in Dominion. You could define it as having fewer points, but it's also easy to say that a deck with 8 Estates and not much else is "behind" a deck that has 0 VP but a bunch of King's Courts and Laboratories and Bridges.

If it's a question of how far along your engine is, then Quarry could be considered a card that is better when you are behind; because once your Engine is fully up and running, you don't need Quarry anymore. Similarly, Chapel is better when you are behind in trashing stuff; a player who has already gotten rid of their junk doesn't need Chapel.

I suppose trashing attacks are the closest thing Dominion has to a pure "catch-up" mechanism. Similar to what was said before about Masquerade; trashing cards from the ahead player's deck will hurt more than trashing cards from the behind player's deck; or bring both decks into more equal footing. The problem is that a good "ahead deck" can play more trashing attacks per turn than the other player.

The old KC+Goons+Masquerade pin was really the ultimate "catch-up" mechanism in Dominion; it didn't matter how far ahead one player was in terms of points or engine functionality; if the other player got the pin; the other player catches up and wins. But again, how to define "ahead" in this case; it could be easily argued that the player who had KC+Goons+Masq in their deck really was ahead of the other player, because they were closer to pulling off the pin.
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sudgy

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #10 on: May 29, 2020, 05:25:16 pm »
+1

One thing is something like Poor House but where it's bad to have victory cards instead of treasures.  It doesn't always work the way you want, but it could maybe work.
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   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

segura

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #11 on: May 29, 2020, 06:08:21 pm »
0

Of the existing cards, I think Masquerade is the closest that exists. With Masquerade, the better player is more likely to be forced to pass away a good card than the worse player. It's random, but still slightly helps players behind.

Some ideas:

- Foo - Project - At the end of the game, if you do not have the most amount of VP, +6 VP.

And for 3P+ games:

- Valley Pass - Landmark - When you are the first player to gain a province, each player picks a player besides themselves to gain 3 VP tokens.
Masquerade changes the value of thinning over time. It is unrelated to being ahead or whatever. Valley Pass incentivizes engine play. Again unrelated to being ahead or whatever.

As being ahead is not measurable (you can have the fewest VPs and win via a megaturn) it is impossible to design a card with effects that are conditional upon being ahead.
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anordinaryman

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #12 on: June 09, 2020, 03:04:01 pm »
+1

I designed a card intended to help balance the game. It won a weekly design contest, so other people enjoyed it as well:




AGH! I noticed a bad typo, it should say "The Player" instead of "The Players" as it does nothing if there is a tie (this appropriately limits the power of the card).

EDIT: this is meant to work best with more than 2 players.
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Kudasai

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #13 on: June 09, 2020, 11:01:34 pm »
0

Hermit/Madman comes to mind. The opportunity cost of turning Hermits into Madmen is going to be a lot higher for a player who is "in the lead". This isn't always the case though, but can be.

Keeping with the opportunity cost theme, maybe things like:
  • Card costs or effects that require you to skip a turn to get.
  • Effects that care about not using all of your Actions, etc.
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Umse

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #14 on: June 22, 2020, 08:45:57 am »
+1

This could work.

Stowaway - $5
Action - Reserve
Put this on your Tavern Mat.
Choose one: +1 Card +1 Action;
 or +$1 per card on your Tavern Mat.
-
When another player gains a card, you may call this to gain a cheaper card per empty Supply pile.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=18987.msg812315#msg812315
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Vengil

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #15 on: June 22, 2020, 10:50:39 am »
0

Is it possible to create a good, fair and balanced card with the goal of being a card which helps whoever is losing the game?

With my little extension "Laws", there is this card:



She is really nice in my games. This forces the first player to have a lot more points OR buy estate. The mechanism is fun and balanced.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2020, 11:09:14 am by Vengil »
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silverspawn

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Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game
« Reply #16 on: June 22, 2020, 03:58:02 pm »
0

The card that leads to the most surprising comebacks in dominion seems to be urchin.  I've seen several games where one player seems hopelessly behind and then just wins because, even though their mercenary is far slower, getting to play it for longer is actually an advantage.

The important properties of mercenary seem to be

- it trashes
- it's very strong
- it attacks by discarding

All of those seem to matter -- if it didn't trash, it wouldn't reward the player with the worse deck; if it wasn't strong, it wouldn't matter that it rewards that player; if it didn't attack, the first player to get it would just get the same benefit earlier -- so even if it's a large benefit, they would still be at an advantage. In particular, it is important that it's a discard attack, because discard attacks hurt the player with a good deck more.

You could try to design another card with those properties. I don't think there is one right now.
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