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Author Topic: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?  (Read 33122 times)

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guided

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Re: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?
« Reply #50 on: December 28, 2011, 09:38:29 am »
0

A Few Acres of Snow still ain't been fixed :(

Eminent Domain is really good though. I played a lot of it at BGG.Con and a bunch since then too. For how brazenly it copies mechanics from Race for the Galaxy + Glory to Rome + Dominion it ended up being a surprisingly excellent game.
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Razzishi

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Re: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?
« Reply #51 on: December 28, 2011, 05:46:44 pm »
+1

I played Nightfall recently, and couldn't finish the game because my brain hurt.  This is coming from someone who is very well versed in the intricacies of the Magic: the Gathering rules.  After it was mostly cleaned up I took all the different cards and found something resembling a pattern in how the various attributes of the cards were distributed so maybe I'll have a better chance if I play it again, but at first glance there are just so many relevant aspects of each card that it's hard to come to grips with exactly what you really want to do.  Basically, the problem comes down to the system of how you play cards from your hand: each card is a specific color that is only indicated in the top left corner, and has 2 different colors next to it that it indicates what color(s) of cards are allowed to be played next.  Each card also has a "kicker" color, wherein if you play it after a card of the given color, you get an extra (or at least usually slightly better) effect.  That's 4 colors on each card, and they're all different, and there's 6 colors in the game.  One player chains together as many cards as he wants, then each other player does in turn order, stopping when the last player passes.  Then the chain resolves Last-in-first-out, meaning that what you wanted to do with your cards when you played them initially might become totally irrelevant.

Now, it wouldn't be all that bad, except you have private supplies of cards that you picked, presumably because you want to base a strategy around them, but when you picked them you didn't know what was going to be publicly available that might allow you to chain into them.  So in considering what cards to buy, you have to figure out whether it has an effect you want, can be chained into or out of by other cards in your deck, and how your opponents are going to mess with your plans.  My suggestion if you end up playing the game is to not think very hard and just buy what you think is cool.  There's way too much thinking involved for very little reward otherwise.

It's also somewhat political in multi-player, as you choose which player(s) to attack with your minions.  In a 4-player game you probably can't win if the other 3 don't want you to, something I find a total turn-off in a game.
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theory

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Re: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?
« Reply #52 on: December 28, 2011, 06:44:10 pm »
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Having actually playtested that strategy in AFAoS now... man, no lie, the game is thoroughly broken once you learn it :-\ Desperately hoping for some kind of fix. Martin Wallace has at least acknowledged the issue at this point, so the designer is on the case I guess.
I derive this inexplicable and perverse joy from reading the BGG AFAoS forum.  I highly recommend it to anyone interested in online flame wars.

In other news, Martin Wallace and his playtesters must be really, really bad at Dominion.
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Glooble

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Re: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?
« Reply #53 on: December 28, 2011, 08:17:05 pm »
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Anyone picked up the Star Trek Deck Building game yet? I don't have high hopes, but I'm such a Trekkie I might buy it anyway... unless you all tell me it really sucks.

I enjoy playing Ascension, btw. It's not as much fun as Dominion, but the luck doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would.
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guided

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Re: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?
« Reply #54 on: December 28, 2011, 09:24:30 pm »
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Anyone picked up the Star Trek Deck Building game yet? I don't have high hopes, but I'm such a Trekkie I might buy it anyway... unless you all tell me it really sucks.
Some local folks played it and basically said it completely sucked. Like, not only did they think it was super capricious (hey, you drew the card that lets you establish a runaway lead through no merit of your own, good job!) but they complained that the thematic element was a mess. Like you might be a Federation captain but then enemy characters join your crew randomly, or another Federation ship blows you up for no reason, or whatever.
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Thisisnotasmile

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Re: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?
« Reply #55 on: December 29, 2011, 05:20:33 am »
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Having actually playtested that strategy in AFAoS now... man, no lie, the game is thoroughly broken once you learn it :-\ Desperately hoping for some kind of fix. Martin Wallace has at least acknowledged the issue at this point, so the designer is on the case I guess.
I derive this inexplicable and perverse joy from reading the BGG AFAoS forum.  I highly recommend it to anyone interested in online flame wars.

In other news, Martin Wallace and his playtesters must be really, really bad at Dominion.

Slightly off-topic and irrelevant but Martin Wallace occasionally comes into my boardgame club with prototype games and we get the chance to playtest them. I haven't personally playtested any because at the end of last year it was Ankh-Morpork and I was completely put off because of the theme, however I have played it since the game was actually released and I found that ignoring the theme, it's still a pretty fun game. He was also in a month or so ago with a new game but I didn't check it out because of how it was described in the club e-mail. I'm not allowed to reveal what that description was or any other information though. Sorry ;)
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popsofctown

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Re: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?
« Reply #56 on: December 29, 2011, 03:22:01 pm »
+3

I actually started with Puzzle Strike.  I had heard some people in a mafiascum chatroom (another forum) say that they play four-for-all dominion online with eachother and it's barrels of fun, so it sounded like a party game to me and I thought Puzzle Strike was more promising.  I played it both physically and online.

I think the game, in concept, actually had the potential to be a higher barrier to entry yet higher fun/depth kind of game.  But the designer  found out he'd printed one of the standard (VP token producer, ish, present every game) chips at a cost at least a 1$ below what it's worth.  It broke several characters from the base set, made lots of strategies unplayable.  Imagine how hard it would be to continue making Dominion expansions if Gold costed 5$ ( a generous comparison ). 
Instead of fixing it he's just going to make expansion chips that punish the offending chip (Combine) by specifically indicating it by name.  Some of them are Thiefish effects, which makes things swingier.  Or better yet, none of the punisher chips are in the random bank and you select what Combine/X strategy you'd like to play.

The game is also more luck based than Dominion, in spite of being intended as a competitive alternative.  It's humorous.

So then later I play Dominion which was supposedly kiddy Puzzle Strike with no interaction.  And I find out, yeah, it's somewhat less interactive, but gee I can tell why I lost a game instead of wondering whether it's the bank's fault.  The banks are random, but you get different starting chips based on the character you chose.  So your character starts with a Throne Room (~Double Take) , mine starts with a Cutpurse (~Pilebunker).  We reveal the random bank and it has Bridge (Sale Price).  May the best man win.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2011, 03:25:24 pm by popsofctown »
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