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Author Topic: Alternative VP - "Dominion"  (Read 3450 times)

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Drab Emordnilap

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Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« on: August 09, 2012, 12:42:06 pm »
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Dominion
Victory - $0*
Worth 1VP for each expansion symbol among Kingdom cards in your deck.
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This costs $1 more for each expansion symbol among Kingdom cards in this game.


This only counts Kingdom cards so that it doesn't matter whether your basic treasures, victory cards, and curses come from Base, Intrigue, Prosperity, or the Base Cards. Sadly, that means it's a nombo with Black Market.
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rinkworks

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2012, 01:59:44 pm »
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How is it a nombo with Black Market?  Seems like you could get some symbols with that that would be unavailable any other way.

Oh, I see -- kingdom cards, as in, cards in the kingdom/supply.  Is that what "kingdom card" really means, though?  For example, we've been told Dark Ages has "35 kingdom cards," which suggests they're "kingdom cards" whether or not they're in the supply for any particular game.
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Drab Emordnilap

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2012, 02:01:34 pm »
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Is that what "kingdom card" really means, though? 
Maybe I'm wrong, actually. For some reason, I had convinced myself it meant "One of those 10 (11) piles you're playing with this game", but now I'm not sure why I thought that.
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Taco Lobster

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #3 on: August 09, 2012, 02:10:10 pm »
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Interesting, though it seems like it would be too good if the Kingdom consists of only one or two expansions (if it's only a single expansion, this could be purchased for $1 and would grant 1 VP because it is a card from a kingdom supply), at two expansions, it cost $2 and you only need one other kingdom card to get it to 2 VP.

Do Walled Village, Governor, Black Market, etc. count as being from a single promo expansion or are they each considered their own expansions?

I think it needs a bump in price and/or a VP to expansion symbol ratio other than 1 to 1. 
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Drab Emordnilap

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #4 on: August 09, 2012, 02:21:49 pm »
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Interesting, though it seems like it would be too good if the Kingdom consists of only one or two expansions (if it's only a single expansion, this could be purchased for $1 and would grant 1 VP because it is a card from a kingdom supply), at two expansions, it cost $2 and you only need one other kingdom card to get it to 2 VP.

Is that really too good? If Estate cost $1, would you buy them more often? I don't know how often there's only one or two expansions represented in a kingdom, anyways.

I'd think it's more likely that there'd be 4, 5, or 6 expansions represented, in which case it starts getting into the same range as Fairgrounds. (Fairgrounds looks a lot weaker in comparison until you remember that Fairgrounds gets to count your Copper/Silver/Gold/Estate/Duchy/Province.)

And maybe you get to play one crazy game where these are worth more than colonies, but even then, they're only a point more, and they still cost $11.

Quote
Do Walled Village, Governor, Black Market, etc. count as being from a single promo expansion or are they each considered their own expansions?

As written, they'd count separately, because this card looks for expansion symbols, and they have different symbols.

Quote
I think it needs a bump in price and/or a VP to expansion symbol ratio other than 1 to 1.

I don't think it would be printable with a different ratio; it'd be too complex to be worth the effort.
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Taco Lobster

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #5 on: August 09, 2012, 02:39:08 pm »
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It's not that I think Estate is good, but making a card that's flat out better than Estate (which is the case in 1 or 2 Kingdom expansions) doesn't strike me as a good design.  Plus, the card cares about an element that isn't related to the game itself - the expansion symbol doesn't reflect anything about the card itself and, to the extent it is a proxy for having a wide variety of cards in your deck, Fairgrounds already hits those notes and in a more elegant way.  This card is like having a victory card based on a die roll, or the number of cards costing $6, or any other arbitrary measure that isn't part of gameplay. 
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Taco Lobster

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #6 on: August 09, 2012, 02:42:04 pm »
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Plus, Fairgrounds has a lot more consistency - you're going to have at least 17 different cards to work in every board. 
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Drab Emordnilap

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #7 on: August 09, 2012, 03:47:20 pm »
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This card is like having a victory card based on a die roll, or the number of cards costing $6, or any other arbitrary measure that isn't part of gameplay.
Tangent: How is 'number of cards costing 6' more arbitrary than 'number of cards with different names'?
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rinkworks

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #8 on: August 09, 2012, 03:52:23 pm »
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I'm not sure that having a card that is sometimes a cheap Estate is a big deal.  It wouldn't be in most games anyway.  And Estate is still distinctive in that you start out with three of them.  Also, with two piles of these -- one at $1 and one at $2 -- some three-piling rush strategies emerge that would not be available otherwise.

I kind of like the idea, inasmuch as it does feel somewhat arbitrary.  But I love Fairgrounds, and this would be another way to get that kind of game going, but with a different twist.

The only weird thing is that live games aren't necessarily chosen with a purely random mix between the different sets.  Sometimes people just take two sets and pull from those.  I don't know if that makes the card worse or better.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2012, 03:54:13 pm by rinkworks »
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #9 on: August 09, 2012, 04:19:18 pm »
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At 1-2 sets, it's just something you buy instead of Estate. You can't really rush them, since even if you get all of them and all the Estates, you still don't have very many points. Someone playing normally will usually have enough Provinces to cover your score. But then at 3 sets, it's all of a sudden ridiculously strong. Assuming you can buy a card from 2 other different sets, you have $3 Duchies. Now this you can rush for enough points to beat Provinces.
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Taco Lobster

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #10 on: August 09, 2012, 05:03:19 pm »
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This card is like having a victory card based on a die roll, or the number of cards costing $6, or any other arbitrary measure that isn't part of gameplay.
Tangent: How is 'number of cards costing 6' more arbitrary than 'number of cards with different names'?

Because there's an extra hoop to jump through to get your victory points - you need to buy a wide variety of cards, including victory cards, to make a card like Fairgrounds worth purchasing.  That means your deck will need to be built to accomodate these cards.  Most of the variable VP cards work this way - part of the cost of purchasing those is creating a deck that plays to those variables.  Fairgrounds is probably the least restrictive of these types of victory cards because you can often splash some cantrips to push up its value, but, conversely, it competes with Gold for your buy, which is also a significant cost.  Most importantly, the player has a lot of control over the value of the victory cards.

Contrast that with "VP = number of $6 cards in the supply".  The player has no control over how many $6 cards are and the variance is very high.  It's hard to price that VP card because it could be worth 1 VP (and will be in most games), but in some games it'll be worth 4+ VP.  You've hit a good way to address that problem with a variable cost, but that variable cost also means that there are several inflection points where the card is too good. 

I dunno, maybe playtest it a little and see how it works.  It doesn't quite pass the smell test for me yet.
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Rush_Clasic

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #11 on: August 09, 2012, 05:20:18 pm »
+2

I'm not a fan of the "strictly better" feature this gets when in a single set or double set kingdom. You could put the base cost at 1 instead; then they're exactly the same in single set kingdoms. The first problem you hit is 4 for 3VP. You could argue that it requires more hoops to jump through and thus the reduction in price, but I'd argue that those hoops are way too easily to get through.

Really, it's a tough thing to have both parts scale and make this a fair card. It's often gonna be way better than other things in too direct a manner, and as was noted earlier, Fairgrounds covers a lot of this design space better.

HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Alternative VP - "Dominion"
« Reply #12 on: August 09, 2012, 05:24:05 pm »
+2

Really, it's a tough thing to have both parts scale and make this a fair card. It's often gonna be way better than other things in too direct a manner, and as was noted earlier, Fairgrounds covers a lot of this design space better.

Though I think Fairgrounds has its own scaling problem. The difference between collecting 15 differently named cards and 10 differently named cards is huge, and should be worth more than 2 VPs per Fairgrounds, imo.
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