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Qvist

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The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« on: August 30, 2012, 11:54:54 am »
0

Yes, it's a little bit early, but I like to prepare the 2013 voting and with Dark Ages a change in the categories is needed.
Also I want to add all cards in the voting as many of you requested. This causes/may cause some problems.
For maximum fun, I really appreciate your feedback for compiling the categories. I already have sort of my own opinion. But I want to let you answer the numbered questions below unbiased.

For adding base cards: Silver and Gold really make no problems to add them in the $3 and $6 category respectively.

1.) Does it make sense voting for Base victory cards like Duchy and Estate?

If yes, there's also Province as an $8 cost card. We already have Peddler in the $6+ category, but we all know this isn't a $8 cost card per se. This leads to:

2.) How can we assign Province, Platinum and Colony to a category?

Then there's Copper and Curse. We don't have a $0 category and we did get 5 different Ruins for $0.
Also there are 8 different $0* cards so far. Then there are 3 Shelters and Poor House for $1.

3.) How can we assign these to categories? A 19 card list with all these cards like rinkworks did? Or separate the $0* cards? Does it make more sense to differentiate between $0, $1 and $2 cards? Or is a $0-$2 list more reasonable? Or a mix like $0-$1 and $2 or $0 and $1-$2?

4.) Then there's Potion. This will be very hard to rank. Should we include it in the $4 list?

5.) Knights are another exclusion. I think one possibility is to add each knight to their respective ($4 or $5) list and the other one is to treat Knights as one average card for $5 and make a separate list for ranking each Knight.

6.) Not a real problem, but I like already to mention that the strength of Tournament, Urchin, Hermit and all Spoils gaining cards depend on their corresponding 0* card, but if we will vote the 0* cards, their strength will be independent of how they are gained and should be voted independantly. Please tell me if you agree or not...

Robz888

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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2012, 12:02:45 pm »
+2

Colony, Platinum, Province, Duchy, Estate, Potion, and Curse should not appear in the rankings, I would say.

All $1, $0, and $0* cards could be lumped together under the banner of "The Best $1- Cards." Just as "The Best $6+ Cards" includes Peddler, which costs $8*, such a list could include all the cards that cost $1 or less, including with * exceptions.

I haven't played with any of the Knights yet, and I don't know what they cost, but I sort of remember their functions. It's probably best to put them all together in one separate list of "The Best Knight Cards."
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werothegreat

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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #2 on: August 30, 2012, 12:04:59 pm »
+13

I think that Knights as a whole should appear on the $5 list, and then the individual Knights should get their own.

I'm still firmly against Ruins and Shelters appearing on these lists, and I'm against a $1- category.  Poor House should be lumped into a $1/$2 category, it being the only $1 entry.

Madman and Mercenary should be factored into the ratings for Hermit and Urchin, respectively, rather than be rated on their own.

Kingdom cards only, please.
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Robz888

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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2012, 12:08:16 pm »
0

Excludig all non-Kingdom cards is an option of course, but I'm not sure why we would feel the need to do that.

But yeah, let's leave out the regular Victory and Treasure cards that always appear, and Colony/Platinum/Potion. The reasonf or leaving out the regular Victory cards is pretty obvious. We are judging cards, essentially, on how good they are at helping you win the game. Almost by definition, Colony and Province are uninterestingly the best at this.
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jsh357

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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #4 on: August 30, 2012, 12:33:42 pm »
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Agreed with Werothegreat's post, and I also think Spoils should not appear on the list as they are essentially a base card.  I'm OK with ranking the Ruins, though.
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NoMoreFun

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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #5 on: August 30, 2012, 01:36:15 pm »
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Poor House should be lumped in the $2 cards; the difference between $1 and $2 is probably less significant than Duchess' special attribute.

It would be interesting to see the $3 and $4 cards in the same category, but probably too hard to vote on. I just see them occupying very similar niches in most games to the point where comparing them isn't such a bad idea.
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #6 on: August 30, 2012, 01:48:00 pm »
0

The hardest card to rank will be Band of Misfits; you've got to compare the average combined effect of all the sub $5 cards in a kingdom and compare it to other $5 cards. It'll be tougher than ranking border village.

An interesting hypothetical would be to analyse how effective Band of Misfits would be in an "all in" games. Not having a dead Sea Hag or Chapel, not needing to buy cards like Trade Route that become much more powerful as the game goes on, and being able to choose between "Village" and "Smithy" are its most pronounced effects.
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goober

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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #7 on: August 30, 2012, 01:59:24 pm »
+2

Poor house -
There are lots of exceptions to the simple price structure, and it seems to work fine to just lump these cards into the list that seems the most similar. For this reason, poor house should just be lumped in with the $2s, it's difference from the $2s in terms of functional difficulty in acquiring is less than the differences between many of the $6+ cards, and this can just be taken into account when ranking it. Works fine for grand market and peddler.

Basic victory cards and treasures-
Including basic victory cards, including colony, on these lists won't be at all interesting and should be avoided. It's just too much of an apples and oranges comparison. Whether or not to buy basic green is a whole different question than what these lists aim to address (at least in my eyes). However, I would include silver, gold, and platinum on their relevant lists, as they function like kingdom cards in your deck. Whether to buy silver or warehouse is a similar question to whether to buy warehouse or lookout.
Copper I would exclude, as it is not typically acquired for its ability to help your deck, but rather to add any card to your deck for gardens or to use a goons buy, in which case its "strength" is irrelevant. I think the "strength" of copper in the situations in which you might buy it for its function is sort of included in the ranks for things like counting house and coppersmith anyway, and it just wouldn't make sense to compare copper to any other set of cards. Similar arguments for curse.
Potion I would also exclude, it's utility is totally dependent on potion-cost cards, and ranking it with the $4s wouldn't be very meaningful. I think the "whether of not to buy a potion" question is gotten at in the potion cost list. Perhaps the best thing about these lists is they spark discussion about buying choices, and leaving the discussion about potion buying on the potion list makes sense to me. That list is basically a ranking of what cards make potion strong anyway.

* cards-
These should all just be factored in to the ranking of the cards that can be used to acquire them, and not ranked individually.

Ruins and shelters-
Exclude. Lumping them in with $2-'s seems silly, but I suppose you could. 

Knghts-
Put them on the $5 list as a group. Like with the prizes, ruins, and shelters, people could rank them individually in their own lists if they really want.
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #8 on: August 30, 2012, 02:00:54 pm »
0

1/2.  Include Silver and Gold.  Don't include any other base cards.  You might include Platinum, but I'd suspect it would be boring because it would be auto #1 in $6+ cards.

3. Mercenary and Madman are included in their respective card rankings.  The Prizes, Shelters, and Ruins could be ranked by comparing them to each other (i.e. 1-5, 1-3, and 1-5 respectively).  It'd be amusing so why not.

Poor House should be included in the $2 category.

4.  No Potions.

5. Knights should go in the $5 list.  You might want to throw int he $4 Knight on the $4 list, just because it is something unique.  Also, the Knights themselves should get a 1-10 ranking because that's also fun.
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #9 on: August 30, 2012, 02:55:24 pm »
+5

I don't feel like it makes any sense to be ranking, for instance, Trusty Steed, Spoils, and Mercenary relative to each other. One of the main points of, say, a $5-card ranking is to help answer the question "I have $5; what should I spend it on?" But no one's ever deciding between Trusty Steed, Spoils, and Mercenary. They may be deciding between Tournament, Marauder, and Urchin, and the relative usefulness of Trusty Steed, Spoils, and Mercenary figures into that comparison.
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #10 on: August 30, 2012, 05:11:37 pm »
+1

I'm of the opinion that only Kingdom cards should be included. All the circumstances for all the other cards are way too different. For instance, for $3, some people will say things like "I almost always buy Fishing Village over Silver", and someone will counter "you can at most buy Fishing Village in ~5% of games (since it's often not in the Kingdom), and you buy Silver in 80+%". The problem for me is that the value of some of the cards is predicated on the base cards being in the Kingdom. For example, Masquerade is a good opener when opened along with Silver, but it's really not that good if you can't get a Silver to go with it. So then determining which is better is almost more of a discussion of metaphysics than of dominion strategy.

I think you just expand the $2 category to $2 or less, and count anything that goes into one section of the box as one (Knights, Urchin/Mercenary, Ruins if you choose to include them).

If you really want to mix things up and put cards that you're more likely to have to choose between together, some options are:

1. Include potion cards costing $3P or less in the $5 cards (since you typically can start getting them around the second time through the deck), and $4P+ in the $6+ (since you typically have to wait a little longer for these). I think this puts them in a more interesting discussion category. Often there is a decision between pursuing the $2-3Ps and the $5s that you have to make at the start when you have to choose between Potion and Silver.

2. Instead of the splitting the $3-4 cards by price, split them by terminal vs non-terminal. This tends to be the more important distinction when it comes down to purchasing these cards. Then you also get the bonus of avoid discussion about things like how non-terminals are just generally better than terminals, so each person bumps them all up some random amount.

The second of these ideas is a little more radical, but I feel like the first one is a better way to handle the potion cards than giving them one list of their own.
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #11 on: August 30, 2012, 06:07:08 pm »
+1

I say Silver and Gold and Platinum should be included in their respective lists.  Why?  We haven't done it yet.  We've got two very authoritative lists of kingdom cards already.  Why not change things up a little and see what happens?  Personally, I'm very interested in seeing how Silver and Gold rank with their competitors.

For those that don't want Silver and Gold ranked, okay, but is it really any big deal if they're there?  You will still have all the information you'd have had without them, but with them we also learn something new.

--

Poor House:  I say lump this in with the $2 cards.  It feels like a $2 card that just happens to have the special feature of costing $1.  I know that doesn't make sense, but the $2 cards are its competition, and so it makes sense to rank it with its competition.

Ruins/Shelters/Prizes/Spoils/etc:  These should be in separate lists, if at all, because they are not competitors with any of the cards in the other lists.  But why not include them in a list (or two)?  Such a list wouldn't serve quite the same function as the other lists, but they would still be very interesting.  And they will have practical use, too:  with Tournament, you have to decide how to prioritize the Prizes, so those cards definitely compete with each other.  And if Tournament, Hermit, Urchin, and Looters are all in the same kingdom, you might well need to decide what $0* cards to shoot for.  I get that it's not the same situation as the other lists, but who says it has to be?  It would still be an interesting and fun exercise, and so I can't conceive of any reason not to do it.

I will concede, however, that ranking Estate/Duchy/Province/Colony/Curse suggests no fun or useful purpose to me at all.
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #12 on: August 30, 2012, 07:13:04 pm »
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1. Include potion cards costing $3P or less in the $5 cards (since you typically can start getting them around the second time through the deck), and $4P+ in the $6+ (since you typically have to wait a little longer for these). I think this puts them in a more interesting discussion category. Often there is a decision between pursuing the $2-3Ps and the $5s that you have to make at the start when you have to choose between Potion and Silver.

Having a single list for postion-costing cards is a slightly different enterprise than a single list for $5 cards, of course—instead of "I have a Potion in my hand; what should I buy?", its purpose is "Given this kingdom, should I buy a Potion?".
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #13 on: August 30, 2012, 07:16:28 pm »
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1/2.  Include Silver and Gold.  Don't include any other base cards.  You might include Platinum, but I'd suspect it would be boring because it would be auto #1 in $6+ cards.

I would not be surprised to see many people put KC / Goons ahead of Platinum.
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ycz6

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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #14 on: August 31, 2012, 03:04:42 am »
0

By the way, are you waiting for Guilds for this?
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #15 on: August 31, 2012, 03:25:51 am »
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1. Include potion cards costing $3P or less in the $5 cards (since you typically can start getting them around the second time through the deck), and $4P+ in the $6+ (since you typically have to wait a little longer for these). I think this puts them in a more interesting discussion category. Often there is a decision between pursuing the $2-3Ps and the $5s that you have to make at the start when you have to choose between Potion and Silver.

Having a single list for postion-costing cards is a slightly different enterprise than a single list for $5 cards, of course—instead of "I have a Potion in my hand; what should I buy?", its purpose is "Given this kingdom, should I buy a Potion?".

In practice you rarely have to answer the former question, and you often have to answer the latter.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #16 on: August 31, 2012, 03:41:16 am »
0

I say Silver and Gold and Platinum should be included in their respective lists.  Why?  We haven't done it yet.  We've got two very authoritative lists of kingdom cards already.  Why not change things up a little and see what happens?  Personally, I'm very interested in seeing how Silver and Gold rank with their competitors.

For those that don't want Silver and Gold ranked, okay, but is it really any big deal if they're there?  You will still have all the information you'd have had without them, but with them we also learn something new.

I mean, it doesn't take too long to add them to the rankings, so in some sense it doesn't really make any difference assuming no one puts any real thought into it. But if you think about ranking this set of cards that includes things that are not kingdom cards, all of a sudden you need a new set of criteria on which to base your rankings. I think for instance that including Silver could potentially affect some people's rankings of all cards, since if they're competing with Silver for a spot on the list, you may have to think about how good they are in the absence of Silver, because if you give them credit for being good with Silver, you have to split that credit, giving some to the kingdom card and some to Silver. This might make villages or gainers gain more strength relative to big money favoring cards or something... And then some people may not think of it in this way at all, and just put Silver first or last, or choose some place to insert them based on some arbitrary criteria related. But then we're just averaging more lists based on completely different criteria (which is already to an extent what we're doing, but it's pushing it more in that direction).

That said, I don't care all that much. I just think it's weird. We don't include the trash pile card. If we did, how much trashing-related stuff would be encompassed in its value? If we do choose to include the basic cards, I'm just going to pretend we didn't and then put them all at the top.
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #17 on: August 31, 2012, 08:33:17 am »
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I think that Knights as a whole should appear on the $5 list, and then the individual Knights should get their own.

Did anybody ever vote for Tournament on the basis of what the card does, or did they vote for it based on the Prizes?  We know the answer to that.  Knights will be no different. 

I wouldn't like to see base cards included in the voting.  It was already time-consuming to do the 2012 votes, and that's only going to get worse with DA and possibly Guilds being included. 
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #18 on: September 02, 2012, 03:40:12 am »
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I don't think Silver or any base cards should be on the list and here is why. Almost every game, you need to buy at least one silver. It is an essential card to deck building. Silver's value and power is very board dependent. Get a crappy board, you're playing BM and Silver is one heck of a card. Have a board with all the components to a great engine, Silver is less powerful. Gold can sometimes be ignored, but putting money and worse Estate/Duchy/Province is just going to muck things up.

Regarding Shelters and Ruins and whatnot. I think those might deserve theis own thread if you're up to it. Spoils is more like an effect the card gives. Bandit Camp for instance gives you spoils so that more or less is Bandit Camp than the Spoils themselves. It is just like ranking Tournament.

And, Poor House is essentially a $2 card. How often are you really going to buy it with just $1. Okay, I'm sure it will happen sometimes, but it should be grouped with the $2 cards.
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #19 on: September 04, 2012, 10:14:59 am »
0

Thanks for your comments so far.
You mostly agree with my own thoughts.

We are judging cards, essentially, on how good they are at helping you win the game.

One of the main points of, say, a $5-card ranking is to help answer the question "I have $5; what should I spend it on?"

These comments summarize best what I think is key. To put it together. The lists try to give an answer "How often do you buy card Y when you have at least X coins?" These lists are grouped together by X. So I try to answer my questions:

Copper, Curse, Ruins and Shelters shouldn't be included in lists because you can't buy Shelters and you only buy the other 3 cards in edge cases. I can make a special category for ranking the Ruins. I will rename the $2 category to a $1-$2 category and include Poor House. I agree that comparing Spoils and Followers doesn't make sense because you can't buy them. But I can make a special category for the Prizes on their own. Potion shouldn't be included neither, because the Potion cost list basically answers if you should buy a Potion. Knights will be counted as $5 card and I will probably make a special Knights category.

There are still 2 open questions IMO:

Base victory cards could still be included because we also included other victory cards so far. Province and Colony make less sense because they're essential in winning, but Duchy and maybe Estate could work. Maybe we should generally exclude victory cards for the lists...? We also ranked Fairgrounds for example which is often nothing else than 4VP for $6.

But Silver and Gold and probably Platinum could definitely be included. Why not? Often you have to decide if you buy a Silver or another $3 card from the supply. Same goes for Gold vs. Goons for example. Platinum is a little different because there are no other $9 cards, but with King's Court on the board you still may ignore Platinum.

werothegreat

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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #20 on: September 04, 2012, 10:27:41 am »
+5

The basic Treasures and Victory cards are in every setup.  While Fairgrounds may usually end up being 4 VP for $6, there is nonetheless a strategy to it.

The way I like to think of it (and the way I often teach the game to newbs) is that you have the basic cards and five rules: Draw 5 cards, play an Action, buy something, discard everything, draw 5 cards.  Kingdom cards are way to essentially "cheat" out of that framework.  You can think of pure Big Money as the unadulterated version of the game, where you simply buy better and better Treasures, and then Provinces and Duchies.  Kingdom cards, whether they be Actions, Treasures or Victory cards, require you to take a different strategy.  Sure, we buy Silver and Gold and Provinces and Duchies a lot of the time, but that's not necessarily part of our strategy, and it's not really what we think of when we play a kingdom.  We don't look at a setup and say "Oh, Silver's in this, I should buy that."  So to me, basic cards really have no place in this sort of ranking.
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #21 on: September 04, 2012, 11:32:23 am »
0

My thoughts:

I kinda liked the idea of seeing how Silver/Gold rank in 3$/6$+, but I don't find it that bad without it. I would be OK with Duchy, Copper, Estate  (Prov as well?) being in too. Potion/Plat/Colony - I don't see any benefit of ranking these.

I would put Poorhouse with $2s, and Knights lumped together with $5.
Now, it is meaningless to compare a Ruin, which is basically something you get as a penalty to Madman which is something you get as a one-shot when you work your ass off to set it up.

If Ruins/Knights are to be rated, they can be rated in a special category: Ruins category (5 entries), Knight Category (10 entries). You can also add Prize Category (5 entries).

On Shelters I don't have a strong opinion, but  it is kinda silly to rate/compare them with anything giving that you cannot buy them at all - so I'd probably leave it out.

So, I think it would be best to have:
Special Cards (in one thread, ratings for Prizes, Ruins, Knights)
$2 and less (including Poorhouse, but no Shelters)
3$, $4, $5, $6+, Potions

(Maybe include basics, but probably better not)
« Last Edit: September 04, 2012, 03:04:21 pm by Grujah »
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #22 on: September 04, 2012, 12:48:10 pm »
+1

Thanks for your comments so far.
You mostly agree with my own thoughts.

We are judging cards, essentially, on how good they are at helping you win the game.

One of the main points of, say, a $5-card ranking is to help answer the question "I have $5; what should I spend it on?"

These comments summarize best what I think is key. To put it together. The lists try to give an answer "How often do you buy card Y when you have at least X coins?" These lists are grouped together by X. So I try to answer my questions:

I'm pretty sure this is not what the lists have been giving an answer to. If this is the question, you just get it from statistics on Council Room. The cards you buy most often are the same as the cards that are the strongest. The way I've been doing the lists, and I think I'm not alone in this, is ranking cards on how important the tend to be to my strategy. Dominion is a strategy game. Sure when you first play, you just pick up your hand, count $4 and see what you can buy with that, but it doesn't take long to get to the point where you look at all the cards at the start of the game and decide what's important. This I think is the most important skill in Dominion and should be the question we are trying to address, imo.

The price grouping I think is because you're going to hit the different price points with different frequencies at different times, and your strategy should account for this. This is why I like the idea of mixing potion-cost cards with 5s. They generally fill a similar strategic role.
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Re: The Best Dominion Cards List 2013 Preparation Thread
« Reply #23 on: September 04, 2012, 12:51:45 pm »
+1

I don't really think you can rank silver. Buying silver or another terminal is a strategy thing really. One person might go for BM. Another person might be going for an engine. The thing is that Silver is board dependent and also dependent on what split you get and even whether you go first or second. The value of Silver literally changes every game. So, do the other cards, but I feel that Silver is more influenced by whats on the board than other cards. Not only that. There are very, very few games that you don't ever buy silver. It almost never comes up. How do you really rank a card that you buy each and every single game?

Edit to add this: With alt. VP cards, buying them is an alternate strategy. However, buying Province and Duchies is the normal Dominion strategy for both Engine and BM games. So, I don't think you can rank them either because buying them is part of your strategy. Going for Silk Roads or Duke or whatnot are not always going to be your strategy. You could still be going for buying all the Provinces. Do you see what I'm saying?
« Last Edit: September 04, 2012, 12:54:27 pm by Beyond Awesome »
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