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[Davio]

In my previous posts I mentioned some alternative ways to go about things: Looking at predetermined sets and drafting.

If you want to make the game more interesting, you can search these forums for sets as well, there have been some Kingdom Design contests. And for some official tournaments there were sets created as well.

[bodybuilder]

ok since we then explain to me how I should use the chapel?
in my game I do not ever waste Estates and copper,  except when they are forced

[serakfalcon]

in my game I do not ever waste Estates and copper,  except when they are forced

It helps to think this way: would you rather have Estates or Provinces? would you rather have coppers or silvers and gold? If you don't have estates or copper anymore, you can buy provinces faster and more often

[theory]

Having more stuff is not necessarily better.

If you have a deck of 10 Golds, then each 5-card hand is going to have $15 in buying power.

If you have a deck of 10 Golds and also 10 Coppers, then each 5-card hand has, on average, only $10 in buying power. 

[Stealth Tomato]

ok since we then explain to me how I should use the chapel?
in my game I do not ever waste Estates and copper,  except when they are forced

Why not? What don't you like about trashing bad cards?

Also, what they're talking about is this: Chapel and money loses to just money. Chapel and good actions beats just good actions.

[math]

If you want to learn how to use Chapel, you might start here: http://dominionstrategy.com/2010/11/17/dominion-chapel/

[DStu]

ok since we then explain to me how I should use the chapel?
in my game I do not ever waste Estates and copper,  except when they are forced

I assume waste=trash?
In this case, trash them.

Let's take an example: http://www.councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130128-055223-235b2c07.html
this one seems quite low on cards that are not from Base/Intrigue/Prosperity.  key cards are Chapel, a Village (Mining in this case) and Conspirator.  Talisman is a Bonus.  Tha gam plan here is to get rid of all Coppers/Estates asap, get as many Conspirators as possible and some Villages to activate them. 

We both start Talisman/Chapel. 
Every time the Chapel is in hand play it and trash every Copper/Estate.  If not, build the engine.  This means here Conspirators and Villages.  The Talisman nicely double each buy, which lets us build up quite quickly.  The small deck means Conspirators are likely to activate, and we both play more or less our whole deck each turn.


How to exactly play this of course depends on the type of engine, but Laboratories, Markets, Minions, King's Courts and many more usually really like small decks, also Village+Smithy type engines, especially if there are strong attacks that you like to play every turn.

[bodybuilder]

you convinced me,  I put the chapel back in the game

now I want to say please, what do you think of:
wishing wells
saboteur
scouts
chancellor
loan
trade route
counting house
contraband

see if you can convince me even on these, or if I was right to remove them because they are weak

[Qvist]

Remove Thief and Adventurer instead of Loan/Wishing Well/Trade Route

[DStu]

see if you can convince me even on these, or if I was right to remove them because they are weak

As said above, I think "removing because weak" is not really right, because it doesn't help you much.  Only a tiniest fraction of strategies really use all 10 cards, so it does not really influence much if there is 1 more weak card on the board, because you wouldn't buy a strong one either as it doesn't fit your strat.

now I want to say please, what do you think of:

Instead of this, I will just say in which situations the card is helpful, so you can decide for yourself.

wishing wells

Is nice if you can pick them up easily (Workshops/Ironworks), and/or if one particular card dominiates your deck (maybe Conspirator).  Said that, of course also a possible activator for it.  Usually not game changing.

saboteur

Is weak but can lead to group-think it is strong, which is even worse.  Everybody destroys everyones deck, you have to like it to find that funny.  Usually only strong if you have a deck to play it every turn, and then most of the time you either have a better payload and/or add insult to injury for your opponent. Probably one of the cards that is really banned from some tables with informed players.

scouts

Would probably be voted worst card of the game if you ask here.  Interactions where already mentioned, with only 3 sets it's still stronger than in full random, but you probably won't miss it.

chancellor

Game-accelerator when you don't have other terminals (or plan on getting enough Villages) or want to get to some key-card fastly (Mountebank, Goons).  Not game-changing. Strong combo with Stash, but that's about it.

loan

Trashing is strong, especially in Colony games. Not being able to trash Estates is a drawback, but maybe something else can do this (Remodel), but can't trash Coppers (well).  Loan trashes without the need of an action, so you can safely open with a terminal.  If you want to go for an engine (maybe you tasted some blood once you played more with Chapel), getting rid of 7 Coppers really helps colliding thing, but build-up is more difficult because of the left Estates.

trade route

Did I say trashing is good? This one is also quite weak, especially as long as it gives +$0.  May assist Loan by trashing the Estates.  Quite strong against Cursers as you have much to trash there and usually Duchies are touched quite early there, getting Trade Route to $3 quite early in the game.  Also possibly strong with or against alternative Victory points, or other cards that give you/your opponent(s) incentives to buy/gain Victory cards early in the game (Hoard).

counting house

Needs all-in on the strategy, and is still mediocre in that case.  Best is defend against Mountebank.  Otherwise, on weak boards possible to grind your VPs with it.   Probably nothing (except counter Mountebank) which I would advice to do until you have played some more games.

contraband

Good if you have alternatives to buy.  So either you want 2 small engine pieces over Gold (or could at least live with it), or there are alternatives at the $6 price point (Hoard, Harem, Nobles, Goons), so your opponent has a hard time guessing what you want (or you wouldn't mind either way).  Remember, you don't have to play all your money at once, so first playing the Contraband before playing the rest of your money doesn't give you opponent to much information on what you can afford.

[bodybuilder]

I'm just a bit undecided about counting house and loan. the other cards I'm still convinced to leave out..

[Kuildeous]

You could probably get help with seeing how useful or useless a card is by having a game on Goko with one of these fine people.

Create a kingdom with an overpowered card (like Chapel) and ask the player to try to beat you without using that card while you do. Against a skilled opponent, you may see that Chapel is not that powerful.

Likewise, ask that person to play with a card that confuses you (like Loan). See how the player makes a good use of the card.

This isn't perfect. Sometimes the kingdom cards will make one card an obvious choice to buy or ignore. Chancellor can still be a decent card, but it won't necessarily win a game.

[Davio]

I'm just a bit undecided about counting house and loan. the other cards I'm still convinced to leave out..

You can leave them out, they don't fill a void necessarily.

For Loan, Trashing Treasure cards can be done in other ways: Chapel, Steward, Trading Post, Upgrade, etc...

Counting House needs a very special board to be good, one that won't come up often.
It's a solid soft counter to Mountebank, but you'll rarely have enough Coppers and an extra buy to make use of it.
Maybe some fantasy Festival-Gardens-Counting House deck?

[markusin]

I'm just a bit undecided about counting house and loan. the other cards I'm still convinced to leave out..

You'll know whether you want these cards or not when you play with them. Just as a heads up, they can both lead to frustration. Really, just remove the cards you don't want to play with, even if that includes something we perceive as random, like Forge.

We all have cards we don't like. I mean, many people played in veto mode on Iso, which allowed each player to remove one card from a randomly selected set to create a 10 card kingdom. Don't feel bad about swapping out cards as you see fit. You'll see those cards enough by playing with random decks on Goko anyway.

[GigaKnight]

I'll admit I didn't read the whole thread because it's really long and there are a lot of tangents here.  I skimmed and didn't see anything like what I'm about to say; forgive me if I missed it.

If I were to remove cards from Dominion, I would not simply choose cards I thought were the "weakest".  I would start with cards I just really, really hate (for me, this is just Saboteur and Possession, and I have removed them from my own copies).  Then I would move to cards that are purchased the least.  Even if those cards are actually pretty strong, I think the point of removing cards should be to increase the "interest density" of each Kingdom so that more cards per set look attractive/viable.  Thankfully, we also don't have to ask people to just list cards, because we have a pretty objective measure in Council Room data.  I'm not going to analyze it myself but it's there for whoever wants to define "purchased to least" (boy, we could have a whole second thread about that) and examine it.

I also don't think the analogies comparing cards to teeth or chess pieces or whatever are particularly accurate.  DXV has said (repeatedly, I think?) that Dominion doesn't need any single card and he's right.  That's one of Dominion's strengths and you have to get pretty pedantic to make that argument for chess or the alphabet - except the letter "C"... useless!

[AdamH]

From forever ago...

also agricultural unbalanced cards banned from tournaments and are therefore eliminated! what's wrong?

I again have no idea what you mean here.

I believe this refers to the board game Agricola where certain cards like Taster, Axe, and Wet Nurse are sometimes banned from tournament play because they are considered overpowered.

[GendoIkari]

This is fun. From now on, I think all forum threads need to be had with text that was translated through Google translate.

(To Bodybuilder, I sincerely don't mean any offense!

[heron]

I agree the rules.

[Kuildeous]

Yeah, having a conversation using Translate is definitely interesting. It's also a testament to the algorithm that we were able to get that far. I'm disappointed that no one admitted that his hovercraft is full of eels.

Though, I have to wonder what he's getting through Translate with our slang. And if he doesn't watch Monty Python, then he surely thinks the translation didn't work for "hovercraft full of eels."

[ftl]

To the OP: I would recommend just removing cards you don't like, rather than trying to come up with strategic justifications for it.

The cards you mentioned are very different. Chancellor and Chapel, for example, have little to nothing in common. Chancellor is a weak card which rarely sees any use and usually doesn't affect the game at all except for the occasional edge case, weak board, or bad play. Chapel is a strong card which usually fundamentally changes the game, and leads to a whole host of different strategies which are completely different than anything you can do without chapel.

Every card is going to be somewhere in between Chancellor and Chapel on that scale, pretty much. So it's hard to pick something that they have in common and remove cards like that.

It's ok to just remove cards you don't like. Dominion has a lot of cards, and there isn't any particular one that Dominion "needs" to have.

[KingZog3]

In my games IRL, we take out cards that are not fun. It has nothing to do with strength. We take out Treasure map because often it's just frustrating and annoying. Same with Goons and Familiar. But we leave Chancellor in because it's unique and still offers something to the game without being too good. Same with Pirate Ship, Thief, Scout, Counting House, Loan (I don't get people's problem with it), Explorer etc. and other such cards that aren't good, but still offer things to the game.

If you took out the weak cards, you'll end up playing with Witch, Mountebank, Sea Hag, Marauder, Ambassador, KC, Throne Room, Chapel, Cultist and Rebuild every game. Or something like that.

[GendoIkari]

Yeah, having a conversation using Translate is definitely interesting. It's also a testament to the algorithm that we were able to get that far. I'm disappointed that no one admitted that his hovercraft is full of eels.

Though, I have to wonder what he's getting through Translate with our slang. And if he doesn't watch Monty Python, then he surely thinks the translation didn't work for "hovercraft full of eels."

And for those who haven't seen it: http://translationparty.com/.

"Chapel is one of the strongest cards in Dominion, relative to its cost." -> "Chapel is the strongest rule and card costs."

[noon]

you convinced me,  I put the chapel back in the game

now I want to say please, what do you think of:

wishing well
saboteur
scout
chancellor
counting house
loan

These can be removed.

trade route

Good card, keep.

contraband

excellent card in some sets. Adds an interesting decision when played. Keep.


I'm late to the party, but my answer to your initial question is

base: thief, spy, chancellor, adventurer, bureaucrat
intrigue: wishing well, saboteur, coppersmith, secret chamber, scout
prosperity: loan, counting house, royal seal, ...

I can't get to five in prosperity. If you made me choose, then Talisman and Monument.

[bodybuilder]

thank you all for the answers. I'm still trying to get out.

I am sure that I will not: Chancellor,  scout,  saboteur,  wishing wells
but I'm still undecided about loan and counting house.

- loan seems good for trashing coppers, but it seems that there are many other cards that do it better
- counting house I think is good only against a mountebank, but it is also good if I have coppersmith? or it is not good to take the coppers from the cards discarded instead of her own deck?

[ftl]

The problem with Coppersmith and Counting house is that they're both terminal actions. Which means you need a village to play both of them.  So you need a hand where 3 of the top 6 cards are "village, coppersmith, counting house". If you're buying a lot of coppers to make your counting house worth a lot, then it's very unlikely that you'll get all those cards in hand, you might draw "counting house, village, 3 coppers" or "coppersmith, counting house, copper copper estate" or something like that.

The best way to get a particular combo of cards together is to build an engine - either play a lot of laboratories, or a lot of villages and smithies, for example. But in that case, you'll just draw all the cards into your hand, and so you don't even need the counting house.