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Kirian

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #25 on: July 31, 2013, 10:24:23 am »
+13

The main problem of other deck building games is this: in order to not be Dominion, they had to do something new, or add something different, or change a mechanic, major or minor.  Sometimes that change of mechanic is all right; sometimes it was a disaster.  And sometimes (I'm looking at you, Tanto Cuore and Puzzle Strike), the change wasn't really enough to justify a new game.

But that means that each of these new games must be directly compared to the simplicity and replayability of Dominion, and it's very, very hard to top that.

----

So I'm looking at a few things on BGG right now.  I'm going to list the major "Deck/Pool Building" games by number of ratings here; games with few ratings are unlikely to have been played by many people, and can reasonably be ignored for purposes of this discussion.  The number in parentheses is the rank on BGG; I'm also ignoring anything below rank 2000 because, really, that's a sign of being actually bad.  (For comparison, "We Didn't Playtest This At All," a game that is actively trying to be bad, is ranked 2248.)

This list might be useful to whoever attempts to go on the podcast.

Dominion (17)
Thunderstone (217)
Quarriors (298)
Mage Knight (9)
Starcraft Board Game (175)
Ascension (262)
Blood Bowl Team Manager (134, what the hell is this?)
Eminent Domain (264)
A Few Acres of Snow (96)
Nightfall (601)
Friday (216)
Rune Age (437)
Legendary (169)
Yggdrassil (352)
Core Worlds (309)
Scarab Lords (1849)
Puzzle Strike (595)
Arcana (1517)
Resident Evil (1163)
DC Comics (670)
Copycat (685)
Eaten by Zombies (1814)
Fzzzt (1619)
Star Trek: TNG (1125)
Tanto Cuore (976) (*)
Penny Arcade (1367)
Arctic Scavengers (1556)
Briefcase (1897)
Fantastiqa (1234)

OK, I'm going to stop there, because I've not even vaguely heard of anything below that other than expansions to games listed above.  OK, let me take a look at ones I've played, and ones I know a bit about even if I haven't played them.

I've played those in bold above: Dominion, Thunderstone, Quarriors, Ascension, Eminent Domain, and (by coercion) Resident Evil.  I'll talk about each of those separately, and the mechanics change(s) they added.

----

Ascension made the two most basic changes possible: the cards are always the same but randomized, and none of your cards are dead--VP are separate.  This leads to two problems.  First, it's essentially impossible to plan a strategy; you have no idea which cards will appear in the row, so you have to build your strategy around what other players choose, and what comes up at random.  It's a tactical game.  Second, because there are no cards that decrease the power of your deck, there is no inherent slowdown; in fact, many of the most powerful and expensive cards also increase your score, creating positive rather than negative feedback.

Thunderstone made a number of mechanical changes.  None of your cards are dead, though many don't lend you much power; some of your cards can level up as in an RPG; you have multiple options for how you will play each turn.  One option increases your deck power, while the other earns you points and experience.  Note that, once again, there are no dead cards; every purchase or combat adds some value to your deck, which means positive feedback again.  In addition, Thunderstone tries, I think, to be too much "not like Dominion," which means they added all this fiddly stuff (light, XP, the Thunderstone itself) that don't so much enhance the game as distinguish it from Dominion.  I think it's safe to say that a mechanic that doesn't enhance the game is a bad mechanic.

Quarriors takes the basics of Dominion and puts them on dice, then adds combat and--once again--separates victory points from the "deck," making positive feedback again the norm.  (I'm sensing a theme here!)  It generates more random "hands" by having you roll dice each time, which is interesting but not really an exciting change.

Resident Evil is the most Dominion-like of all of these, to the point that it comes very close to being a pure clone, right down to certain costs.  Sure, you have a character with special powers, and you have combat (which uses your main resource in different ways), but when your main resource is in 10, 20, and 30 denominations that cost 0, 30, and 60 respectively, it's really really hard not to immediately look at what other cards are directly copied from Dominion (Answer: a lot.)

Eminent Domain is one of my favorite games right now, and of the games I've played here it's the one that introduces completely different mechanics while maintaining some of the elegance of Dominion.  While no cards are actively bad, as you gather basic cards (and you're forced to do so!) your deck becomes clogged, as the only way to do much is to have multiples of the same card type in your hand.  This gets alleviated by the fact that, unlike other deck builders, EmDo allows you to keep cards from turn to turn.  Those two mechanics changes make for a very different game dynamic in terms of deck management; and because they're truly new, EmDo is simpler than, say, Thunderstone, while still being utterly different from Dominion.  The fact that much of what you do is outside your deck makes it much less of a "pure" deck builder.

----

Of the rest of the games on that list, what I know are only tidbits.  I've heard Nightfall is somewhat comparable to Thunderstone.  I've heard the ST:TNG game is insanely complex.  I've heard that both it and the Penny Arcade game suffer from what I call competitive co-op syndrome: the game is cooperative yet, for some reason, there are conditions that make one person the "winner."  I've heard good things about Legendary and Nightfall, and quite a mix about A Few Acres of Snow (like a terrible imbalance).

Several of the games (Ascension in particular, but also AFAOS and I believe Arctic Scavengers) lack the equal-access aspect of Dominion.

OK, that's my (counts) probably at least 20 cents.  Anyone know much about the other games?
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PitzerMike

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #26 on: July 31, 2013, 10:33:02 am »
0

I don't like Thunderstone as much as Dominion, but I think you're wrong about being unable to create a Dominion-style deck. What I've noticed is that while I'm not good at "dungeon crawl" type games in general, my skill at Dominion has carried over to Thunderstone to the point that I can win games using deck-building skills I learned from Dominion. While it's true that you can't ever build a completely reliable engine where you draw your deck every turn, for example, there are a fair number of trashing cards, and if those are available, you can make a quite-thin deck.

Basically what I've done in the past couple games is spend a really long time just going to the village. Just trashing cards, gaining XP if there's any card that gives XP from the village, and getting just a couple power cards in my deck. Then, when I'm several points behind because everyone else has been going to the dungeon, I hit the dungeon. And at this point I have a deck that can take out my choice of monster with almost any hand I'm dealt. I'll often only have 12 cards in my deck at this point, so I'll be seeing my whole deck every other turn. Even if I can only reliably kill something every other turn, that's better than other players who are becoming bloated with low-vp monster cards and I overtake them.

Very interesting, thank you!
Maybe it also gets better with later expansions.
I think I only played vanilla + the first expansion or something.
Which do you have?
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GendoIkari

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #27 on: July 31, 2013, 12:09:46 pm »
+1

I don't like Thunderstone as much as Dominion, but I think you're wrong about being unable to create a Dominion-style deck. What I've noticed is that while I'm not good at "dungeon crawl" type games in general, my skill at Dominion has carried over to Thunderstone to the point that I can win games using deck-building skills I learned from Dominion. While it's true that you can't ever build a completely reliable engine where you draw your deck every turn, for example, there are a fair number of trashing cards, and if those are available, you can make a quite-thin deck.

Basically what I've done in the past couple games is spend a really long time just going to the village. Just trashing cards, gaining XP if there's any card that gives XP from the village, and getting just a couple power cards in my deck. Then, when I'm several points behind because everyone else has been going to the dungeon, I hit the dungeon. And at this point I have a deck that can take out my choice of monster with almost any hand I'm dealt. I'll often only have 12 cards in my deck at this point, so I'll be seeing my whole deck every other turn. Even if I can only reliably kill something every other turn, that's better than other players who are becoming bloated with low-vp monster cards and I overtake them.

Very interesting, thank you!
Maybe it also gets better with later expansions.
I think I only played vanilla + the first expansion or something.
Which do you have?

I only own the first base set, but the last few games I played were on a friend's set, which included cards from a bunch of sets (it was also the Epic variant). From everything I've heard, base-set only has all sorts of rules and balance issues, and they've come a long way in fixing that in later expansions. Also, there's the new Thunderstone Advance, which isn't just an expansion but a complete re-release. But as a whole, I think people who really like it like it for the theme / the dungeon crawl aspect, not as much as a deck-building game.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #28 on: July 31, 2013, 12:17:25 pm »
+1

Thunderstone made a number of mechanical changes.  None of your cards are dead, though many don't lend you much power; some of your cards can level up as in an RPG; you have multiple options for how you will play each turn.  One option increases your deck power, while the other earns you points and experience.  Note that, once again, there are no dead cards; every purchase or combat adds some value to your deck, which means positive feedback again.

I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. Some monsters are only worth VP; not anything else.  Unless you're counting the XP you get as a positive influence for your deck, which you could.
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SirPeebles

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #29 on: July 31, 2013, 12:22:12 pm »
+2

It may be worth pointing out that it isn't really fair to compare these other deck builders to Dominion, at least not the Dominion most of us likely have in mind: namely,  Dominion + eight expansions + promos, totaling over 200 kingdom cards and costing hundreds of US dollars retail.  Many of us were reintroduced to plain Base Dominion when we stingily played on Goko, and it is not remotely as engaging or deep long term.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #30 on: July 31, 2013, 12:36:25 pm »
0

FWIW, the positive feedback might be something that some people enjoy.  It can be fun to become an unstoppable juggernaut.

I watched a recent Dice Tower review for the Thunderstone starter set and they described a mechanic for keeping cards like you (Kirian) described for Eminent Domain.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #31 on: July 31, 2013, 12:41:29 pm »
+2

It may be worth pointing out that it isn't really fair to compare these other deck builders to Dominion, at least not the Dominion most of us likely have in mind: namely,  Dominion + eight expansions + promos, totaling over 200 kingdom cards and costing hundreds of US dollars retail.  Many of us were reintroduced to plain Base Dominion when we stingily played on Goko, and it is not remotely as engaging or deep long term.

But I think base-only Dominion is only a boring game when compared to all-sets Dominion, or perhaps when having spent insane amounts of time on this forum and playing thousands of games on Iso where we because so good at Dominion that base is almost solved. I played a LOT of base-only Dominion before this forum and before Iso, and never got sick of it.
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Re: Showdown
« Reply #32 on: July 31, 2013, 12:48:49 pm »
0

I'd rather play Ascension over base-Dominion. But the addition of expansions is really what pushes it over for me.
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Ratsia

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #33 on: July 31, 2013, 04:07:21 pm »
+2

I'm going to list the major "Deck/Pool Building" games by number of ratings here; games with few ratings are unlikely to have been played by many people, and can reasonably be ignored for purposes of this discussion.
It seems I've played eleven of those, even though it always feels like I'm not that familiar with deck-builders as a genre; after all, I've never tried even Ascension or Legendary, two of the games that often get mentioned besides Dominion.

Quote
Blood Bowl Team Manager (134, what the hell is this?)
It's crap and it's perhaps a bit of stretch to call it a deck-builder. Everyone starts with a deck of BB players and during the game gets a few more and often gets rid of a few bad ones, but building the deck is not really the core of the game. Also, it has a lot of other components as well.

Some other games on that list are perhaps still a bit further away from "proper" deck-builders, such as Fizzzt!.

Quote
Eaten by Zombies (1814)
This one is actually quite funny, a kind of reverse deck-builder where the decks get gradually worse and worse. It's almost like playing a Dominion game where some external power constantly plays cursers and cards like Saboteur. Unfortunately it's not really that balanced.
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Re: Showdown
« Reply #34 on: July 31, 2013, 04:30:49 pm »
+4

I'd note that you don't really need all the expansions to make Dominion a great game. One expansion is really enough to have a lot of variety, two is ample for a fun game. The fact you have a huge choice of expansions beyond that if you want to go deeper is a pure positive.
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...spin-offs are still better for all of the previously cited reasons.
But not strictly better, because the spinoff can have a different cost than the expansion.

GeronimoRex

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #35 on: July 31, 2013, 04:43:32 pm »
+1

I'd note that you don't really need all the expansions to make Dominion a great game. One expansion is really enough to have a lot of variety, two is ample for a fun game. The fact you have a huge choice of expansions beyond that if you want to go deeper is a pure positive.

I'd agree strongly... We started with the Big Box (base/alchemy/prosperity) and that was really more than we needed. We've since been gifted Seaside and Dark Ages, but neither is really necessary... I've borrowed other sets so I've got familiarity with most of the cards.

I'd guess that for most regular gamers, 3 sets (Base/Prosperity/other big set) would keep them happy virtually forever, and would provide enough possible game variants to keep Dominion a mainstay for years... of course, since there are more sets, we're all going to want them, but that doesn't mean they are a necessary add to ensure fun and strategic gaming.

I include Prosperity with base as the two most "necessary" sets because I feel like the option of Plat/Col add some of the greatest strategic variance to the boards... The same kingdom w and w/o Plat/Col can play radically differently and require totally different strategies... also, I've found a lot of more casual gamers appreciate the slightly slower pace of Plat/Col games. On their own, I think base/Prosp need something else to shake up the overall set of available kingdom cards, but whether that is Seaside/Hinterlands/Dark Ages doesn't really matter in terms of long term enjoyment and replayability.
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Robz888

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #36 on: July 31, 2013, 05:37:01 pm »
+1

I'd note that you don't really need all the expansions to make Dominion a great game. One expansion is really enough to have a lot of variety, two is ample for a fun game. The fact you have a huge choice of expansions beyond that if you want to go deeper is a pure positive.

Yes, emphatically agreed. Actually, it can be a whole lot of fun for regular players just two mix two sets, even simple sets. Intrigue and Hinterlands together are really a whole lot of fun.
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liopoil

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #37 on: July 31, 2013, 05:50:09 pm »
0

IRL I own the base set, 3 large expansions, and cornucopia. there are two small expansions and two large that I don't own, but really, I don't think buying them would add a whole lot. They all have fun cards and mechanics that would be cool to play with of course, but I mean, I'm never going to get bored of games with the ones I own. plus, if I got another expansion I'd need a new storage solution! right now I can fit them all in the base set box. I don't really enjoy my goko games hosted by someone who has all the expansions any more than an IRL game with 5 expansions.
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Re: Showdown
« Reply #38 on: July 31, 2013, 06:22:04 pm »
0

I'd note that you don't really need all the expansions to make Dominion a great game. One expansion is really enough to have a lot of variety, two is ample for a fun game. The fact you have a huge choice of expansions beyond that if you want to go deeper is a pure positive.

Yes, emphatically agreed. Actually, it can be a whole lot of fun for regular players just two mix two sets, even simple sets. Intrigue and Hinterlands together are really a whole lot of fun.
True. I have Guilds and Base on Goko and playing with just those two sets has been great so far. Though, I won't turn down a chance to play with all of the expansions either.
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Re: Showdown
« Reply #39 on: August 01, 2013, 02:59:49 am »
0

I'd note that you don't really need all the expansions to make Dominion a great game. One expansion is really enough to have a lot of variety, two is ample for a fun game. The fact you have a huge choice of expansions beyond that if you want to go deeper is a pure positive.

Yes, emphatically agreed. Actually, it can be a whole lot of fun for regular players just two mix two sets, even simple sets. Intrigue and Hinterlands together are really a whole lot of fun.
I think it depends on how often you play. If you play thousands of games online like WW does, things can get samey fast enough that you really want all the sets. If you just play in real life, you can make do with fewer expansions.
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Re: Showdown
« Reply #40 on: August 01, 2013, 07:15:43 am »
+2

FWIW, I think I'd still be pretty happy playing just base, at least for a few thousand games.

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #41 on: August 01, 2013, 08:50:39 am »
0

Eaten By Zombies probably ought to be on the list - though, to my mind, it's not particularly good mostly because it is very lacking in numbers of cards, and a few bits of writing are nowhere near as tight as I'd like.

Thunderstone's OK.  Epic Thunderstone is more adventurey, but less deckbuildingy because it has a lot less control over what will be available at any given time.  I've not played Thunderstone Advanced yet, but I understand it to be an improvement.

It's definitely possible to get a solid engine going in Thunderstone; the difficulty is that a combat engine tends to suck in the village, and vice versa, so you're bad at half the game if you're good at the other, and you really do need both to win.

The real thing that makes Dominion awesome is the simple core rules, and the copious expansions that break them in controlled, reaonsably balanced, interesting ways.
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Re: Showdown
« Reply #42 on: August 02, 2013, 02:34:39 am »
0

FWIW, I think I'd still be pretty happy playing just base, at least for a few thousand games.
Really, don't you think you're just going through the motions most of the time with base?

For me the cutoff point would likely be 100 games or so, not 1000+.
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Polk5440

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #43 on: August 02, 2013, 12:41:39 pm »
0

Anyone respond to the original BGG post so Dice Tower knows we are trying to find someone?

It would be a shame if a non-f.ds person was picked to defend Dominion's honor.
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Re: Showdown
« Reply #44 on: August 02, 2013, 01:54:45 pm »
0

theory said he PM'd them, didn't he?
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...spin-offs are still better for all of the previously cited reasons.
But not strictly better, because the spinoff can have a different cost than the expansion.

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #45 on: August 02, 2013, 02:47:25 pm »
0

theory said he PM'd them, didn't he?

Ah, missed that post.
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Re: Showdown
« Reply #46 on: August 04, 2013, 12:33:18 am »
0

theory said he PM'd them, didn't he?

Well, I formally volunteer, but would absolutely yield to someone who is better informed about other deck building games.
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Ratsia

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #47 on: August 04, 2013, 09:56:20 am »
+1

Sometimes that change of mechanic is all right; sometimes it was a disaster.
(clipped a lot)
and--once again--separates victory points from the "deck," making positive feedback again the norm.  (I'm sensing a theme here!)
Related to these, I just remembered that Trains was not on your list, due to too few ratings (not surprisingly, given that it was originally released only in Japanese and shipping it to Europe/US cost a ton of money). It's one of the better deck-builders, and in particular the new mechanic is easy to pinpoint and it is actually a good one. It's otherwise very standard Dominion-like deck-builder with a set of "kingdom" cards chosen amongst a larger set and fixed money and VP cards that are always available, but it adds spatial dimension. Besides the cards it has a separate map where the players can lay track and build stations (well, lay cubes) to expand their railway network that must always be connected.

Effectively the map provides an alternative way to score, one where the players are directly fighting against each other to reach the cities first. The spatial constraint is an interesting addition to Dominion since it encourages, to a degree, early scoring and makes it possible to prevent another player from scoring certain locations. Even though the map is separate every action that lays track or builds stations also adds "confusion" cards in the deck, which prevents the positive feedback of many other games.

The spatial dimension is such a clever addition that the basic mechanics of Trains might be argued to beat those of Dominion, especially since it does not notably add complexity; one can explain the whole map part of the game in a few seconds and building on the map is anyway simply one of the actions written in the cards. However, as a game it is not as good due to lack of variety (no expansions yet, besides extra maps), and I would be a bit surprised if it was equally well balanced; can't say for sure since I've only played it for a few games.

Nevertheless, I still strongly recommend everyone to try it if given a chance.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2013, 09:57:31 am by Ratsia »
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Re: Showdown
« Reply #48 on: August 04, 2013, 10:55:18 am »
+7

I've actually played quite a few of these games. Here are some quick rundowns if it's still relevant:

A couple overall comments: First, I think the fundamental strength of Dominion is that the game is about trying to get the right cards into your hand each turn, and the way you do this is build your deck. All of the cards either do something good (Gold, Sea Hag), or work to change the way you draw cards (Village, Lab, Smithy), or both. Most of the first-generation clones had the cards do "something exciting" . But it turns out that if you combine deckbuilding with cards that don't change your deck or hand, you're just creating a slow action-drafting game and the fact that you have five different cards each turn doesn't matter.

Second, for whatever reason every designer's first instinct when messing with Dominion is to add a second currency (and usually call it "fighting"). In theory, I guess this could be interesting. In practice I haven't seen a game yet where it added much. (I'm still not enamored of the Potion-cost cards in Dominion, either.) But it lets you have a thing called "fighting" and there are definitely consumers who respond well to that, judging based on what Kickstarters succeed.

Thunderstone: I played this once and liked it a lot. I played it a few more times and liked it noticably less each time. It takes way too long and the interactions between the cards are very blunt. The first edition also had weird card layout and questionable balance. They released an entire overhauled game, Thunderstone Advance, which is better, but has the same fundamental weaknesses and definitely still takes too long on the table. Remember in the introduction where I complained about not being able to do much to make the cards in your hand work together? Well, Thunderstone Advance came up with a Band-Aid rule that lets you spend your turn to discard as much as you want and draw up to your hand size. It's better than nothing, I guess.

Arctic Scavengers: The idea of having every card be able to do one of several things to varying abilities is a neat idea, but I don't think the pieces work well together. One of the actions is called "fighting," which gets people excited. They would be much less excited about the mechanism if you called it what it is, which is a "blind bid". There's a second currency, medicine, but you can't just buy it; you have to get lucky digging through the "junk pile". Yes, imagine if half the cards in Dominion had Potion costs and the only way to get Potion was through the Black Market. Luckily there are cards that let you look at more Black Market cards!

Nightfall: OK, it's Dominion with directed attacks and the goal is to get the most Curses into the other players' decks. Sound good? You can only play one action a turn, except that there's this arbitrary "chaining" mechanism that allows you to play more as long as you can match the colors of cards played by you or the player previous in turn order. The next time someone complains about Dominion's theme, ask them what the hell the colored moons in Nightfall have to do with anything.

Despite my dislike of the game, Nightfall had a really interesting deckbuilding innovation that I admire. You get an initial deck of low-powered cards, which span most of the game mechanisms in an easily understood way, and trash themselves when you play them. This helps novices get a grasp of the game easily, and provides a built-in transition from "starting deck" to "midgame deck" without having to explicitly introduce cards that mess with your deck. I like that. I'm much less impressed by the idea of drafting individual supply piles before the game begins. In theory it leads to different, asymmetric decks during the game; in practice it requires you to make the most important decisions before the game begins.

Ascension: At its heart this is a very basic Dominion clone with two changes: a second currency, which is fighting of course, and buying cards from a rotating, not fixed, supply. I thought the game was thin, but it seems to have a strong following, so I am still waiting for the long-anticipated Android version so I can give it a shot. I think it's definitely best with two players, where your choices to buy or not buy from the center are much more strongly related to your outcome.

Quarriors: I think this is a fine game in that it lives up to what it says on the tin, and what it says on the tin is "The Game of Uber Strategic Hexahedron Monster Combat Mayhem!". The idea of having multiple cards that refer to the same die is brilliant. The game itself has a lot of luck, but you signed up for that when you walked in, and there's a fair amount of strategy in choosing between your different purchasing options, too. I highly recommend the advanced variant in which you can buy two dice a turn and to score a die, you must cull that die--it makes the blunt strategy of "always buy the most expensive thing available" less dominant.

Puzzle Strike: Of the games that could reasonably be called Dominion clones, this one is definitely my favorite. This is because I think it actually keeps the good parts, while introducing interesting innovations. The Action cards (chips) have different colors and many effects that provide +Actions only give you actions of a specific color. There is lots of drawing and Actions with interesting effects, which makes the mix of chips you have very relevant. The primary innovation is the victory condition--as you attack your opponent, you bring them closer to losing and yourself farther away--but the closer you are to losing in this way, the more chips you draw, which lets you either buy big chips or (hopefully) play your big combo. The second innovation is the character chips, which lead to an asymmetric game. For advanced players, the way you play a board will definitely depend on both your and your opponent's characters.

This is not to say there aren't weaknesses. First, the game was clearly designed exclusively as a 2p game. The 3-4p rules just don't work with the "unbalanced seesaw" pacing and victory conditions. The game has been through three editions, with the chips changing in each, and has earned some IMHO justified criticism for not bothering to get it right the first time. (Remember the story about one pile ending Dominion, and the dominant Duchy-rush strategy that some playtester showed off? That's the sort of mistake the pre-nerf Combine was, and good development should have caught it.)

Eminent Domain: This game is its own animal. The deckbuilding and play are completely different than any of the Dominion-like games I've talked about above, and yet the deckbuilding still works and is important. You get only one Action a turn, and almost nothing gives you any more--then you also get a Role, which allows you to play any number of matching cards in your hand to increase the effect. But when you take a Role, everyone else can play the matching effect too! Eminent Domain has a rhythm which takes some getting used to but I really enjoy it.

Mage Knight: The deckbuilding is only a small part of this adventure/exploration game, and I wouldn't really want to talk about it in a discussion of deckbuilding games. I thought the player interaction was pretty minimal, and I found myself wanting to play solo--because the puzzle of a single turn is fascinating, but the downtime between turns was pretty extreme. But it's big, bulky, and fiddly, and what I really want is to play this on PC or tablet.

By the way, Ratsia, thank you for your quick review of Trains. It's been on my radar as something I want to try. I have high hopes, but then I had high hopes for a lot of these games.

Edit: because I do all my best game thoughts in the shower...

Friday: This is a cool solitaire game. You need to line up your cards to pass a series of challenges. When you pass a challenge, you add the challenge card to your deck--turn it upside and it's an in-hand power. The trouble is that your deck starts out very, very bad. When you fail a challenge, you lose HP, but you are allowed to cull the bad cards that helped you fail. I enjoyed the game and admire the design, but like Mage Knight, I want to play solitaire games like this with electronic aid.

Core Worlds: A lot of people like this game, but I'm not one of them. The fact that you see each card only a small number of times limits the interest of the deckbuilding aspect, and the interactions are blunt. (There are Robot cards, cards that give Robot bonuses, and an endgame card that gives you points for having Robots.) The fact that there is a game arc is interesting, but the five different-deck phases make it feel a bit forced. Also, this game is long, in the 90-120 minute range.

Fantastiqa: Of all the games listed here, this is the one I dislike the most strongly. There are not one, not two, not three, but NINE different currencies, all of which are exactly identical. The game is built with this lavish fantasy theme, but swords work the same way as wands work the same way as spiderwebs. You use your currencies to wander around a tiny board picking up cards in a way that doesn't matter. The quests that come up are random, and require you to get 2-3 each of 2-3 different currencies. The way you get these to line up in your hand is, you sit at the appropriate destination and use the action that lets you pass your turn and discard only the cards you don't want until you've drawn everything you need. Some of the art is very attractive and well-chosen public-domain art, which is the game's best redeeming feature. Unfortunately, this is marred by the iconography and other graphic elements, which are awful horrible clip art; this is particularly jarring when juxtaposed against the lavish paintings used elsewhere.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2013, 02:23:41 pm by sitnaltax »
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scott_pilgrim

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Re: Showdown
« Reply #49 on: August 04, 2013, 06:23:33 pm »
+10

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