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[allanfieldhouse]

I just got into Dominion this summer, and so far I have the base set and Intrigue. I'm going to be traveling soon, and I'd like to bring Dominion with me to play with family and friends. I don't want to bring both boxes or make a custom storage solution right now, so I was thinking of bringing half of the cards from each set (exact proportion doesn't matter to me).

Here's some info on how we'll be playing. I'm going to be the only one who has read any sort of dominion strategy articles or ever played online. Most of the other "experienced" players have probably played 5-20 games, but I've given them enough strategy advice that they at least know some basics like to not undervalue treasure cards or buy only villages. We will also be playing with people who have never heard of Dominion before...probably also with people who haven't played games like catan either. I imagine the vast majority of our games will be 3-4 players, but we might play a game or two of 2-player.

Including the two empty slots in the box (and bringing a randomizer deck), I can fit in 27 kingdom cards. Considering these requirements and how we'll be playing, what would you recommend as the best combination of cards to bring (or even just a general strategy for how to pick the cards myself).

Thanks!

[Stealth Tomato]

Remove the cards you absolutely despise from contention, then pick the other 27 at random. Resist the temptation to custom-pick your favorite cards... the best thing about Dominion is the variety, and handpicking your favorites means you'll see them entirely too often.

[StrongRhino]

Well, of you are playing with new players, it's probably a good idea to bring lots of villages to avoid frustrating collision when terminals are overbought. Attacks are good, but not extremely frustrating ones (torturer) and ones that take forever (spy). I'm mostly speaking for new players here.
This: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=8848.0 thread covers some basics on card types to use for new players.

If you don't insist on just putting them in the box, you could take out the plastic holders and fit them all in, holding them together with rubber bands or putting them in a deck box inside the actual box.

[Awaclus]

You can leave out these cards for sure:

Adventurer
Chancellor
Feast
Mine
Spy
Thief
Coppersmith
Great Hall
Scout
Secret Chamber
Torturer
Tribute

Torturer is the exact opposite of a beginner-friendly card, and the others are pretty weak and sometimes overrated by beginners. Then I suggest that out of the remaining cards, you just take the 27 that you personally like the most and I'm sure you'll be fine, as long as there are enough villages in there.

[StrongRhino]

Remove the cards you absolutely despise from contention, then pick the other 27 at random. Resist the temptation to custom-pick your favorite cards... the best thing about Dominion is the variety, and handpicking your favorites means you'll see them entirely too often.

This is a great point.

[allanfieldhouse]

You can leave out these cards for sure:

Adventurer
Chancellor
Feast
Mine
Spy
Thief
Coppersmith
Great Hall
Scout
Secret Chamber
Torturer
Tribute

Torturer is the exact opposite of a beginner-friendly card, and the others are pretty weak and sometimes overrated by beginners. Then I suggest that out of the remaining cards, you just take the 27 that you personally like the most and I'm sure you'll be fine, as long as there are enough villages in there.

This is the approach I was leaning toward. Especially with Donald X saying that the base set contains some duds, I figured it would be best to start by removing all of those (plus some of the "torturous" attacks). Any others I should eliminate right off the bat? Woodcutter?

From there, I guess I should mainly try to make sure there's a good variety of abilities. Quoting one of the posts in the thread linked to by StrongRhino,
village
trash
gain
buy
attack (preferably hand-size)
draw
sift
possibly reaction...
lack of a completely dominant card
multiple cards at all price points

I'm thinking that it's okay to include a dominant card like Witch because I'm not just designing a specific 10-card set like that thread is talking about. There will be plenty of games without it so there's still going to be variety.

I'll try to work up a rough draft list later and post it here.

[LastFootnote]

Cellar
Chapel
Moat

Great Hall
Masquerade
Shanty Town
Wishing Well
Woodcutter

Bureaucrat
Coppersmith
Gardens
Ironworks
Scout
Spy
Thief
Throne Room

Duke
Festival
Laboratory
Library
Market
Mine
Torturer
Tribute
Upgrade

Harem
Nobles

EDIT: Replaced Chancellor with Woodcutter.

[eHalcyon]

Don't bring the randomizers.  You can randomize by taking 1 of each regular card, then adding the other 9 for the ones you picked.  When the game is done, put one from each pile back in the "randomizer" deck.

That makes room for an extra card or two.

[Stealth Tomato]

You can leave out these cards for sure:

Adventurer
Chancellor
Feast
Mine
Spy
Thief
Coppersmith
Great Hall
Scout
Secret Chamber
Torturer
Tribute

Torturer is the exact opposite of a beginner-friendly card, and the others are pretty weak and sometimes overrated by beginners. Then I suggest that out of the remaining cards, you just take the 27 that you personally like the most and I'm sure you'll be fine, as long as there are enough villages in there.

Don't exclude Thief, it helps teach important lessons and is sometimes a counter to Chapel. I would also not exclude Mine, which is a perfectly reasonable card and a good example of trash-for-benefit. Also resist the temptation to include Villages in every kingdom. Part of the interesting part of Dominion is what happens when you CAN'T play more than 2-3 Actions in a turn.


Honestly, I feel like a dolt for telling you all that and then telling you to handpick, but you may want to just take all the cards necessary for a few of the preset boards. First Game, Victory Dance, and Underlings make up 26 cards... pick one more however you want.

[Awaclus]

Don't exclude Thief, it helps teach important lessons and is sometimes a counter to Chapel. I would also not exclude Mine, which is a perfectly reasonable card and a good example of trash-for-benefit.

The most important lesson Thief teaches is "if you buy Thief, you lose". While that might be an important lesson, it is not a lesson you have to learn during your first couple of games.

And I would totally exclude Mine, which is, while perfectly reasonable, still on the weak side and in my experience, WAY overrated by new players. There's already Moneylender and Trading Post, and those are better examples of TFB because they actually reduce your deck size.

[GeoLib]

Rather than taking the randomizer, you could also get a randomizer app like Dominion Shuffle if you have a smart phone. This proves especially useful if you start playing with more sets. I'm not sure Thief is nearly as bad as Awaclus makes it out to be in 3-4 player games. Mostly I would exclude some of the duds and then do a random selection. If you end up with no villages or something you can tweak it, but otherwise this way is a lot simpler and avoids the bias problem suggested earlier.

[gman314]

I would keep all the cards used for the "first game" kingdom, it's a good kingdom for beginners. I really like Stealth Tomato's suggestion of keeping a couple of recommended kingdoms and then adding another. I think that Awaclus' suggestion of cards to remove is really just about the opposite of what you want to do. There are cards in his list which either got weaker with more sets, or get stronger with more players, and a lot of players here only play with 2.

[gman314]

One thing you could do is choose several cards from Base that you don't want to take, and then find cards from Intrigue that fulfill similar roles and use those cards as replacements.

[eHalcyon]

Thief is not that bad. As mentioned, it is sometimes a Chapel counter. It can also be Gardens support in 3-4p games.

[Polk5440]

If you are traveling and only taking 30-ish kingdom cards, you might consider buying one or two small card boxes from a local game store for a dollar each. They travel better than the Dominion box, and because you are taking so few kingdom cards, dividers don't really matter that much. I know you said you didn't want to mess with a custom storage solution, but an easy travel solution might be worth considering.

[allanfieldhouse]

What do you guys think of this list of 27?

Cellar
Chapel
Council Room
Festival
Laboratory
Library
Market
Militia
Moat
Moneylender
Remodel
Smithy
Throne Room
Village
Witch
Woodcutter
Bridge
Courtyard
Duke
Ironworks
Masquerade
Shanty Town
Steward
Swindler
Upgrade
Nobles
Harem

Is there anything specific I'm missing?

I have all the cards but 1 or 2 from the First Game and Village Square sets (Mine, Workshop, Bureaucrat), and I'm only missing 3 from Underlings and Victory Dance (Baron, Minion, Pawn - in both cases). So I didn't quite take the advice of picking a couple of the recommended sets, but I do think I included most of the cards that are listed in multiple recommended sets.

[eHalcyon]

If the concern with bringing both boxes is box space and the concern of a custom storage solution is time, you could probably put together a quick makeshift storage solution by removing the insert and putting all the different cards into ziploc bags. 

[LastFootnote]

That list of 27 seems OK. It's a little village-heavy and attack-light, but it should be fine.

EDIT: It's very draw-heavy, too. I'm guessing you're a big fan of Village/Smithy engines.

[Awaclus]

Looks pretty good to me.

[Stealth Tomato]

What do you guys think of this list of 27?

It looks like you handpicked all your favorite cards. Throw it out and pick using an actual system. The same strategy is going to work over and over, and your guests will get no taste for the flavor of the game.

"Trash everything and build a deck-drawing engine" is fun and all, but it's not the be-all and end-all of Dominion. It is here.

[allanfieldhouse]

Yeah, I was a little worried that it was a too heavy on draw, actions, and trash/TfB. I could definitely see most sets coming down to the same strategy...

Let me revise.

[allanfieldhouse]

If the concern with bringing both boxes is box space and the concern of a custom storage solution is time, you could probably put together a quick makeshift storage solution by removing the insert and putting all the different cards into ziploc bags.

Another aspect of it is the desire to just be able to pull out a nice commercially produced box and say "Hey guys, do you want to play this awesome game I have?". I'm also not going to be playing tons and tons of games, so it would be nice to keep it limited to about the same number of cards that actually come in a box. I basically want the beginner-friendliness of the main set combined with some improvements from Intrigue.

[LastFootnote]

Since you're going to revamp your set anyway, and I have a bit more time than I did when I originally posted this suggestion, let me plug my 27-card set for a moment.

Cellar
Chapel
Moat

Great Hall
Masquerade
Shanty Town
Wishing Well
Woodcutter

Bureaucrat
Coppersmith
Gardens
Ironworks
Scout
Spy
Thief
Throne Room

Duke
Festival
Laboratory
Library
Market
Mine
Torturer
Tribute
Upgrade

Harem
Nobles

For Goko, Donald X. split Intrigue into two halves that could be bought separately. The "Peasants and Aristocrats" half contains all the hybrid Victory cards and the cards that combo with them. The "Underlings" half contains most of the cards that give you a choice between effects.

What I've done here is to take the 13 cards in "Peasants and Aristocrats" and pad it out with cards from the Base Set that complement it well. I chose that half because I think it's more new-player friendly. Fewer decisions should make for quicker games and people won't have to wait as long for their turn to come up.

When padding, I avoided cards that were too close to the Intrigue cards already included. You probably don't need Upgrade AND Remodel. You don't need Ironworks AND Workshop. Nor Shanty Town AND Village. I also tried to avoid duds like Chancellor and Feast, although I included Woodcutter for cheap +Buy and to have a terminal Silver. I mostly tried to include cards that have no Intrigue analogue (Throne Room, Cellar, etc.).

For Attacks, I tried to cover the spectrum (discard, junk, trashing, deck inspection). Torturer already has discard and junk. Spy and Thief are the classic Base Set trashing and deck inspection attacks, so they're in. Thief is quite usable in a 3 or 4-player game, especially with beginners. Bureaucrat is there because it interacts great with all the Intrigue Victory cards. Likewise Gardens is there because it's a Base Set pillar and it pushes the Victory combos.

[allanfieldhouse]

Okay, second draft.

Adventurer
Bureaucrat
Cellar
Chapel
Festival
Gardens
Library
Market
Militia
Mine
Moat
Moneylender
Remodel
Smithy
Throne Room
Village
Witch
Woodcutter
Workshop
Bridge
Duke
Masquerade
Pawn
Steward
Swindler
Upgrade
Harem

Overall I got rid of several Intrigue cards in favor of more base set.

Adventurer replaced Nobles as a 6 card and to reduce actions/draws.
Got rid of Lab and Council Room to reduce the draw-your-deck-ability of the set.
Downgraded Ironworks into Workshop (to get rid of bonus actions, etc).
Added gardens for variety.
Switched courtyard out and pawn in to reduce drawing a little but still a card with choices.

I added a couple other cards (mine, bureaucrat) so that it includes all the cards from the First Game and Village Square.

What do you think of the list now? Right level of +actions and +cards? I think there's even more trashing/TfB now...is that a problem?

PS - LastFootnote, you posted while I was writing this, so I'll review your list in a second.

[eHalcyon]

On LF's set, I would make some changes.

Remove:

Torturer -- hurts a lot, especially with more than 2 players; newbies will have trouble dealing with it and probably find it unfun.
Spy -- deck inspection is really slow and not that exciting.

Replace these two with Witch and Militia.

Maybe replace Shanty Town with Village.  I think ST is more interesting, but Village is simpler and more forgiving.

Replace Woodcutter with Bridge, which is similar but more exciting.

I think it would be nice to include Steward, Swindler, and/or Conspirator.  My top contenders to remove in favour of these would be Wishing Well, Coppersmith and Scout.

Don't worry too much about emphasizing "draw your deck", you can fix that easily by limiting the number of villages around.  Choose just one of Village and Shanty Town.  Festival can be the second one.  Maybe drop Nobles.