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701

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Dominion Cards by... Me!!!! :D

« on: November 27, 2013, 07:37:55 pm »

Chapel is an exceptional case.

Lookout is not cantrip.  The +1 card matters a lot.  Moreover, it gives you far reduced selection (3 cards instead of your hand) and it gets very dangerous to play in the mid game.

Loan is a copper, which is not at all like a cantrip.  And it only trashes treasures.  If you buy any other Treasures it will start to whiff (hitting your Silvers and Golds) quite a lot.

Lookout doesn't have +1 Card, but since it trashes from deck instead of hand, it keeps your handsize the same as a cantrip trasher would do, so it seems equivalent to a (nerfed) cantrip trasher to me. The same holds for Loan, which neither costs an action nor decreases handsize any more than Junk Dealer does. (If the top card of my deck is a Copper, playing Junk Dealer to trash a Copper and playing Loan actually do exactly the same thing, both for my current term and for my deck content.)
Of course both cards have the substantial nerfs that you mention, but they also have the advantage of mild filtering resp. giving $1 over a "vanilla" cantrip trasher.
The question is if Lookout and Loan are so weak only because of these nerfs, or if a cantrip trasher isn't that strong to begin with.

702

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Dominion Cards by... Me!!!! :D

« on: November 27, 2013, 07:07:07 pm »

You can't really assign linear value to vanilla bonuses like that, but I didn't say the benefit was marginal.  I said it was mild.  There's a difference.  

  Sorry, I meant to say I don't consider it a "mild" benefit, due to the comparisons I gave (which seem like reasonable heuristics in the absence of actual playtesting; of course they don't prove anything).

More specifically, the +$1 on Junk Dealer is nice, but it is small compared to the benefit of trashing.  Trashing is just that good!  I also said that I thought Sweeper would be too weak for $5 but too strong for $4.  The main point was just that cantrip trashing is extremely good.  Countering junkers isn't even a factor here -- it's about the early game momentum that you can build from quickly cycling and trashing through your deck.

And I did say at the end that it might still work at $4.  It would still be very, very strong at that price though.

I don't quite see why you think it to be so strong. Of course trashing is very strong, but a single Chapel can trash faster than even two or three Sweepers (even if you count the Chapel as a dead card afterwards, while the Sweepers remain "almost" cantrips).

Also, we already have two cards that are essentially ("nerfed") cantrip trashers at $3: Lookout and Loan (since trashing from the deck doesn't decrease handsize); and they're both quite weak.

(Edit to clarify; see also my next post)

703

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Dominion Cards by... Me!!!! :D

« on: November 27, 2013, 06:07:09 pm »

Sweeper (Action, Cost:3)

+1 Card
+1 Action

Choose a card in your hand. Discard it, or trash it.

There has been some discussion on this, saying that this should cost $4.  I am going to go further and say that it probably doesn't work at any price as is, but if a price had to be given it would be $5.

Sweeper gives cantrip trashing.  That is very powerful.  Off the top of my head I can think of 3 official cantrip trashers -- Upgrade, Junk Dealer and Rats.  Upgrade and JD are pretty similar -- $5 cantrip trashing with a mild benefit.

Junk Dealer's benefit is not marginal, but quite big - adding +$1 typically increases a card's cost by $2 or $3 (Silver vs. Gold, Village vs. Bazaar). Therefore Sweeper seems reasonable (if strong) at $4 to me, since its benefit is much smaller; I think it would be slightly stronger than Masquerade, which also has optional trashing. Sweeper might seriously hurt Junkers since you can spam it, but that might be considered a plus since junkers are so strong usually.

704

Simulation / Re: Dominiate: a Dominion simulator that runs on the Web

« on: November 27, 2013, 08:32:26 am »

Thanks. Not buying the third Rebuild changes very little; TerminalRebuild seems to become marginally (<1%) weaker against most cards, but now loses also to Monument (probably because BM-Monument tends to longer games).

I've also tried replacing one Rebuild by a Gold; this marginally helps against one card but hurts against another.

705

Simulation / Re: Dominiate: a Dominion simulator that runs on the Web

« on: November 26, 2013, 06:33:08 pm »

With Rebuild being so awfully strong, I've been interested to see whether removing the "+1 Action" would balance it. I expected it to remain strong, while Donald X. said that this version "couldn't compete". Since I didn't know how to add new cards to the simulator, I just "simulated" this with the existent Rebuild strategy (by ragingduckd and SheCantSayNo) by setting "WantsToRebuild" to zero when there's already a Rebuild in play, which seems to work as intended. The buying strategy is still close to optimal. This "TerminalRebuild" turns out to be significantly weaker than the original card:

TerminalRebuild loses to the strongest BM cards: Wharf, Goons, GhostShip, DoubleJack, all Cursers.

It essentially ties with Monument (51:49), Envoy (48.5:51.5), Smithy (52:48) and Courtyard (50:50), and wins against all other implemented one-card strategies (Militia, Masq., HP, Amb., Library, ...).

So BM-TerminalRebuild is about as strong as standard Smithy-BM, i.e. far from overpowered, but occasionally useful on BM boards. This seems to me to be an interesting "mediocre" card: It'd be worse in an engine, but great for slogs, or when combined with Walled Village (making it non-terminal again) or Tournament.

706

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What do you think about the house rule...

« on: November 24, 2013, 02:50:47 pm »

It's easier to take a lead, or end the game, than it is to take the lead and end the game. If Player 1 can win by doing those two on separate turns, and doesn't have to actually still be in the lead on the turn he ends the game, then he has an advantage.

But by my rule suggestion, Player 1 has to be in the lead on his last turn to win; and even this might not be enough if he didn't lead already before his last turn.

Interesting idea. Not sure whether I'd want to play with it though (as it's pretty complicated). I don't think it solves the 3-piling problem either, because P1 would still be reluctant to, say, 3-pile-plus-estate when ahead, because it'd be easy for P2 to match that for a tie. Because P1 is spending $ to ensure the game ends while P2 isn't, it puts P2 at an advantage in that situation.

P1 can still 3-pile for a secure win if he was ahead before his last turn (which is as it "should be" for a fair game IMO; you shouldn't be able to win just because of your extra turn). And if the players are tied before P1 3-piles by taking the last estate, P2 would need a duchy (or some other VP card) to tie, so the cases in which P2 has a potential advantage are very rare.

707

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What do you think about the house rule...

« on: November 24, 2013, 12:23:30 pm »

Currently Dominion does have a very significant first player advantage, and it would be nice if there were some reasonable way to fix it. Equal turns doesn't quite do that, but I think it would make things closer. It would however mean the first player could rarely trigger the endgame with a guaranteed win, but normally they'd be alright.

I think there is a way to remove the "extra turn" advantage without giving the last player an end-game advantage, when players count points during the game:

Play equal turns, but after the ending condition was triggered, a player may not gain more points in his "extra" turn than the "triggering player" did in his last turn^* - or rather, any surplus points gained don't count for the score.

So in a 2P game, if the first player ends the game, he can essentially choose whether the final score, or the score after the penultimate round, counts.
This way, each player can end the game with a guaranteed win (the first player by ending the game when leading before their last turn, the last player in the usual way). The first player can also "risk" to end the game without a secure win, e.g. by buying the last province or doing a megaturn. The PPR remains in force for both players (though with different numbers for first/second player).
I haven't tried it yet, but this rule should substantially reduce the first-player advantage, though not remove it completely.


^*and may not remove VPs from him (due to cursers, trashing attacks etc.)