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6176

The Bible of Donald X. / Dominion: Alchemy Preview

« on: June 20, 2011, 04:12:11 pm »

The Inevitable Dominion: Alchemy Preview

The new Dominion expansion, Alchemy, has been out for a few days now, which means it's high time for another one of my "previews." What's in Alchemy, anyway? What do the cards look like? What can you do with them? Are these rhetorical questions? All this and more, coming up!

What You Get

Alchemy has 150 cards. It's half the size of a "normal" Dominion expansion. Those 150 cards break down into 12 kingdom cards and one "basic" card.

The "basic" card is Potion! It's part of the supply in games using Alchemy cards. It's a new resource. It's a treasure, but instead of making money, it makes a potion symbol. Ten cards in the set have that symbol in their costs, and to buy one of them, you need a Potion, plus whatever money they cost. The rulebook covers cases like, how does Remodel work with these cards, etc. It all works pretty much like you'd expect. A Potion is like money, but doesn't combine with other money. It's worth a Potion.

[Potion]

Some cards in the set care about Potions. Alchemist comes back next turn if you have a Potion; Apothecary draws Potions (and Coppers) for you. Other cards don't mention Potions, but do useful things with them. Herbalist lets you reuse one of this turn's treasures next turn; Apprentice lets you trash a card to draw cards based on its cost, which is handy with a Potion you no longer want.

[Alchemist, Apothecary, Apprentice]

The set has a sub-theme of "cards that care about Action cards." Vineyard is a victory card that counts Action cards in your deck. Golem plays the next two Actions from your deck (other than Golems). University gains you an Action, and provides +2 Actions for playing all the Actions you end up with. Scrying Pool draws you all of the Actions from the top of your deck

[Vineyard, Golem, University]

If there's just one card out with Potion in the cost, is it worth buying a Potion in order to get that card? It oughta be. So, the cards with Potion in the cost are almost all useful in multiples. Apothecary, Scrying Pool, University, Alchemist, and Familiar all provide +1 Action or more. Golem plays other Actions from your deck, which can end up giving you +1 Action. Vineyard is a victory card, and Philosopher's Stone is a treasure - both useful in multiples. That just leaves Transmute, which can at least turn unplayable Action cards into Duchies, and Possession, which costs so much that you won't typically be able to buy more copies than you want.

[Scrying Pool, Familiar, Possession]

How to Play With this Expansion

As usual, the choice of kingdom cards to use is yours. You can use whatever method to pick out 10 cards, and whatever method to pick out that method. It's methods all the way down! And they're all yours.

However, since multiple cards in Alchemy cost this new resource, Potion, some people prefer to see more than one Alchemy card on the table at once. So that you have a choice of what to buy when you draw your Potion. And some of those people are used to just dealing out 10 random cards to play with.

For those people, here's a method you can use. Deal out 8 cards at random. Then, if any of those cards are from Alchemy, dig through the randomizer deck for two more cards from Alchemy. If none of those 8 are from Alchemy, dig for two cards that aren't from Alchemy. Either way, put the cards you went past back on top of the randomizer deck. This way, in the long run, you will see each card just as often as you would have otherwise. The Alchemy cards will just end up clumped together.

There are other ways to achieve this. Or you can just always deal out 3 cards from Alchemy when you're using it, and 7 from your normal randomizer. Or you can just deal out 10 random cards, and live with sometimes having just one card with a Potion in the cost. It's not so bad. But if you wanted a method for using a randomizer deck, there's one.

Your Guide to Costs in Dominion

To pad this sucker out some, here is a short essay about a random Dominion-related topic. I have chosen the cost system, since Alchemy mucks with it.

People sometimes try to make a tidy formula for calculating how much the +'s in Dominion are worth. They assign values to +1 Card etc., to try to get them to add up correctly for the existing cards. It doesn't work. The costs in Dominion aren't linear. The abilities aren't linear either! +1 Action is better if it comes with +1 Card; +2 Buys isn't twice as good as +1 Buy. And so on.

A big thing is, you start out with 7 Coppers and 3 Estates. That seriously distorts the low costs. Your deck can make $3 consistently right out of the gates, and it makes $4 plenty. Then, as you buy more cards for your deck, each card has less and less of an effect on your draws - since your deck is larger! At the same time you are buying better cards, but it isn't quite enough; building up from $7 to $8 is generally harder than building up from $4 to $5.

Here is a general guide to the base costs:

$2: Since your deck starts out already making more than $2, these cards struggle to be good enough. Often they really have to be worth $3. Otherwise you're just so rarely buying them. Mainly you buy a $2 when 1) you get $2 on turn one or two and the $2 at least isn't going to hurt your deck, 2) you get a victory-card heavy draw late in the game and the $2 is useful then, 3) you're choking on Curses, 4) you have an extra buy and can get the $2 with something else, and 5) the $2 is really worth $3. Often the main thing I go after with a $2 is, I at least want you to be able to buy it with a 5/2 opening without regretting it.

$3: These cards are squarely up against Silver. Silver is a good buy, and not a "terminal action" either. A terminal action is one that doesn't give you +1 Action. The problem with a terminal action for $3 is, you could be using up your action on something costing more instead, which would be more powerful. Sometimes your strategy doesn't involve an expensive terminal action, so you can go ahead and take a few cheap terminal actions. Other times you can live with having extra terminal actions, and other times you are just not buying a lot of $3's. Unless of course they aren't terminal! If they give you +1 Action then it's a whole different story. You may just snatch up some of those.

$4: These cards are also squarely up against Silver! $4 is just not that much more than $3. You most often start the game with either 3/4 or 4/3 hands; you are buying a $4 right away. A main distinction for $4's is, you can't buy two of them on turns 1 & 2. Some cards are too strong if you can buy two immediately, so those may end up at $4 rather than $3. Some simple cards are at $3 so that I can make variations at $4; if Village cost $4, Village-with-a-bonus would have to cost $5, and that's a lot more. But with Village at $3, I can make Village-with-a-bonus at $4 and it all works out.

$5: These tend to drive your strategy. They make the biggest difference between actions and treasure; you can get Silver at $3 and Gold at $6, and you can only afford to have so many terminal actions, so you probably buy Silver at $4 some too. At $5 then you have actions that really do stuff for you, with very little competition from Silver. $5's get to be a lot more powerful than $4's. And if you have a game that's missing a particular cost, this is the one you really don't want to be missing. Ideally there are multiple choices at $5.

$6: It's hard to compete with Gold, and you don't just get $6 immediately too often. People will snatch up a $6 if it's a good one, but still, I don't do that many cards at this cost. The main set had one, Intrigue had two, Seaside didn't have any. They don't do as much to promote different strategies as the other costs, and they get played in fewer games. The cost isn't a complete dud - it can be cool to have something at $6 sometimes. It's just not a significant factor in the game.

I haven't done cards costing less than $2, except for Copper and Curse. Originally this was because of things like Bridge - I didn't want it to be too easy to empty a pile. And if a card costs $0, you can just take it with any +Buy, so probably it's going to be pretty weak. But really, $2 itself is already pretty low-end. There's no point to having cheaper cards. Often a card costing $1 would actually be worse than the same card costing $2 - you wouldn't be paying $1 for it, and it's worse with Remodels. Anyway a card costing $0-$1 isn't out of the question, especially when you consider weird additional costs. It's not really on the menu though.

Some people think I should never do a card costing $7. They think that hole is doing so much for the game. When actually, if there's a card costing $7, then in almost all games there still is no card costing $7. Whatever that hole is doing for the game, it's still doing, almost always. And then whatever you get from having a $7, you get to have that too, in those games where that card is out. Anyway a $7 here and there is just not causing a hole-filling problem. Instead the problem with $7 is that this is an engine-building game, and that engine normally tops out at buying Provinces. Province costs $8. If you aren't building a deck designed to buy multiple Provinces in one turn, a $7 is going to usually be overkill. You would buy one if you got $7 early enough, but later on you'll look sadly at the expensive action and then buy your Duchy. Hence, no $7's. And no $8's either. To compete with Province - as Possession does - you have to offer up a Province plus extra.

Alchemy mucks with this arrangement by adding in Potions. It's tempting, like with those people trying to figure out what +1 Action is worth, to try to assign a $ value to having a Potion in a card's cost. You can't though. It's not linear! And this is especially obvious with Potions. Transmute and Apothecary are pretty close in cost, barring +Buys; Apothecary and Golem aren't. Gardens was originally in Alchemy, way back when, with Vineyard in the main set. When they were switched, Gardens cost a Potion - no $ - and Vineyard cost $4. But that doesn't mean that Golem is roughly worth $8. Potion doesn't really have a $ equivalent, but is worth more on cheaper cards.

Fun With Potions

Normally at this point I'd be talking about what Throne Room does with all of these cards. Man, everyone has figured Throne Room out by now, right? You do the thing twice. So instead I'm just going to say whatever nonsense pops into my head about some of the cards.

Alchemist: The obvious combo is Herbalist. Put your Alchemists on your deck via having a Potion; then put the Potion on your deck via Herbalist. Nothing puts the Herbalist on your deck though. I don't know what to tell you there. There are other ways to try to make sure you've got a Potion handy of course. You can look around in your Cellars for a Potion. You can trash things with an Apprentice, madly looking for Potions. And of course you can just buy a bunch of Potions.

Apothecary: There are a bunch of cute tricks you can do with Apothecaries, but one of the simplest combos is just another Apothecary. The first Apothecary gets some Coppers and maybe a Potion into your hand, and lets you reorder the other cards you looked at. Then the second Apothecary draws you the card you wanted that you put back (and who knows, maybe more Coppers).

Apprentice: I know what you're thinking. Not now, in a second. You're thinking, someday, I will trash a Province with that, and draw eight cards. You will, too. And if trashing a Province with it can be good, trashing anything can be good. They especially like to feed on each other.

Familiar: It's free (it gives you back the card and action it cost you), it hands out Curses, what's not to like. When the Curses run out, it essentially vanishes from your deck; move along, Familiar, your work here is done. Free attacks can be scary things and well it does cost a Potion.

Golem: Golem is insane. Fortunately it's expensive and you have to set it up. You worry more about what exactly is in your deck when any of it may leap out at you when you play a Golem. The fun thing of course is to have to play a card-trasher you may not want to, such as an Apprentice. Something's going down. Another thing about Golems is, you can get combos. Sometimes there's some combo between two action cards that you'd like to see. Only you need to draw a Village and both cards together and well it doesn't just happen. With Golem, it just happens.

Herbalist: To some eyes, this is the only card in the set having nothing to do with Potions. Ten cards have the potion symbol in the cost; Apprentice cares about potion symbols in costs; and Potion is potion. What's up with Herbalist? As it happens Herbalist is in the set specifically for how it interacts with Potions! A cheap +buy is a handy thing when you're trying to buy cards with the potion symbol in the cost. And then it puts a treasure back on your deck. A treasure like... Potion? That's right. Of course you already knew that from the bit about Alchemist.

Philosopher's Stone: This one is tricky. You want to draw through your deck in order to play it more often. But when you play out that line of Villages and Smithies, suddenly your cards aren't in your deck anymore, and Philosopher's Stone doesn't make you any money. You want ways to draw it more often that don't actually put cards into play or your hand. That sends you into the realm of underappreciated cards like Chancellor and Navigator. Or hey, Herbalist.

Possession: The most common question is, if you Possess someone and make them play Possession, who controls that turn? They do. Possession isn't an attack, but can feel like one, and sometimes you'll try to defend against it. One obvious thing to do is to buy attacks. Not attacks that gain you cards - hurty attacks. If you Possess me and I've got Witch in my hand, do you play it? Either way, that hand was better for me (had I gotten to play it) than it was for you. You are not getting full value from that Possession. Another trick is to go for special victory cards like Gardens. In a typical Gardens deck, my hand is full of Coppers and victory cards. I'm just trying to get to $4. If you Possess me and I do have $4 this turn, the best you can do is take a Gardens away from me. You built a deck that can make $6 plus a potion; you're going for Provinces. Once again my hands are better for me than for you.

Scrying Pool: Here's another way to draw 8 cards. The massive card-drawing this can do for you does not just happen by itself. There are actions to acquire, Coppers to trash. If you look closely, you will see that the vision in the pool is of a Village.

Transmute: Yes, if you Transmute a Great Hall, you get both a Duchy and a Gold. And a Curse doesn't turn into anything. At least you get rid of it.

University: When your University is gaining you Markets, it's a business school! When it gets you Festivals, it's clown college! When it's getting you Torturers, that's one badass university. If you have other Alchemy cards out then it will often teach new Apprentices. Yes all I really have to comment on here is the flavor. Gain actions, then play them, what's not to like. It's important that University can't gain itself, or you would see piles empty so fast.

Vineyard: The obvious card to compare this to is Gardens. There are a lot of differences though. The cards that make each one good are completely different. Gardens wants Coppers, Estates, and other copies of Gardens. Vineyard doesn't like any of those, or even other Vineyards. It wants cheap actions and lots of them. This makes playing a Vineyard deck a lot different than playing a Gardens deck. Another thing is, when you're going for Gardens, other players will buy a few to stop you from going too nuts. They can't buy Vineyards without Potions though. Did they get Potions? They didn't always get them.

And That's That

They were rhetorical questions! In retrospect it was obvious.

6177

The Bible of Donald X. / Complexity in Rules on Cards

« on: June 20, 2011, 04:03:01 pm »

[This is an essay I wrote for the Alchemy preview, then decided to save for a later set. Now that BGN is part of BGG I've talked myself out of doing that kind of preview, so here it is.]

Somehow I have fallen into the trap of writing essays about random Dominion-related topics and including them in these previews. And this preview was especially short, what with the set being a small one. Here then is a lengthy bunch of thoughts on the topic of card complexity.

Alchemy's cards are more complex than those in Dominion's main set. Dominion has six "vanilla" cards - just combinations of pluses. Alchemy has zero. Alchemy does have a couple fairly simple cards - Vineyard is a straightforward victory card; Familiar is a very simple attack; University is pretty simple. But it also has a couple very wordy cards - Scrying Pool and Possession are both thick with text. And then, the cards in-between are more involved than Dominion's non-vanilla cards. As you can see from the images!

So how did that happen? Weren't there more simple cards left that were worth doing?

The short answer is, not really! There were only so many simple cards worth making. I spread them out among the main set and six expansions that I had before the game was published. The main set got the lion's share, because simplicity was its theme. Some expansions managed to get new simple cards from their themes, such as the simpler Duration cards in Seaside. Alchemy didn't have anything like that; I could have had a card with "+1 potion symbol," but it would have been a dud when there were no other Alchemy cards out.

So, what's the deal? Why are there only so many simple cards worth doing? In fact there are several factors pushing cards to be more complex.

1. The Card Complexity Axiom

At the root of it all is this:

The number of cards you can make for a game is proportional to the product of the complexity of the game and the amount of space you allow yourself for card text.

That's pretty basic and obvious but still seems worth going on about for a paragraph. There are only so many possibilities within a certain amount of space. To get more possibilities you have to add more space. You can add that space in the rulebook, or on the cards themselves, but it has to be somewhere. Dominion has very few rules, so by default the burden is on the cards.

2. Little Computer Programs

Cards are little computer programs. They refer to data, and have operations and "program flow." There are only so many elements to combine, and getting more cards at some point requires combining more elements (or creating new elements).

Each game has its "atoms." These are the simplest ways that data in the game can change. In Dominion you can move cards between the places that they hang out, and can muck with the amount of actions/buys/coins/vp you have. Those are the atoms. There are also a few more exotic things, i.e. the turn sequence. I am probably never making "The turn order switches direction," but it would be simple.

The simplest cards just do the atomic things. +3 Cards! Simple. Courtyard from Intrigue is "+3 Cards, put a card from your hand on top of your deck." That's just two atoms, even though the second one doesn't have a shorthand for it.

You can spice these up with qualifiers. University doesn't just gain you cards; it only gains you Action cards, and only ones costing $5 or less. Adding qualifiers like that is a good next step towards getting fairly simple cards.

Then there are formulas. In general you can only do the simplest things. We can access data directly, with no math beyond counting; how many cards are in play? I also let myself divide by N; Philosopher's Stone and Vineyard both make you divide. Multiplication, I don't know if I will ever go that far. I don't know why division seems simpler. Anyway this can never account for very many cards.

Finally there's "program flow." This is the stuff in computer programs that determines what happens next. "If X then Y else Z." "Repeat X until Y." And also simple stuff like "Do X, then do Y." This is stuff you can do on cards to get more variety, and it's the bulk of what there is to do. There are only so many ways to use qualifiers on a basic concept that will be interesting enough. You can't do very many things with formulas at once. And there are only so many atoms.

So in the end it's all about using program flow to combine atoms involving qualified data. There are only so many atoms, so once you've made all of those cards, you're going to have to make more complex cards.

For Dominion specifically, we can go further. Some of the atoms have parameters, but not all simple combinations of atoms with parameters are worth doing. Most of them are either utter duds ("+1 Card"), too strong to cost low enough to get to buy them before the game's over ("+6 Cards"), or too close to an existing card ("+2 Actions +2 Buys +$2" is too close to Festival). A bunch are randomly different in a really uninteresting way ("+2 Cards +$1"). At one point I made a chart of all of the combinations of pluses to possibly consider, and figured out which ones I thought were good enough to actually do. There weren't many.

3. The Vanilla Card Problem

In some games, one card can just be better than another one. Medici has a 3 of spices and a 4 of spices and no-one is like "omg the 4 of spices is broken." You bid on those cards, that's what makes them fair. In other games, including Dominion, there's a cost system balancing the cards, and at a given cost the cards are expected to be about as good. Obviously there will always be cards better than other cards. Each game the cards vary in value based on what other cards are out, so hopefully every card gets its day in the sun. But still. In general, one card will be better than another at the same cost. And that's fine, and anyway unavoidable.

It's a problem though if two cards are very similar and one is clearly better. In particular, if one card does everything another card does plus a little more, for the same cost, that's bad. It makes some people unhappy. If both are in the same game, we don't buy the one until the other sells out. That's still not a complete loss, but it's not as good as having some other card there.

With only so many atoms, like I was saying above, there are inevitably going to be similar cards - a new Village, a new Remodel. And these cards help make the game work - you need some Villages here and there. I just need to try to keep them enough different that this issue doesn't come up.

Enter vanilla cards. Vanilla cards in Dominion are ones that just have pluses. More broadly it's all of the simplest versions of concepts; the vanilla card problem applies to some cards that aren't strictly vanilla. But it especially applies to vanilla cards. Whatever it is.

Okay the vanilla card problem is this: vanilla cards limit what other cards you can make, without having two similar cards such that one is too obviously better than the other.

For example, Dominion has Village: "+1 Card +2 Actions." It costs $3. Village means I can never make a card that's Village-with-a-bonus, without charging $4 or more for it. I make Village-with-a-bonus sometimes - Mining Village in Intrigue is one. And when I do it has to cost $4.

It's not so bad charging $4 for Village-with-a-bonus. In Dominion, $3 is secretly pretty close to $4. By putting Village at $3, I gave myself some room to make variations on it at $4.

I can do Village-with-a-bonus cards at $4 forever. As long as each bonus is different, the cards don't end up too close. Sure they're both Villages, but is the one bonus always better than the other?

Now consider Throne Room. It's not a vanilla card, but it's the simplest version of its concept. Suppose I wanted to make Throne Room with a bonus. That would have to cost $5. At $4 it would just be better than Throne Room. But in Dominion, $5 is a lot more than $4. That bonus would have to be pretty significant in order for that card to be worth buying. And in fact that came up. Originally Throne Room cost $3, and I had a variation for $4 in an expansion that was "Choose one: +1 Card +1 Action, or Throne Room." Once Throne Room went to $4, the variation had to go to $5, and it wasn't worth $5. So it died.

The solution to the vanilla card problem is not to do vanilla cards. If your basic version of a concept includes a bonus, you can vary the bonus and keep the cost the same. Only when you do the bonus-less version are you stuck with increasing the cost. But you can't just not do vanilla cards. You need them for how simple they are. So in the end you pick and choose. For example Dominion does not have a card that just says "+1 Card +1 Action +$1." If I made that card, it would limit what other cards I could make. So instead I just do variations on it.

I should note that the vanilla card problem only exists in games with a lot of granularity to their costs. Generally you want to keep numbers in games as low as possible. Dominion has small cost numbers and that's good. But it means that a difference of +$1 is sometimes very significant. With larger costs, you would have more room to tweak costs for similar cards.

4. Complexity: The Panacea

You've just playtested a card. It's too weak / too strong. How do you fix it? By making it more complex. If it's too weak, you add a bonus; if it's too strong, you add a penalty. Or, if it's too strong, you weaken it too much, then add a bonus, and if it's too weak, you power it up, then add a penalty. In fact normally you add bonuses, not penalties, one way or another. Bonuses are more fun.

Adding complexity isn't the only option. But there is a lot of pull in that direction. The granularity of the system is again the issue.

Let's say Militia is too weak. It's "+$2. Each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand." It's not too weak. But let's say it is.

I can't just change it to +$3 - that's vastly more powerful. I can't just make it "discards down to 2 cards in hand" - that's crippling. I can't just lower it to costing $3 - that's not going to make the difference, and then maybe it's too good at $2. I could try a mix of things - up it to costing $6, make it +$3. In general though, the granularity of the system is fighting me. There may simply be no fair version of the card that just tweaks the numbers.

But I can always tack on another ability. And if that other ability is too weak or strong, I can replace it with a different one. I can also just replace Militia, but that's not nearly as good of an option. Militia may be doing something I need, and may be the best version of it in some other way. It may be totally worth doing except for power level. It may be a card people adore.

So the normal progression is, a card starts out simple, and if it isn't perfect, it desperately tries to get more complex, as I struggle to rein it in.

This also happens when power level is fine. A card is filling an important role but is too boring. What could spice it up? How about another line of text?

5. Ideas vs. Text

In these many paragraphs on this exciting card complexity topic, I have really been talking about complexity of ideas. A card can also just have a lot of words. But that's not as bad.

Suppose the rulebook defined "dig" appropriately. Then Golem could have read, "Dig for two Action cards other than Golems. Play them in either order."

That's pretty simple. Golem doesn't do anything complex really. Once you have that definition of "dig." And digging is straightforward too. But there aren't enough cards that dig, so digging is always spelled out on the cards, and well it takes a bunch of words.

Contrast this with Scrying Pool. Scrying Pool does two things: first it lets you toss or keep each player's top card, and then it draws you all of the actions from the top of your deck, plus a card. That's how many words it took me to tell you what it does, as a non-precise summary. It's not just wordy, it's complex idea-wise.

In general it's the multiple-idea complexity that's really complex. And sometimes even those cards can be simplified by having a strong connection of some kind between the ideas. Having a bunch of words can be intimidating when you first see a card, but you learn it quickly if those words just add up to one idea.

6. Complexity Solved

So there it is. Rules end up in the rulebook or on the cards, but they're somewhere. There are only so many game elements to combine, so you end up combining multiple elements to get more cards. You can't even do all of the vanilla cards that are possible. And in any case you're pushed towards complexity just by trying to make the game work.

6178

Feedback / Re: The Bible of Donald X.

« on: June 20, 2011, 03:39:09 pm »

I do.  I'll add them in later today.  Though I am not sure where the Designer's Diaries are.  If someone had a link (even a broken one) that would be helpful, since archive.org seems to preserve most of them.

I'll send you the versions I have, i.e. prior to whatever editing by W. Eric Martin.
.
Edit: Oh, or just post them.

6179

Feedback / Re: The Bible of Donald X.

« on: June 20, 2011, 03:33:59 pm »

IMO, at least if they are all BGG links, I think he can further comment on BGG. 

Or in this thread!
.
I never got around to posting about point counters, and then Doug added one so there was a lot less to say, but obv. keeping open points or what have you is a rules variant, not cheating, and I give everyone permission to play any rules variants they want for any games they want. If you are using a rules variant against an opponent's wishes though, that's obv. cheating, why is that even a question.
.
I don't know why those threads are read-only, but if you want to discuss a topic, aside from contentious ones that have had threads closed, like the one I snuck in a comment for above, just start a thread and talk about the topic. I bet no-one will mind.

6180

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Isotropic

« on: June 20, 2011, 02:48:19 pm »

Yes it is legal. Donald X does his official card-testing on it, so he is absolutely fine with it.

What's this now? I don't think there have ever been cards on Isotropic that aren't published yet. This sounds like a mutated version of the fact (from the Isotropic FAQ) that Donald X helpfully provided the set of prototype artwork that he used for the Kingdom cards. (They all seem to be free images anyway, from places like Wikipedia, but it's nice that Donald himself picked them out.)

There is in fact a nonpublic version of isotropic with unpublished cards.

6181

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which is the card you hate the most?

« on: June 20, 2011, 02:43:04 pm »

Possession is weak, really?
...
The other big surprise for me is your unreserved love for Tournament.

Well there are arguments as to why Possession might not be so incredible given its cost, but I'm not really here to discuss strategy. I'm not scared of Possession, and I haven't been in any messed-up games with it, except for ones involving other cards that no longer exist.
.
I thought Tournament would be such a hit because it was such a hit! That was my line of reasoning there. There was no-one saying, what is this nonsense. There were arguments about the specifics and the prizes and well that's all covered in the Secret History.
.
I checked the last 10 logged playtest games with Tournament. There were two where no-one bought it, and four where everyone bought it. In the four games with a mix, two games had someone with Tournament and a prize win; one had someone with Tournament but no prizes win; and one had someone without Tournament win (over someone with a prize and someone without one, and this was not a Colony game). The cards get way more testing by the public than by the playtesters, and the playtesters aren't necessarily the best players ever, but still, you can obv. have a group of decent players that do not have a problem with Tournament.

6182

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion: Awesome Mechanics; Meh Flavor

« on: June 20, 2011, 12:38:03 am »

added in more to appeal to the typical board game players (which, to be fair, is probably the anticipated audience) than strongly incorporated into the mechanics themselves.

No, some people like to think that RGG made a marketing-based decision on the flavor, but really, I didn't have any medieval-themed games at the time, had been meaning to do a kingdom-building game, and thought this was a reasonable fit. In the main set, Circus was renamed to Festival, Militia and Bureaucrat switched at one point (see Secret History), and everything else has the original playtest name.
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Dominion is a simple game. That means the game isn't adding rules just for the flavor. The cards themselves do support flavor to varying degrees, but the best flavor requires the most text. Thief was easy, but nothing was ever going to be great flavor for "+3 Cards."
 

At the micro level, there are the cards.  There are some themes that are obvious/easy to perceive (villages being the obvious...but then there's University and Festival).  Here are some cards that I just don't get:

The idea is that +2 Actions is a group of people doing things for you. Most of them are Villages, but this is how University and Nobles fit in.
 

Baron: Nobles is a victory card; Duke is a victory card; why not Baron?

It's not like that. Why aren't Nobles and Duke tracts of land, that's the question. And the answer is, well Duke is named that because it involves Duchies, and Nobles uh well maybe they're attracted by the tracts.
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Baron involves Estates, that's how it got that name. He's a real Estate Baron.
 

Library:  Library lets you set aside action cards, which often leaves you with a handful of victory cards and coins.  Why does a library get you those?  Shouldn't it get you actions?  My guess with this particular card is that it originally did get you only actions, but was probably overpowered in that version.

No, it didn't change except for the precise wording. Library was the kind of name I wanted in Alchemy, where the card started, and well I guess I've been influenced all these years by MtG equating card-drawing with knowledge. There is no such equating in Dominion; I decided early on that "+Cards" would have no flavor, because a card like Torturer wants to be named for the relevant new part of the card, not for the +3 Cards.
 

Chapel:  What does trashing cards have to do with chapels?  Is there a theme with religious figures/buildings/rooms and trashing (e.g., bishop)?  Why? 

Well this one is easy. When you trash Coppers and Estates, you're giving them to charity, and when you trash Curses, that's an exorcism.
 

Those a few off the top of my head, but I know there are others that come up (are all attacks themed as people?  What is the mechanical difference between a card representing a person and one representing a building?  Why only use verbs on the trash for a new card effects (remodel, upgrade, etc.)

There's no specific reason for person vs. building, just whichever sounds better on the card, except yes, attacks are usually people. Remodel was a verb and then the rest just imitated it. One-shots were events, back when there were more of them.

moat's defensive ability fits its flavor perfectly, but why does it draw cards?

Because it would be too awful if it didn't! And really that sums it up. You are not gonna do better on naming Moat; you really have to just ignore the +2 Cards when naming, except when that's all the card does. And then, do you drop the +2 Cards so the card has better flavor? No, you do not do that, it doesn't matter how good the flavor is on a card no-one is ever buying.

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Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?

« on: June 19, 2011, 07:06:13 pm »

I am totally sympathetic towards the guy who wanted to see just how well his deck could perform, and totally unsympathetic towards the guy who made the other guy wait for the timeout.

Them being a jerk doesn't justify you being a jerk. The only time you being jerk is justified is when it's hilarious. And that takes an audience so it really can't apply here.

Timeouts may be honest, but I think the obvious trick is just, track the timeouts by player, and if a player tends to only timeout on later turns in losing positions, drop them from the leaderboard. The leaderboard is the only prize here, so that's as much as you can do. It's the internet; you will always be up against twelve-year-olds some of the time, and the system just has to deal with it as best it can.

Edit: Also I hate how this forum software adds blank lines.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which is the card you hate the most?

« on: June 19, 2011, 06:53:43 pm »

Once in a while someone will mention to me, "you know, I don't like Dominion," and man I am fine with that. I am not too insecure on that front. It didn't win Austrian game of the year, that's how I put it. Anyway here you all are probably relatively fond of it, but feel free to hate whatever cards. I don't mind. There are certainly some love/hate cards.

Here then is what I think of these hated Dominion cards.

Possession: Possession has two possible problems in my book. First it has that gigantic FAQ. The FAQ might have killed it if there had been more time to work on the set. It's crazy long, even if mostly it just says, "yes really, they take a turn but you make the decisions." Second it's a love/hate card in a small set. You could argue that love/hate cards should be in large sets, where the hate matters less, because, you know, it's a smaller percentage of your cards. Whereas I don't think that diminishes love so much. Somehow. Anyway it was the first small set and I did not think about such things. Other than those things I like the card. I find it to be on the weak side; it kind of has a "fun tax" - cards that give you extra turns have to be weak in general so that players don't bore you too much with them. Not that Possession is boring. Anyway it was gonna be a love/hate card, no question, but there are people who love it and they couldn't play it if it didn't exist, and man it's easy enough to fight against. Don't build a deck that buys two Provinces a turn vs. Possession; that's a good place to start.

Saboteur: This has four strikes against it. First it's a way to trash people's precious cards. It is totally worth making some of those cards, for the people that adore them, but they need to be especially fun for those people, which Saboteur is not. Second it's an attack with no resource production. You know, it just attacks. That sounded fine to me, but it turns out some people don't like that. This isn't a love/hate thing though; no-one loves it. It's not important to the game to have such cards and I already did a couple, so I wouldn't be expecting too many more. Third it's weak. In fact it's the weakest card in the game, relative to its cost. Something had to be and well that something is Saboteur. Fourth it has lots of tiny text. That's something I like to reserve for really adored cards. Overall Saboteur is the Dominion card least justified in existing.

Smugglers: I like Smugglers a lot. Flavorwise it should probably be "non-vp card" rather than "card costing up to $6," but of course functionally it's significant that it isn't necessarily dead late in the game. I think Smugglers went over well in general and it looks out of place on this list to me. Sure your opponent might Throne Smugglers after you buy Gold or Duchy. Man, they're your opponent, they've gotta do something to bother you.

Treasure Map: In playtesting the struggle was making sure this was good enough to sometimes go for. Once it made 3 Golds and they didn't go on top. Some people do single this out as a high-variance card they don't like. I think the hate is similar to Pirate Ship's; in some groups everybody buys it, thus whoever bought it and got luckiest wins, and then the card looks broken when really it requires good card interactions to be exciting. King's Court has higher variance and gets fewer complaints, though some people do hate it (especially, players who are really focused on skill winning out); I think there it's just, playing something three times is something a lot of people can appreciate, and the card isn't as blatant about its variance. And then Platinum, I bet a lot of people don't even think of Platinum as high-variance. Certainly no-one complains about it. So anyway yeah, Treasure Map, not the swingiest card, but very in your face about its swinginess.

Familiar: Some people just don't like the Potion concept. I knew this, thought the set was still worth doing, but put it last. Then it jumped up to 3rd after they decided they wanted small sets. The cards in Alchemy have to be good enough when they're the only Alchemy card out, and if they are then you may draw your Potion without quite enough money. The general solution is not to do this kind of thing in Dominion expansions, but in spin-offs instead, where you can ensure that there's always plenty of whatever, and then balance the cards for that situation.

Swindler: I like Swindler a lot, now you know. It's everything I want out of a trashing attack. Let's compare it to Saboteur. Swindler trashes people's precious cards. It can't usually get rid of a Province though (yes it can on the last turn, and there's Peddler sometimes, or combos). And sometimes other cards are safe from it, e.g. Gold with no other $6. It does produce resources, a generous +$2. It's not weak. And it doesn't have lots of tiny text! It's a fine length. Also it adds a decision that's sometimes interesting, and puts cards in your deck that you didn't want but which might be useful anyway. It does add luck, and especially hurts when they hit your $5 early, say while hitting someone else's Estate, but it also adds skill. You see people blow it on that decision so often; the funniest case is where they hit Silver and cannot bear to give you a Swindler for it.

Black Market: For the prototype I don't have separate different-backed randomizer cards - I use one card from each pile for the randomizer, add it to the pile to play, then return one to the randomizer pile afterwards. You can do this with real cards too, and if you do, then you don't actually ever need to build a Black Market deck. Those of you who just don't like the setup, there you go. I have played with Black Market a lot, but have never actually endured the setup it proposes. Those of you who don't like that only one person ends up with a particular card, well that was the premise, some people like that a lot, and hey it's a promo.

Tournament: Aside from being so complex that it has a 2x2 payoff grid and then requires you to read five other cards to know the whole story, I think of Tournament as a slam dunk, the kind of card every set is desperate to have. I did not expect any complaints about the rich-get-richer aspect of it; there is so much rich-get-richer in Dominion.

Goons: I am pleased with this card. It was a late addition with several restrictions - it had to be an attack that was suitable for Prosperity and didn't give out Curses; it had to give out VP tokens; it had to be justifiable with that art (leftover from Pawn). The attack part feels tacked on, but the other part is cool. It's nice that while the VP tokens part is cumulative, the attack part isn't. It's a good $6 but not an automatic purchase. Some people never get tired of raking in the VP tokens, and there are cute combos like Watchtower.

Ambassador: The attacks in Dominion fall into four categories, and it's easy for the attack part of an attack to feel like nothing new, leaving the resource part to try to make the card unique. So I am very pleased with Ambassador, which feels very different from other attacks in its family. It's cool that people sometimes buy Curses to give them away with it, and it's fun when you end up giving someone a random action you don't want anymore. I can see experienced players getting sick of it, since it's powerful, but I think at first glance it doesn't look scary; there's some play value in gradually learning what kind of monster you're dealing with.

For me, the worst cards to see in a set of 10 are Spy variants. The reason is, they mess up testing. I'm testing a new card, Sheep. I buy it. You hit it with Spy and make me discard it. Next pass through my deck, same thing. Well I am not learning anything about Sheep this game.

I like seeing high variance cards on the table - it takes the pressure off. I can just relax and play. It wasn't my fault I lost, officer, the King's Court did it. I like fighting against attacks. Some of the most hated cards, like Possession and Saboteur, I usually don't even buy, because I'm trying to win. I don't mind Chapel in games where there's no good alternative; we all buy Chapel, it's a fast game, and there are still other decisions. I don't have trouble counting for Philosopher's Stone, although if I had it to do again I would put it (back) into Prosperity (with Bank, formerly from Alchemy, in Alchemy), to reduce the overall sense of the set being slow.

Well it's no surprise that I like the cards, I mean anything I hated did not have much of a chance of making it into a set.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Keeping track of turns...

« on: June 18, 2011, 11:14:44 pm »

I snuck the rule for Outpost into the Possession FAQ, so it is actually a rulebook rule, just not one that comes with Seaside.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pirate Ship in 3+ player games.

« on: June 18, 2011, 06:02:08 pm »

My heart made a little jump when I read your name. It's great to have you here.

thx guys. Just try not to be intimidated into not saying how much you hate Pirate Ship or whatever. I can take it, honest. And here's a little more on the Pirate Ship front.

Pirate Ship originally was an action-victory card worth points based on the stolen treasures. That card wasn't attractive enough and one day I replaced it with essentially the card you know.

We tried it for the first time in a 3-player game. We all bought it. One of us won. Afterwards someone said, well that was obv. broken.

I argued with them for a bit, then we played again with the same 10 cards. This time I didn't buy Pirate Ship and I won.

This has been the story of Pirate Ship from the beginning. Most of the time you can beat it handily, regardless of the number of players or how many go for it. They trash your Coppers for you! That's a significant penalty. You don't need to go treasureless to beat it either. Nevertheless some groups think it's unbeatable, everyone buys it, someone who bought it wins. It lends itself to this behavior by being an action that makes money that makes you want an action that makes money.

Arguably balancing cards for experts isn't the be-all end-all. A card that's too powerful for beginners may be worth changing just for that reason. I try to pay attention to this, and to avoid cards that defend too well vs. themselves, but some get out, and there's Pirate Ship. If it's bumming you out, try beating it, that's my advice.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pirate Ship in 3+ player games.

« on: June 17, 2011, 04:02:37 am »

I've slowly become more and more convinced that the various card powers in Dominion are actually best balanced for a 3-player game,

I can't say if this is true, but it's definitely the intention. Ideally any card is balanced regardless of the number of players. When a card varies in power level noticeably with the number of players (but is still worth making), it typically either gets better with more players or gets worse with more players. So the way to make it as balanced as possible is to balance it for 3 players (yes we supported 5-6 but those games aren't typical).

That said, Pirate Ship would not be my example. I do not think there is a number of players that makes it overpowered.