Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Merudo on October 19, 2014, 07:57:08 pm

Title: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: Merudo on October 19, 2014, 07:57:08 pm
I used Amazon.com to check the price of each card (as of October 19, 2014), and calculate what is the price you pay per kingdom card when you buy an extension.

Moreover, I used silverspawn's rankings (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11898.0) to calculate the price per "good" (i.e. not terrible) card, where a good card is one that is ranked 3 or more by silverspawn.

I also added a prince per "well-designed" card, as ranked by silverspawn here (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11910.0). Here a well-designed one is one not ranked in Chapter I: The Bad Cards or Chapter II: The Weak Cards (And Outliers).

Expansion
Base
Intrigue
Seaside
Alchemy
Prosperity
Cornucopia
Hinterlands
Dark Ages
Guilds
Promo
Price
$28.22
$29.73
$28.70
$20.20
$29.22
$19.09
$27.50
$25.87
$20.34
$2.50
Per card
$1.13
$1.19
$1.10
$1.68
$1.17
$1.47
$1.06
$0.74
$1.56
$2.50
Per good card
$1.57
$1.42
$1.20
$2.20
$1.33
$1.59
$1.15
$0.78
$1.56
-
Per well-designed card
$1.28
$1.35
$1.25
$2.89
$1.27
$1.59
$1.15
$0.78
$1.56
-

As you can see, Dark Ages is by far the best bang for your buck, giving nearly twice as many kingdom cards for the money as the smaller expansions (Alchemy/Cornucopia/Guilds).

Although Hinterlands cost slightly less than Seaside/Prosperity, you get more "stuff" out of the latter two expansions (playing mats & coins for the former, Colony & Platinum for the later).

Base & Intrigue give a price per card similar to Hinterlands/Seaside/Prosperity, however both the original sets have many duds, which inflates their price per good card. Still, you get the money/victory cards only with Base/Intrigue, making buying one of these sets attractive.

Guilds & Cornucopia are among the most pricey sets - they cost about 40% more than Hinterlands/Seaside/Prosperity. This is not surprising, given that Guilds & Cornucopia have half the cards of bigger sets yet only cost $6-7 less.

Finally, Alchemy is the most expensive set for the cards you get. This is especially true if you don't could the "bad" cards of Alchemy (Transmute/Herbalist), in which case you pay nearly 3 times as much per card as Dark Ages.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: enfynet on October 19, 2014, 10:26:34 pm
Now use the rankings and those averages to find the cost of every individual kingdom card, as one might do for trading card games.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: liopoil on October 19, 2014, 10:29:37 pm
Why do you want good cards? I'd rather have rats, a relatively weak but very fun card than cultist, a very good but un-fun card.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: 2.71828..... on October 19, 2014, 10:41:23 pm
yeah, I just bought them all.  As long as their is at least one "good" card in each set it is worth it.  And they all have good cards in them that make the game more interesting and fun to play.

Also this whole discussion of "good" cards is ridiculous in my opinion.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: A Drowned Kernel on October 19, 2014, 10:53:21 pm
Quote from: 2.71828..... on October 19, 2014, 10:41:23 pm
Also this whole discussion of "good" cards is ridiculous in my opinion.

This deserves all the +1's.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: Merudo on October 19, 2014, 11:06:52 pm
Quote from: liopoil on October 19, 2014, 10:29:37 pm
Why do you want good cards? I'd rather have rats, a relatively weak but very fun card than cultist, a very good but un-fun card.

I guess I was not clear. What I defined as "good" cards are really non-terrible cards.

Rats is included in there. The only cards I excluded and considered not "good" are :

Chancellor
Woodcutter
Bureaucrat
Mine
Coppersmith
Pearl Driver
Herbalist
Cache
Poor House
Death Cart
Feast
Secret Chamber
Pirate Ship
Talisman
Contraband
Counting House
Harvest
Duchess
Adventurer
Thief
Scout
Saboteur
Transmute
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: JW on October 19, 2014, 11:07:48 pm
The bigger sets starting with Seaside have the best bang for the buck. Large sets offer more cards per $ spent at typical online prices and Donald has said that he got better at designing sets starting with Seaside.

From a cost-effectiveness standpoint, you'll also want to pick up Base or Intrigue for the base cards (rather than needing to purchase them separately).  Also, Intrigue and especially Base have simpler cards than later sets which is helpful for people learning to play. I find Seaside to be a great mix of interesting and relatively simple cards.

Dark Ages adds a lot of interesting (and more complicated) cards, but consider leaving Rebuild and Cultist in the box.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: werothegreat on October 20, 2014, 12:44:16 am
Quote from: liopoil on October 19, 2014, 10:29:37 pm
Why do you want good cards? I'd rather have rats, a relatively weak but very fun card than cultist, a very good but un-fun card.

Shame on you.  Cultist is a lot of fun.  As much fun as Mountebank!
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: Davio on October 20, 2014, 03:17:27 am
Good luck setting up a game if you have only Dark Ages and Hinterlands!  ;D
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: Awaclus on October 20, 2014, 07:28:29 am
Both extremely weak and extremely strong cards benefit from designed kingdoms rather than randomly chosen kingdoms. If you choose the kingdoms randomly, you might have a lot of kingdoms that have useless cards either because the cards just are that weak or because there is another very strong card that makes all others useless, but you can design kingdoms where winning the Feast split is the key factor in winning the game and kingdoms where going for Rebuild is a bad idea. These obviously do also happen in randomized kingdoms, but that's rare.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: Jimmmmm on October 20, 2014, 07:33:14 am
We really need to rank the cards in terms of how fun and well-designed (which often but not always means well-balanced) cards are and generally how much of a positive effect they have on the game of Dominion.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: Cas Liber on October 20, 2014, 07:56:07 am
We got all the sets. I must admit I wasn't as fond of Seaside as the other big expansions, but still has some great cards. I think it is great that many cards vary so much in usefulness depending on hat the other 9 supply cards are.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: Cas Liber on October 20, 2014, 07:56:59 am
Quote from: Merudo on October 19, 2014, 11:06:52 pm
Quote from: liopoil on October 19, 2014, 10:29:37 pm
Why do you want good cards? I'd rather have rats, a relatively weak but very fun card than cultist, a very good but un-fun card.

I guess I was not clear. What I defined as "good" cards are really non-terrible cards.

Rats is included in there. The only cards I excluded and considered not "good" are :

Chancellor
Woodcutter
Bureaucrat
Mine
Coppersmith
Pearl Driver
Herbalist
Cache
Poor House
Death Cart
Feast
Secret Chamber
Pirate Ship
Talisman
Contraband
Counting House
Harvest
Duchess
Adventurer
Thief
Scout
Saboteur
Transmute

aww, love herbalist, counting house, thief and adventurer here....
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: Davio on October 20, 2014, 08:18:21 am
A lot of "bad" cards do one thing that no other card does. This is what makes them a lot of fun given the right kingdom.

Take Counting House for example, a card which you can often skip, but it's a lot of fun to use with Golem or with Plaza/Stables. Coppersmith likewise.

Saboteur can absolutely destroy a deck under the right circumstances.

Out of that list, the only cards I consider to be bad 99% of the time are Scout (obviously) and Transmute. But Transmute's main problem is that it's often the only Potion-coster. I advise using at least one other Potion-card if Transmute is included, so it's a nice consolation prize for a missed Familiar.

So this leaves only Scout.

Duchess shouldn't be in there, because you can't compare it to other cards you'd actually pay $2+ for.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: LastFootnote on October 20, 2014, 12:31:37 pm
Enough about pricing the expansions. What about Princing the expansions?
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: Eevee on October 20, 2014, 01:17:50 pm
Quote from: LastFootnote on October 20, 2014, 12:31:37 pm
Enough about pricing the expansions. What about Princing the expansions?
You'd need a lot of bridges and highways.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: silverspawn on October 20, 2014, 02:23:10 pm
Quote from: Eevee on October 20, 2014, 01:17:50 pm
Quote from: LastFootnote on October 20, 2014, 12:31:37 pm
Enough about pricing the expansions. What about Princing the expansions?
You'd need a lot of bridges and highways.
I think if you prince an expansion, the price of all cards just adds up, so you really only need 10 highways and one bridge.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: KingZog3 on October 20, 2014, 04:04:41 pm
Quote from: Merudo on October 19, 2014, 11:06:52 pm
Quote from: liopoil on October 19, 2014, 10:29:37 pm
Why do you want good cards? I'd rather have rats, a relatively weak but very fun card than cultist, a very good but un-fun card.

I guess I was not clear. What I defined as "good" cards are really non-terrible cards.

Rats is included in there. The only cards I excluded and considered not "good" are :

Chancellor
Woodcutter
Bureaucrat
Mine
Coppersmith
Pearl Driver
Herbalist
Cache
Poor House
Death Cart
Feast
Secret Chamber
Pirate Ship
Talisman
Contraband
Counting House
Harvest
Duchess
Adventurer
Thief
Scout
Saboteur
Transmute

Why are Poor House and Death Cart badly made cards? They are amazing. Poor House can be totally ridiculous.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: silverspawn on October 20, 2014, 04:33:23 pm
Quote
Why are Poor House and Death Cart badly made cards? They are amazing. Poor House can be totally ridiculous.
the quote is a part of my powerlevel rating post. so, it's about powerlevel, not design. the cards are on there because I think they're weak. Death card can be pretty strong, but that'ss very rare. poor house is similar, it's usable slightly more often, and slightly less strong when it is.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: KingZog3 on October 20, 2014, 04:48:42 pm
Quote from: silverspawn on October 20, 2014, 04:33:23 pm
Quote
Why are Poor House and Death Cart badly made cards? They are amazing. Poor House can be totally ridiculous.
the quote is a part of my powerlevel rating post. so, it's about powerlevel, not design. the cards are on there because I think they're weak. Death card can be pretty strong, but that'ss very rare. poor house is similar, it's usable slightly more often, and slightly less strong when it is.

I didn't quote your rankings. Or is this completely form your rankings? I thought you only did a couple of the cards.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: liopoil on October 20, 2014, 04:50:34 pm
Quote from: silverspawn on October 20, 2014, 04:33:23 pm
Quote
Why are Poor House and Death Cart badly made cards? They are amazing. Poor House can be totally ridiculous.
the quote is a part of my powerlevel rating post. so, it's about powerlevel, not design. the cards are on there because I think they're weak. Death card can be pretty strong, but that'ss very rare. poor house is similar, it's usable slightly more often, and slightly less strong when it is.
I'd guess that I center my strategy entirely around poorhouse at least 20% of the time it's in the kingdom. It's really strong when it's usable.
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: silverspawn on October 20, 2014, 04:58:40 pm
Quote from: KingZog3 on October 20, 2014, 04:48:42 pm
Quote from: silverspawn on October 20, 2014, 04:33:23 pm
Quote
Why are Poor House and Death Cart badly made cards? They are amazing. Poor House can be totally ridiculous.
the quote is a part of my powerlevel rating post. so, it's about powerlevel, not design. the cards are on there because I think they're weak. Death card can be pretty strong, but that'ss very rare. poor house is similar, it's usable slightly more often, and slightly less strong when it is.

I didn't quote your rankings. Or is this completely form your rankings? I thought you only did a couple of the cards.
you did quote my rankings  :P and yes, I did them all, here (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11898.msg428810#msg428810), and yea these are all from that post. The quoted part are the cards that received the rating 2, 1, or 0 from me (on the right side of the post). which makes sense, because I said in the post that I considered cards <= 2 underpowered
Title: Re: Pricing the Dominion expansions: how much bang do you get for your buck?
Post by: Awaclus on October 20, 2014, 06:59:37 pm
The term "silverspawn's rankings" is confusing right now, since there are two different rankings that are both "silverspawn's rankings". Especially here, when we're referring to the rankings that caused much less drama.