Lighthouse is the only one.Okay, how do you put it in General? Or how do you put it anywhere besides Articles?
Also, this should probably be in Dominion General, not Articles.
Treasure Map doesn't exactly "control games". It is usually pretty bad. The best use of it may be in some tricky engines, where maps collision is not luck dependent at all.No, it doesn't control games, put people open double Treasure Map on a Baker board then they collide on turn 3. This has only happened once but it's made me hate Treasure Map.
In retrospect the card is clearly too powerful for how interesting it is. Which is to say, the most powerful cards should make for lots of interesting gameplay and different situations; Chapel for example may be strong, but the games play out differently depending on the rest of the cards. With Rebuild the rest of the cards are too unlikely to get involved in your Rebuild deck.
For casual players it probably isn't a problem, unless one of them reads online about how to use Rebuild. For serious players you will probably have more fun just not playing with Rebuild after you've had the experience. I would rather that not be the case, but well at least there are 34 other kingdom cards in Dark Ages.
I got better at making sets after Intrigue. I can believe that people playing the base set by itself might feel like it needs something. There are some duds, and those duds reduce strategic options. The base set has done great anyway, but you know, there's room for improvement. But I mean take out the duds and you're there, that's what I think. If someone plays a random ten from Dark Ages they are not going to see all these boards with nothing to do.
Donald X on Rebuild: http://boardgamegeek.com/article/14094365#14094365QuoteIn retrospect the card is clearly too powerful for how interesting it is. Which is to say, the most powerful cards should make for lots of interesting gameplay and different situations; Chapel for example may be strong, but the games play out differently depending on the rest of the cards. With Rebuild the rest of the cards are too unlikely to get involved in your Rebuild deck.
For casual players it probably isn't a problem, unless one of them reads online about how to use Rebuild. For serious players you will probably have more fun just not playing with Rebuild after you've had the experience. I would rather that not be the case, but well at least there are 34 other kingdom cards in Dark Ages.
Rebuild and Cultist are the biggest offenders on this front for me. Cards that are too weak also make the game less fun.I got better at making sets after Intrigue. I can believe that people playing the base set by itself might feel like it needs something. There are some duds, and those duds reduce strategic options. The base set has done great anyway, but you know, there's room for improvement. But I mean take out the duds and you're there, that's what I think. If someone plays a random ten from Dark Ages they are not going to see all these boards with nothing to do.
Rebuild, Torturer, Champion
I've played with it. By the time you get there, if you have a halfway decent engine going, it just becomes "going through the motions" until the game ends. I was anxious to use it too, then realized how much it changes the game at that point. The Peasant-Teacher line I find much more interesting.Rebuild, Torturer, Champion
I'm curious: have you actually played with Champion, or do you just hate it on principle?
Mainly because cultists are chainable. Which means you a) can get a lot of ruins in one turn without village support b) it promotes buying not many other action cards so the cultists connect more often.I can understand what you're saying, But I like Cultist.
Hireling and Port in multiplayer. The Hireling pile emptied in about 3-4 turns, and Ports just disappear.
Hireling and Port in multiplayer. The Hireling pile emptied in about 3-4 turns, and Ports just disappear.
I hate Rebuild. It degenerates games and is poorly designed. I never understood how it could actually make its way into the game as an official card. It just doesn't lives up to the design standards i expect from Dominion.I think this stems from the behavior of some playtesters, remembering that DXV mentioned the playtesters disliked Durations.
I don't mind weak cards. Obviously you can accuse those of bad design, too, but they are not as bad for the playing experience. A Rebuild board will be about Rebuild 90% of the time. A Thief board will be about whatever the other 9 cards are 90% of the time. When weak cards work, it's nice, and if they don't, you still can have a good game of Dominion with the remaining kingdom. In fact, i count many "weak" cards as my favourites, including Chancellor, Counting House and Philosopher's Stone.
I hate Rebuild. It degenerates games and is poorly designed. I never understood how it could actually make its way into the game as an official card. It just doesn't lives up to the design standards i expect from Dominion.I think this stems from the behavior of some playtesters, remembering that DXV mentioned the playtesters disliked Durations.
I don't mind weak cards. Obviously you can accuse those of bad design, too, but they are not as bad for the playing experience. A Rebuild board will be about Rebuild 90% of the time. A Thief board will be about whatever the other 9 cards are 90% of the time. When weak cards work, it's nice, and if they don't, you still can have a good game of Dominion with the remaining kingdom. In fact, i count many "weak" cards as my favourites, including Chancellor, Counting House and Philosopher's Stone.
Chancellor isn't weak. Insta-shuffle is a thumbs up in my book. It's just that it's weak relative to other $3 terminals. If my $4 is non-terminal and there's nothing better at $3, I'm opening Chancellor. I'd wager Magpie/Chancellor is a stronger opening than Magpie/Silver. Chancellor will probably also go well with Page. I'd say Chancellor is better than Woodcutter, and usually better than Fortune Teller. I think the reason why it's thought of so poorly is that most new players are just so confused by it.Once you have Champion in play, Warriors become really cumbersome. The first one attacks 2 cards, the second one attacks 3 cards, and so on. With the card draw, they aren't really bothered by a few Heroes in the deck either.
I would almost never take Scout over Silver.I hate Rebuild. It degenerates games and is poorly designed. I never understood how it could actually make its way into the game as an official card. It just doesn't lives up to the design standards i expect from Dominion.I think this stems from the behavior of some playtesters, remembering that DXV mentioned the playtesters disliked Durations.
I don't mind weak cards. Obviously you can accuse those of bad design, too, but they are not as bad for the playing experience. A Rebuild board will be about Rebuild 90% of the time. A Thief board will be about whatever the other 9 cards are 90% of the time. When weak cards work, it's nice, and if they don't, you still can have a good game of Dominion with the remaining kingdom. In fact, i count many "weak" cards as my favourites, including Chancellor, Counting House and Philosopher's Stone.
Rebuild got very little playtesting. Sure, it's strong, and it often dominates boards at the expense of other cards, but there are ways around it.
Cards I hate:
Haven - fuck this shitty little piece of shit stupid shitty...
Champion - remove all thought and challenge from the game once this is in play. I don't hate this as much because it is a bit of a chore to get. The problem is that TH and Hero are not really cards that you'd really buy on their own outside of a Feodum game. Warrior is really the only Page line card that does anything for me.
The problem is that TH and Hero are not really cards that you'd really buy on their own outside of a Feodum game.
Library.
Chancellor isn't weak. Insta-shuffle is a thumbs up in my book. It's just that it's weak relative to other $3 terminals. If my $4 is non-terminal and there's nothing better at $3, I'm opening Chancellor. I'd wager Magpie/Chancellor is a stronger opening than Magpie/Silver. Chancellor will probably also go well with Page. I'd say Chancellor is better than Woodcutter, and usually better than Fortune Teller. I think the reason why it's thought of so poorly is that most new players are just so confused by it.
Haven - fuck this shitty little piece of shit stupid shitty...
The problem is that TH and Hero are not really cards that you'd really buy on their own outside of a Feodum game.
Really? You never buy Silver gainers outside of a Feodum game? Not with Duke? Not with Gardens?
And you wouldn't want Hero with Platinum available? Would high-quality payload gum up your engine too much?
Chancellor isn't weak. Insta-shuffle is a thumbs up in my book. It's just that it's weak relative to other $3 terminals. If my $4 is non-terminal and there's nothing better at $3, I'm opening Chancellor. I'd wager Magpie/Chancellor is a stronger opening than Magpie/Silver. Chancellor will probably also go well with Page. I'd say Chancellor is better than Woodcutter, and usually better than Fortune Teller. I think the reason why it's thought of so poorly is that most new players are just so confused by it.
Haven - fuck this shitty little piece of shit stupid shitty...
So basically what you said is that it's weak compared to other $3 terminals AND that you don't want it if there are decent $4 terminals? I don't see how this is a point against Chancellor being weak. Either way, i'm not saying Chancellor is the weakest card in Dominion. It's better than Scout or Adventurer at the very least (discussion starting... now). I've often pointed out how nicely Chancellor supports Potions, too. It's just a card that you have to take a good look at to judge whether it's worth it, and that's something i like.
Really, Haven? It's actually my favourite Duration :'(
I don't like Governor or Minion as their different options self-synergise into a single card strategy.
Minion can be a pretty good single card strategy if you add in one source of +buy...I don't like Governor or Minion as their different options self-synergise into a single card strategy.
If you play minions as a single card strategy, you're doing something pretty wrong.
Chancellor isn't weak. Insta-shuffle is a thumbs up in my book. It's just that it's weak relative to other $3 terminals. If my $4 is non-terminal and there's nothing better at $3, I'm opening Chancellor. I'd wager Magpie/Chancellor is a stronger opening than Magpie/Silver. Chancellor will probably also go well with Page. I'd say Chancellor is better than Woodcutter, and usually better than Fortune Teller. I think the reason why it's thought of so poorly is that most new players are just so confused by it.
Haven - fuck this shitty little piece of shit stupid shitty...
So basically what you said is that it's weak compared to other $3 terminals AND that you don't want it if there are decent $4 terminals? I don't see how this is a point against Chancellor being weak. Either way, i'm not saying Chancellor is the weakest card in Dominion. It's better than Scout or Adventurer at the very least (discussion starting... now). I've often pointed out how nicely Chancellor supports Potions, too. It's just a card that you have to take a good look at to judge whether it's worth it, and that's something i like.
Really, Haven? It's actually my favourite Duration :'(
There are a lot of strong $3 terminals - Ambassador, Hermit, Masquerade, Steward, Swindler... but of the weaker $3 terminals, Chancellor should definitely not be on the bottom. Chancellor is not a niche card, it's useful in almost every deck - it's just there's a lot of competition at $3, and you only have so many Actions.
Haven is done in by being mandatory. More often than not, I find myself setting aside an Estate to it. Why? You play cantrips to see what your next card is. Maybe I've got Throne Room/Haven in my hand, and I'm thinking I'll save the Throne Room. But then I draw my Witch, so now I don't want to set aside either of them. Or I've got Silver, Haven, three Estates, and I think I'll set aside the Silver, but then I draw my Gold, and I really wanted to pick up another Cultist... it just usually doesn't work out very well. It's a very frustrating card.
Minion can be a pretty good single card strategy if you add in one source of +buy...I don't like Governor or Minion as their different options self-synergise into a single card strategy.
If you play minions as a single card strategy, you're doing something pretty wrong.
I don't like Governor or Minion as their different options self-synergise into a single card strategy.
If you play minions as a single card strategy, you're doing something pretty wrong.
Saboteur. It's fortunately often ignorable, but games where it's not ignorable are absolutely miserable.
Also, I rarely have much fun in a Knights game.
Nothing in this game breaks my spirit more than having key cards I spent valuable resources on disappear before my eyes.
It's not really that much different from buying a phone. Whenever you buy a phone, you know that it'll last for a while, and then you have to buy a new phone to replace the old one.
I despise the wildly swingy cards:
Swindler (oh here you get a $5 curse and I get to discard an estate)
Smugglers (sucks in skill imbalanced multiplayer, huge swings if you draw it after a $5 or <$5 opponent hand)
Tribute (sucks in skill imbalanced multiplayer, huge swings when you need actions or coin)
Familiar ($3P or not $3P that is the question)
and the biggee:
Possession - can make 3er or higher completely farcical when the guy to your left is doing something slow and boring (like a bad Gardens slog) so you can't Possesses him ... but if you try something good then the guy to your right gets a gimmee Possession game. There is no bigger price/effect breakpoint in the game than $5P and $6P. Lastly, when you play possession is often literally determine game - the strongest strategy may well be to go megaturn and hope that the first Posssession shows up in the back 3/5ths of the Opponent's deck rather than the front 2/5ths. Possession remains the only Dominion card to get vote banned in my gaming group.
Roadrunner, I've noticed that a couple of your most recent threads seem to be along the lines of Qvist's card rankings (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=10398.0). Have you seen them? The most recent version of these, while it is a year old, does include Guilds, and it's certainly too soon for one of these to be including Adventures IMHO.I have seen them I think once, but the community seems to have changed a lot since then. My post was more related to my personal interest concerning the people of 2015, but thanks for sharing!
I suppose it's unfortunate that the Favorite cards lists haven't been released for this version. It would be cool to know these.
I suppose I'll share the bottom of my list. Looking at this now, there are certainly changes I'd make, I made this list over a year ago.
Black Market
Tournament
Knights
Rebuild
Smugglers
Golem
Treasure Map
Urchin/Mercenary
Shanty Town
multiplayer Dominion is awful.
Anything that's too swingy -- e.g. if you are lucky and you get one, then getting all of the rest of them is even easier, like Grand Market, or if you're going for multiple Mercenaries. I had a game recently where I opened Urchin/Urchin and never got them to collide.
Two Mercenaries are simply mandatory, and getting two should be your top priority whenever you want one at all.
One of the biggest recurring mistakes I see is people not buying a 3rd Urchin after connecting on T3 or 4. The purpose of the 3rd Urchin is not to speed up the time of your first connection, but to get to a deck containing two Mercs as quickly as possible.
Pretty much the only exception to this is if you already trashed down with e.g. Chapel and only use the Mercenary for its discard attack.
Rebuild.because since then the rebuild and cultist races were more annoying ? :)
I used to hate Hunting Party because every game with it just seemed to descend into a Hunting Party race ... But this seems much less of a problem since dark ages came out.
Anything that's too swingy -- e.g. if you are lucky and you get one, then getting all of the rest of them is even easier, like Grand Market, or if you're going for multiple Mercenaries. I had a game recently where I opened Urchin/Urchin and never got them to collide.
That's why you should always have a third Urchin. To quote an Urchin master:Two Mercenaries are simply mandatory, and getting two should be your top priority whenever you want one at all.
One of the biggest recurring mistakes I see is people not buying a 3rd Urchin after connecting on T3 or 4. The purpose of the 3rd Urchin is not to speed up the time of your first connection, but to get to a deck containing two Mercs as quickly as possible.
Pretty much the only exception to this is if you already trashed down with e.g. Chapel and only use the Mercenary for its discard attack.
Man, Dominion is a weird favorite game for some of you folks who hate swingy-ness so much.
Man, Dominion is a weird favorite game for some of you folks who hate swingy-ness so much.Why? Dominion really isn't that swingy. It's only particularly swingy when two good players play the best strategy on the board close to optimally. And well, how else are you going to decide who wins at that point?
Man, Dominion is a weird favorite game for some of you folks who hate swingy-ness so much.Why? Dominion really isn't that swingy. It's only particularly swingy when two good players play the best strategy on the board close to optimally. And well, how else are you going to decide who wins at that point?
Sure, sometimes it's right, but if I'm only using Mercenary for its discard attack, I'm probably not opening double Urchin for it. Also, I'm probably losing the game. I would say the main exception is if there's some other attack on the board that you want in your deck -- get that Attack and use it to increase your Attack density instead of a third Urchin.
When weak cards work, it's nice, and if they don't, you still can have a good game of Dominion with the remaining kingdom. In fact, i count many "weak" cards as my favourites, including Chancellor, Counting House and Philosopher's Stone.
When weak cards work, it's nice, and if they don't, you still can have a good game of Dominion with the remaining kingdom. In fact, i count many "weak" cards as my favourites, including Chancellor, Counting House and Philosopher's Stone.
Along those lines, can anybody point to some real games where Chancellor was truly a star? In theory, you can kind sort of guess what they might look like, but I think a concrete example or two would be interesting.
I'm not entirely sure I get all this fear of Cultist, though. Maybe we're playing it wrong or there has been some *serious* long-tail probability weirdness involving it just so happening to always show up with its strong counters, but I'm pretty sure that the last five or six games we've had including Cultists have been won by the person who got zero/fewer of them. It's starting to get a serious aura of "trap card" on our table.
I just mean, like, you shuffle your deck each time you go through it. It's a game with a nontrivial luck element. There are ways to mitigate that. You can decide not to play with "swingy" cards. You can decide to force common opening hands. You can always play best-of-15 matches. You can play chess instead. Or you can just enjoy it for what it is.
Anything that's too swingy -- e.g. if you are lucky and you get one, then getting all of the rest of them is even easier, like Grand Market, or if you're going for multiple Mercenaries. I had a game recently where I opened Urchin/Urchin and never got them to collide.
That's why you should always have a third Urchin. To quote an Urchin master:Two Mercenaries are simply mandatory, and getting two should be your top priority whenever you want one at all.
One of the biggest recurring mistakes I see is people not buying a 3rd Urchin after connecting on T3 or 4. The purpose of the 3rd Urchin is not to speed up the time of your first connection, but to get to a deck containing two Mercs as quickly as possible.
Pretty much the only exception to this is if you already trashed down with e.g. Chapel and only use the Mercenary for its discard attack.
As is the case with almost everything that comes out of SCSN's mouth and/or keyboard, I really don't think you should take this seriously.
When weak cards work, it's nice, and if they don't, you still can have a good game of Dominion with the remaining kingdom. In fact, i count many "weak" cards as my favourites, including Chancellor, Counting House and Philosopher's Stone.
Along those lines, can anybody point to some real games where Chancellor was truly a star? In theory, you can kind sort of guess what they might look like, but I think a concrete example or two would be interesting.
Rebuild, Cultist, Ill Gotten Gains, Tournament (often okay, but man there's those games...) Transmute, Scout, Harvest, Feast, Chancellor
Somewhat related: I hate Wharf having the +1 Buy instead of Merchant Ship
---
I disagree with SCSN that double Mercenary is almost always desirable. Overall I'm about 50/50 on whether I want a second; it's board-dependent. I do however agree that keeping an extra Urchin around is very often a good idea--if only to make your opponent's Mercenary-containing hands a little less effective.
Man, Dominion is a weird favorite game for some of you folks who hate swingy-ness so much.Why? Dominion really isn't that swingy. It's only particularly swingy when two good players play the best strategy on the board close to optimally. And well, how else are you going to decide who wins at that point?
The only one that I'd say is definitely more balanced is Puzzle Strike
Rebuild, Cultist, Ill Gotten Gains, Tournament (often okay, but man there's those games...) Transmute, Scout, Harvest, Feast, Chancellor
Somewhat related: I hate Wharf having the +1 Buy instead of Merchant Ship
---
I disagree with SCSN that double Mercenary is almost always desirable. Overall I'm about 50/50 on whether I want a second; it's board-dependent. I do however agree that keeping an extra Urchin around is very often a good idea--if only to make your opponent's Mercenary-containing hands a little less effective.
(http://i.imgur.com/qQ2Twcj.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/96t1CKU.png)
I dunno, I think I'll side with SCSN here. Thinning faster is always better.
Rebuild.because since then the rebuild and cultist races were more annoying ? :)
I used to hate Hunting Party because every game with it just seemed to descend into a Hunting Party race ... But this seems much less of a problem since dark ages came out.
OT: I hate scryiing pool
Rebuild.because since then the rebuild and cultist races were more annoying ? :)
I used to hate Hunting Party because every game with it just seemed to descend into a Hunting Party race ... But this seems much less of a problem since dark ages came out.
OT: I hate scryiing pool
Because of the shelters. The added card variety means Hunting Party is not quite such a lock. They also reduce the power of Remake which used to seem borderline overpowered.
Somewhat related: I hate Wharf having the +1 Buy instead of Merchant Ship
Chancellor
The only one that I'd say is definitely more balanced is Puzzle Strike
(http://www.wearefine.com/mingle/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/unnamed-111.gif)
(https://aerisvelivolus.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/stoning-o.gif)
This is really uncalled for.
Two Mercenaries are simply mandatory, and getting two should be your top priority whenever you want one at all.
One of the biggest recurring mistakes I see is people not buying a 3rd Urchin after connecting on T3 or 4. The purpose of the 3rd Urchin is not to speed up the time of your first connection, but to get to a deck containing two Mercs as quickly as possible.
Pretty much the only exception to this is if you already trashed down with e.g. Chapel and only use the Mercenary for its discard attack.
As is the case with almost everything that comes out of SCSN's mouth and/or keyboard, I really don't think you should take this seriously.
I stand behind the veracity of the quoted post. I still see mid- to high-level players grossly blundering in this area on a somewhat regular basis, and one really should be able to count the times one has deviated from its prescription on a single hand.
Note that I did not say to always get a third Urchin, I said to make two Mercs your top priority; whether you do that via 3 Urchins or 2 Urchins and a Militia doesn't matter much. And the exception of only using Merc for its discard attack was even covered in the post itself.
That's the one with the douchebag creator who ripped off a Dominion fan's artwork, right?
[...]
extraordinarily useful [...] because the position is clear and gives a strong starting point for thinking about the decision and testing things out[,]
The quoted post by SCSN has made me a better Urchin/Mercenary player. Prior to reading it, I would almost always get one Mercenary. I tried out his advice [...]
I think it is at least clear that everyone else on the forums is less skilled at using words like soporific and dross.
That's the one with the douchebag creator who ripped off a Dominion fan's artwork, right?
Yes.
For those who aren't aware (https://boardgamegeek.com/image/395648/dominion):
Fan-made Dominion chip set (first):
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic395648_md.jpg)
Puzzle Strike (second):
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1266744_md.jpg)
The main thing you're not getting is that I don't write to be pedantically correct; I write to be approximately right and ruthlessly effective.
While I could have made any of the stale statements you proposed, they are entirely comprised of uninspiring dross that accomplishes nothing.
It's incredibly easy to blurt out this forum's favorite cliché, append a creamed serving of stock phrases topped with an edge case or two and have the community nod its bored head in soporific agreement.
Consider how difficult it is in comparison to state something that is almost board-invariant (and thus actually useful to know!), non-trivial, largely unknown, helpful to a wide range of players and written in such a way that it takes people by surprise, makes them incredulous, maybe even balk at the idea, but still inspires eagerness to try it out?
It's precisely this latter objective that my posts are designed to fulfill. If they strike you as simplistic that's only because you overlook these inner workings. I challenge you to try out this "SCSN language" for yourself. I'll predict in advance that in stead of coming up with posts that areextraordinarily useful [...] because the position is clear and gives a strong starting point for thinking about the decision and testing things out[,]
you'll fall prey to caricatural hyperbole.
In the end I don't mind people hating my writing, but there's no point in denying its effectiveness.
You've yourself experienced more than once the sudden urge to play a certain board in response to something I wrote. And it's exactly the invocation of this sudden desire to play, the inspiration to experiment, the willingness to be surprised or the drive to prove someone wrong that constitute the highest achievement a simple strategy post can possibly attain.The quoted post by SCSN has made me a better Urchin/Mercenary player. Prior to reading it, I would almost always get one Mercenary. I tried out his advice [...]
Few things delight me more than reading this!
The ruined lives SCSN has left in his wake as he wrote strong opinions about Dominion on the internet, I shudder to think of those poor souls.Well, both Adam and SCSN have very good points. SCSN is an amazing Dominion player, has so much experience, etc. However, I do agree with Adam for the most part and I'd just like to add that sarcasm really can't be seen over the Internet.
If you say something that's wrong, it's actively harmful.
I would rather say that all high-level Dominion advice necessarily has to be either vague enough that it's entirely useless or "wrong".
Long post re SCSN
Actually, I would rather say that all high-level Dominion advice necessarily has to be either vague enough that it's entirely useless or "wrong".
You can call my statements stale and you can find the discussion that happens a lot around here boring, but at least it's correct and productive, unlike most "SCSN language". Maybe people like MQ feel comfortable challenging you, and I'm starting to build up the courage after several months, but these aren't the kind of people who are going to benefit from your writing. These are the kind of people who don't need your advice because they can look at it and tell that it's not to be taken seriously. So in the best case it's "not actively harmful".
Could you... take this to its own thread?Personally, I feel honored to have this discussion on a thread I started!
In the past year, I've gotten much better at Dominion. The main improvements I've made in my game have been looking at my decisions -- those "universal truths" I thought I knew about Dominion, and questioning them all. Trying to see if I could do better. And I have over 10 iso levels worth of improvement to show for it.
Actually, I would rather say that all high-level Dominion advice necessarily has to be either vague enough that it's entirely useless or "wrong".
Well then that's a pretty sad state of strategic discussion. There's plenty of middle ground between "It depends on the board" and blanket statements. We can say "Wharf is good" and still acknowledge that it's not always the best card and discuss when those exceptions might occur.
but people seem to just understand it and praise him for it because he's 14 ranks higher on the leaderboard than I am.
but people seem to just understand it and praise him for it because he's 14 ranks higher on the leaderboard than I am.
Don't worry, it's clear that idea was roundly mocked.
I find it's very liberating not to be on the leaderboard at all. How good at Dominion am I? Beats me!
"It depends on the board" is a blanket statement.
Sure, we can say "Wharf is good", but that's entirely useless. Saying that Wharf is good doesn't tell anyone how to play games with Wharf in them. "Whenever Wharf is on the board, you want to win the Wharf split" is not always true, but it's much more useful.
Winning the Wharf split is only likely to be important on a board where there's a way to play at least 3 Wharfs in a turn (Necropolis alone wouldn't be sufficient).But crossroads is? The thing is you have to choose how precise you want to be, because there is an edge case to everything. Encompassing all edge cases is pointless, but surely you want to include the less edgy ones? So the question is where you draw the line, and depending on the strength of the player, what Awaclus said is fine.
I don't even know what this leaderboard that you speak of is, but I think I'm alright at Dominion.but people seem to just understand it and praise him for it because he's 14 ranks higher on the leaderboard than I am.
Don't worry, it's clear that idea was roundly mocked.
I find it's very liberating not to be on the leaderboard at all. How good at Dominion am I? Beats me!
I find it's very liberating not to be on the leaderboard at all. How good at Dominion am I? Beats me!
I'm going to ruin your day! You're quite good!
Actually, I would rather say that all high-level Dominion advice necessarily has to be either vague enough that it's entirely useless or "wrong".
Well then that's a pretty sad state of strategic discussion. There's plenty of middle ground between "It depends on the board" and blanket statements. We can say "Wharf is good" and still acknowledge that it's not always the best card and discuss when those exceptions might occur.
"It depends on the board" is a blanket statement.
Sure, we can say "Wharf is good", but that's entirely useless. Saying that Wharf is good doesn't tell anyone how to play games with Wharf in them. "Whenever Wharf is on the board, you want to win the Wharf split" is not always true, but it's much more useful.
It's refreshing to see such a lively discussion in this forum about Dominion, of all things. Spectacular! ;D
It's so easy to type these things because they're short
Even if what you're saying is right, it can decrease the tendency of others to think about boards for themselves
which is so easily remedied by you just giving reasons for what you're saying!
It can be a bit frustrating to put so much care into what I type, have it be perfectly clear to me, and have people misunderstand me to the point where they think I'm saying something completely different than what I am; all while SCSN can just spout out whatever he wants, saying it so carelessly that it can be inaccurate and even misleading, but people seem to just understand it and praise him for it because he's 14 ranks higher on the leaderboard than I am.
I'd like to know what I said that made this unclear. I can't find anything.
I happen to be very well-versed in classical rhetoric and have spent an inordinate amount of time deliberately honing my writing skills. What you mistake for carelesness on my part is simply the apparent randomness with which a concert pianist smashes his hands on the keys and magically produces widely appreciated tones. It can be a quite frustrating experience indeed if you're up next and don't actually know anything about harmony!
You can argue that it shouldn't be like that, but then you'd be like the captain of the military ship approaching a lighthouse who angrily commands it to move out of the way. Reality is not going anywhere; either master its rules or keep feeling like a victim of forces that only appear to be outside of your control. A wise man once coined an applicable acronym: YMYOSL ;)
I happen to be very well-versed in classical rhetoric and have spent an inordinate amount of time deliberately honing my writing skills. What you mistake for carelesness on my part is simply the apparent randomness with which a concert pianist smashes his hands on the keys and magically produces widely appreciated tones. It can be a quite frustrating experience indeed if you're up next and don't actually know anything about harmony!
Here you go: A fundamental observation underlying rhetoric is that people respond much stronger to the structure of an argument than to its content. Since my position is crystal-clear and you're rather violently arguing against it, they're going to subconsciously assume that you disagree with it to the core (you wouldn't throw a big fit over, say, the precise frequency of "almost always", after all). The only way to bring across a nuanced point is to tone down the anger and frustration, actually state your general agreement with my position, and then say that you just want to add a basic caveat. When you try to present a nuanced point with a strong stance you're bound to fail, as when tone and content are incongruent, tone takes priority and content will be distorted.
QuoteI happen to be very well-versed in classical rhetoric and have spent an inordinate amount of time deliberately honing my writing skills. What you mistake for carelesness on my part is simply the apparent randomness with which a concert pianist smashes his hands on the keys and magically produces widely appreciated tones. It can be a quite frustrating experience indeed if you're up next and don't actually know anything about harmony!
Here you go: A fundamental observation underlying rhetoric is that people respond much stronger to the structure of an argument than to its content. Since my position is crystal-clear and you're rather violently arguing against it, they're going to subconsciously assume that you disagree with it to the core (you wouldn't throw a big fit over, say, the precise frequency of "almost always", after all). The only way to bring across a nuanced point is to tone down the anger and frustration, actually state your general agreement with my position, and then say that you just want to add a basic caveat. When you try to present a nuanced point with a strong stance you're bound to fail, as when tone and content are incongruent, tone takes priority and content will be distorted.
Is this satire?
I happen to be very well-versed in classical rhetoric and have spent an inordinate amount of time deliberately honing my writing skills. What you mistake for carelesness on my part is simply the apparent randomness with which a concert pianist smashes his hands on the keys and magically produces widely appreciated tones. It can be a quite frustrating experience indeed if you're up next and don't actually know anything about harmony!
Except that purely on the basis of rhetoric (hopefully not, but probably) AdamH is much more convincing to me.
I happen to be very well-versed in classical rhetoric and have spent an inordinate amount of time deliberately honing my writing skills. What you mistake for carelesness on my part is simply the apparent randomness with which a concert pianist smashes his hands on the keys and magically produces widely appreciated tones. It can be a quite frustrating experience indeed if you're up next and don't actually know anything about harmony!That made me smile, your writing style is truly enjoyable. I hope there is a bit of self-irony between these lines though.
I happen to be very well-versed in classical rhetoric and have spent an inordinate amount of time deliberately honing my writing skills. What you mistake for carelesness on my part is simply the apparent randomness with which a concert pianist smashes his hands on the keys and magically produces widely appreciated tones. It can be a quite frustrating experience indeed if you're up next and don't actually know anything about harmony!That made me smile, your writing style is truly enjoyable. I hope there is a bit of self-irony between these lines though.
Yes, because clearly I was suggesting we change the Wharf article to literally "Wharf is good". Of course it's pretty useless if that's all you say about it. But I think statements like the one you said can be pretty harmful. I'd much rather read about WHEN it's important to win the Wharf split. What needs to be true about the board for winning the Wharf split to be less essential? And if you don't have time to get into that, then at least qualify your statement with a "usually" or something along those lines so beginners don't read it and start playing robotically by that guideline. Sure, expert players won't take it that way, but then again expert players probably aren't the ones who need to be told that winning the Wharf split is generally important.
Oh, and I hate Interstellar Casus Belli. Other take over cards you can play around, but that one is just silly. It simply breaks the game in 3P+ faster than you can say "Kingmaking".
I can't say no.That's what she said?
The way I see it is this. When I was new, I was told strategies, and I was cool with it. And then there were always strings attached, inconsistencies and edge cases. Nothing was definite, everything had a sort of Descartes and nihilist feel to it. I didn't really know anything and nothing I was taught mattered at all. [...] It's better to just say general truths, and say everything generally works, but has edge cases than to bring up all of the scenarios. Save that for more experienced players, is what I propose.
Yes, because clearly I was suggesting we change the Wharf article to literally "Wharf is good". Of course it's pretty useless if that's all you say about it. But I think statements like the one you said can be pretty harmful. I'd much rather read about WHEN it's important to win the Wharf split. What needs to be true about the board for winning the Wharf split to be less essential? And if you don't have time to get into that, then at least qualify your statement with a "usually" or something along those lines so beginners don't read it and start playing robotically by that guideline. Sure, expert players won't take it that way, but then again expert players probably aren't the ones who need to be told that winning the Wharf split is generally important.
I'm probably guilty of adding the "usually" way too often myself.
The thing is, all strategy advice about Dominion depends on the kingdom. Everyone knows that. If I say that you should always try to win the Wharf split, everyone knows that it's not always true. Even if someone memorizes that exact piece of advice, when they come across a kingdom where they don't want to win the Wharf split, they can probably see it themselves, and if not, then they'll just lose that one game and learn a lot. When there's no particular reason why it wouldn't be true, people will follow the advice the way it's supposed to be followed, and win.
If I say that you should usually try to win the Wharf split, and then someone memorizes that, the advice is not as efficient because there are two layers of uncertainty here: the "everything depends on the kingdom" that the person already knows, and my "usually". That adds up, and then there is more of it than necessary, and while it will help them avoid Wharf when they should, it will help them actually go for the Wharves a lot less, and that's the more important part.
If you're writing an article about a card, then you should be knowledgeable and bothered enough to actually explain some useful edge cases for the advice you're giving. There's no need to mention obscure stuff that requires, like, 2 or more cards or a very specific situation, but it's good to mention that being able to play a lot of discard attacks can seriously slow Hermit/Market Square down. But it's not reasonable to demand that every piece of advice given on the Game Reports forum or something like that must be a mini-article covering all the edge cases. It takes time to write, it takes time to read, and it's probably not what the OP (or whoever it is) is looking for. There's also the issue that not every high-level player is perfect. For example, I don't have Governor on Goko or IRL, which is why I'm experienced enough to tell you that you should always buy lots of Governors, but not experienced enough to be able to come up with some relatively common counterexample scenarios on the spot. I don't think that means I'm not allowed to tell people they should buy lots of Governors.
The way I see it is this. When I was new, I was told strategies, and I was cool with it. And then there were always strings attached, inconsistencies and edge cases. Nothing was definite, everything had a sort of Descartes and nihilist feel to it. I didn't really know anything and nothing I was taught mattered at all. [...] It's better to just say general truths, and say everything generally works, but has edge cases than to bring up all of the scenarios. Save that for more experienced players, is what I propose.
This is a really important observation. When someone is new and/or stuck in a suboptimal habit, they need simple directions to a new playground, not elaborate minutiae. It's similar to someone struggling with basic high school math asking whether x*y equals y*x. The unequivocally correct answer is "yes, it does!". If someone would interferes by mumbling something about quaternions or matrix algebra, he doesn't deserve applause for being technically correct, he deserves to get kicked out of class.
Advice needs to be tailored to the specific needs of your audience, and in the case of Urchins I saw a lot of players from all levels making gross blunders that my simple prescription would mostly correct. It's silly to presume that this somehow holds people back. Teaching Newtonian gravity in highschool doesn't prevent students from learning General Relativity later; it's actually smuggling in advanced nuances too early that messes up learning the most.
Oh, and I hate Interstellar Casus Belli. Other take over cards you can play around, but that one is just silly. It simply breaks the game in 3P+ faster than you can say "Kingmaking".
You can just avoid military altogether, and it can be tough for the ICB player to produce the "seed" prestige needed to get it started. Yes IMPERIUM Invasion Fleet does allow you to combo to take over any world, but that is pretty dang expensive and requires both cards to end up in your tableau and you have to be able to afford that in the first place. My beef with Brink of War is that prestige and develop-spam are a bit too strong compared with previous expansions.
Well you're allowed to say whatever you want. I just personally prefer when people say things that are true or useful. And everything we say is context-dependent. I'm not suggesting every post you make be a mini-article detailing all of the finer points about a card's usage. In the Game Reports forum especially a statement like "Winning the Wharf split is important" is probably fine as it will usually be pertaining to a specific board. But in general I still think it's a bad thing to say. Winning the Wharf split often is important, but not always, and even when it is there are other things to bear in mind. You need to make sure you have enough Villages to support your Wharves, for starters. On a BM board it's usually not as essential that you win the split as they're unlikely to run out. If there is other draw on the board and you don't need all that +Buy you may consider buying that other card at some point instead. You keep saying that people are smart enough to know when these things are true. Well if everyone's just smart enough to figure these cards out on their own then what's the point of discussing strategy? You also say that if they follow this advice and screw up then they'll know better later. This may work, but when you lose a game it's not always clear why. A player may very well be inclined to think "Well, I know winning the Wharf split is important, so I must have lost for some other reason". I mean sure, enough trial-and-error will eventually teach anybody how to play the game, but if we just give accurate advice in the first place then maybe we can expedite the process.
...It's actually smuggling in advanced nuances too early that messes up learning the most.
Oh, and I hate Interstellar Casus Belli. Other take over cards you can play around, but that one is just silly. It simply breaks the game in 3P+ faster than you can say "Kingmaking".
You can just avoid military altogether, and it can be tough for the ICB player to produce the "seed" prestige needed to get it started. Yes IMPERIUM Invasion Fleet does allow you to combo to take over any world, but that is pretty dang expensive and requires both cards to end up in your tableau and you have to be able to afford that in the first place. My beef with Brink of War is that prestige and develop-spam are a bit too strong compared with previous expansions.
It's bad enough that ICB kills opportunistic military, but what it does to Contact Specialist is beyond words. You just can't play that card anymore.
I don't mind prestige as much as others, but it's true that it's very powerful. The real problem is that if two players go after it, whoever is not getting the bonus is in a pretty bad position.
...I wonder which of the two ongoing conversations is more off-topic.
This is a really important observation. When someone is new and/or stuck in a suboptimal habit, they need simple directions to a new playground, not elaborate minutiae. It's similar to someone struggling with basic high school math asking whether x*y equals y*x. The unequivocally correct answer is "yes, it does!". If someone would interferes by mumbling something about quaternions or matrix algebra, he doesn't deserve applause for being technically correct, he deserves to get kicked out of class.
Advice needs to be tailored to the specific needs of your audience, and in the case of Urchins I saw a lot of players from all levels making gross blunders that my simple prescription would mostly correct. It's silly to presume that this somehow holds people back. Teaching Newtonian gravity in highschool doesn't prevent students from learning General Relativity later; it's actually smuggling in advanced nuances too early that messes up learning the most.
Hey, can we pivot back to the cards we hate? I think things are getting a little too personal between Adam and SCSN, which is a real shame given what great contributions they've both made to the forum. Stopping to count to 10 would help.You know, I think what Adam and SCNS have been saying has been building up for a while. I'm sure it'll pass, but they'll get all their anger out and be bros again. I would've worry about it, most people are enjoying the show but mostly focused on the cards that people hate.
That said, AdamH is completely correct...
About Shanty Town. Such a frustrating and unreliable card.
Other than that, the worst thing I can say about a card is that it's boring. Woodcutter might be the supreme example, given the presence of Market as a much more enjoyable +buy source.
I don't like Warehouse. It's super boring, no interesting choices, rarely adds something new to the board, yet is still a very good card so I have to buy it :(I can see why you'd hate Warehouse and Hoard, I just didn't really expect anyone to. But I can totally see where you're coming from with Alchemist.
I also don't like alchemists. I hate getting a chain going and then at the worst possible moment not drawing a potion. Also they don't do anything.
Oh, and hoard, I don't like hoard. It's yellow, and encourages you to buy green cards to get more yellow cards. Bleh.
What I dislike about your style is that gives players a fish
but that doesn't do much to show them why the insight is true
Of course if you really want to get good at dominion (as in have a high ranking) you don't bother reading the board at all - just go play more and then do an after action on the games you play to identify how things are playing out.
I think things are getting a little too personal between Adam and SCSN, which is a real shame given what great contributions they've both made to the forum.
Seriously, there is no point dropping the discussion. I think this forum has enough meme threads that one more serious topic among them won't hurt. Just don't read it if you don't like to. But Adam brought up a legitimate concern that is not unimportant for this forum. I think it's great that we discuss this here.Yes, I myself enjoyed reading the "off-topic" discussion this time around. Though, if it needs to continue much further then I think it should go in another thread, where people will be less hesitant to chime in because it's the "Cards you Hate!" thread, a thread that spurs some fun discussion on its own.
SilverReally? Without Silver, it would be a LOT harder to get up to $5 and $6 cards, and you'd need a lot of Gold to buy Provinces!
Hate is a bit strong. It's more that I find the card uninteresting, and actively enjoy building decks that never gain a Silver.SilverReally? Without Silver, it would be a LOT harder to get up to $5 and $6 cards, and you'd need a lot of Gold to buy Provinces!
Hate is a bit strong. It's more that I find the card uninteresting, and actively enjoy building decks that never gain a Silver.SilverReally? Without Silver, it would be a LOT harder to get up to $5 and $6 cards, and you'd need a lot of Gold to buy Provinces!
What is YMYOSL?
What is YMYOSL?
Back to topic, has anyone else made the experience that Possession is more enjoyable in games IRL than online (which isn't hard since it's not enjoyable online at all), especially for more casual players? Those are unlikely to focus their strategy on getting lots of Possessions (or lots of anything) and thus when they play it once or twice, it's a a moment of special satisfaction to them while the person being possessed usually doesn't mind it that much if it's only for one turn.
Seriously, there is no point dropping the discussion. I think this forum has enough meme threads that one more serious topic among them won't hurt. Just don't read it if you don't like to. But Adam brought up a legitimate concern that is not unimportant for this forum. I think it's great that we discuss this here.Yes, I myself enjoyed reading the "off-topic" discussion this time around. Though, if it needs to continue much further then I think it should go in another thread, where people will be less hesitant to chime in because it's the "Cards you Hate!" thread, a thread that spurs some fun discussion on its own.
I'm not sure how I feel about most of the commonly hated cards such as Possession and Cultist. However, I strongly dislike Peddler of all cards. In games with no good sources of +buy, it's fine as a "oh I can pick this up for $2" (I'll try GendoIkari's Chrome extension later). But in games with lots of +Buy and +Actions, it's just like "Okay, I get 3 Peddlers this turn, then you get 3 on your turn, then I get the remaining 4 on my turn *sticks tongue out*. Oh and I have Remodel in my deck" (I'm in no mood to discuss punctuation in quotation, but I'm of the "This is a sentence". camp).
It's a bit sad for me that Peddler is one of Donald's favourite Prosperity cards.
The way I see it is this. When I was new, I was told strategies, and I was cool with it. And then there were always strings attached, inconsistencies and edge cases. Nothing was definite, everything had a sort of Descartes and nihilist feel to it. I didn't really know anything and nothing I was taught mattered at all. [...] It's better to just say general truths, and say everything generally works, but has edge cases than to bring up all of the scenarios. Save that for more experienced players, is what I propose.
This is a really important observation. When someone is new and/or stuck in a suboptimal habit, they need simple directions to a new playground, not elaborate minutiae. It's similar to someone struggling with basic high school math asking whether x*y equals y*x. The unequivocally correct answer is "yes, it does!". If someone would interferes by mumbling something about quaternions or matrix algebra, he doesn't deserve applause for being technically correct, he deserves to get kicked out of class.
Advice needs to be tailored to the specific needs of your audience, and in the case of Urchins I saw a lot of players from all levels making gross blunders that my simple prescription would mostly correct. It's silly to presume that this somehow holds people back. Teaching Newtonian gravity in highschool doesn't prevent students from learning General Relativity later; it's actually smuggling in advanced nuances too early that messes up learning the most.
Seriously, there is no point dropping the discussion. I think this forum has enough meme threads that one more serious topic among them won't hurt. Just don't read it if you don't like to. But Adam brought up a legitimate concern that is not unimportant for this forum. I think it's great that we discuss this here.Yes, I myself enjoyed reading the "off-topic" discussion this time around. Though, if it needs to continue much further then I think it should go in another thread, where people will be less hesitant to chime in because it's the "Cards you Hate!" thread, a thread that spurs some fun discussion on its own.
I'm not sure how I feel about most of the commonly hated cards such as Possession and Cultist. However, I strongly dislike Peddler of all cards. In games with no good sources of +buy, it's fine as a "oh I can pick this up for $2" (I'll try GendoIkari's Chrome extension later). But in games with lots of +Buy and +Actions, it's just like "Okay, I get 3 Peddlers this turn, then you get 3 on your turn, then I get the remaining 4 on my turn *sticks tongue out*. Oh and I have Remodel in my deck" (I'm in no mood to discuss punctuation in quotation, but I'm of the "This is a sentence". camp).
It's a bit sad for me that Peddler is one of Donald's favourite Prosperity cards.
See, I'm the opposite. If there aren't enough buys in a Peddler, I get frustrated; especially if I can't decide between a gold or a Peddler or something else.
SilverReally? Without Silver, it would be a LOT harder to get up to $5 and $6 cards, and you'd need a lot of Gold to buy Provinces!
I try not to but too many Silvers when I'm playing with an Engine, but you really need a 'slighshot' card like Moneylender or Baron to get you up to 6 on turn 3 so that you can jump right to Gold. With BM, however, a Silver is almost always a good buy.SilverReally? Without Silver, it would be a LOT harder to get up to $5 and $6 cards, and you'd need a lot of Gold to buy Provinces!
Okay, so in the spirit of making this a teachable moment...
Yes, an early Silver (or something that gives you $2) makes it rather easier to get $5 cards, but if you look through the game logs of top players or watch the streams, you will find that, surprisingly often, the Top 100 only buy the one, and they might even trash it or pass it later on after it's served its purpose.
And there are surprisingly many games when top players never buy (or even gain) one at all, and yet these are often games that are over in like 12 or 13 turns. Once you figure out how this works, your rating cannot help but go up a lot.
I try not to but too many Silvers when I'm playing with an Engine, but you really need a 'slighshot' card like Moneylender or Baron to get you up to 6 on turn 3 so that you can jump right to Gold. With BM, however, a Silver is almost always a good buy.
I tend to buy Gold if I hit $6, as I think that it will allow me to get more $5 actions down the road, and it will increase the average hand value more than most $5 cards at that point in the game.I try not to but too many Silvers when I'm playing with an Engine, but you really need a 'slighshot' card like Moneylender or Baron to get you up to 6 on turn 3 so that you can jump right to Gold. With BM, however, a Silver is almost always a good buy.
You don't want Gold right away when you're playing an engine. The $5 Actions are probably much more important. Also, Moneylender doesn't give you any more money than a Silver does (it does remove the Copper from your deck though, which is very nice).
I tend to buy Gold if I hit $6, as I think that it will allow me to get more $5 actions down the road, and it will increase the average hand value more than most $5 cards at that point in the game.I try not to but too many Silvers when I'm playing with an Engine, but you really need a 'slighshot' card like Moneylender or Baron to get you up to 6 on turn 3 so that you can jump right to Gold. With BM, however, a Silver is almost always a good buy.
You don't want Gold right away when you're playing an engine. The $5 Actions are probably much more important. Also, Moneylender doesn't give you any more money than a Silver does (it does remove the Copper from your deck though, which is very nice).
I tend to buy Gold if I hit $6, as I think that it will allow me to get more $5 actions down the road, and it will increase the average hand value more than most $5 cards at that point in the game.I try not to but too many Silvers when I'm playing with an Engine, but you really need a 'slighshot' card like Moneylender or Baron to get you up to 6 on turn 3 so that you can jump right to Gold. With BM, however, a Silver is almost always a good buy.
You don't want Gold right away when you're playing an engine. The $5 Actions are probably much more important. Also, Moneylender doesn't give you any more money than a Silver does (it does remove the Copper from your deck though, which is very nice).
You shouldn't.
it will increase the average hand value more than most $5 cards at that point in the game.
If the payload of your engine is treasure, then I think it will help you a lot...it will increase the average hand value more than most $5 cards at that point in the game.
This might be true, but the $5 action is going to do much more for you in the long run.
I try not to but too many Silvers when I'm playing with an Engine, but you really need a 'slighshot' card like Moneylender or Baron to get you up to 6 on turn 3 so that you can jump right to Gold. With BM, however, a Silver is almost always a good buy.SilverReally? Without Silver, it would be a LOT harder to get up to $5 and $6 cards, and you'd need a lot of Gold to buy Provinces!
Okay, so in the spirit of making this a teachable moment...
Yes, an early Silver (or something that gives you $2) makes it rather easier to get $5 cards, but if you look through the game logs of top players or watch the streams, you will find that, surprisingly often, the Top 100 only buy the one, and they might even trash it or pass it later on after it's served its purpose.
And there are surprisingly many games when top players never buy (or even gain) one at all, and yet these are often games that are over in like 12 or 13 turns. Once you figure out how this works, your rating cannot help but go up a lot.
Okay, you're probably right, thanks!I try not to but too many Silvers when I'm playing with an Engine, but you really need a 'slighshot' card like Moneylender or Baron to get you up to 6 on turn 3 so that you can jump right to Gold. With BM, however, a Silver is almost always a good buy.SilverReally? Without Silver, it would be a LOT harder to get up to $5 and $6 cards, and you'd need a lot of Gold to buy Provinces!
Okay, so in the spirit of making this a teachable moment...
Yes, an early Silver (or something that gives you $2) makes it rather easier to get $5 cards, but if you look through the game logs of top players or watch the streams, you will find that, surprisingly often, the Top 100 only buy the one, and they might even trash it or pass it later on after it's served its purpose.
And there are surprisingly many games when top players never buy (or even gain) one at all, and yet these are often games that are over in like 12 or 13 turns. Once you figure out how this works, your rating cannot help but go up a lot.
See, when playing an engine, you usually want up to 1 silver, just to help you reach $5 on your second shuffle. And when you do get "slinged" to $5 or $6, the card you want to be buying is not gold, but some powerful engine piece.
You want to get your engine up and running as fast as possible, and Gold will not help there (it may even hinder you, by making your engine pieces less likely to connect). Instead, $5/6 is price level that contains some pretty powerful engine cards you want to get ASAP (of course, depending on a board): cards that let you draw (Wharf, Journeyman, Stables...), slow down your opponent (Mountebank, Witch, Goons...), are powerful trashers (Upgrade, Junk Dealer...), offer some other benefits or combine any of the above (Margrave, Minion, Governor...). In engines, all of these are more important than an early Gold.
Okay, you're probably right, thanks!I try not to but too many Silvers when I'm playing with an Engine, but you really need a 'slighshot' card like Moneylender or Baron to get you up to 6 on turn 3 so that you can jump right to Gold. With BM, however, a Silver is almost always a good buy.SilverReally? Without Silver, it would be a LOT harder to get up to $5 and $6 cards, and you'd need a lot of Gold to buy Provinces!
Okay, so in the spirit of making this a teachable moment...
Yes, an early Silver (or something that gives you $2) makes it rather easier to get $5 cards, but if you look through the game logs of top players or watch the streams, you will find that, surprisingly often, the Top 100 only buy the one, and they might even trash it or pass it later on after it's served its purpose.
And there are surprisingly many games when top players never buy (or even gain) one at all, and yet these are often games that are over in like 12 or 13 turns. Once you figure out how this works, your rating cannot help but go up a lot.
See, when playing an engine, you usually want up to 1 silver, just to help you reach $5 on your second shuffle. And when you do get "slinged" to $5 or $6, the card you want to be buying is not gold, but some powerful engine piece.
You want to get your engine up and running as fast as possible, and Gold will not help there (it may even hinder you, by making your engine pieces less likely to connect). Instead, $5/6 is price level that contains some pretty powerful engine cards you want to get ASAP (of course, depending on a board): cards that let you draw (Wharf, Journeyman, Stables...), slow down your opponent (Mountebank, Witch, Goons...), are powerful trashers (Upgrade, Junk Dealer...), offer some other benefits or combine any of the above (Margrave, Minion, Governor...). In engines, all of these are more important than an early Gold.
There are of course boards where the only payload of your engine is Treasures. Even in that case it is important that you get your engine pieces first. Until you reliably draw your deck each turn, every Gold makes you more likely to stall.
Okay, you're probably right, thanks!I try not to but too many Silvers when I'm playing with an Engine, but you really need a 'slighshot' card like Moneylender or Baron to get you up to 6 on turn 3 so that you can jump right to Gold. With BM, however, a Silver is almost always a good buy.SilverReally? Without Silver, it would be a LOT harder to get up to $5 and $6 cards, and you'd need a lot of Gold to buy Provinces!
Okay, so in the spirit of making this a teachable moment...
Yes, an early Silver (or something that gives you $2) makes it rather easier to get $5 cards, but if you look through the game logs of top players or watch the streams, you will find that, surprisingly often, the Top 100 only buy the one, and they might even trash it or pass it later on after it's served its purpose.
And there are surprisingly many games when top players never buy (or even gain) one at all, and yet these are often games that are over in like 12 or 13 turns. Once you figure out how this works, your rating cannot help but go up a lot.
See, when playing an engine, you usually want up to 1 silver, just to help you reach $5 on your second shuffle. And when you do get "slinged" to $5 or $6, the card you want to be buying is not gold, but some powerful engine piece.
You want to get your engine up and running as fast as possible, and Gold will not help there (it may even hinder you, by making your engine pieces less likely to connect). Instead, $5/6 is price level that contains some pretty powerful engine cards you want to get ASAP (of course, depending on a board): cards that let you draw (Wharf, Journeyman, Stables...), slow down your opponent (Mountebank, Witch, Goons...), are powerful trashers (Upgrade, Junk Dealer...), offer some other benefits or combine any of the above (Margrave, Minion, Governor...). In engines, all of these are more important than an early Gold.
I'm of the "This is a sentence". camp).
That's the one with the douchebag creator who ripped off a Dominion fan's artwork, right?
Yes.
For those who aren't aware (https://boardgamegeek.com/image/395648/dominion):
Fan-made Dominion chip set (first):
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic395648_md.jpg)
Puzzle Strike (second):
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1266744_md.jpg)
Chancellor isn't weak. Insta-shuffle is a thumbs up in my book. It's just that it's weak relative to other $3 terminals.I wouldn't even say that. I think it's fairly average compared to most $3 terminals (there really aren't many). The problem is it doesn't measure up to any other terminals - it's not the cost that's the issue, it's the fact it has to compete with all possible terminals. That's why most $2 are cantrip-like.
That's the one with the douchebag creator who ripped off a Dominion fan's artwork, right?
Yes.
For those who aren't aware (https://boardgamegeek.com/image/395648/dominion):
Fan-made Dominion chip set (first):
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic395648_md.jpg)
Puzzle Strike (second):
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1266744_md.jpg)
Woah, until now I thought that people who were complaining that Puzzle Strike was a ripoff of the fan-made Dominion set were just talking about the concept of using round chips instead of cards. I didn't know until just now that the actual design/art of the chips was the same.
"inspired"
Oh geez, uh, hrmmm...I'm of the "This is a sentence". camp).
That makes no sense. The string "This is a sentence" is not a sentence - it needs a period to be complete. If you're trying to do logical punctuation, you should have written "I'm of the "This is a sentence." camp.".
oh man i see some Legendary Game Designer David Sirlin talk
that guy truly is a freaking legend in the fighting-game scene, for some right reasons and many wrong ones. i could write a novel about this, but i'll just say that he tried to improve one of the longest-lasting games in that genre and failed so miserably that everyone went back to the original after a year or two. he's also the mastermind behind Chess 2~
btw he wrote a hilariously awful article bashing dominion to hype up his game, including such gems as "starting with junk cards is bad design (because Reasons)". in fairness it was written before quite a few expansions came out, but i think cards like apothecary and baron were already around and he just ignored their existence when calling copper & estates completely useless. it appears to be gone now though...
oh man i see some Legendary Game Designer David Sirlin talk
that guy truly is a freaking legend in the fighting-game scene, for some right reasons and many wrong ones. i could write a novel about this, but i'll just say that he tried to improve one of the longest-lasting games in that genre and failed so miserably that everyone went back to the original after a year or two. he's also the mastermind behind Chess 2~
btw he wrote a hilariously awful article bashing dominion to hype up his game, including such gems as "starting with junk cards is bad design (because Reasons)". in fairness it was written before quite a few expansions came out, but i think cards like apothecary and baron were already around and he just ignored their existence when calling copper & estates completely useless. it appears to be gone now though...
If I were him, and people were tearing me a third asshole for bashing Dominion, I'd try to hide it too.
oh man i see some Legendary Game Designer David Sirlin talk
that guy truly is a freaking legend in the fighting-game scene, for some right reasons and many wrong ones. i could write a novel about this, but i'll just say that he tried to improve one of the longest-lasting games in that genre and failed so miserably that everyone went back to the original after a year or two. he's also the mastermind behind Chess 2~
btw he wrote a hilariously awful article bashing dominion to hype up his game, including such gems as "starting with junk cards is bad design (because Reasons)". in fairness it was written before quite a few expansions came out, but i think cards like apothecary and baron were already around and he just ignored their existence when calling copper & estates completely useless. it appears to be gone now though...
If I were him, and people were tearing me a third asshole for bashing Dominion, I'd try to hide it too.
He probably learned from the time he got the second one.
Nope. I hear he has 8 now.
oh man i see some Legendary Game Designer David Sirlin talk
that guy truly is a freaking legend in the fighting-game scene, for some right reasons and many wrong ones. i could write a novel about this, but i'll just say that he tried to improve one of the longest-lasting games in that genre and failed so miserably that everyone went back to the original after a year or two. he's also the mastermind behind Chess 2~
btw he wrote a hilariously awful article bashing dominion to hype up his game, including such gems as "starting with junk cards is bad design (because Reasons)". in fairness it was written before quite a few expansions came out, but i think cards like apothecary and baron were already around and he just ignored their existence when calling copper & estates completely useless. it appears to be gone now though...
If I were him, and people were tearing me a third asshole for bashing Dominion, I'd try to hide it too.
He probably learned from the time he got the second one.
Nope. I hear he has 8 now.
oh man i see some Legendary Game Designer David Sirlin talk
that guy truly is a freaking legend in the fighting-game scene, for some right reasons and many wrong ones. i could write a novel about this, but i'll just say that he tried to improve one of the longest-lasting games in that genre and failed so miserably that everyone went back to the original after a year or two. he's also the mastermind behind Chess 2~
btw he wrote a hilariously awful article bashing dominion to hype up his game, including such gems as "starting with junk cards is bad design (because Reasons)". in fairness it was written before quite a few expansions came out, but i think cards like apothecary and baron were already around and he just ignored their existence when calling copper & estates completely useless. it appears to be gone now though...
If I were him, and people were tearing me a third asshole for bashing Dominion, I'd try to hide it too.
He probably learned from the time he got the second one.
Nope. I hear he has 8 now.
If he has 8, does that mean the 8th one has a name that starts with P?
I just realized David Sirlin wrote that book 'Playing To Win', which I actually liked when I was much younger. I guess I'd better reread it, because Sirlin is NEVER right.
I just realized David Sirlin wrote that book 'Playing To Win', which I actually liked when I was much younger. I guess I'd better reread it, because Sirlin is NEVER right.
There's actually nothing wrong with Playing To Win.
Man, Dominion is a weird favorite game for some of you folks who hate swingy-ness so much.
Man, Dominion is a weird favorite game for some of you folks who hate swingy-ness so much.
What happened to YMYOSL?
I don't know if you guys even want this discussion to revolve around the cards you hate anymore but I just need an outlet for my frustration: I. Hate. Warrior.
I really hate it.
What was Donald thinking?
I don't know if you guys even want this discussion to revolve around the cards you hate anymore but I just need an outlet for my frustration: I. Hate. Warrior.
I really hate it.
What was Donald thinking?
I think any card that trashes a card off the top of your deck in general is oppressive. Knights, Saboteur, Swindler, Warrior.. All of them suck.
Maybe I should make this in the form of the unpopular opinion potion meme, but trashing attacks are fine and the ones that Donald has published are all very reasonable.
I don't know if you guys even want this discussion to revolve around the cards you hate anymore but I just need an outlet for my frustration: I. Hate. Warrior.
I really hate it.
What was Donald thinking?
I think any card that trashes a card off the top of your deck in general is oppressive. Knights, Saboteur, Swindler, Warrior.. All of them suck.
Dude, have you not played with Giant yet?
Man, Dominion is a weird favorite game for some of you folks who hate swingy-ness so much.
What happened to YMYOSL?
Man, Dominion is a weird favorite game for some of you folks who hate swingy-ness so much.
What happened to YMYOSL?
YMYOSL is an attitude, or more of a frame of mind. It is the realization that many times (likely the vast majority) there were play decisions made that were much more impactful in the win or the loss than bad luck.
Of course in reality shuffle luck still has a significant impact, especially in the first few shuffles. I probably struggle more from bashing myself being a bad player rather than realizing that sometimes the opponent really does get to go first, open with mountebank, then play it T3 and T5 before I've even got one copy in my deck.
Man, Dominion is a weird favorite game for some of you folks who hate swingy-ness so much.
What happened to YMYOSL?
YMYOSL is an attitude, or more of a frame of mind. It is the realization that many times (likely the vast majority) there were play decisions made that were much more impactful in the win or the loss than bad luck.
Of course in reality shuffle luck still has a significant impact, especially in the first few shuffles. I probably struggle more from bashing myself being a bad player rather than realizing that sometimes the opponent really does get to go first, open with mountebank, then play it T3 and T5 before I've even got one copy in my deck.
It just seems contradictory to me to say that Dominion is a game with a significant amount of swingyness (luck) and also say that luck plays a minor role.
Man, Dominion is a weird favorite game for some of you folks who hate swingy-ness so much.
What happened to YMYOSL?
YMYOSL is an attitude, or more of a frame of mind. It is the realization that many times (likely the vast majority) there were play decisions made that were much more impactful in the win or the loss than bad luck.
Of course in reality shuffle luck still has a significant impact, especially in the first few shuffles. I probably struggle more from bashing myself being a bad player rather than realizing that sometimes the opponent really does get to go first, open with mountebank, then play it T3 and T5 before I've even got one copy in my deck.
It just seems contradictory to me to say that Dominion is a game with a significant amount of swingyness (luck) and also say that luck plays a minor role.
I'll just add that this discussion assumes perfect play by both players -- but of course if you assume perfect play by both players then any game will be decided by luck.
Cards you hate keeps coming up on my refresh so I finally will add one:
Loan. Hate that card.
And in a double-Jack mirror, you might decide Province vs Gold if you hit $8 a little early, or Gold vs Duchy later on, but do those affect the outcome more than who hits $8 and who hits $7 in the endgame?
I'd say "good enough play" rather than "perfect play," meaning that at some skill level (higher on some kingdoms than others), both players do well enough that their mistakes have less bearing on the winner than luck. Let's take Jack as an example, since I know he's among your favorite cards and you wrote the article on him. When he appears without villages or his few other major synergies, and there aren't attacks nasty enough to slow him down (reasonably common conditions), you can't do much better than double-Jack. And in a double-Jack mirror, you might decide Province vs Gold if you hit $8 a little early, or Gold vs Duchy later on, but do those affect the outcome more than who hits $8 and who hits $7 in the endgame? Or whose Jacks collide, or miss a few shuffles?
So at your position on the leaderboard, and even more up in the WW/Stef area, I wouldn't say all the variance due to player decisions has been removed, but I would say enough of it has been removed that you start to see lots more games decided by luck than skill disparity.
Cards you hate keeps coming up on my refresh so I finally will add one:
Loan. Hate that card.
I don't like Loan either but you can bet I'll go for it anyway on an engine board without other trashing. I once made a deck that consisted almost exclusively of Loans and Bakers and won. But there wasn't much else going on in the Kingdom, as you might imagine.
Cards you hate keeps coming up on my refresh so I finally will add one:
Loan. Hate that card.
I don't like Loan either but you can bet I'll go for it anyway on an engine board without other trashing. I once made a deck that consisted almost exclusively of Loans and Bakers and won. But there wasn't much else going on in the Kingdom, as you might imagine.
The very fact that loan is sometimes necessary is what makes me dislike it. No other trasher feels as terrible to play as loan, especially in any kingdom where realistically you are going to need at least one other treasure to hit 5 a few times and get going. Loan hitting silver when there is a 7/8 chance for it to hit copper feels a lot like someone sea hagging your sea hag, but technically you did it to yourself, which makes it just that much worse
Cards you hate keeps coming up on my refresh so I finally will add one:
Loan. Hate that card.
I don't like Loan either but you can bet I'll go for it anyway on an engine board without other trashing. I once made a deck that consisted almost exclusively of Loans and Bakers and won. But there wasn't much else going on in the Kingdom, as you might imagine.
The very fact that loan is sometimes necessary is what makes me dislike it. No other trasher feels as terrible to play as loan, especially in any kingdom where realistically you are going to need at least one other treasure to hit 5 a few times and get going. Loan hitting silver when there is a 7/8 chance for it to hit copper feels a lot like someone sea hagging your sea hag, but technically you did it to yourself, which makes it just that much worse
Lookout is similar - maybe worse. It's often the strongest trashing option and not ignorable, but it's just not fun. It's uncomfortable to play, and when it ends up being a self-attack it's highly irritating.
You are speaking about something which you have no experience of. And I think making a common mistake when people talk about Dominion skill. Which is to talk about it as if it isn't something that varies wildly from game to game. I am playing these top players, and we are sometimes playing games really well, sometimes playing them ok, and sometimes playing them just terribly. And believe me, when you play terribly you get punished and you usually lose the game!
Cards you hate keeps coming up on my refresh so I finally will add one:
Loan. Hate that card.
I don't like Loan either but you can bet I'll go for it anyway on an engine board without other trashing. I once made a deck that consisted almost exclusively of Loans and Bakers and won. But there wasn't much else going on in the Kingdom, as you might imagine.
The very fact that loan is sometimes necessary is what makes me dislike it. No other trasher feels as terrible to play as loan, especially in any kingdom where realistically you are going to need at least one other treasure to hit 5 a few times and get going. Loan hitting silver when there is a 7/8 chance for it to hit copper feels a lot like someone sea hagging your sea hag, but technically you did it to yourself, which makes it just that much worse
Lookout is similar - maybe worse. It's often the strongest trashing option and not ignorable, but it's just not fun. It's uncomfortable to play, and when it ends up being a self-attack it's highly irritating.
I dispute this.
Early, as in the first few shuffles, lookout is completely safe. Later, you just need to play lookout carefully. If you get it early in the shuffle and have 3+ good cards and say less than six junk cards, just don't play it. If you're drawing your deck, a lot of times you can stop when you have 1-3 cards left, think through what they are, and, if the answer is one of them is a stray copper or what have you, you can still play lookout safely. I often go double lookout for this reason, because soon one can trash the other.
Loan otherwise plays similarly, but in my experience the tricks you can use to make sure it hits copper are considerably fewer, it doesn't work at all in a deck drawing engine without discard support, its terrible for cursing slogs, leaves your estates behind like little presents and for all this disadvantage its one advantage over lookout is that it produces a single coin, the very value of that which it is bought to eliminate from your deck.
So to me, they are not even in the same class.
But it does feel good to say all this. What a fine thread!
It happens very rarely that top players play terribly. Usually when one top player plays decidedly worse, it's because they chose a strategy that turned out to be clearly inferior,
In most of these games luck will still be the deciding factor. I'm not sure how many, but when I say "most" I mean more than 50%.
I agree with AdamH that you can always get better. But if in every game you lose, you are convinced it's something you did wrong, you will not improve either, because you will often "learn" the wrong thing. You have to consider the luck factor, which is often significant, as well as what you did and what your opponent did, and navigate between them to try to understand what would have been the best play. That's difficult. Sometimes it's pretty much impossible, because the luck skewed it so much. If you play the same strategy later, with more or less the same cards (and your opponent does too) then you have more to go on and might start to draw some conclusions (if you remember both games that is!).
We'll never agree on this of course. I really feel like top players generally want to delude themselves into thinking that luck plays a much smaller role than it does.
Dominion is definitely a high variance game. Given two players with roughly equal skill, sure they could have played better, but often it comes down to luck. That's why there is shuffling in the game. We've all played the game where our two opening buys end up at the bottom of the deck on the first shuffle. It happens. Not often, but it does. And so on and so forth. Once you fall behind, it's very hard to come back with certain swingy cards, like Tournament, Sea Hag, Familiar, etc. That's what I think this discussion is about. It's not that way with every card (Oh boy, you got an early Cartographer, big whoop), but I really wish Dominion had fewer cards that did.
I basically disagree with the viewpoint that you can even determine whether luck or skill was the "deciding factor" in a game (in most cases). It's a game people play with themselves to have some closure or "understanding" about the outcome, but is mostly just our brains latching onto the most obvious and easily communicated "reason" why a game was lost or won. Dominion games are big ole mixed bags of decisions and shuffles and because some cases are clearly luck or skill it makes us want to pigeonhole all our games that way, but it can't be done.
It's like when a basketball analyst looks for a "reason" why Team B lost, and they come up with something like Team A winning the rebound battle (when in fact the, uh, points battle is far more important).
Stonemason, Scheme, Bridge, Navigator, Silk Road, Young Witch, Bazaar, Horn of Plenty, Knights, Library, WharfYoung Witch is present, again with very weak trashing, but an amazing bane in Scheme. I chose to open YW/Silver hoping to spike 5 (and did so!), whereas he opened YW/Scheme and got the ideal for that (hit me with 2 curses, topdecked Scheme every time to ensure perfect defense). Which opening is better given the flop possibilities in both cases? Is a totally different opening better?
Throne Room
I am absolutely over this - never links up with any of my action cards while my opponent seems to string together all manner of B/S connections.
Hate the thing
I play terribly all of the time, there are very few games I go back an look at where I don't feel I made any mistakes at all. I'm sure other "top players" will say the same thing. And most of the time these misplays are tactical things -- not the kind you're talking about. Little ways I could have played my turn better or ordered my buys to make things move along quicker, or reduce the chance of bad things happening to me. Sometimes I catch these things while I'm playing, but a lot of the time I only see them on the replay or when someone in chat tells me about it. I'm quite sure that if someone looks at their play closely enough, they will find tons of these, everywhere. In most turns of almost every game.
Maybe your definition of "terribly" is something I'm not picking up on, but any misplay (even a small one) is a chance for me to learn from it. Maybe you don't find any benefit in looking at your past games closely, that's OK.
You can say it's true, but I can say it isn't true (or at least that I don't know that it's true, just to give you the burden of proof :P) but both of us are just saying things based on our guts and not on actual knowledge. That number (50%) was effectively pulled out of thin air, I can pull a number out of thin air too and say it's less than 50%.
If you believe this is the case, then I'd say you need to work on getting better at learning. When I start a thread to talk about something and get feedback, my takeaways aren't specific moves I should have done better that game, it's assumptions about the way I play the game that need to change. Do I need to adjust in my mind the power level of a card or a pair of cards? Do I need to put in a mental note to slow down at a certain point in some games? (Never press the "play all treasures" button in a Farmland game. Just don't ever do it before thinking about what you're going to buy.) Or maybe I just need to play a bunch of games with a card or two cards or something to get a feel for something. It will be different for you but if you can't learn from your past games, maybe try learning a different way? I mean, you describe this problem and that just doesn't register with me so maybe it's on your end. I'm sorry but I feel like this isn't really helpful, what I'm saying here. :-\
I basically agree with you 100% on YMYOSL philosophy in theory and 100% with Adam in practice because one approach makes people look for mistakes and one makes people look for excuses. Anybody who gets better must necessarily hunt out their mistakes.
I basically agree with you 100% on YMYOSL philosophy in theory and 100% with Adam in practice because one approach makes people look for mistakes and one makes people look for excuses. Anybody who gets better must necessarily hunt out their mistakes.
To repeat: If the outcome was decided more by luck than by the players' decisions, you learn more by realizing this than not realizing it. You can still hunt out mistakes (whether you won or lost), but that sounds like something you can do by having better players tell you. If you're going to find mistakes yourself, you need the context of the game and seeing how your decisions influenced what happened, and that works less well the more luck skewed it.
I basically agree with you 100% on YMYOSL philosophy in theory and 100% with Adam in practice because one approach makes people look for mistakes and one makes people look for excuses. Anybody who gets better must necessarily hunt out their mistakes.
To repeat: If the outcome was decided more by luck than by the players' decisions, you learn more by realizing this than not realizing it. You can still hunt out mistakes (whether you won or lost), but that sounds like something you can do by having better players tell you. If you're going to find mistakes yourself, you need the context of the game and seeing how your decisions influenced what happened, and that works less well the more luck skewed it.
I basically agree with you 100% on YMYOSL philosophy in theory and 100% with Adam in practice because one approach makes people look for mistakes and one makes people look for excuses. Anybody who gets better must necessarily hunt out their mistakes.
To repeat: If the outcome was decided more by luck than by the players' decisions, you learn more by realizing this than not realizing it. You can still hunt out mistakes (whether you won or lost), but that sounds like something you can do by having better players tell you. If you're going to find mistakes yourself, you need the context of the game and seeing how your decisions influenced what happened, and that works less well the more luck skewed it.
Not being on Mic's level != having an invalid perspective. Besides, it's not like Jeebus is a new player; he's quite good.
What he's saying is valid. It is important to understand luck plays a big role in games and also to understand when luck was the deciding factor in something. However, it's also important to realize that you can do more about the factors you have control over and your energy is better spent worrying about those than luck.
Great Frickin' thing to do when you're one of the top players. I'm sure that if our other top players here make a mistake, they don't think about it, say luck happened and maaaayybe ask someone higher up than them to help. I'm sure that plan Especially helps Stef.The attitude that you can only be helped by someone "better" than you is a bizarre one. (im not saying you have that attitude, to be honest I'm struggling to see from your post what your opinion is on what I'm about to say) When we're talking about identifying mistakes, the best players make them, sure. And it doesn't necessarily take a better player to point them out. Anyone coming from a decently informed position can probably help just by being a second pair of eyes coming from an impartial position (or an opponent; discussion with opponents can be hugely fruitful). The idea that someone like, say, Seprix, is incapable of suggesting to, say, Stef, that he thinks that decision X in a game was a mistake (thus presumably initiating a helpful discussion for one or other of them), is kind of insane. (that sentence got away from me.)
Maybe when I stream today, someone can tell me what I'm doing?
Maybe when I stream today, someone can tell me what I'm doing?
I can. You're streaming.
Maybe when I stream today, someone can tell me what I'm doing?
I can. You're streaming.
Right now!?
Maybe when I stream today, someone can tell me what I'm doing?
I can. You're streaming.
Right now!?
No, when you stream today.
Maybe when I stream today, someone can tell me what I'm doing?
I can. You're streaming.
Right now!?
No, when you stream today.
I didn't realize you were making a joke because I was in a hurry.
Maybe when I stream today, someone can tell me what I'm doing?
I can. You're streaming.
Right now!?
No, when you stream today.
I didn't realize you were making a joke because I was in a hurry.
I think you can assume that every post of mint is a joke by default unless there's a reason to assume otherwise.
I haven't won more than 1 game in a row in almost a month, and I'm losing tons of games in between. This was not the case until now. It can't be luck, but I can't find many reasons why I lost anymore. It feels like my improving has stopped now. It's to the point where I kind of want a tutor for like a week because I'm so on tilt it seems. Maybe when I stream today, someone can tell me what I'm doing?
I haven't won more than 1 game in a row in almost a month, and I'm losing tons of games in between. This was not the case until now. It can't be luck, but I can't find many reasons why I lost anymore. It feels like my improving has stopped now. It's to the point where I kind of want a tutor for like a week because I'm so on tilt it seems. Maybe when I stream today, someone can tell me what I'm doing?
Just thought I would add this - skill development isn't linear. It peaks and plateaus at times. It doesn't mean you'll never get better, but that you may be in one of those plateaus for awhile. Are you more tired or busy than normal? That can make it hard to improve. The more you play when well rested, thoughtful, and focused, the sooner you'll leave your plateau and begin improving again.
Watch some videos, experiment with strategies you might not otherwise do, fuck around a bit. Maybe some of the old patterns you fall into are holding you back.
This has to be the most ridiculous thread I've read since that one about the frequency of three pile endings in high level games being basically 0 (on bgg I think).
This has to be the most ridiculous thread I've read since that one about the frequency of three pile endings in high level games being basically 0 (on bgg I think).
This has to be the most ridiculous thread I've read since that one about the frequency of three pile endings in high level games being basically 0 (on bgg I think).
ooh! anyone know where i can find this thread?
This has to be the most ridiculous thread I've read since that one about the frequency of three pile endings in high level games being basically 0 (on bgg I think).
ooh! anyone know where i can find this thread?
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1369555/2-player-game
This has to be the most ridiculous thread I've read since that one about the frequency of three pile endings in high level games being basically 0 (on bgg I think).
ooh! anyone know where i can find this thread?
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1369555/2-player-game
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
This has to be the most ridiculous thread I've read since that one about the frequency of three pile endings in high level games being basically 0 (on bgg I think).
ooh! anyone know where i can find this thread?
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1369555/2-player-game
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
Yes, but what makes for a classic internet argument is that he doesn't know that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Ugh. The plural of anecdote is not data.
It makes a kind of sense: if certain cards are better, the better players are going to tend to buy the same cards and hence the chance of a 3-pile would go up.
Chancellor isn't weak. Insta-shuffle is a thumbs up in my book. It's just that it's weak relative to other $3 terminals.I wouldn't even say that. I think it's fairly average compared to most $3 terminals (there really aren't many). The problem is it doesn't measure up to any other terminals - it's not the cost that's the issue, it's the fact it has to compete with all possible terminals. That's why most $2 are cantrip-like.
Chancellor isn't weak. Insta-shuffle is a thumbs up in my book. It's just that it's weak relative to other $3 terminals.I wouldn't even say that. I think it's fairly average compared to most $3 terminals (there really aren't many). The problem is it doesn't measure up to any other terminals - it's not the cost that's the issue, it's the fact it has to compete with all possible terminals. That's why most $2 are cantrip-like.
Would Chancellor be decent (almost too good maybe?) if it had a +Action?
Chancellor isn't weak. Insta-shuffle is a thumbs up in my book. It's just that it's weak relative to other $3 terminals.I wouldn't even say that. I think it's fairly average compared to most $3 terminals (there really aren't many). The problem is it doesn't measure up to any other terminals - it's not the cost that's the issue, it's the fact it has to compete with all possible terminals. That's why most $2 are cantrip-like.
Would Chancellor be decent (almost too good maybe?) if it had a +Action?
At $(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/32/Coin3.png/16px-Coin3.png)?! Yeah, it would! That's like a Silver that can discard with little downside limited to edge cases.
Chancellor isn't weak. Insta-shuffle is a thumbs up in my book. It's just that it's weak relative to other $3 terminals.I wouldn't even say that. I think it's fairly average compared to most $3 terminals (there really aren't many). The problem is it doesn't measure up to any other terminals - it's not the cost that's the issue, it's the fact it has to compete with all possible terminals. That's why most $2 are cantrip-like.
Would Chancellor be decent (almost too good maybe?) if it had a +Action?
At $(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/32/Coin3.png/16px-Coin3.png)?! Yeah, it would! That's like a Silver that can discard with little downside limited to edge cases.
Like Smithy and Witch?
Duke blows
it was a joke based on my avatar. You see, my avatar is a duke, so presumably, I am fond of duke (I am).Duke blows
Duke is an awesome card.
it was a joke based on my avatar. You see, my avatar is a duke, so presumably, I am fond of duke (I am).Duke blows
Duke is an awesome card.
I figured it would be humorous if I feigned dislike of duke while my avatar indicated quite the contrary. Based on the number of upvotes I got, I was wrong.
it was a joke based on my avatar. You see, my avatar is a duke, so presumably, I am fond of duke (I am).Duke blows
Duke is an awesome card.
I figured it would be humorous if I feigned dislike of duke while my avatar indicated quite the contrary. Based on the number of upvotes I got, I was wrong.
I don't like Black market at all. Sometimes it's a pretty cool card because you are able to play your treasures earlier. This is awesome in Draw to X or in DoubleTactician for example. But the main effect is ridiculous. Some cards of the BM deck are usually just game changing and give you a free win. Just a few examples:
- Tournament
- Goons
- Villages or even Crossroad in a Kingdom with awesome Terminals and without Villages
- Chapel (in you hit it early)
- Mountebank
I don't like Black market at all. Sometimes it's a pretty cool card because you are able to play your treasures earlier. This is awesome in Draw to X or in DoubleTactician for example. But the main effect is ridiculous. Some cards of the BM deck are usually just game changing and give you a free win. Just a few examples:
- Tournament
- Goons
- Villages or even Crossroad in a Kingdom with awesome Terminals and without Villages
- Chapel (in you hit it early)
- Mountebank
Buying the last Province while your opponent has at most a 5-point lead is also game-changing and gives you a free win. Now what can you to make it so that you're more likely to get that opportunity than your opponent is?
Similarly, what can you do to make it so that you're more likely to get some great cards out of the Black Market than your opponent is?
The answer to those two questions is more or less the same and is what Dominion is all about.
oh I can't stand provinces, dont even get me started.I don't like Black market at all. Sometimes it's a pretty cool card because you are able to play your treasures earlier. This is awesome in Draw to X or in DoubleTactician for example. But the main effect is ridiculous. Some cards of the BM deck are usually just game changing and give you a free win. Just a few examples:
- Tournament
- Goons
- Villages or even Crossroad in a Kingdom with awesome Terminals and without Villages
- Chapel (in you hit it early)
- Mountebank
Buying the last Province while your opponent has at most a 5-point lead is also game-changing and gives you a free win.
oh I can't stand provinces, dont even get me started.I don't like Black market at all. Sometimes it's a pretty cool card because you are able to play your treasures earlier. This is awesome in Draw to X or in DoubleTactician for example. But the main effect is ridiculous. Some cards of the BM deck are usually just game changing and give you a free win. Just a few examples:
- Tournament
- Goons
- Villages or even Crossroad in a Kingdom with awesome Terminals and without Villages
- Chapel (in you hit it early)
- Mountebank
Buying the last Province while your opponent has at most a 5-point lead is also game-changing and gives you a free win.
oh I can't stand provinces, dont even get me started.I don't like Black market at all. Sometimes it's a pretty cool card because you are able to play your treasures earlier. This is awesome in Draw to X or in DoubleTactician for example. But the main effect is ridiculous. Some cards of the BM deck are usually just game changing and give you a free win. Just a few examples:
- Tournament
- Goons
- Villages or even Crossroad in a Kingdom with awesome Terminals and without Villages
- Chapel (in you hit it early)
- Mountebank
Buying the last Province while your opponent has at most a 5-point lead is also game-changing and gives you a free win.
But you also think Dukes blow. You also hate Estates because they're junk cards. So what do you like?
oh I can't stand provinces, dont even get me started.I don't like Black market at all. Sometimes it's a pretty cool card because you are able to play your treasures earlier. This is awesome in Draw to X or in DoubleTactician for example. But the main effect is ridiculous. Some cards of the BM deck are usually just game changing and give you a free win. Just a few examples:
- Tournament
- Goons
- Villages or even Crossroad in a Kingdom with awesome Terminals and without Villages
- Chapel (in you hit it early)
- Mountebank
Buying the last Province while your opponent has at most a 5-point lead is also game-changing and gives you a free win.
But you also think Dukes blow. You also hate Estates because they're junk cards. So what do you like?
Harems
Buying the last Province while your opponent has at most a 5-point lead is also game-changing and gives you a free win. Now what can you to make it so that you're more likely to get that opportunity than your opponent is?
Similarly, what can you do to make it so that you're more likely to get some great cards out of the Black Market than your opponent is?
The answer to those two questions is more or less the same and is what Dominion is all about.
The answer to the latter is, first of all, "almost nothing"
Playing BM often is usually not the best idea.
It's clear that certain cards are more swingy than others; that's the point.
Im not certain about this, but wasn't the point that one player can pull a power card earlier than the more skilled player has a chance to excercise his superior skill? Like, if on turn 3 or 5 one player just gets lucky and wins the prized bm card. That rearly happens to the eigth province.
And you're sort of admitting this (that bm is swingy). You're just saying it's also high skill, which, fine, but people can still dislike it for being swingy.
Im unsure what your position is. Are arguing that bm is not an overly swingy card, cuz that's the only point that was made against it.actually that's not really true, is it. But whatever, are you arguing THAT point?
In Black Market games on the other hand, if there's one or several important cards in the same vein as Prizes, it's much more likely that one player can get an important card just by playing BM. It just as likely to happen in turn 3 or 4 as later (except that you might not get $5 and it might cost $5, or it might costs $6).
As an example, if there is no trashing and no cursing and you get a curser, that's extremely impactful, often more so than Followers, because Followers slows down the player playing it too, with Estates. As another example, if it's the only trasher.
This last bit is false. There are 25 cards in the Black Market, you're obviously much more likely to see any of them "later" rather than turn 3 or 4. Clearly playing BM more often can increase your chances of finding something nice in the "later".
Swinger is widely accepted as being a fairly swingy card. Obviously you can make all kinds of qualifications about that, things you can do to mitigate the swinginess of the card (just as you guys are doing about BM). That doesn't take away from the fact that it's swingy; actually those qualifications are considered when people say it's a swingy card.
The cards don't have properties independent of how players are using them in actual games of Dominion. They don't have some fixed swinginess that people then "mitigate", how people play with them determines whatever swinginess a card has. Unless you want to peg some particular algorithm for playing a card as the default. Your last sentence is saying this, I just want to make it clear.
From the strategy article written by theory: "Swindler is a heavily luck-driven card: there’s a very big difference between discarding an opponent’s Estate and transforming Coppers into Curses. If an opponent opens 5/2 and you turn their first into a Duchy, that may very well decide the game." I guess this is just nonsense to you?
Well, in Swindler's case, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that buying $5 cards is actively making Swindler swingy, rather than saying that Swindler is inherently swingy and buying $4 cards is mitigating its swinginess. It's even useful to think of it this way, since the default play shouldn't be "buy the most expensive card you can afford".
Well, in Swindler's case, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that buying $5 cards is actively making Swindler swingy, rather than saying that Swindler is inherently swingy and buying $4 cards is mitigating its swinginess. It's even useful to think of it this way, since the default play shouldn't be "buy the most expensive card you can afford".
You can't seriously be saying that with a 2/5 split the correct play is usually to buy a $4 over a good $5 just because Swindler is on the table.
True.
True.
Okay. Then... state what you are saying instead maybe? Because the one word answer isn't really adding anything, in case you for some reason hadn't realized that.
SheCantSayNo. You said, "any match-up between identical strategies is always going to be a coin-flip". This was the exact thing I told you not to say.
The cards don't have properties independent of how players are using them in actual games of Dominion. They don't have some fixed swinginess that people then "mitigate", how people play with them determines whatever swinginess a card has. Unless you want to peg some particular algorithm for playing a card as the default. Your last sentence is saying this, I just want to make it clear.
To me what you're saying is akin to saying that for instance Scout is not "good" or "bad"; it's all about how people play with it. While strictly speaking true, it has very little bearing on the discussion.
From the strategy article written by theory: "Swindler is a heavily luck-driven card: there’s a very big difference between discarding an opponent’s Estate and transforming Coppers into Curses. If an opponent opens 5/2 and you turn their first into a Duchy, that may very well decide the game." I guess this is just nonsense to you?
I always remember this thing rrenaud did: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2798.msg47781#msg47781
Remember that one guys? The idea there was to see how much the presence of a card changed your ability to predict who would win (based on their rating). You can fault it for including all games; it's showing you what cards help good players beat up bad players or vice-versa. And of course it's of its era, whatever era that was.
The difference between the best and worst predictors was not huge. Still, by this metric, Black Market is one of the cards that most means the better player will win. Swindler is at the other end, though still not as randomizing as oh Smithy.
I'm saying that the default play should be "buy nothing" unless you have a reason to buy something. Cards help you, but they can also hurt you, especially when Swindler is around, and you should take that into consideration.
lol, sorry about that, I forgot that you're the arbiter on what I'm allowed to say. Arguing is pretty damn easy if you forbid your opponent from making the points you can't refute, isn't it?
You don't really seem open to changing your mind, but don't worry, if you really think BM is such a crapshoot I have a great offer for you: we play 30 random kingdoms with Black Market in it, if you get at least 13 points (win = 1, tie = 0.5) I pay you X, otherwise you pay me X. I suggest X to be a friendly amount like $100, but I'm willing to consider other proposals.
First of all, why introduce money at all if we just want to prove a point?
But I could have a thermometer which could distinguish between 70.05 and 70.00 while my body probably couldn't.
It's ok to decline, I expected nothing less. It's just funny to know that despite Black Market being this terrible game-ruining crapshoot, it's apparently not enough of a game-ruining crapshoot to back it with a bet at 57-43 odds.
I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).
I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).
I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
Cultist+Big Money is not a simple strategy.
I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).
I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
Cultist+Big Money is not a simple strategy.
It isn't? How? I'm not an expert so I may be overlooking something, but it's just buying Cultist at 5 and other than that just Big Money, right? At some point you have to switch to Duchies but that's really the only difficulty I can think of...
I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).Chancellor actually isn't very weak, Thief has it's place in some decks, and even Scout isn't always 'too weak to bother with.'
I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).Chancellor actually isn't very weak, Thief has it's place in some decks, and even Scout isn't always 'too weak to bother with.'
I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
Chancellor/Stash immediately jumps to mind whenever someone says how weak Chancellor is. It's also good if you have a Gold in play and want to shuffle it in, or if it's a Bank, Counterfiet, Loan, or any other valuable treasure. Thief is almost always good on a Chapel board, unless there is tons of virtual money.I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).Chancellor actually isn't very weak, Thief has it's place in some decks, and even Scout isn't always 'too weak to bother with.'
I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
Chancellor's effect may not be very weak for its cost, but it is weak for the Action it uses up. Unless you have a glut of +Actions (Fishing Village, Port, Champion) or there are no other terminal Actions on the board, you're better off spending your Actions on better terminal Action cards.
Thief has its place in some decks; those decks are exceedingly rare in 2-player games.
Chancellor/Stash immediately jumps to mind whenever someone says how weak Chancellor is.
What about using it to prevent your good cards from missing the shuffle?Chancellor/Stash immediately jumps to mind whenever someone says how weak Chancellor is.
Yeah, and that happens, like, once every 300 games or something like that.
What about using it to prevent your good cards from missing the shuffle?Chancellor/Stash immediately jumps to mind whenever someone says how weak Chancellor is.
Yeah, and that happens, like, once every 300 games or something like that.
If you can trash down quickly, get a lot of villages or get draw cards with +actions, Chancellor can be a good part of your deck. Chancellor BM also beats straight up BM.What about using it to prevent your good cards from missing the shuffle?Chancellor/Stash immediately jumps to mind whenever someone says how weak Chancellor is.
Yeah, and that happens, like, once every 300 games or something like that.
Too often you have to choose between playing your good cards and playing Chancellor. That's the problem.
I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).
I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
If you can trash down quickly, get a lot of villages or get draw cards with +actions, Chancellor can be a good part of your deck.
Chancellor BM also beats straight up BM.
I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).Chancellor actually isn't very weak, Thief has it's place in some decks, and even Scout isn't always 'too weak to bother with.'
I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber
Yes, you are mostly correct here. However, on problem 2, your Mountebank and Chancellor would not have even had the chance to collide if you would not have used Chancellor's ability. Thus, Chancellor let you play your Mountebank.I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).Chancellor actually isn't very weak, Thief has it's place in some decks, and even Scout isn't always 'too weak to bother with.'
I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
So, I think this is becoming a repeat of that scout article you tried to write. I'm not sure exactly where the disconnect is between what everyone else agrees to be true and what you believe about cards like these (although I'm more with you than not on Thief). I THINK it might be that you are missing the idea of opportunity cost?
So, like you keep saying things along the lines of "chancellor's power is better than a silver by itself" which is quite clearly true, but I think misses the costs of buying chancellor over, at the very worst, a silver (although on most boards there will be another 3 or 4 cost you want more than both chancellor and silver, for varying reasons. Let's walk through some of the problems of buying a chancellor instead of say, a silver.
- Problem 1: If you have any terminal draw in your deck, which you will quite often want (like, way more often than you want chancellor), you have a chance of drawing chancellor dead, lowering the value of that hand by $2.
- Problem 2: Ok, so you recognize the nice benefit that chancellor provides of cycling you quickly, so that on turn 3, when you draw Chancellor, CopperX3, Estate, you can instantly shuffle in your 5-cost you really want in your deck (and you seem to get this, which is actually one of the more tricky concepts for a lot of people to get).
But now when your Mountebank or whatever your 5 cost is collides with your Chancellor, your Chancellor is again a dead card, lowering your hand value by $2 again. In fact, this is a basic concept of not wanting terminals to collide. Unless you will never be buying another terminal in the game, you probably don't want chancellor, because, ok, so that ability he has is nice, but not as nice as that other terminal you want.
So, ok, you're aware that you might have a terminal collision so you add a couple villages to make sure that doesn't happen. Well now you've spent 3 buys on a fancy silver. Probably not the best use of buys/money.
- Problem 3: In any sort of engine board, you don't want stop cards. Chancellor is a stop card.
So the basic problem is that if you plan on having any other terminals in your deck... ever, then chancellor is probably worse for your deck than silver, because it's benefit is worse than the cost. Note that if you tweak it just a little into scavenger, it's suddenly much more useful in many more games, even at the higher cost.
But, ok, so yeah maybe the board is so weak that chancellor/big money is actually the best thing doing! It's certainly possible. So let's just see how often that happens. Here's a list of my latest games (http://gokosalvager.com/logsearch?p1name=nate_w&p1score=any&p2name=&startdate=04%2F05%2F2015&enddate=07%2F29%2F2015&supply=chancellor&nonsupply=&rating=casual&pcount=2&colony=any&bot=false&shelters=any&guest=false&minturns=&maxturns=&quit=false&resign=any&limit=20&submitted=true&offset=0) where chancellor was on the board. Let's just see if there are any other terminals in each game that I would want in each game, which might make it so I don't buy chancellor.
Game 1 - Goons Game 2 - Butcher Game 3 - Ghost Ship Game 4 - Vault if I'm going big money, probably no terminals if I'm not. Game 5 - Goons Game 6 - Nobles/Courtyard Game 7 - Butcher Game 8 - Cutpurse Game 9 - Masquerade Game 10 - Ambassador.
I mean, are there any of these games where you'd prefer chancellor in your deck to the card listed? Mayyybe game 8? The point is, when people say chancellor is weak, they mean that when they look at a board, it takes like 1 second to be decide that chancellor is completely ignorable because there is some other terminal they want more, so chancellor is worse than silver.
The same goes with scout. Ok, so you can come up with some contrived situations where you are not SUPER unhappy to have scout in your deck. But it's very rare that there wasn't another card that you could have bought instead of scout that you want in your deck more. Hope this helps.
Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber
Scout is good as well in Scrying Pool and Vineyard decks. With Scrying Pool, you can even rearrange the cards to draw more. Pearl Diver is bad if and when you draw it dead. Duchess helps your opponent, how often would you really rather have it over a Silver. Once every 400 games? And Secret Chamber and Tactican are rarely going to be on the same board, and with heavy trashing, Secret Chamber is so much worse.Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber
Duchess is fine if you have next to no Terminals. It's essentially a Silver that you *might* draw dead. There are times you want this card.
Pearl Diver is great in games with Vineyards and Scrying Pool for example. They're awesome to gain in engines with +buy, they never hurt ever.
Secret Chamber is amazing in decks with Double Tactician/Village. It's essentially a Vault that doesn't draw you anything, so if you have the draw, Secret Chamber can be nice, especially if you can simply draw all those juicy action cards you discarded with a single scrying pool. Huge payload if you can make it work.
There is no good strategy with Scout. Using Scout to draw up Great Halls is awful, and using it to draw up Nobles is okay at best. You'd have to go so out of your way to make Scout draw great.
I don't think people would ever get Duchess over a Silver. It cost 2 (or 0 most of the time).Scout is good as well in Scrying Pool and Vineyard decks. With Scrying Pool, you can even rearrange the cards to draw more. Pearl Diver is bad if and when you draw it dead. Duchess helps your opponent, how often would you really rather have it over a Silver. Once every 400 games? And Secret Chamber and Tactican are rarely going to be on the same board, and with heavy trashing, Secret Chamber is so much worse.Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber
Duchess is fine if you have next to no Terminals. It's essentially a Silver that you *might* draw dead. There are times you want this card.
Pearl Diver is great in games with Vineyards and Scrying Pool for example. They're awesome to gain in engines with +buy, they never hurt ever.
Secret Chamber is amazing in decks with Double Tactician/Village. It's essentially a Vault that doesn't draw you anything, so if you have the draw, Secret Chamber can be nice, especially if you can simply draw all those juicy action cards you discarded with a single scrying pool. Huge payload if you can make it work.
There is no good strategy with Scout. Using Scout to draw up Great Halls is awful, and using it to draw up Nobles is okay at best. You'd have to go so out of your way to make Scout draw great.
Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber
Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber
I've said that it introduces significantly more luck than Swindler, on average.
I always remember this thing rrenaud did: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2798.msg47781#msg47781
Remember that one guys? The idea there was to see how much the presence of a card changed your ability to predict who would win (based on their rating). You can fault it for including all games; it's showing you what cards help good players beat up bad players or vice-versa. And of course it's of its era, whatever era that was.
The difference between the best and worst predictors was not huge. Still, by this metric, Black Market is one of the cards that most means the better player will win. Swindler is at the other end, though still not as randomizing as oh Smithy.
I've said that it introduces significantly more luck than Swindler, on average.
I'm catching up on this thread a month and a half later, but I can't help but notice that you completely ignored the data Donald linked which actively refutes this claim. In case you genuinely missed it:
What that chart tells me is "money decks are easy to play optimally, engine decks harder". The harder a deck type is to play optimally, the more likely the better player is to win.I've said that it introduces significantly more luck than Swindler, on average.
I'm catching up on this thread a month and a half later, but I can't help but notice that you completely ignored the data Donald linked which actively refutes this claim. In case you genuinely missed it:
I saw it, but didn't really know what to make of it. Embassy and Jack are the most randomizing card? And they, together with Smithy and Caravan, are more randomizing than Swindler? Well, it certainly goes against established wisdom as expressed pretty much everywhere on the wiki. Maybe it should all be rewritten from scratch. Or maybe that calculation was flawed somehow.
What that chart tells me is "money decks are easy to play optimally, engine decks harder". The harder a deck type is to play optimally, the more likely the better player is to win.I've said that it introduces significantly more luck than Swindler, on average.
I'm catching up on this thread a month and a half later, but I can't help but notice that you completely ignored the data Donald linked which actively refutes this claim. In case you genuinely missed it:
I saw it, but didn't really know what to make of it. Embassy and Jack are the most randomizing card? And they, together with Smithy and Caravan, are more randomizing than Swindler? Well, it certainly goes against established wisdom as expressed pretty much everywhere on the wiki. Maybe it should all be rewritten from scratch. Or maybe that calculation was flawed somehow.