Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Seprix on August 31, 2016, 08:56:09 pm

Title: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Seprix on August 31, 2016, 08:56:09 pm
Welcome to the Dominion Tier List for 2016! Simply vote on a scale of 0-10 for each card given. You will systematically rate all of the Dominion Cards in this way. All of the ratings given to each individual card will help process where the card will land on the final Tier List.

How will the cards be processed? All of the card's ratings by every user will be averaged to find out the aggregate ranking of the card. Then, the cards will be grouped into Tier lists. It is important to remember that cards that come before or after one another in a specific tier (for example, tier A) are not by definition better or worse than another card, but similar in overall strength. (For example, Mountebank might be on the list of A tier cards before Chapel, but it does not mean Mountebank is better)

There is one rating bar from 0 to 10 per card. Things that should factor into the rating are the cost of the card, overall strength, and how often it is used in a given Kingdom.

An example: Scout will almost never get bought for its overall strength. In addition, Scout will almost never be used in general. However, Scout only costs $4.

Another example: Expand is a card that costs $7 and is very strong, but is not always picked up in a given Kingdom.

Use your discretion when ranking cards. Do not just rate cards 10 or 0 without them having deserved it. Try to moderate your views on a card in order to give it the fairest overall rating possible.

Thank you for voting! Please be patient while each survey comes up! I won't be able to do them all in a day (and neither will you, you busy folk), so I decided to separate them by Expansions. There will also be separate ranking systems for Events, Landmarks and Ruins, as well as different criteria for voting in those phases. Just read the directions on those to be certain.

Many thanks to Deadlock39 for providing the images in this tier list survey! Also, many thanks to Aleimon Thimble for assisting me in processing all of the information. I couldn't have done it without you. Well, I could have. But it would have taken forever and a day.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Seprix on August 31, 2016, 08:56:27 pm
Dominion Base Ratings (https://goo.gl/forms/1KgmGF7mrWuYT2C13)
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Seprix on August 31, 2016, 09:15:35 pm
Dominion Base added. Submit your rankings!
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Seprix on August 31, 2016, 09:27:27 pm
update added: You are now required to give a username. Those who didn't submit one before won't be required to submit one or anything lame. My mistake.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Roadrunner7671 on August 31, 2016, 09:33:22 pm
Cool. 'Dominion Base' means the base cards, right? So I can rank them now and rank Intrigue later? Then Seaside later, then etc?
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: werothegreat on August 31, 2016, 09:39:36 pm
Many thanks to Deadlock39 for providing the images in this tier list survey!

i.e. told you about my scans
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Deadlock39 on August 31, 2016, 09:46:35 pm
Credit to the wiki and all of wero's hard work for sure... I resized them all and have them hosted for my randomizer. That is what he is crediting here.  It was a tiny amount of work with batch editing in GIMP compared to the time I am sure you spent scanning.

(It is difficult to get to the scaled down images on the wiki, which was the reason I did this in the first place.)
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Seprix on August 31, 2016, 10:28:00 pm
Cool. 'Dominion Base' means the base cards, right? So I can rank them now and rank Intrigue later? Then Seaside later, then etc?

Yes. But the rankings will continue a long time later on. Right now, Qvist has his rankings going to happen very shortly.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Roadrunner7671 on August 31, 2016, 10:31:21 pm
Cool. 'Dominion Base' means the base cards, right? So I can rank them now and rank Intrigue later? Then Seaside later, then etc?

Yes. But the rankings will continue a long time later on. Right now, Qvist has his rankings going to happen very shortly.
Didn't we already do the 2016 ones?
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Seprix on August 31, 2016, 10:31:54 pm
Cool. 'Dominion Base' means the base cards, right? So I can rank them now and rank Intrigue later? Then Seaside later, then etc?

Yes. But the rankings will continue a long time later on. Right now, Qvist has his rankings going to happen very shortly.
Didn't we already do the 2016 ones?

...we did? I thought those were coming up shortly.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Roadrunner7671 on August 31, 2016, 10:32:13 pm
Cool. 'Dominion Base' means the base cards, right? So I can rank them now and rank Intrigue later? Then Seaside later, then etc?

Yes. But the rankings will continue a long time later on. Right now, Qvist has his rankings going to happen very shortly.
Didn't we already do the 2016 ones?

...we did? I thought those were coming up shortly.
It feels like we ranked cards recently...
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Seprix on August 31, 2016, 10:32:49 pm
Cool. 'Dominion Base' means the base cards, right? So I can rank them now and rank Intrigue later? Then Seaside later, then etc?

Yes. But the rankings will continue a long time later on. Right now, Qvist has his rankings going to happen very shortly.
Didn't we already do the 2016 ones?

...we did? I thought those were coming up shortly.
It feels like we ranked cards recently...

We didn't.

At any rate, this was the thread nobody wanted.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Roadrunner7671 on August 31, 2016, 10:33:44 pm
Cool. 'Dominion Base' means the base cards, right? So I can rank them now and rank Intrigue later? Then Seaside later, then etc?

Yes. But the rankings will continue a long time later on. Right now, Qvist has his rankings going to happen very shortly.
Didn't we already do the 2016 ones?

...we did? I thought those were coming up shortly.
It feels like we ranked cards recently...

We didn't.

At any rate, this was the thread nobody wanted.
I like to rate stuff. I like this thread
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Donald X. on August 31, 2016, 10:37:49 pm
Cool. 'Dominion Base' means the base cards, right? So I can rank them now and rank Intrigue later? Then Seaside later, then etc?

Yes. But the rankings will continue a long time later on. Right now, Qvist has his rankings going to happen very shortly.
Didn't we already do the 2016 ones?

...we did? I thought those were coming up shortly.
It feels like we ranked cards recently...

We didn't.

At any rate, this was the thread nobody wanted.
I like to rate stuff. I like this thread
what do you rate it
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Roadrunner7671 on August 31, 2016, 10:42:37 pm
Cool. 'Dominion Base' means the base cards, right? So I can rank them now and rank Intrigue later? Then Seaside later, then etc?

Yes. But the rankings will continue a long time later on. Right now, Qvist has his rankings going to happen very shortly.
Didn't we already do the 2016 ones?

...we did? I thought those were coming up shortly.
It feels like we ranked cards recently...

We didn't.

At any rate, this was the thread nobody wanted.
I like to rate stuff. I like this thread
what do you rate it
Probably a seven, right next to Council Room and Festival.

I would rate it higher but voting on scales of 1-10 are sort of bad. You have overly critical people and people who think all cards are great because Dominion is great and they never rate anything below a five.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: traces Around on August 31, 2016, 10:56:00 pm
I would rate it higher but voting on scales of 1-10 are sort of bad. You have overly critical people and people who think all cards are great because Dominion is great and they never rate anything below a five.

For anybody who feels a need to respond to this, the discussion has already been had. It does not need to take place again. Please overcome your need and let this thread sit until the appropriate time.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Chris is me on August 31, 2016, 11:00:08 pm
I voted. Let's see how this plays out!

Will rankings be revealed after each expansion? I wonder if that influences how cards will be ranked in the future (and not necessarily for the worse) - if people will benchmark future cards against the Base Set averages, maybe? That might not be a bad thing.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Beyond Awesome on August 31, 2016, 11:03:15 pm
I will say figuring out where to rank the cards is hard. I feel a 0-10 scale is rather huge. Anyway, I only feel good giving Chapel 10 and Thief and Adventurer 0. Everything else, I'm not sure about my rankings.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: trivialknot on August 31, 2016, 11:26:59 pm
I like that I'm not required to have an MF account to vote.  And although I prefer the complete ordering from a math perspective, the 0-10 score seems simpler from a rater's perspective.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Jimmmmm on August 31, 2016, 11:30:30 pm
I will say figuring out where to rank the cards is hard. I feel a 0-10 scale is rather huge. Anyway, I only feel good giving Chapel 10 and Thief and Adventurer 0. Everything else, I'm not sure about my rankings.

I propose a new ranking system with only 3 options: 0, 10 and "Depends on the board".
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: werothegreat on September 01, 2016, 12:21:40 am
I will say figuring out where to rank the cards is hard. I feel a 0-10 scale is rather huge. Anyway, I only feel good giving Chapel 10 and Thief and Adventurer 0. Everything else, I'm not sure about my rankings.

I propose a new ranking system with only 3 options: 0, 10 and "Depends on the board".

Well, these are tiers, right?  So the tiers should have names.  I propose four tiers: Chapel (good), Village (utilitarian), Adventurer (bad), and Scout.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Roadrunner7671 on September 01, 2016, 12:25:36 am
I will say figuring out where to rank the cards is hard. I feel a 0-10 scale is rather huge. Anyway, I only feel good giving Chapel 10 and Thief and Adventurer 0. Everything else, I'm not sure about my rankings.

I propose a new ranking system with only 3 options: 0, 10 and "Depends on the board".

Well, these are tiers, right?  So the tiers should have names.  I propose four tiers: Chapel (good), Village (utilitarian), Adventurer (bad), and Scout.
So we'd have good, utilitarian, bad and out of this world amazing?
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Aleimon Thimble on September 01, 2016, 03:13:50 am
We're not 100% sure yet how exactly we will analyze the data, but there will probably be named tiers in the end, we'll just have to establish cut-off points from the scores.

Also, Adventurer and Scout are likely going to be in the same tier.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Chris is me on September 01, 2016, 07:46:38 am
We're not 100% sure yet how exactly we will analyze the data, but there will probably be named tiers in the end, we'll just have to establish cut-off points from the scores.

Also, Adventurer and Scout are likely going to be in the same tier.

I think the simplest thing to do would be to have Tiers 1 through 10. It's a lot of tiers, but it makes sense with the numbers to cut them off at the same points users had to rate them.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Davio on September 01, 2016, 07:53:00 am
That would be tier 0-1, 1-2, until 9-10.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Chris is me on September 01, 2016, 08:26:15 am
That would be tier 0-1, 1-2, until 9-10.

Yeah, I just think naming the tiers by maximum score sounds cleaner, rather than the full range they encompass.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Haddock on September 01, 2016, 08:36:02 am
If you really want to make life difficult for yourself, you could weight everyone's entries by their iso ranking.

Note: Don't do this.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: madeofghosts on September 01, 2016, 08:54:50 am
Village was the hardest one to rate. It's old hat now but in the context of the base game it's kind of a game-changer.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: werothegreat on September 01, 2016, 09:43:21 am
Village was the hardest one to rate. It's old hat now but in the context of the base game it's kind of a game-changer.

Rate cards in context of everything, not just the set they're in.  Otherwise, Scout might be tier 2, maybe even 2.5.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: madeofghosts on September 01, 2016, 10:23:10 am
I guess what I really mean is that it's especially dependent on what other cards are available. I know that's true of every card. Villages in general being really important but Village itself being one of the weaker versions - it's hard to pick through all that.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: JThorne on September 01, 2016, 12:16:24 pm
I think Vanilla Village is a good example of a card that would actually be a relatively high, but not bonkers, power level. How many boards is it skippable? It is often a key piece of an engine board. How often would you buy another village instead if a different one were available at $4? It costs $3, and I'd much rather have it than Shanty Town most of the time. Sure, it's boring, but it's appropriately costed.

It's especially interesting to compare it to cards like City, which, on the wrong board, is a $5 Village for most of the game. I've probably skipped City more than I have Village. When City's good, it's great, but it can be a trap, especially if your opponent ignores it and you can't empty another pile quickly enough.

Factoring in the cost when evaluating the cards is definitely the trickiest part, but it's a critical part. Expand would be utterly broken at $4 and would be an unskippable rock-crusher of a card on almost any board. As-is, it's often (if not usually) skipped. This is why the cost has to be taken into account. The rating gels it all down to one number that gives a general sense of how good the card is.

Never mind Village for a second; allow me to suggest a basic card rating comparison: Silver is better than Gold. It gives you $2 for only $3 investment, rather than $3 for $6. It's usually not skippable because of the need to hit $5 early. Sliver flooding is a thing. Gold flooding isn't. Sure, some cards give you free Gold, but does that make it a better card overall? Not really. The existence of Gold adds a lot to the intrinsic value of Tunnel; The existence of Tunnel doesn't add much to the intrinsic value of Gold. I've skipped Gold on plenty of engine boards, but I've only skipped Silver on BM boards that ramp to $6 almost immediately, like Gear-BM.

That said, you use Silver as a means to an end, not because you want to, but because you have to. Sometimes it even gets trashed along the way. Some people would even call it a glorified Copper. Then again, even Copper has utility (I wouldn't rate it a zero. That's for Curses and Ruins.) But all Dominion cards are a means to an end, so that's not meaningful.

I think the numbers will be interesting with a large enough sample size. Sure, some people will overrate and others will underrate, but that's the whole point of creating averages. Personally, once there's enough data, I'd be interested in just seeing a list of all of the card-shaped things sorted by rating the average rating shown to one or two decimal places.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Chris is me on September 01, 2016, 12:20:12 pm
I think I rated Village an 8. Villages are among the most powerful and least skippable cards in the game. They tend to be forgotten or not seen as being as essential as they really are.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Seprix on September 01, 2016, 12:42:58 pm
This thread needs to die so that Qvist has all attention on his rankings for this year. This will be done some time later, or maybe never, if Qvist is right about already doing what I am doing in addition.

That being said, if I can find some interesting way to make a different list involving tiers, I will do it later on.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Dingan on September 01, 2016, 01:05:15 pm
It would be cool to know what people's average ratings are -- if they're mostly near 5 (the average of the 11 choices), or not.  It should be 5 across all sets.  If it wasn't, I would think you would want to normalize that person's ratings.  Or maybe that's too much work, idk.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Orange on September 01, 2016, 01:25:59 pm
I will say figuring out where to rank the cards is hard. I feel a 0-10 scale is rather huge. Anyway, I only feel good giving Chapel 10 and Thief and Adventurer 0. Everything else, I'm not sure about my rankings.

I ranked.  Looking forward to the next batch.

On something lime Chapel, although it gets bought in most kingdoms, I took a couple points off because it rarely gets bought more than once per player.   I suppose I'm thinking about the average number of copies gained per kingdom as my measurement of how "often" instead of the percentage of kingdoms in which I buy a card at least once.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Limetime on September 01, 2016, 02:17:18 pm
I will say figuring out where to rank the cards is hard. I feel a 0-10 scale is rather huge. Anyway, I only feel good giving Chapel 10 and Thief and Adventurer 0. Everything else, I'm not sure about my rankings.

I ranked.  Looking forward to the next batch.

On something lime Chapel, although it gets bought in most kingdoms, I took a couple points off because it rarely gets bought more than once per player.   I suppose I'm thinking about the average number of copies gained per kingdom as my measurement of how "often" instead of the percentage of kingdoms in which I buy a card at least once.
That because it does it's job so well that you don't need any more.
If village was + 100 actions you would only need one but it would easily be rated 10.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: AdrianHealey on September 01, 2016, 02:18:12 pm
I will say figuring out where to rank the cards is hard. I feel a 0-10 scale is rather huge. Anyway, I only feel good giving Chapel 10 and Thief and Adventurer 0. Everything else, I'm not sure about my rankings.

I ranked.  Looking forward to the next batch.

On something lime Chapel, although it gets bought in most kingdoms, I took a couple points off because it rarely gets bought more than once per player.   I suppose I'm thinking about the average number of copies gained per kingdom as my measurement of how "often" instead of the percentage of kingdoms in which I buy a card at least once.
That because it does it's job so well that you don't need any more.
If village was + 100 actions you would only need one but it would easily be rated 10.

We have a card called Scenic Village that gives +10 actions and you still need more than 1.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Beyond Awesome on September 01, 2016, 02:23:28 pm
I will say figuring out where to rank the cards is hard. I feel a 0-10 scale is rather huge. Anyway, I only feel good giving Chapel 10 and Thief and Adventurer 0. Everything else, I'm not sure about my rankings.

I ranked.  Looking forward to the next batch.

On something lime Chapel, although it gets bought in most kingdoms, I took a couple points off because it rarely gets bought more than once per player.   I suppose I'm thinking about the average number of copies gained per kingdom as my measurement of how "often" instead of the percentage of kingdoms in which I buy a card at least once.
That because it does it's job so well that you don't need any more.
If village was + 100 actions you would only need one but it would easily be rated 10.

Champion
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Polk5440 on September 01, 2016, 03:13:08 pm
I would rate it higher but voting on scales of 1-10 are sort of bad. You have overly critical people and people who think all cards are great because Dominion is great and they never rate anything below a five.

For anybody who feels a need to respond to this, the discussion has already been had. It does not need to take place again. Please overcome your need and let this thread sit until the appropriate time.

Where did this discussion happen?
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Polk5440 on September 01, 2016, 03:14:18 pm
There is one rating bar from 0 to 10 per card. Things that should factor into the rating are the cost of the card, overall strength, and how often it is used in a given Kingdom.

Is the intention to consider 2 player Dominion games only? Or are multiplayer considerations allowed?
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: werothegreat on September 01, 2016, 03:32:49 pm
This thread needs to die so that Qvist has all attention on his rankings for this year. This will be done some time later, or maybe never, if Qvist is right about already doing what I am doing in addition.

That being said, if I can find some interesting way to make a different list involving tiers, I will do it later on.

Too late, buddy, you've got to finish now.

*cracks bullwhip*

We're expecting Intrigue.  Don't keep us waiting.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: NolanA on September 01, 2016, 04:20:47 pm
I'd find it helpful to have a editable final summary page that displays a sorted list of all of your ratings, or a way to go back and edit previous ratings.   This would make it easier to scale the ratings to one another.   For example, Cellar was on one of the earlier pages of my survey.   I rated it in relation to other few cards of the set I had rated at that point... better than my rating for Moat, worse than my rating for Chapel, etc.   By the time I got on later pages, I realized I didn't put in a large enough gap in my rating for Chapel and Cellar to fit the multiple levels of cards that I consider to fall somewhere in between them.  The end result was rating Cellar and some of the other early cards on a different scale than the later cards.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: NolanA on September 01, 2016, 05:24:39 pm
Well, these are tiers, right?  So the tiers should have names.  I propose four tiers: Chapel (good), Village (utilitarian), Adventurer (bad), and Scout.
I will say figuring out where to rank the cards is hard. I feel a 0-10 scale is rather huge. Anyway, I only feel good giving Chapel 10 and Thief and Adventurer 0. Everything else, I'm not sure about my rankings.

I have a different view about Chapel.  In the base game, I think Witch should be the highest rated card, rather than Chapel.  Witch is by far the most powerful attack card in the base game.  Buying it assists in nearly every non-Gardens Rush game, which is the overwhelming majority of base games.  It's probably the only base game card, where it is typically desirable to buy the 1st one on a $6+ draw.  In the old CouncilRoom game results analysis, Witch was the base card that had the highest Win Rate with and lowest Win Rate without, putting it on a similar level to Province in terms of Win Rate with/without, well above all other base game cards. 

In contrast, Chapel is more kingdom specific than Witch.  It can completely change the game and is extremely powerful in the right kingdom, but there are also a good portion of base game kingdoms where it doesn't help due to the opportunity cost of the turns spent trashing and rebuilding not being worth the benefit of rebuilding something other than a powerful engine, combined with Chapel often being unused and interfering with draws in the mid/late game.   For example, it's not uncommon for the best strategy in a base game kingdom to be Smithy/Council - Big Money.  Chapel isn't going to help in such a kingdom.  Chapel does even worse in most Rush games.  Even in Engine games, if only a mediocre engine is possible, Chapel still may not be worth the opportunity cost.   For example, Chapel isn't going to do much for win rate in a Lab with Militia terminal type engine (assuming no other useful kingdom cards to combo/enhance, particularly + buys), compared to Lab + Militia without Chapel.  Or with a Village/Smithy + Market (again assuming no other useful cards to combo/enhance), I'd favor playing the engine with Remodel for trashing, rather than Chapel.  I think even beating Smithy-BM would be difficult with Chapel and no Remodel in this kingdom. 

I'm not saying Chapel is a bad card.  I think it's a great card, probably the most powerful card relative to its cost in all sets.  However, that wasn't the only criteria for the rankings.  When considering the additional factors, I'd rank the base cards as Witch 1st and Chapel 2nd.

Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Beyond Awesome on September 01, 2016, 05:45:46 pm
For my rankings, I am going off how powerful Chapel is in the context of all of Dominion, not just using it in just base. I think most people are ranking the same way as me. Overall, while Witch is a strong card, with strong trashing, its effectiveness goes way down.
Title: Re: Dominion Tier List: 2016
Post by: Jacob marley on September 01, 2016, 06:49:24 pm
I also find that Chapel (or other strong trashers) are skip able far less often than not, so Chapel rates strongly period.