Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Commodore Chuckles on January 27, 2018, 04:15:26 pm

Title: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Commodore Chuckles on January 27, 2018, 04:15:26 pm
So, every year we have a new thread where we rank all the expansions favorite to least-favorite. Here's my list:

1. Empires
Hands-down my favorite. Expands the game strategy in all the right ways. My only real complaint is that I don't like some of the Landmarks, but this would be an awesome set even if it didn't have the Landmarks at all, so that's not really a point against it.

2. Intrigue, 2nd Edition
The new cards are great, and the others are classic cards that continue to be interesting.

3. Adventures
My feelings about the Reserve cards are somewhat mixed. Cards flying in and out of your deck like this feels sort of un-Dominionish. Still, I overall like them, and the set has no duds.

4. Dark Ages
This one has really grown on me. The subtle interactions between the cards are very cool, and the Shelters and Ruins are awesome. The main thing dragging the set down is a few really stupid cards (Rebuild, Urchin, Cultist.)

5. Seaside
This set is very under appreciated, I think. The main complaint seems to be that the set has "power creep" or is "boring." Wharf and Fishing Village are powerful, but their presence still makes the game interesting, as opposed to Rebuild and Urchin, which are overpowered in a way that makes the game less interesting. And Tactician and Native Village remain some of the most interesting cards in the game, in my opinion. Also, for such an early set, this one has surprisingly few duds. The main one that sticks out is Navigator, but I'm starting to have a bit more respect for even that card. And yeah, I guess Pearl Diver is pretty worthless.

6. Prosperity
The Gilded Age set: A lot of cool, powerful cards but also a lot of duds. Ironically considering the set's theme, a lot of the duds are the kingdom treasures.

7. Nocturne
Some mechanics just aren't my cup of tea, I'm afraid. I'm actually starting to like the Hexes a bit more: it's interesting how they can stack, and the mechanic allows interesting attacks that often do nothing (particularly Bad Omens.) I still don't really like the Boons, though, but it might simply be because a lot of the Boon cards are pretty boring. There are also a lot of retreads: Pooka is like Spice Merchant, Secret Cave is very similar to Mill. Still, I'd be lying if I said this set doesn't have some really, really cool cards.

8. Guilds
The Guilded Age Set. The coin tokens and overpay are neat and well-utilized.

9. Hinterlands
This set, not Seaside, is the true "boring" set. The "on-gain" theme is weak (and is a mechanic that appears in plenty of other sets), a lot of the cards are retreads, others are big duds, and some are just not that interesting. I'm glad it exists, but there are so many other, better expansions.

10. Cornucopia
You can count me as one who doesn't share in the Cornucopia hype. I like it, but most of the cards just don't grab me that much.

11. Alchemy
What else is there to say that hasn't been said a million times? I share everybody else's complaints with this set.

12. Base, 2nd Edition
It's great that I won't ever have to see Chancellor's ugly mug again, but this is still the most boring set in the game, which is fine, because it's supposed to be simple. There is one dubious thing about the new cards: did we really need TWO new Peddlers in a set that already had Market?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: weesh on January 27, 2018, 05:16:41 pm
intrigue is that good?

the only reason intrigue was competing with prosperity and seaside on my "next buy" list is because after 200 unsleeved games, i'm in the market for more basic supply cards.

 
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: crj on January 27, 2018, 06:32:15 pm
[Empires]
My only real complaint is that I don't like some of the Landmarks, but this would be an awesome set even if it didn't have the Landmarks at all, so that's not really a point against it.
[Dark Ages]
The main thing dragging the set down is a few really stupid cards (Rebuild, Urchin, Cultist.)
If I understand you correctly, in the case of Empires you forgive some bits you dislike because of the bits you do like, but in the case of Dark Ages you feel the bits you dislike count against the set. Isn't that inconsistent?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Commodore Chuckles on January 27, 2018, 07:16:37 pm
[Empires]
My only real complaint is that I don't like some of the Landmarks, but this would be an awesome set even if it didn't have the Landmarks at all, so that's not really a point against it.
[Dark Ages]
The main thing dragging the set down is a few really stupid cards (Rebuild, Urchin, Cultist.)
If I understand you correctly, in the case of Empires you forgive some bits you dislike because of the bits you do like, but in the case of Dark Ages you feel the bits you dislike count against the set. Isn't that inconsistent?

The thing is that Empires has great cards even without the Landmarks, whereas Dark Ages has bad (in my opinion) cards taking up places where better cards could be.

Also, sheesh, I wasn't expecting people to put my opinion under a microscope. Maybe I worded the OP wrong, but this wasn't supposed to be an authoritative list of best to worst, it's just my personal favorite to least favorite, and I don't care if your list is completely different than mine.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: LastFootnote on January 27, 2018, 07:47:25 pm
intrigue is that good?

the only reason intrigue was competing with prosperity and seaside on my "next buy" list is because after 200 unsleeved games, i'm in the market for more basic supply cards.

Intrigue Second Edition doesn’t include the basic supply cards. Just buy the Base Cards product.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: jsh357 on January 27, 2018, 07:54:04 pm
We don't have a new thread for this every year.

Seaside is the most commonly recommended expansion, so there is not a wide perception of it being boring.

Fake news!

Empires
Base 2
Cornucopia
Nocturne
Guilds
Adventures
Prosperity
Seaside
Dark Ages
Intrigue 2
Hinterlands
Base 1
Alchemy
Intrigue 1
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: LibraryAdventurer on January 27, 2018, 07:55:41 pm
Also, sheesh, I wasn't expecting people to put my opinion under a microscope. Maybe I worded the OP wrong, but this wasn't supposed to be an authoritative list of best to worst, it's just my personal favorite to least favorite, and I don't care if your list is completely different than mine.
You sound new to fds. Everything posted here gets put under a microscope, knitpicked, edge-cased, commented on, and otherwise picked apart until the horse is not only dead, but tarred, feathered, hanged, electrocuted, burned, and then drawn and quartered and fed to the blue dogs.

My list:
1 Adventures (my favorite)
2 Dark Ages  (I just don't play with Rebuild, at least not the official version)
3 Seaside
4-5 Guilds & Cornucopia  (minus Tournament)
6-8 Intrigue (2e of course), Prosperity & Empires
9-10 Hinterlands & Base (and even these are still great, just not as interesting as the others)
11 Alchemy (Alchemy and Nocturne are the only sets I don't own IRL, and the only card from Alchemy I'd want to use IRL is Apprentice.)

I haven't played with Nocturne enough to rank it among the others, but on first impressions I think it'll be at the level of Guilds and Cornucopia.
I got (1e) Intrigue before getting the Base game, and it was only after getting several other expansions that I finally got the base game (soon before 2e came out).

EDIT: I realized I forgot to rank Prosperity the first time. Added it tied with Intrigue & Empires.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: werothegreat on January 27, 2018, 08:03:53 pm
It's spelled "nitpicked".
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: weesh on January 27, 2018, 08:06:32 pm
Intrigue Second Edition doesn’t include the basic supply cards. Just buy the Base Cards product.

Really?
(checks)
Why?

---

most fav at top, criteria is a ratio of enjoyment to complication added

empires/adventures
dark ages/nocturne
base
guilds
cornucopia/hinterlands
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: werothegreat on January 27, 2018, 08:34:05 pm
Intrigue Second Edition doesn’t include the basic supply cards. Just buy the Base Cards product.

Really?
(checks)
Why?

Because there is now a Base Cards product.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Chappy7 on January 27, 2018, 08:50:14 pm
This is like picking my favorite child.  I just can't do it.  But I definitely can pick out my least favorite child expansion.  Alchemy, I don't even kinda like you.  (except for Apprentice.  That card is sweet)
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: crj on January 27, 2018, 09:19:02 pm
Personally, I feel people forget just how good first-edition Base was. OK, so we've all played it into the ground by now, but that doesn't mean it's objectively become worse.

Even now, I hanker after a real Village, a real Smithy, a real Laboratory, a real Witch once in a while. (-8

Also: Chapel!
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: dz on January 27, 2018, 09:45:27 pm
Listing my favorite expansion is just too hard. So I'll just list my favorite card per expansion:

Dominion: Sentry

Intrigue: Masquerade

Seaside: Tactician

Alchemy: Scrying Pool (yes the attack is a waste of time but otherwise it's still fun)

Prosperity: Grand Market

Cornucopia: Tournament (sorry Tournament haters)

Hinterlands: IGG (sorry IGG haters)

Dark Ages: Counterfeit

Guilds: Baker

Adventures: Transmogrify

Empires: Villa

Nocturne: Devil's Workshop
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Simon Jester on January 31, 2018, 05:56:45 pm
Oh. It's not really possible. I'm a prosperity-guy though - I just love all the VP-cards and KC made me love Dominion more than any other game in the world. With the rest I can't choose. Alchemy and Dark Ages is somewhat worse than the others, but hey, I still love them as well, at least playing with them online.

Empires is a little bit extra good also, but when it comes to the cards it's more due too novelty than that it is outstanding in other ways compared to the whole I think.

Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: ipofanes on February 01, 2018, 03:11:31 am
Personally, I feel people forget just how good first-edition Base was. OK, so we've all played it into the ground by now, but that doesn't mean it's objectively become worse.

Don't forget that this is the only "expansion" that won the SdJ award.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Aleimon Thimble on February 01, 2018, 03:36:53 am
Sure. :)

1.   (1) Adventures: It balances old and new mechanics, it offers casual and expert players countless hours of fun with Travellers, Events, Reserve cards, Duration cards that are actually interesting (the ones in Seaside aren’t), but also more vanilla cards such as Lost City. Of course, it’s also the expansion that I played the most with IRL, since it came out when my Dominion enthusiasm peaked. To be fair, though, it’s a close call with number 2 on the list.
2.   (2) Prosperity: Adventures may be my personal favorite, but Prosperity is more or less the ultimate expansion to Dominion. The Base set offers the basic outline for Dominion, one of the best games ever, but Prosperity is what really puts it over the top. More points, stronger cards, better decks, lots and lots of options.
3.   (5) Dominion Base (2nd edition): The Base game was already pretty amazing, but Donald really put the icing on the cake by deleting the six worst cards from it. Probably the best idea in Dominion history after publishing the game in the first place. These days, Dominion doesn’t even need expansions anymore to be a balanced game that can keep someone occupied for years.
4.   (7) Empires: I didn’t like a lot of the mechanics at first, but I’ve grown to appreciate them. The Debt mechanic isn’t so bad once you start to understand the rationale behind it, and the split piles offer some interesting player interactions. Of course, the large number of scoring options is the best thing about Empires, and most of the Landmarks are just awesome. The only downside is that most of the Events suck, they’re either too weak or too strong. Empires would have been better without the Events.
5.   (3) Guilds: This one remains my favorite small expansion. The mechanics are cool, the cards are pretty amazing, and Herald remains my favorite card to this day. The small size is really its only downside.
6.   (-) Nocturne: It still seems a bit on the complicated side with all the extra piles and card rules, and especially IRL I can imagine setting it up takes a lot of time and table space. But online it works just fine and it has a bunch of cool mechanics.
7.   (8 ) Cornucopia: Although this expansion lacks a clear identity or anything that really sets it apart (‘diversity’ doesn’t really count), it does contain a number of very cool cards, including Horn of Plenty and Tournament. Yes, Tournament has the player imbalance, but I don’t think it’s such a high-luck card as people claim it is.
8.   (4) Dark Ages: It’s a fine set, but it didn’t stand the test of time as well as I thought it would. It used to be one of my favorites but it’s now in the bottom half. I guess it says more about the upper half though. I still like the theme and overall feel.
9.   (6) Hinterlands: It’s more or less the ‘little bit of everything’ expansion. It flirted with being another standalone, and I think it would have been better than Intrigue at this role, although frankly Dominion doesn’t need that anymore with such an amazing Base set.
10.   (11) Alchemy: It rose two places from the bottom of the list (not counting Nocturne). Honestly Alchemy is pretty hard to rank, some of its individual cards are really awesome and the Potion mechanic is okay, but it does suffer from a couple of design flaws. Possession is just a disaster of course, probably the worst card in existence gameplay-wise, and Transmute is just useless. But then it has amazing stuff like Apothecary, Golem and University on the other side of the spectrum, which is Alchemy’s saving grace.
11.   (9) Intrigue (2nd Edition): It’s not a standalone anymore, and for good reason. Intrigue is just not nearly as good as the Base set in my opinion, especially now that the Base set has ditched its useless cards. I played Intrigue before Base, and it’s telling that I liked Dominion, but didn’t love it for the first couple of years. The update didn’t do it wonders either, ditching awesome cards such as Coppersmith and to a lesser extent Saboteur.
12.   (10) Seaside: Clearly the worst set. Its Duration cards are bland and unbalanced, its Attacks are highly frustrating and slow the game down by a lot, and it lacks anything cool that sets it apart from the other sets. The only reason ever to buy this would be for completion’s sake.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Chris is me on February 01, 2018, 08:14:08 am
Adventures
Empires
Prosperity
Seaside
Nocturne
Corn/Guilds
Base 2
Dark Ages
Hinterlands
Intrigue 2
Alchemy

Maybe seaside is too high. More words on this later.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: MatthewCA on February 01, 2018, 12:27:05 pm
For what it's worth, I'll rank the expansions. I will not rank the ones I have not played.

1. Adventures- adds the most to the game imo and just gives you so many options on a given turn.

2. Intrigue 2e- this is a close second for me. Fixing this set was such a good idea.

3. Prosperity- yes it's good, but I see this as the real power creep expansion (instead of Seaside), and kind of over rated. What it does well, it does really well, but it has a lot of duds. 

4. Dark Ages- it's probably only in this position on my list because I haven't played many games with it.

5. Base set 2e- same as Intrigue 2e, remove the boring, introduce new cards that are actually fun.

6. Seaside- I give this set props for introducing some of the best mechanics in the game, durations, mats, and tokens. I do see it's flaws though, and for everything Seaside does right, I feel it does something wrong. I just like the things it does right more than I hate what it does wrong.

7. Hinterlands- good set that doesn't really have a standout card or cards imo. I feel strongly that each set should have a big powerful game warping card or two, and I don't feel that Hinterlands has one. Kind of like the opposite of Seaside in that the good is really good but the bad is really bad. I just feel like Hinterlands is kinda meh.

8. Guilds- again, have not played much with Guilds, would probably go up with more play, but what I have played I feel was not as good as other sets.

9. Alchemy- everyone has already pointed out the problems with Alchemy, you don't need to read it again.

Unranked (because I haven't played them)

Empires- I could have gotten this for my birthday last year, instead I got Stone Age. I think I made the wrong decision. (Stone Age is good, don't think I'm knocking it,  its just that everything I've seen says Empires is better)

Nocturne- I'm excited to try the heirlooms, and see how the night phase and cards change the game, but thus far, I have not been able to try it.

Cornucopia- sounds good, for a small set. Just have not played it at all, so I'm not gonna comment on it.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: traces Around on February 01, 2018, 07:15:17 pm
My ranking of expansions (which should be yours too, because otherwise you have no reason to care):

1. Nocturne
2. Base
3. Adventures
4. Hinterlands
5. Empires
6. Seaside
7. Dark Ages
8. Guilds
9. Prosperity
10. Intrigue
11. Cornucopia
12. Alchemy
13. Promos
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: 7string on February 01, 2018, 08:48:47 pm
Here are my favorites.  Not necessarily in order of power, but just how much enjoyment I find in each set.  To me, how fun the set is comes largely from the amount of variety they bring to the table, and how many different approaches you have to playing the game.  So this list is just my personal preference.  I recently had a friend I play with ask me what should be the next expansion to buy after he has Base and Seaside, and I had to explain that it depends on how much depth and complexity you are looking for - versus something just fun and easy to teach to other new players.

1.  Adventures  This was a close call between Adventures and Empires, but for me, Adventures gets the nod for all the new mechanics it brought to the game.  Events are great, and overall, the Adventures Events are much stronger than the Empires Events.  The Travelers, and all the various ways to modify kingdom cards with tokens just adds so much variety.  And bringing back duration cards with some really strong ones was just a nice bonus.

2.  Empires  When I first played Empires, I was afraid it might be too much, and that Donald had finally jumped the shark.  But the more I played it (both in real life and online), I really began to like the whole set, and it has grown on me immensely.  With all the nifty mechanics and options, I doubted that some of my friends and family would get into it for a casual fun game night, but to my surprise they all seem to really love it once they began to understand the options.  I simply love most of the Landmarks - to me they are even a bigger change to the game than Duration cards or Events because they alter the basic scoring rules for each game.  Some people may not like that, but I think it was a stroke of genius.  Most of the events are fairly weak, but as we know a couple of them are awesomely powerful.  Victory points are far more fun in Empires than they are in Prosperity because of the large variety of ways you can gain them, and it makes for much more thoughtful and tactical games.

3.  Nocturne  So far I don't see it as strong as the top 2, but the huge variety of new mechanics and card types is just plain fun.  It is the only physical set I do not own yet, so I have yet to see whether more casual players will enjoy it, but I think they will like all the themes.  The night cards are really interesting.  Some of the spirits haven't grabbed me as much, but overall I really enjoy seeing Nocturne cards pop up in random games.

4.  Dark Ages  This is a set I often recommend as maybe the 3rd set to buy.  Part of the reason is just that you get more bang for the buck with so many different kingdom cards.  Also, Dark Ages focus on trashing is a great way to teach newer players the value of trashing those coppers and estates.  One of our friends had a real problem trashing coppers, but after I made her play a few games with Dark Ages, the light bulb turned on.  Shelters aren't as fun as Heirlooms, but were still a nice change to the basic estates, and Ruins were a good alternative to Curses.  Just a lot of great cards in this set, and huge variety for one box.

5.  Seaside  Ranking favorites after the top 4 gets a little difficult, but I'm going to go with Seaside for the impact of the Duration cards.  To me Duration cards were the first really big game changing mechanic, and those Fishing Village, Wharf, Tactician and Outpost cards are still fun to play today even with all of the recent mechanics and complexity.

6.  Hinterlands  So part of me wants to rank Prosperity next, but last year we visited family who had just bought their first 2 expansions.  Based on Amazon reviews they purchased Prosperity and Hinterlands.  In spite of the really powerful cards in Prosperity, they often found the kingdoms just had too many treasure cards, and not enough options in how to play the game, so they preferred Hinterlands.  It made me rethink the 2 sets.  I have always liked Hinterlands with the Border Village, Haggler, Highway, Stables, and other sifting cards, but at home it didn't make it to the table as often.  But overall, I think it is just a slight bit more fun than the average Prosperity game...tough call since the best Prosperity games with KC, Goons, Grand Market etc. can be simply awesome, and I don't have an issue with people placing Prosperity higher on the list.

7.  Prosperity  I think I said most of it in the last comments.  A great set, and one of the first 3 or 4 expansions I would recommend for new players.  The great cards in the set still play great with all of the new sets.

8.  Cornucopia  OK, maybe I'm letting my wife influence me here since this is her favorite set.  We have played a HUGE number of IRL games with Cornucopia cards.  I know it can get swingy, and I personally think Tournament is overrated since it is often a dead card after opponents purchase Provinces...but you have to admit, the Prizes are just fun!  Hunting Party and Horn of Plenty are not only fun but just incredibly powerful.  If this was a full sized set I would probably rank it above Dark Ages, but the small sets don't offer much variety unless you mix them with other sets (which of course is the way to go).

9.  Base  We had really stopped playing the base entirely unless we were introducing Dominion to new players.  The new cards really did perk the set up a lot (although I do miss the loss of a buy that disappeared with Woodcutter).  Overall though, this is the fundamental set of prototype cards that you need to have if you want to get people into Dominion, and some of them are still fun.  I still love the original Village, Smithy, Witch cards that were just simple and straight forward.  And it makes a good combo with one of the newer sets if you want to tone down the overall complexity of the game.

10.  Alchemy  I'm sure I'm bucking the trend here, but I have never hated Alchemy, and it contains some really powerful and fun cards.  Scrying Pool is awesome, but as someone else said it can really slow down the game.  I personally like Alchemist a lot as a core engine card if the game is not too fast and you have time to acquire them.  University is great only if you have 5 cost cards from other sets to acquire.  And Vineyards can at times produce some really scary scores.  Overall one of the strongest engine expansions.  Like all the small sets it suffers from not having enough variety unless played with other sets, and if only some of the cards are potion cards you really have to consider whether the cost is worth it.  I do sort of wish there were a few more potion cards...maybe a promo some day?

11.  Intrigue  The new cards were a big help for Intrigue, but somehow this set has just never grabbed me as much as the others.  Sure I like Bridge and Nobles, and Lurker and Replace were very interesting additions, but overall we just rarely ever reach for this set at home.

12.  Guilds  If it were a larger set I probably would rank it above Intrigue.  I enjoy the coin token cards, and Stone Mason can certainly be fun (or even a massive Advisor engine), but it just is another set that rarely gets played much in our house.  Not bad, but there are just other expansions that are much more fun.

13.  Promos  Not sure these even belong in a ranking of expansions, but I guess I would have to place them last.  But among them are Governor which is one of my all time favorite cards, and Sauna/Avanto which is quickly becoming a household favorite for IRL games, and of course Black Market which is another major game changer.  I own all the promo cards, and other than these 3 we rarely play the others...and I often forget to include some in games.  I do enjoy online games which include them though.  Not a big fan of Envoy, although it certainly can be powerful.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: J Reggie on February 02, 2018, 04:47:19 pm
Adventures: I love all the new mechanics it adds, and Miser is my favorite card of all time.

Empires: Really changes how we think about winning a game. Lots of really well-designed cards.

Nocturne: Night and Heirlooms are so cool, and once we got out of previews week where literally every game has them, Boons and Hexes have become really cool too. I would have liked to see another traveller in this set, though; I think it would have fit the theme.

Everything else: Besides the Big Box (Base, Prosperity, Alchemy), I got all the sets at the same time, so they kind of blur together. Lots of cool cards and mechanics in here, but nothing as interesting as the three most recent sets.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: brokoli on February 09, 2018, 08:36:35 pm
Here is how I rank the expansions nowadays. My main criterias are :
- Creativity : expansions with cards that creates weird or counter-intuitives strategies that actually works will be ranked higher. Alt-Vp things and Trash-for-benefit are especially nice about creativity.
- Mechanic elegance : I tend to prefer simple things that works elegantly to more complicated things that involve more stuff. That's why I like Duration, Reserve and Night cards more than Split piles or Fates.
- Balance : Sometimes you know you are going to buy a card, at first glance, even without seeing the others. The edge cases are too uncommon. I usually like average/situationnal cards way more than must-buys.
- Tactical / on turn decision : A (very little) downside in Dominion (which is still my all time favorite game) is the predominance of strategy over tactic. Sometimes everything is scripted from turn 1. So, cards that adds touch of tactical decisions in the game get my preference.

So here is the list :

1. Cornucopia : My love for cornucopia is a bit irrationnal. But this little set is very solid. With the exception of tournament, I like every single card in it. Menagerie and Horn of plenty are easily in my top 5. The variety theme works very well for me, and brings lot of fun to the game.

2. Adventures : The +card/action/coin/buy tokens (+plan and ferry) are in my opinion one of the funniest things in dominion. The reserve mechanic is great too, it mitigates shuffle luck in a nice way. Those travellers are a little bit overpowered and inelegant, but I still like the Peasant line. Some cards are a little bit too similar too earlier cards, but i don't consider that in my ranking, because the release order says nothing about the inherent qualities of an expansion.

3. Dark Ages : It's a shame we have cultist and Rebuild (and Knights that turns almost every game into a knight battle) because the rest of the cards is absolutely awesome. Procession and Rats are two examples of how dominion can be fun and very complex at the same time. This is clearly one of the best expansions about creativity.

4. Hinterlands : I feel Hinterlands is little bit underrated. Overall it has a great balance : very few overpowered cards. There are maybe too many underpowered cards but in my opinion it matters less than the overpowered ones. It's also one of the very few sets that aren't too engine-friendly. Cards in this set are interesting and adds lot of subtle decisions.

5. Intrigue : With very simple ideas, this expansion brings the game to new thinking paths. Think about it : Conspirator, Baron, bridge, Duke, Coppersmith (still lives in my heart) all needs very different kinds of decks to work at there best. The 2nd edition is not particularly needed, especially considering we miss coppersmith, but still adds interesting cards.

6. Seaside : One of the most simple expansions, still with very different interesting concepts in it. Durations are very well designeed.

7. Base : Simplicity again. I would rank the 1st edition much lower though. The 2nd edition is almost perfect.

8. Guilds : I like a lot of the cards there too. Overpay is a nice mechanic but not enough used and not in the best way IMO. For example Herald would be fine without overpay. But coin tokens is a good mechanic.

9. Empires : On one side, I love Empires. Really. I feel bad it is so low on the list. The concepts are very, very interesting. But on the other side, I feel a lot of the cards ends up being uselessly complicated. Especially split piles. I like Fortune but not so much Gladiator. I like settlers but often don't have the opportunity to but a bustling village. Catapult/Rock is fun thematically but doesn't work that well in practice. Same for gathering. The events are not as elegant and interesting as in adventures.
I'm divided about landmarks : sometimes the game is very weird because of them, other times, they do add depth (and alternate paths of victory) to the game.
But I like the debt cards a lot : it's always hard to find the right moment to buy them.

10. Nocturne : I may rank it higher in the future but right now i'm simply not fond enough of neither boons nor hexes. That's randomness at it's most uninteresting way. And non-supply cards are just a little bit too much of design complexity for my taste. The rest is fine, Night cards are fun and Heirlooms add variety to the opening hands in a subtle way.

11. Alchemy : It's a fun engine expansion. My only problem is the overall balance and how attacks are devastating. But I still like possession.

12. Prosperity : Same here, Prosperity is the least balanced set in my opinion. Too much power-creep ruins the fun. I still enjoy Prosperity a lot, it's just that I like the rest more.

13. Promos : Again, we have too powerful cards. I learned to like governor though. Also, Prince and Summon are very fun.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Amac on February 12, 2018, 07:00:35 am
I still have to play beyond Guilds, so this is it for me:

1. Seaside: Clearly the best expansion for me. The duration mechanic is a really interesting mechanic, especially on 'easy-to-understand' cards. Sure, there are some misses, but I like cheaper and easy-to-play cards
2. Dark Ages: Shelter mechanic is really good, most of the cards are fine too, nothing too complex overall. There are some miss cards, hurting a little more than Seaside overall
3. Prosperity: Gears towards engine-building and I feel kingdom treasures are pretty interesting. I only dislike the 7-cost actions except for Forge.
4. Cornucopia: Many people do not like the 'different cards'-concept, but I honestly do. Tournament, Menagerie, these type of cards are really distinguishing and interesting in general
5. Base: Solid set. Nothing more to say
6. Hinterlands: Another solid set, but you expect an expansion to have more 'oomph'
7. Intrigue: Too many real 'miss' cards alongside a few very nice and fun-to-play cards.
8. Guilds: I do not see many special cards in here
9. Alchemy: Potion mech just does not work
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: faust on February 12, 2018, 07:42:30 am
1. Cornucopia : My love for cornucopia is a bit irrationnal. But this little set is very solid. With the exception of tournament, I like every single card in it. Menagerie and Horn of plenty are easily in my top 5. The variety theme works very well for me, and brings lot of fun to the game.
You like Fortune Teller?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: werothegreat on February 12, 2018, 10:51:33 am
My favorite is Basetriguesidechemritopinterarkagildsenturiresurnomos.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: allanfieldhouse on February 12, 2018, 01:35:16 pm
Base (1st ed)
Intrigue
Seaside
Alchemy
Prosperity
Cornucopia
Hinterlands
Dark Ages
Guilds
Adventures
Empires
Base & Intrigue (2nd eds)
Nocturne

..wait, what was the question?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Chase Adolphson on February 21, 2018, 11:24:34 pm
13 dark ages
This expansion sucks. I don't like trashing that much. In most expansions there is at least one card that stands out to you as a good card, but this expansion just doesn't have any.

12 seaside
Duration cards are really slow. Also like dark ages, there is no card that stands out to me as a good card. The only thing that is good about this expansion is that it has very brutal attacks.

11 dominion
The cards are just really boring and simple.

10 prosperity
I like being wealthy, but these cards are kind of dumb. They are just not that powerful. One thing good about this expansion is platinum and colony.

9 nocturne
Skulk, werewolf, raider, blessed village, druid, idol, cobbler, fool, crypt, shepherd and tracker are awesome. Pixie, pooka and leprechaun suck.

8 guilds
Most of the cards suck, but the ones that don't suck are really awesome!!!! Masterpiece is way cool!!! If you pay ten for it you get seven silvers. BAKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love baker!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are super easy to stack, since it is a cantrip. If you have a lot of coin tokens that can help you a lot! Also the setup is really fun.

7 hinterlands
Guilds is the last expansion that I don't really like that much. So that means hinterlands is the first expansion that I really like. The cards are simple like dominion, but unlike dominion these cards are actually fun. TUNNEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tunnel should be a five card not a three card! Yeah, I know, it's that good. Really? Really, it's that good. Two victory points is already awesome. But the reaction ability that it has is awesome!!!!!! Someone could play a militia, go haha, you have to discard down to three cards in hand. And then you just discard two tunnels from your hand of five cards, and you go thanks for the two golds.

6 adventures
Coin of the realm, miser, royal carriage, distant land, caravan guard, duplicate and giant are awesome. Page and peasant are really cool. HIRELING!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love this card so much!! If you have four of them, your starting hand size is nine cards!

5 intrigue
Why I like this expansion so much is because I like victory cards that help you during the game. COPPERSMITH!!!!!!!!!! If you have four coppersmiths your coppers are worth a platinum that turn.

4 promo
Governor, prince, sauna/avanto and stash are cool, but the main reason I like this expansion so much is BLACK MARKET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Black market is my favorite card, which is why my profile picture is the black market picture. To get cards that are not even in the game is so cool.

3 cornucopia
Hunting party and remake suck. Fairground, horn of plenty, menagerie, farming village, and hamlet are awesome. But the main reason this is number three is because of two cards. The first one is JESTER!!!!!!!!!!!! Two coins helps. But then, with the other part either way it benefits you. The other one is TOURNAMENT!!!!!!!!!!! The prizes are awesome!

2 empires
Empires is really wealthy like prosperity, but has good cards unlike prosperity. GLADIATOR/FORTUNE!!!!!!!!!!! Gladiator is okay, but fortune is awesome! CROWN is also awesome!!!!!!!! Also, even though empires only has three attacks, all three of them are very brutal.
Legionary: It's worse than margrave because with margrave you can discard the card you draw, but with legionary you can't.
Catapult: If somebody trashes a silver, you get a curse, and have to discard down to three cards in hand.
Enchantress: if you have a princess all you get for it is one card and one action.

1 alchemy
Transmute, apprentice and golem are okay, but the other nine are do good that I am going to talk about each one of them individually.
Alchemist: if you keep on putting them back on top, you can have a lot of them in a row.
Apothecary: coppers add up, and potions are very useful.
Familiar: this is my favorite alchemy card, because since it replaces its self, you can play a lot of them really easily, and the more you play, the more curses get distributed.
Herbalist: if any kingdom cards are treasure cards, you could put one of them on top.
Philosophers stone: your decks get pretty big, so this is a really good card.
Possession: taking another turn is awesome, but that second turn, is with somebody else's deck, which is even more awesome.
Scrying pool: to put a lot of action cards in your hand is awesome.
University: two actions is cool, and gaining an action card costing up to five coins is also really cool.
Vineyard: makes action cards worth victory points.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Seprix on February 22, 2018, 12:01:22 am
13 dark ages
This expansion sucks. I don't like trashing that much. In most expansions there is at least one card that stands out to you as a good card, but this expansion just doesn't have any.

Dark Ages has some of the most powerful cards in Dominion, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Cultist, Junk Dealer, Hermit/Madman, Urchin/Mercenary, Ironmonger, Procession, Wandering Minstrel, Counterfeit, Altar are all top tier exceptionally strong cards in themselves that often define games. You might not like trashing, but trashing is an essential part of the modern competitive Dominion scene. You could even make an argument that it's always been essential, I would certainly make that case.

12 seaside
Duration cards are really slow. Also like dark ages, there is no card that stands out to me as a good card. The only thing that is good about this expansion is that it has very brutal attacks.

I guess you've never played against Cultist or Mercenary then. Anyways, yeah some Durations are more on the slow side, except uh Wharf, Caravan and sometimes Tactician (Tactician isn't as good as it used to be). But slow doesn't mean bad, just ask Fishing Village.

Quote
11 dominion
The cards are just really boring and simple.

Can't really debate this, although based on everything else you've said and are going to say, I don't think you have a deep understanding of some of the cards. Which is fine! You'll get there.  ;D

Quote
10 prosperity
I like being wealthy, but these cards are kind of dumb. They are just not that powerful. One thing good about this expansion is platinum and colony.

Yeah, some stuff like Talisman and Contraband are pretty bleah. Other cards like King's Court and Goons completely disagree with the narrative that Prosperity is not that powerful, but yeah it has some mostly duds.

Quote
8 guilds
Most of the cards suck, but the ones that don't suck are really awesome!!!! Masterpiece is way cool!!! If you pay ten for it you get seven silvers. BAKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love baker!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are super easy to stack, since it is a cantrip. If you have a lot of coin tokens that can help you a lot! Also the setup is really fun.

Those two also happen to be the least wordy of the Guilds cards, probably a theme there. Guilds is like the mature beer and wine set of Dominion, well one of many including Empires and Dark Ages.

Quote
7 hinterlands
Guilds is the last expansion that I don't really like that much. So that means hinterlands is the first expansion that I really like. The cards are simple like dominion, but unlike dominion these cards are actually fun. TUNNEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tunnel should be a five card not a three card! Yeah, I know, it's that good. Really? Really, it's that good. Two victory points is already awesome. But the reaction ability that it has is awesome!!!!!! Someone could play a militia, go haha, you have to discard down to three cards in hand. And then you just discard two tunnels from your hand of five cards, and you go thanks for the two golds.

Actually Tunnel is sorta bad, although it's been so maligned for so long that sometimes you absolutely can sneak out a Tunnel/Warehouse deck against a high ranked player and win.  :D But it usually doesn't happen.

Quote
5 intrigue
Why I like this expansion so much is because I like victory cards that help you during the game. COPPERSMITH!!!!!!!!!! If you have four coppersmiths your coppers are worth a platinum that turn.

I guess you haven't seen Intrigue second edition yet. Coppersmith has been removed for actual good cards, although I do admit I have a fondness for Coppersmith anyways. It was fun to King's Court one.

Quote
3 cornucopia
Hunting party and remake suck. Fairground, horn of plenty, menagerie, farming village, and hamlet are awesome. But the main reason this is number three is because of two cards. The first one is JESTER!!!!!!!!!!!! Two coins helps. But then, with the other part either way it benefits you. The other one is TOURNAMENT!!!!!!!!!!! The prizes are awesome!

Uh Remake and Hunting Party are actually among the premier cards in their respective fields of draw and trashing, but maybe sucking just means how much you like them rather than competitive talk.

Quote
2 empires
Empires is really wealthy like prosperity, but has good cards unlike prosperity. GLADIATOR/FORTUNE!!!!!!!!!!! Gladiator is okay, but fortune is awesome! Also, even though empires only has three attacks, all three of them are very brutal.
Legionary: It's worse than margrave because with margrave you can discard the card you draw, but with legionary you can't.
Catapult: If somebody trashes a silver, you get a curse, and have to discard down to three cards in hand.
Enchantress: if you have a princess all you get for it is one card and one action.

Legionary is worse than Margrave, mainly because it doesn't draw and give +buy, but yeah the attack is insane brutal.

Quote
Philosophers stone: your decks get pretty big, so this is a really good card.

Actually it's maybe the single worst card in Dominion, besides maybe Transmute.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: J Reggie on February 22, 2018, 12:14:23 am
Also that's not true about Princess. Read the FAQ for Enchantress.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Accatitippi on February 22, 2018, 12:49:13 pm
Quote
Philosophers stone: your decks get pretty big, so this is a really good card.

Actually it's maybe the single worst card in Dominion, besides maybe Transmute.

Harvest begs to differ.

1. Cornucopia : My love for cornucopia is a bit irrationnal. But this little set is very solid. With the exception of tournament, I like every single card in it.

Even Harvest?

Harvest!
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Commodore Chuckles on February 22, 2018, 01:28:14 pm
There are some cards more useless than Transmute (hello Bureaucrat) but Transmute is still the worst card because of the price.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Seprix on February 22, 2018, 07:53:35 pm
Quote
Philosophers stone: your decks get pretty big, so this is a really good card.

Actually it's maybe the single worst card in Dominion, besides maybe Transmute.

Harvest begs to differ.

1. Cornucopia : My love for cornucopia is a bit irrationnal. But this little set is very solid. With the exception of tournament, I like every single card in it.

Even Harvest?

Harvest!

No, Harvest is marginally better than Transmute and Phil Stone. Sometimes you just want terminal money, like in a Tac deck for example.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Chase Adolphson on February 22, 2018, 10:05:40 pm
Why do people hate alchemy so much? It's my favorite expansion!
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: ipofanes on February 23, 2018, 03:08:28 am
The concept of an alternative currency reduces predictability and rewards skill less. This is amplified by the regular method of randomisation on Shuffle IT and its predecessors, that is, all card-shaped things with equal probability. You can't ignore the Familiar in the kingdom, but you are screwed with a 4th turn 2€+P. I think Alchemy is ok when you mix it with one or two other expansions, giving you a shot at at least getting a University or Apothecary instead of a Pearl Diver.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Awaclus on February 23, 2018, 06:26:25 am
Also a lot of the Alchemy cards are just bad. Herbalist is bad unless you need the +buy, you practically never buy Transmute or Philosopher's Stone and Golem is too difficult to acquire to be worth its effect most of the time. That's 1/3 of the entire expansion there.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Accatitippi on February 23, 2018, 10:26:08 am
Quote
Philosophers stone: your decks get pretty big, so this is a really good card.

Actually it's maybe the single worst card in Dominion, besides maybe Transmute.

Harvest begs to differ.

1. Cornucopia : My love for cornucopia is a bit irrationnal. But this little set is very solid. With the exception of tournament, I like every single card in it.

Even Harvest?

Harvest!

No, Harvest is marginally better than Transmute and Phil Stone. Sometimes you just want terminal money, like in a Tac deck for example.

Harvest is the worst man for that job, though. It's expensive, unreliable because of the random draw, and clunky because it needs cards in your deck.

Familiar also makes transmute better, so maybe let's call it a draw?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Aleimon Thimble on February 23, 2018, 10:28:56 am
There are some cards more useless than Transmute (hello Bureaucrat) but Transmute is still the worst card because of the price.

I'm still not convinced Bureaucrat is so bad. It's useless in engines, but it's a semi-decent BM card and a strong slog card.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Awaclus on February 23, 2018, 10:57:08 am
There are some cards more useless than Transmute (hello Bureaucrat) but Transmute is still the worst card because of the price.

I'm still not convinced Bureaucrat is so bad. It's useless in engines, but it's a semi-decent BM card and a strong slog card.

It's an awful BM card and slogs aren't ever the best strategy on the board.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: aku_chi on February 23, 2018, 11:07:07 am
There are some cards more useless than Transmute (hello Bureaucrat) but Transmute is still the worst card because of the price.

I'm still not convinced Bureaucrat is so bad. It's useless in engines, but it's a semi-decent BM card and a strong slog card.

It's an awful BM card and slogs aren't ever the best strategy on the board.

I'm not sure what you mean by "slogs aren't ever the best strategy on the board".  I expect that in a two-card kingdom with Bureaucrat and Duke, the optimal strategy involves buying 1-3 Bureaucrats.  I agree that Bureaucrat is an awful card in strategies that buy Provinces.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Awaclus on February 23, 2018, 11:08:27 am
There are some cards more useless than Transmute (hello Bureaucrat) but Transmute is still the worst card because of the price.

I'm still not convinced Bureaucrat is so bad. It's useless in engines, but it's a semi-decent BM card and a strong slog card.

It's an awful BM card and slogs aren't ever the best strategy on the board.

I'm not sure what you mean by "slogs aren't ever the best strategy on the board".  I expect that in a two-card kingdom with Bureaucrat and Duke, the optimal strategy involves buying 1-3 Bureaucrats.  I agree that Bureaucrat is an awful card in strategies that buy Provinces.

Okay, I should reword my statement a bit. Slogs aren't ever the best strategy on the board unless we're playing a variant in which there are only two cards in the kingdom.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Simon Jester on February 23, 2018, 11:12:50 am
As far as I know there are quite many boards that involve junkers with no or poor trashing, aka Slog games, or am I missing something? Are slogs ever something you are able to choose?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Awaclus on February 23, 2018, 11:29:12 am
As far as I know there are quite many boards that involve junkers with no or poor trashing, aka Slog games, or am I missing something? Are slogs ever something you are able to choose?

Those are probably big money games. Slogs are a strategy where you gain so many points your opponent is never able to end the game without losing.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: loneXolf on February 23, 2018, 11:44:15 pm
1. Dark Ages- Favorite expansion, I would call this the most unique expansion before Nocturne. Some really unique cards in here. Love the focus on trashing. However it does have it's share of stinker cards "Rebuild, Beggar, Poor House", I am a fan of the all of the others.

2. Prosperity- VP tokens, 7 costed cards

3. Nocturne- Nocturne is a Mixed bag for me. I enjoy night cards and heirlooms, but I am not so much a fan of boons and hexes. Nocturne is only this high because I really want to play it more because I don't have that many games with it.
 
4. Adventures- I actually like Reserve actions more than Duration actions. I would call this my favorite backbone expansion, since it has a lot of solid cards. Journey Tokens, is the weakest mechanic to me in all of dominion, but only two cards use it so it's forgivable.

5. Cornucopia- My favorite mini-expanion. Hamlet, Menagerie, Farming Village, Remake, Tournament, Hunting Party, and jester are some of my favorite cards.

6. Intrigue- A lot of great cards, you can tell this is when dominion really took off.

7. Empire- Really solid set but some of the cards are pretty mediocre/triggering to me, such as Patrician/Emporium, Chariot Race, Enchantress, Settlers, Gladiator, Archive, Wild Hunt, Rocks, Legionary. Also I wish the debt tokens were used a bit more.

8. Guilds- Coin tokens are a really neat mechanic, but Journeyman, Merchant Guild, Soothsayer, Doctor, and Masterpiece are cards I don't really care too much about, which is almost half of the set.

9. Base- Has a lot of vanilla and classic cards that I quite enjoy playing with. The second edition cards are less desirable than intrigue's to me and nothing is really that unique or pops in the base set.

10. Hinterlands- This set always rubbed me off as boring at least in theme/artwork. Don't get me wrong it has a lot a great cards, but it's "When you gain mechanic" isn't that stand-out to me and the set as a whole doesn't feel connected like other sets.

11. Seaside- Lighthouse is my favorite card and I do like the theme. But this set has a lot of mediocre/stinker cards for me... Treasure Map, Explorer, Outpost, Tactician, Lookout, Pearl Diver, Sea Hag, Pirate Ship, and Ghost Ship aren't really cards I enjoy seeing in random kingdoms most of the time.

12. Alchemy- The only cards I actually like in this set are Alchemist, Golem, Apprentice, and Possession. "Sorry Scrying Pool fans"
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Hockey Mask on February 24, 2018, 11:42:01 pm
This is my expansion ranking alphabetically...

1. Adventures
2. Alchemy
3. Cornucopia
4. Dark Ages
5. Empires
6. Guilds
7. Hinterlands
8. Intrigue
9. Nocturne
10. Prosperity
11. Seaside
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Chase Adolphson on February 25, 2018, 01:45:41 am
This is my expansion ranking alphabetically...

1. Adventures
2. Alchemy
3. Cornucopia
4. Dark Ages
5. Empires
6. Guilds
7. Hinterlands
8. Intrigue
9. Nocturne
10. Prosperity
11. Seaside


Finally I found somebody else who likes alchemy as well. I thought I was the only one who liked alchemy
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: faust on February 25, 2018, 03:04:04 am
There are some cards more useless than Transmute (hello Bureaucrat) but Transmute is still the worst card because of the price.

I'm still not convinced Bureaucrat is so bad. It's useless in engines, but it's a semi-decent BM card and a strong slog card.

It's an awful BM card and slogs aren't ever the best strategy on the board.

I'm not sure what you mean by "slogs aren't ever the best strategy on the board".  I expect that in a two-card kingdom with Bureaucrat and Duke, the optimal strategy involves buying 1-3 Bureaucrats.  I agree that Bureaucrat is an awful card in strategies that buy Provinces.

Okay, I should reword my statement a bit. Slogs aren't ever the best strategy on the board unless we're playing a variant in which there are only two cards in the kingdom.
I dunno man, Shepherd is a pretty strong slog card.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Asper on February 25, 2018, 05:31:52 am
I have opinions too, yay! But who reads the second page of a thread like this?
I don't want to sort between sets that are really close, so here are tiers:

Favourite: Prosperity, Adventures, Guilds, Cornucopia.

Upper Middle: Base, Hinterland, Intrigue.

Lower Middle: Empires, Seaside.

Least: Dark Ages, Alchemy, Nocturne.

Base and Intrigue are 2nd Ed and benefit from my favouritism of simple cards.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: brokoli on February 25, 2018, 06:39:44 am
Quote
Philosophers stone: your decks get pretty big, so this is a really good card.

Actually it's maybe the single worst card in Dominion, besides maybe Transmute.

Harvest begs to differ.

1. Cornucopia : My love for cornucopia is a bit irrationnal. But this little set is very solid. With the exception of tournament, I like every single card in it.

Even Harvest?

Harvest!

I don't get the harvest hate really. Mainly, it's a very fun card to play with because the money you'll get from it depends on your deck building. It's a predictable random parameter and I like that.
I know that terminal money is very situationnal, but with some tricks you can make very clever uses of Harvest, discarding the crap out of the top of your deck.
It happens often that you have no cards to discard, but in this case, you just don't buy Harvest so this doesn't impact my whole appreciation of the card.
Yes, it's a weak card, but there is nothing wrong about that. However, it's no way as weak as transmute.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Commodore Chuckles on February 25, 2018, 01:28:48 pm
Harvest's big problem is that it's terminal payload that you don't want to draw at the very end. You can discard some junk and Harvest that, but that option isn't always available. When it works, though, it can be pretty good payload, particularly with cards like Herald that love actions but hate treasures. It's also something decent to buy if it's a slog board with not much else going on; that's definitely not high praise but it's more than I can say for something like Cache, which you usually don't want even if there's nothing else going on.

Overall, I don't think Harvest is the very worst $5 card, but it's definitely down there.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Duggie on February 25, 2018, 05:15:18 pm
I took people's responses here, ranking their favorite dominion expansions, and did some analysis on them. I included 11 people's responses, anyone who gave a ranking of their favorite 12 expansions, and the post seemed sincere (sorry alphabetical guy).  From these responses, the average ranking from best to worst was (with 1 being favorite and 12 being least favorite; so the average score is 6.5):

Tier 1 (1-4)

1.  2.68 Adventures (4.25 people rated this as favorite, [1 person ranked 4 as his favorite])


Tier 2 (4-6)

2. 4.50 Empires (2 favorites)

--
--

3. 5.27 Nocturne (1 favorite)


Tier 3 (6-8)

4.  6.00 Dark Ages (1 favorite)

5. 6.14 Prosperity (0.25 favorites)

---

6. 6.45 Cornucopia (1.25 favorite)

7. 6.82 Guilds (.25 favorite))

---

8. 7.14 Base 2e (0 favorites)

9. 7.23 Seaside  (0 favorites)

----

10. 7.59 Hinterlands (0 favorites)

11. 7.82 Intrigue 2e (0 favorites)



Tier 4 (10-12)

12 10.36 Alchemy (1 favorite; everyone else rated it 10-12th)

------
 


Conclusion: People like the newest sets best on average, especially Adeventures and people really don't like alchemy. In terms of variance, Alchemy, Adventures and Hinterlands had the lowest variance in responses. A few people included promos and most put them as 13th as the cards are often too powerful.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: ackmondual on February 26, 2018, 12:51:39 am
Empires I my fave due to Landmarks. They shake up the game in fun "think outside the box" ways.

Personally, I feel people forget just how good first-edition Base was. OK, so we've all played it into the ground by now, but that doesn't mean it's objectively become worse.

Don't forget that this is the only "expansion" that won the SdJ award.

Don't forget Stash ;)

(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/1/16/Stash-back.jpg/200px-Stash-back.jpg)
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: tripwire on February 26, 2018, 02:48:52 pm
I took people's responses here, ranking their favorite dominion expansions, and did some analysis on them. I included 11 people's responses, anyone who gave a ranking of their favorite 12 expansions, and the post seemed sincere (sorry alphabetical guy).  From these responses, the average ranking from best to worst was (with 1 being favorite and 12 being least favorite; so the average score is 6.5):

Tier 1 (1-4)

1.  2.68 Adventures (4.25 people rated this as favorite, [1 person ranked 4 as his favorite])

...

Tier 4 (10-12)

12 10.36 Alchemy (1 favorite; everyone else rated it 10-12th)


I guess I had better post my list since it might throw these results off somewhat. It's interesting how much my ranking this time around has changed from when I did this last year:

1- Empires
2- Intrigue 2nd ed.
3- Prosperity
4- Dark Ages
5- Guilds
6- Hinterlands
7- Alchemy
8- Adventures
9- Cornucopia
10- Dominion 2nd ed
11- Seaside

(I haven't played enough Nocturne to rank it)
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Chase Adolphson on March 05, 2018, 12:22:31 am
I took people's responses here, ranking their favorite dominion expansions, and did some analysis on them. I included 11 people's responses, anyone who gave a ranking of their favorite 12 expansions, and the post seemed sincere (sorry alphabetical guy).  From these responses, the average ranking from best to worst was (with 1 being favorite and 12 being least favorite; so the average score is 6.5):

Tier 1 (1-4)

1.  2.68 Adventures (4.25 people rated this as favorite, [1 person ranked 4 as his favorite])

...

Tier 4 (10-12)

12 10.36 Alchemy (1 favorite; everyone else rated it 10-12th)


I guess I had better post my list since it might throw these results off somewhat. It's interesting how much my ranking this time around has changed from when I did this last year:

1- Empires
2- Intrigue 2nd ed.
3- Prosperity
4- Dark Ages
5- Guilds
6- Hinterlands
7- Alchemy
8- Adventures
9- Cornucopia
10- Dominion 2nd ed
11- Seaside

(I haven't played enough Nocturne to rank it)

What's wrong with cornucopia
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: tripwire on March 05, 2018, 10:23:26 am

I guess I had better post my list since it might throw these results off somewhat. It's interesting how much my ranking this time around has changed from when I did this last year:

1- Empires
2- Intrigue 2nd ed.
3- Prosperity
4- Dark Ages
5- Guilds
6- Hinterlands
7- Alchemy
8- Adventures
9- Cornucopia
10- Dominion 2nd ed
11- Seaside

(I haven't played enough Nocturne to rank it)

What's wrong with cornucopia

For a small set it has a lot of cards that I find boring or uninteresting: Harvest, Fortune Teller, Farming Village. Young Witch is kinda fun for the extra card, but I don't really get excited when I play with it. Hunting Party is solid, but doesn't really excite me either. Hamlet is a good card, but the people I play with makes me not enjoy it being out (I've found more people fall for a village idiot trap with it than other villages, and at least one person I play with gets AP with it for some reason).  So that's about half the set that I'm kinda meh on.

I really like a lot of the remaining cards, though. Menagerie and HoP are some of my favorite cards, and Tournament and Jester can be great fun with my group. But as a whole, it seems to have a higher percentage of misses for me than most other sets.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: weesh on March 05, 2018, 11:32:03 am
...Hamlet is a good card, but the people I play with makes me not enjoy it being out (I've found more people fall for a village idiot trap with it than other villages, and at least one person I play with gets AP with it for some reason)...

There are definitely cards that I like, but don't play with because they aren't fun with my friends.
They get analysis paralysis with scheme, for example, which takes a stupid long time for them to decided to put the scheme on top, so they can be confused next turn too.

I only play games my app make,s or reddit KOTWs, and so i never play games with dreck like harvest.
Even so, cornucopia was at the bottom of my list because while it adds some great cards, it doesn't add a ton of cards that I see in games.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Chase Adolphson on March 06, 2018, 01:26:52 am
Quote
Philosophers stone: your decks get pretty big, so this is a really good card.

Actually it's maybe the single worst card in Dominion, besides maybe Transmute.

Harvest begs to differ.

1. Cornucopia : My love for cornucopia is a bit irrationnal. But this little set is very solid. With the exception of tournament, I like every single card in it.

Even Harvest?

Harvest!

I don't get the harvest hate really. Mainly, it's a very fun card to play with because the money you'll get from it depends on your deck building. It's a predictable random parameter and I like that.
I know that terminal money is very situationnal, but with some tricks you can make very clever uses of Harvest, discarding the crap out of the top of your deck.
It happens often that you have no cards to discard, but in this case, you just don't buy Harvest so this doesn't impact my whole appreciation of the card.
Yes, it's a weak card, but there is nothing wrong about that. However, it's no way as weak as transmute.

Harvest is really good for getting coins but the reason I hate it is because you have to discard the cards
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: McGarnacle on March 08, 2018, 10:04:30 am
Quote
Philosophers stone: your decks get pretty big, so this is a really good card.

Actually it's maybe the single worst card in Dominion, besides maybe Transmute.

Harvest begs to differ.

1. Cornucopia : My love for cornucopia is a bit irrationnal. But this little set is very solid. With the exception of tournament, I like every single card in it.

Even Harvest?

Harvest!

I don't get the harvest hate really. Mainly, it's a very fun card to play with because the money you'll get from it depends on your deck building. It's a predictable random parameter and I like that.
I know that terminal money is very situationnal, but with some tricks you can make very clever uses of Harvest, discarding the crap out of the top of your deck.
It happens often that you have no cards to discard, but in this case, you just don't buy Harvest so this doesn't impact my whole appreciation of the card.
Yes, it's a weak card, but there is nothing wrong about that. However, it's no way as weak as transmute.

Harvest is really good for getting coins but the reason I hate it is because you have to discard the cards

Well, its good for getting coins if you like getting + (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png) out of a (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png) action. Even when you get (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/32/Coin3.png/16px-Coin3.png), its still not great. Harvest sucks, which is too bad because the art and the idea are cool.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: LastFootnote on March 08, 2018, 11:28:37 am
Harvest is really good for getting coins but the reason I hate it is because you have to discard the cards

Well, its good for getting coins if you like getting + (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png) out of a (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png) action. Even when you get (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/32/Coin3.png/16px-Coin3.png), its still not great. Harvest sucks, which is too bad because the art and the idea are cool.

It's nice when you occasionally get a board where Harvest pays off. I had an online game recently where it was consistently paying out $4 and that extra $1 over Gold was repeatedly meaningful.

That being said, I updated my physical Harvest cards so that they put one of the four cards back on top of your deck. It's still not a power card, but it's decent pretty often.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Chase Adolphson on March 24, 2018, 11:38:27 am
My favorite is Basetriguesidechemritopinterarkagildsenturiresurnomos.


That's actually my favorite one too
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: ackmondual on March 25, 2018, 11:08:50 am
Quote
Philosophers stone: your decks get pretty big, so this is a really good card.

Actually it's maybe the single worst card in Dominion, besides maybe Transmute.

Harvest begs to differ.

1. Cornucopia : My love for cornucopia is a bit irrationnal. But this little set is very solid. With the exception of tournament, I like every single card in it.

Even Harvest?

Harvest!

I don't get the harvest hate really. Mainly, it's a very fun card to play with because the money you'll get from it depends on your deck building. It's a predictable random parameter and I like that.
I know that terminal money is very situationnal, but with some tricks you can make very clever uses of Harvest, discarding the crap out of the top of your deck.
It happens often that you have no cards to discard, but in this case, you just don't buy Harvest so this doesn't impact my whole appreciation of the card.
Yes, it's a weak card, but there is nothing wrong about that. However, it's no way as weak as transmute.

Harvest is really good for getting coins but the reason I hate it is because you have to discard the cards
Not so great to discard good cards, but it is great when discarding the lousy cards too that the latter has made up for the former. 

Also makes terminals and low action boards less of an issue
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Jack Rudd on March 25, 2018, 06:18:26 pm
Harvest's best friend is Black Market.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Awaclus on March 26, 2018, 03:22:28 am
Harvest's best friend is Black Market.

If you take a board where Harvest is already viable and add Black Market to it, suddenly Harvest isn't viable anymore because you'd rather have the Black Market.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: ipofanes on April 03, 2018, 04:13:23 am
Harvest is really good for getting coins but the reason I hate it is because you have to discard the cards

Cycling is a boon in itself; topdecking all the cards in any order would make Harvest worse. And keeping the cards would get it into $7-8 territory, you certainly didn't mean that.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Chase Adolphson on April 03, 2018, 04:31:45 am
Harvest is really good for getting coins but the reason I hate it is because you have to discard the cards

Cycling is a boon in itself; topdecking all the cards in any order would make Harvest worse. And keeping the cards would get it into $7-8 territory, you certainly didn't mean that.


Cycling is horrible when you're buying victory cards
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: GendoIkari on April 03, 2018, 10:06:08 am
Harvest is really good for getting coins but the reason I hate it is because you have to discard the cards

Cycling is a boon in itself; topdecking all the cards in any order would make Harvest worse. And keeping the cards would get it into $7-8 territory, you certainly didn't mean that.


Cycling is horrible when you're buying victory cards

Yes, but that's far less than half of the game. As a whole, an effect that simply says "discard the top 4 cards of your deck" would be a good effect more often than a bad effect.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: LastFootnote on April 03, 2018, 10:10:00 am
Harvest is really good for getting coins but the reason I hate it is because you have to discard the cards

Cycling is a boon in itself; topdecking all the cards in any order would make Harvest worse. And keeping the cards would get it into $7-8 territory, you certainly didn't mean that.


Cycling is horrible when you're buying victory cards

Yes, but that's far less than half of the game. As a whole, an effect that simply says "discard the top 4 cards of your deck" would be a good effect more often than a bad effect.

A very mildly good effect, yes.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: GendoIkari on April 03, 2018, 10:39:57 am
Harvest is really good for getting coins but the reason I hate it is because you have to discard the cards

Cycling is a boon in itself; topdecking all the cards in any order would make Harvest worse. And keeping the cards would get it into $7-8 territory, you certainly didn't mean that.


Cycling is horrible when you're buying victory cards

Yes, but that's far less than half of the game. As a whole, an effect that simply says "discard the top 4 cards of your deck" would be a good effect more often than a bad effect.

A very mildly good effect, yes.

Well yeah, didn't mean to imply that it's great. But if there were an event that cost (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/5d/Coin0.png/16px-Coin0.png), and said "Once per turn: +1 Buy. Discard the top 4 cards of of your deck." then you would buy it almost every turn for more than half of the game.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: ipofanes on April 03, 2018, 10:40:50 am
Also, cycling makes bad cards like Harvest miss the reshuffle. This should be held in favour of this card.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: GendoIkari on April 03, 2018, 11:19:56 am
Also, cycling makes bad cards like Harvest miss the reshuffle. This should be held in favour of this card.

Self-synergy! It's basically Minion.

On the other hand... cycling is better before you start adding bad cards to your deck, but when you buy Harvest, you've started adding bad cards to your deck.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: LastFootnote on April 03, 2018, 11:28:32 am
Well yeah, didn't mean to imply that it's great. But if there were an event that cost (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/5d/Coin0.png/16px-Coin0.png), and said "Once per turn: +1 Buy. Discard the top 4 cards of of your deck." then you would buy it almost every turn for more than half of the game.

Actually there was an Adventures outtake like that.

March: Event, $1
+1 Buy
Put your deck into your discard pile.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: GendoIkari on April 03, 2018, 02:14:21 pm
Well yeah, didn't mean to imply that it's great. But if there were an event that cost (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/5d/Coin0.png/16px-Coin0.png), and said "Once per turn: +1 Buy. Discard the top 4 cards of of your deck." then you would buy it almost every turn for more than half of the game.

Actually there was an Adventures outtake like that.

March: Event, $1
+1 Buy
Put your deck into your discard pile.

That would have made for really interesting openings.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: LastFootnote on April 03, 2018, 02:53:58 pm
Well yeah, didn't mean to imply that it's great. But if there were an event that cost (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/5d/Coin0.png/16px-Coin0.png), and said "Once per turn: +1 Buy. Discard the top 4 cards of of your deck." then you would buy it almost every turn for more than half of the game.

Actually there was an Adventures outtake like that.

March: Event, $1
+1 Buy
Put your deck into your discard pile.

That would have made for really interesting openings.

I guess you could say that you get some of that experience with Summon.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: crj on April 03, 2018, 09:39:10 pm
What was wrong with March? Not useful enough? Too useful?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Donald X. on April 03, 2018, 10:26:59 pm
What was wrong with March? Not useful enough? Too useful?
Without looking it up, I'm going to guess that it was just, it adds nothing but shuffling. It doesn't open up strategies, it doesn't give you something interesting to think about. You buy it when you can and shuffle more.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: LastFootnote on April 04, 2018, 12:27:38 am
What was wrong with March? Not useful enough? Too useful?
Without looking it up, I'm going to guess that it was just, it adds nothing but shuffling. It doesn't open up strategies, it doesn't give you something interesting to think about. You buy it when you can and shuffle more.

That matches my memory. It just didn’t add any gameplay.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: NoMoreFun on April 06, 2018, 06:09:38 am
Excellent:
Empires
Adventures

Good:
Intrigue 2
Guilds
Base 2
Cornucopia
Nocturne
Dark Ages

Needs updating:
Prosperity
Hinterlands
Seaside

Bad:
Alchemy
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Simon Jester on April 07, 2018, 10:57:41 am
Needs updating:
Prosperity

What kind of updates does Prosperity need?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Gazbag on April 07, 2018, 12:30:39 pm
Needs updating:
Prosperity

What kind of updates does Prosperity need?

Prosperity is a pretty weird expansion, it's the king of payload with Goons and Kings Court and what have you but it's quite lacking in draw and trashing, especially early game.
Watchtower, Rabble, activated Cities and Kings Court is the only draw in the entire expansion! City and Kings Court only happen later in the game and Watchtower is arguably worse draw than Moat, Rabble isn't even that great either, pretty average. Compare this to base, which has Moat, Smithy, Council Room, Laboratory, Library and Witch.

The trashing cards in Prosperity are all quite awkward too, for varying reasons. Trade Route is of the weakest trashers in the game, that's fine, something has to be, but it has this interesting mat and Coin token mechanic which is kind of squandered on such a rarely used card and means nothing else can put Coin tokens on piles. Loan is pretty strong, but it has the sad trait of being unpopular with a lot of players and not particularly loved by anyone either. It also doesn't play well will the special treasures that are a main theme of Prosperity. Bishop doesn't count because it trashes for your opponent just as much as it does for you. Mint, Forge and Expand are all pretty good, but a little awkward because of their high cost and force you to build first, trash later. That isn't a problem, there aren't really that many cards in game like that, but having 3/5 of the trashers in the set play like that is a little awkward - compounded somewhat by the lacking draw!

Prosperity also has a fair few dud cards, not as bad as Scout or anything but it takes a pretty sad kingdom for Royal Seal or Venture to get any play. Counting House is kind of in a Coppersmith situation, Contraband is fine these days, it plays well with Events and the 2nd editions removed a lot of duds from the card pool so there tends to be more options in modern kingdoms, but if you don't have the newer expansions/2nd editions this might not see much play. I don't think too many people would be upset if Mountebank was cut for a slightly less ridiculous attack either.

I think Prosperity is a fine expansion overall, but there are certainly improvements that could be made.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Simon Jester on April 07, 2018, 12:50:49 pm
Needs updating:
Prosperity

What kind of updates does Prosperity need?

Prosperity is a pretty weird expansion, it's the king of payload with Goons and Kings Court and what have you but it's quite lacking in draw and trashing, especially early game.
Watchtower, Rabble, activated Cities and Kings Court is the only draw in the entire expansion! City and Kings Court only happen later in the game and Watchtower is arguably worse draw than Moat, Rabble isn't even that great either, pretty average. Compare this to base, which has Moat, Smithy, Council Room, Laboratory, Library and Witch.

The trashing cards in Prosperity are all quite awkward too, for varying reasons. Trade Route is of the weakest trashers in the game, that's fine, something has to be, but it has this interesting mat and Coin token mechanic which is kind of squandered on such a rarely used card and means nothing else can put Coin tokens on piles. Loan is pretty strong, but it has the sad trait of being unpopular with a lot of players and not particularly loved by anyone either. It also doesn't play well will the special treasures that are a main theme of Prosperity. Bishop doesn't count because it trashes for your opponent just as much as it does for you. Mint, Forge and Expand are all pretty good, but a little awkward because of their high cost and force you to build first, trash later. That isn't a problem, there aren't really that many cards in game like that, but having 3/5 of the trashers in the set play like that is a little awkward - compounded somewhat by the lacking draw!

Prosperity also has a fair few dud cards, not as bad as Scout or anything but it takes a pretty sad kingdom for Royal Seal or Venture to get any play. Counting House is kind of in a Coppersmith situation, Contraband is fine these days, it plays well with Events and the 2nd editions removed a lot of duds from the card pool so there tends to be more options in modern kingdoms, but if you don't have the newer expansions/2nd editions this might not see much play. I don't think too many people would be upset if Mountebank was cut for a slightly less ridiculous attack either.

I think Prosperity is a fine expansion overall, but there are certainly improvements that could be made.

Ah, I see. I actually hadn't noticed the relative lack of draw in the expansion. However as long as you play with the earlier sets it should be hardly noticable (case in point that I who have probably played with prosperity more than with any other expansion didn't know..) - I guess it's fine if a set is weaker on one component to focus on something special and I think Prosperity does it fine there.. Hm. How does Empires compare in that regard?

I like to defend the "duds" in Dominion and just to repeat myself once more: Less good cards is fine to have as long as they are fairly unique since they still manage to teach you something on how to play the game. I regarded Venture as OP for a long time and the card is fine for certain player levels and quite fun too. Counting house is a bit weirdly designed for my taste though, it could be stronger or at least look more appealing, it's just weirdlooking from the beginning and I feel you need to force it to be useful. Other than that Talisman is the most awkward card, but eh, they can't all be the best 4$ cards ever I guess.

Don't touch Mountebank before Cultist. I personally have no problem with it. It's strong but not an auto-card by any means imo.

Thanks though, clarified a bit why my love for the expansion isn't as shared as I somewhat would expect it too be..

   
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Fuu on April 07, 2018, 02:38:34 pm
In order from favourite on down:

Seaside
Base (I have 1st edition plus update)
Adventures
Dark Ages
Guilds/Cornucopia
---
Prosperity
Empires
Nocturne
Hinterlands
Intrigue
Alchemy

The top half of the list I own, except for Guilds/Cornucopia which is on my wish list. I don't really have any interest in getting the bottom half.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: SuperHans on April 10, 2018, 12:33:27 am
1. Adventures. For me, it's the pinnacle of Dominion.  It has the right amount of complexity and combo potential without being too fiddly. I generally play in person so the less set up time the better. With how I have the game organized, Adventures does not increase set up time as much as some of the other expansions (i.e., Empires and Nocturne). The event cards are a big game changer and it's hard to play without them now. I love the reserve cards and would like to see them revisited sometime if possible.

2. Empires. This is right up there with Adventures, but, in real life, it sometimes requires just a bit more set up time with the debt and victory tokens. I wonder if we'll ever get Debt Mats like we have now with Coffers. Empires has some of my absolute favorite cards (Fortune, Overlord, Villa, Crown, Legionary). And, of course, the landmarks.

3. Nocturne. This set is almost up there with Adventures and Empires. The night cards are way more fun than I imagined, especially Werewolf, Vampire, Changeling, and Devil's Workshop. I was unsure about Hexes and Boons at first, but, when playing in person, there is a real satisfaction of flipping and revealing them that does not translate to online play. I don't play competitively so the swinginess doesn't have the same impact with me. I generally play with my wife or friends and Nocturne has probably had the most success with them.

4. Dark Ages. This is just such a consistent expansion from top to bottom. This expansion rounded out Dominion in a good way.

5. Hinterlands. I started playing Dominion right when this expansion was released so a lot of the cards have that nostalgic factor. Not as innovative as the other expansions, but it introduced a lot of cards that I like playing with often (e.g., Highway, Haggler, Border Village, Spice Merchant, Scheme).

6. Intrigue (2d ed.). This expansion improved so much by the removal and addition of a handful of cards. This is such an underrated expansion.

7. Cornucopia/Guilds. Cornucopia is good, but Guilds really elevates this joint expansion in my opinion. Coin tokens are a great mechanic.

8. Prosperity. A somewhat inconsistent expansion compared to the ones above, but it has a few cards that are just so much fun to play with (e.g., King's Court, Goons, Grand Market, and Peddler).

9. Seaside. This is one of the most thematic expansions. And I'll always love duration cards. There are a few duds that bring it down a notch and I wish some of them had been replaced or modified in the second edition like Base and Intrigue, especially Pirate Ship.

10. Base (2d ed.). Solid, but simple.

11. Alchemy. I hope one day we receive 5-10 more potion cards to round out the potion mechanic. A man can dream.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: jonaskoelker on April 12, 2018, 02:10:05 pm
The expansions I own are Base (2E), Intrigue (2E), Empires and Seaside, listed from earliest to most recent purchase. My favorite opponent is my gf, and we mostly (only?) play single-set games, playing each kingdom three times. That obviously colors my evaluation.

Ordered from great to merely-moderate enjoyment of single-set games:

1. Intrigue, man, all the cards are awesome! There's strong slogging in Duke (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Duke), there's quirky-draw-your-deck in Minion (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Minion), there's awesome payload in Bridge (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Bridge), there's a cantrip engine in Conspirator (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Conspirator) if you can activate it, there are some pretty decent money enablers (not that money is often the best strategy). Plenty of really great cards; As Commodore Chuckles said in first post, classic cards that continue to be interesting.

Okay, Shanty Town (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Shanty_Town), Harem (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Harem) and Nobles (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Nobles) are a little bit bland. If you replaced those with Crown (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Crown), Fool's Gold (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Fool's_Gold), Tunnel (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Tunnel) and/or Farmland (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Farmland), Intrigue would be nearly perfect. Swindler and Torturer can creating swingy games, let's admit faults, but man, Intrigue is great.

2. Empires is great. Variation in how you score points expands the strategy space and up-ends established. Events are cool. The cards are great. If you mix Empires in with your other expansions it's top notch frosting. For single-set games I can't help but think that I'd like some proportions that are a little more cake-heavy; maybe that's just I'm not yet bored of playing stacks of Village/Smithy variants.

3. Seaside—Tactician (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Tactician), Wharf (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Wharf), Ambassador (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Ambassador), even the mundane Warehouse (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Warehouse) and Salvager (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Salvager) are great fun to play with. Some of the other cards are not the most powerful ever, which is really not that important when you're playing all-Seaside, and the flavor is great.

4. Base is... Base is fine. It's on the boring simple side of things, and it has to be. No hate for Base, but it does get kind of bland after a while.

Among the ones I don't own, the ones I'm most looking forward to are:
1. Adventures — Other than the Warrior (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Warrior) and Champion (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Champion)-first lotteries, everything looks great. Wonky cool duration cards. And tokens!
2. Prosperity — Holy bananas, gimme dat KC, Goons (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Goons), Grand Market (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Grand_Market) and City (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/City). You can keep the Loan (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Loan) and Counting House (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Counting_House), though.
3. Hinterlands — No game-warpers, few hard duds. Haggler (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Haggler), Highway (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Highway), Jack of all Trades (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Jack_of_all_Trades) and Scheme (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Scheme) excite me.
4. Guilds+Cornucopia — This looks Hinterlandsy, with fewer cards that excite me but they all look nice. Guilds looks a bit more exciting than Cornucopia.
5. Dark Ages — Dark Ages looks mostly fine. Cultist (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Cultist), Rebuild (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Rebuild), Urchin (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Urchin) lottery and Knights lottery concern me, and the remaining 87.5% don't excite me quite as much as Hinterlands and Guilds.
6. Nocturne — I'm not sure about the Boons/Hexes, the theme is a little on the too supernatural side of what I think Dominion should be. The Heirloom mechanic looks cool. I guess I'm just uncertain about the new and unfamiliar.
7. Alchemy — Some cards look like real stinkers, some of the other ones look really cool. Apothecary (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Apothecary) and Vineyard (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Vineyard) in particular.

If I merge the lists with single-set play in mind, it probably comes out something like this:
1. Adventures
2. Intrigue
3. Empires
4. Prosperity
5. Hinterlands
6. Seaside
7. Guilds+Cornucopia
8. Dark Ages
9. Nocturne
10. Base
11. Alchemy
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: PortlandSkye on May 03, 2018, 09:31:12 pm
1   Dark Ages
        Lots of cards, interactions, Forager, Bandit Camp, not overly complex or gimmicky

2   Prosperity
        Colonies and Platinum, victory tokens

3   Cornucopia
        Hamlet and Menagerie, love that combo

4   Empires
        Debt and split piles

5   Adventures
        Like the mat, could do more with it

6   Nocturne
        Really like, but a bit too fussy, don't love Hexes or Boons--a bit too random

7   Seaside
        Good start with duration

8   Hinterlands
        Border Village moves the game along

9   Base
        Chapel, also like 2nd Edition additions

10   Intrigue
        Baron gets you off to a good start

11   Guilds
        Not in love with coins, some good (but not great) ideas

12   Alchemy
        If it didn't have Potions, or if Potions were used in other expansions, this would be better

13   Promo
        Too random and hard to integrate into the overall game
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Willvon on May 14, 2018, 05:35:35 pm
1) Prosperity — My first expansion I bought. So it is a sentimental favorite, but my wife and I also love Colonies and Platinums. We use them whenever we can in our games.  It was the first to use victory tokens and has several cards that are real game changers in most any kingdom.

2) Cornucopia — I really love 10 of the 13 cards and consider them must buys pretty much any time they appear. 2 of the other 3 are frequently useful. Those are pretty amazing odds.

3) Adventures — Introduced Travelers, Reserve cards, and Events, along with the return of Durations.  A great expansion. I understand why many have it as their #1.

4) Dark Ages — Love the trashing theme. Many cards that I love. Introduces Ruins and Shelters. Also takes the use of non-supply piles to a new level.

5) Empires — Introduced Debt and split piles, both are great additions to the game. I also love having more Events and new cards making use of victory tokens. And Landmarks have really taken “alternate victory” to new level.

6) Intrigue-2nd Edition — With the 6 deleted cards and 7 new cards, this expansion really has improved greatly.

7) Seaside — Durations , Durations , Durations - at the time these were a major change to the game and whenever a new expansion was announced, there were always people saying they hoped there were more Durations in the set.

8. Nocturne — I love Night cards and Heirlooms, but haven’t played this enough to rank it higher at this time.

9) Hinterlands — Has a few great cards, but most are average, which is not bad, just not as exciting as some of the new things in other expansions.

10) Guilds — I enjoy the cards that use coffers (as they are now named), and it has a couple of great trashers, and one of the top villages, but the size of the expansion makes coffers and overpay feel very underutilized.

11) Alchemy — OK, but not great. They can’t all be the best expansion.

I didn’t rank the base game, because it’s not an expansion.
       
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Burning Skull on May 14, 2018, 07:30:54 pm
Empires
Everything is great about this one. Landmarks, VP tokens, debt
City Quarter is simply the best!!

Adventures
Lots of key cards, lots of new conceptions. This expansion changed the whole gameplay and meta tremendously.

Base
Became truly amazing with the second edition: no duds, all the cards easy to understand for beginners, very elegant.

Dark Ages
I like the theme!! Several years ago I went to a bar, got drunk and wrote a short story (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=10852.msg367127#msg367127) influenced by Dark Ages.
It is very bad, but definitely a pinnacle of my ehhm writing career.

Nocturne
Not a big fan of hexes: sometimes when they are supposed to do some damage they do not,
and sometimes you are getting royally screwed without opponent putting a lot of effort into that.
It's a pity night cards have quite a few antisinergyes with other cool stuff.
All in all a whole lot of cool cards, heirlooms are great, as are will'o'wisps and imps.
Also it's still pretty new, so that's a plus

Seaside, Prosperity
Old good ones, can never go wrong with those.

Cornucopia, Guilds
More Dominion cards, can't complain about that! Can't really say anything bad about those two in general.
Tournament sucks though. I mean, it doesn't if you just want to have fun, but it leads to a lot of very frustrating losses

Hinterlands
It's fine (no, Duchess, not you)
The theme (doing stuff on gain and on buy) did not age very well with all the new expansions

Alchemy
A lot of duds for such a small expansion, sadly.
But pools, apos, alchemists, apprentices, possession are all amazing

Intrigue
Three of the most annoying attacks in the game are here (Minions, Torturers and Swindlers)
Second edition made it a lot better, still probably the least favorite for me.
Obviously, this one still has a lot of great stuff
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: drsteelhammer on May 16, 2018, 04:22:09 am
Needs updating:
Prosperity

What kind of updates does Prosperity need?

Prosperity is a pretty weird expansion, it's the king of payload with Goons and Kings Court and what have you but it's quite lacking in draw and trashing, especially early game.
Watchtower, Rabble, activated Cities and Kings Court is the only draw in the entire expansion! City and Kings Court only happen later in the game and Watchtower is arguably worse draw than Moat, Rabble isn't even that great either, pretty average. Compare this to base, which has Moat, Smithy, Council Room, Laboratory, Library and Witch.

The trashing cards in Prosperity are all quite awkward too, for varying reasons. Trade Route is of the weakest trashers in the game, that's fine, something has to be, but it has this interesting mat and Coin token mechanic which is kind of squandered on such a rarely used card and means nothing else can put Coin tokens on piles. Loan is pretty strong, but it has the sad trait of being unpopular with a lot of players and not particularly loved by anyone either. It also doesn't play well will the special treasures that are a main theme of Prosperity. Bishop doesn't count because it trashes for your opponent just as much as it does for you. Mint, Forge and Expand are all pretty good, but a little awkward because of their high cost and force you to build first, trash later. That isn't a problem, there aren't really that many cards in game like that, but having 3/5 of the trashers in the set play like that is a little awkward - compounded somewhat by the lacking draw!

Prosperity also has a fair few dud cards, not as bad as Scout or anything but it takes a pretty sad kingdom for Royal Seal or Venture to get any play. Counting House is kind of in a Coppersmith situation, Contraband is fine these days, it plays well with Events and the 2nd editions removed a lot of duds from the card pool so there tends to be more options in modern kingdoms, but if you don't have the newer expansions/2nd editions this might not see much play. I don't think too many people would be upset if Mountebank was cut for a slightly less ridiculous attack either.

I think Prosperity is a fine expansion overall, but there are certainly improvements that could be made.

Necro time!

It never occured to me that there is so little draw, which is a good reason why this expansion isn't quite as good as most others.

But there is a fifth draw card that I had to look up by myself because I forget it everytime aswell: Vault. Funny thing, that card was once considered on of the best cards in the game (long time ago), and still considered quite decent when I started playing (pre Adv.). Now, that card is usually quite inconsequential and rarely any good, and certainly not good for drawing.

This expansion has also waaaaay to many treasures. Kingdom treasures are way below average in strength overall and Prosperity treasures are the weakest among them. You've got Royal Seal, Venture, Talisman, Hoard and Contraband that just dont do anything interesting for you. Bank is also mostly mediocre, Loan is ok and Quarry is the only one I'd miss.

Then there is still Counting House, Trade Route etc..

The cool, shiny parts of the Expansion (KC, Colony, Grand Market) sometimes lead to neglecting the below average cards in evaluating this expansion in my opininion. It's still worth getting because it contains some of the coolest cards, but other expansions and revisited editions provide so much more.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Awaclus on May 16, 2018, 04:51:14 am
Then there is still Counting House, Trade Route etc..

That's a super weak card and a super strong card that do completely different things, I'm having a hard time knowing what the "etc" is supposed to be.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: aku_chi on May 16, 2018, 07:34:38 am
Then there is still Counting House, Trade Route etc..

That's a super weak card and a super strong card that do completely different things, I'm having a hard time knowing what the "etc" is supposed to be.

This is tiresome.  A card is not “super strong” if it’s correct to gain it in fewer than 20% of the kingdoms it appears in.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Awaclus on May 16, 2018, 07:44:14 am
Then there is still Counting House, Trade Route etc..

That's a super weak card and a super strong card that do completely different things, I'm having a hard time knowing what the "etc" is supposed to be.

This is tiresome.  A card is not “super strong” if it’s correct to gain it in fewer than 20% of the kingdoms it appears in.

doesn't take into account a scenario in which a card is only very slightly weaker than many other similar cards (e.g. Walled Village), in which case the card in question is not gained in many kingdoms because a slightly stronger card is gained instead
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Screwyioux on May 16, 2018, 09:38:30 am

To the original point, here's how I rank the expansions, based on nothing but my personal preference:

1. Empires: No question in my mind, this expansion added as much to Dominion as two or three other full expansions put together. It's just marvelous, and as far as I've seen so far it seems exquisitely balanced. I will sing the praises of this expansion with my dying breath.

2. Dark Ages: I'm so mixed on this one in so many ways. It gave us my favorite card in the game (Rats) and my favorite boards in the game (those crazy ones where you trash your deck every turn and start next turn with a completely different deck, it's the only thing that makes me feel alive). It also gave us Rebuild and Cultist. In some ways I think Knights summarizes Dark Ages to the letter. It's one of the most interactive and dynamic piles in the game. It, unfortunately, also contains Dame Anna.

3. Adventures: Similar to Dark Ages in my mixed feelings towards it, but less so on both counts. So many great things to say about this expansion, and it explores some really interesting design space. But Page. I. Hate. Page. Games. So. Much. Still, great expansion. The concept of "making your own card" with the tokens is delightful and makes you feel clever (the choice on how to do it is usually obvious, but somehow that doesn't detract from the feeling of agency it gives you as a player).

4. Hinterlands: The tactical turn-by-turn decision making is my favorite part of any game of Dominion, and all the on-gain effects emphasize it. Buying an Inn to cause the perfect shuffle makes me want to start smoking just so I can quit and see if the euphoria from that "last cigarette" I've heard so much about measures up. Plus, Jake of all Trades, man. Who doesn't love good old Jake?

5. Prosperity: Just adding Platinum/Colony to any board instantly changes the dynamic and pace of the game. On top of that, the idea of VP chips in general has added insane depth to the game beyond buying green cards to win, and this set introduced it. It has a lot of fan-favorite cards and should probably be the second or third set anyone picks up.

6. Seaside: What can I say, it's just a solid expansion with some great Dominion cards in it. Smugglers can be a teensy bit irritating sometimes (especially in 3p), but other than that, I'm always happy to see it on the table.

7. Cornucopia: Horn of Plenty mega turns are about the most fun the game gets for me. Even if we have to endure Tournament.

8. Guilds: Those sweet, sweet coin tokens.

9. Alchemy: I love playing with a lot of these cards, but the resolution time makes them almost unplayable irl, and Transmute, Golem and Herbalist feel super weak most of the time. That would be fine, but the expansion is pretty small, so it's significant proportionately to detract from what the set offers.

10. Nocturne: I wrote a rant article on how I feel about Hexes. My stance on them has softened a bit, but I still hold to it for the most part. I love Night cards and Heirlooms (except Cursed Gold, which creates too much variance in the first two turns and sometimes feels a bit unfair), but it they just don't push it up the ranks for me.

11. Base and Intrigue: I'm sure these are great expansions, but I pretty much consider them core to the game. They've been around since I started and I got them both at once, so yeah, I take these for granted.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: markusin on May 16, 2018, 10:15:12 am
Nowadays, you can get Platinum and Colony from the base cards box. And so, I no longer consider Platinum and Colony as a contributor to my ranking of Prosperity. I would actually rank prosperity pretty low. It's a set with some bombs and then a bunch of meh treasures. There are also only three VP chip cards, and Empires stuff kind of eclipses Monument I feel (at least when King's Court isn't around). My favourite cards from Prosperity are maybe Mint and Grand Market.

A quick set ranking because I don't feel like writing too much:

1. Empires - Lots of cool stuff. Cards are strong, but in a classy way, unlike say Adventures.

2. Adventures - I like the bonus tokens, I like events, and I like cards that are relevant to the board. Adventures has a hefty amount of all of these.

3. Guilds - a small but consistent expansion. Also, I can live with +1 Coffers.

4. Dark Ages - I like how this set challenges you to push for the finish line by trashing your deck to good effect. It's a set where you can shoot yourself in the foot, so you always got to be on your toes.

5. 2nd ed.Intrigue - I don't think the attacks are all that bad, and the second edition really adds a bunch of cool stuff if you look past the attacks.

6. 2nd ed. Base - The 2nd edition cards bring new life to this set, while keeping classics like Witch, Chapel, Militia, Laboratory, and of course Village.

7. Hinterlands - I've come to appreciate the simplicity of this set in terms of mechanics, while still allowing for cool moments with like Haggler, Border Village, and Inn.

8. Nocturne - At least online, I like that there is a bunch more small things to think about with like the Boons, Hexes, and spirits. It's a good supplementary, but gets messy when many cards from this set are used at once.

9. Cornucopia - I like the variety cards. I avoid Tournament when playing against new players. Pairs very well with Dark Ages.

10. Seaside - I like durations, but there are some really nasty attacks here, as well as several duds.

11. Prosperity - The power level of cards here is too polarizing. Many of the coolest cards in this set awkwardly cost 7. A bunch of kingdom treasures that feel meh (but there are some good ones).

12. Alchemy - a bit harsh to put Alchemy this low, but only Apprentice really excites me, and it isn't even a potion card.

13. Promo - Even the good cards in this "set" are swingy (Governor, Black Market). Even Summon needs a good board to shine.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Commodore Chuckles on May 16, 2018, 01:59:34 pm
Then there is still Counting House, Trade Route etc..

That's a super weak card and a super strong card that do completely different things, I'm having a hard time knowing what the "etc" is supposed to be.

This is tiresome.  A card is not “super strong” if it’s correct to gain it in fewer than 20% of the kingdoms it appears in.

doesn't take into account a scenario in which a card is only very slightly weaker than many other similar cards (e.g. Walled Village), in which case the card in question is not gained in many kingdoms because a slightly stronger card is gained instead

Trade Route is not "slightly" weaker than other $3 trashers. It is way, way weaker than most of them. Even if it's the only trasher, it's a waste of time if terminal space is tight but you still have decent draw.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Awaclus on May 16, 2018, 03:22:44 pm
Then there is still Counting House, Trade Route etc..

That's a super weak card and a super strong card that do completely different things, I'm having a hard time knowing what the "etc" is supposed to be.

This is tiresome.  A card is not “super strong” if it’s correct to gain it in fewer than 20% of the kingdoms it appears in.

doesn't take into account a scenario in which a card is only very slightly weaker than many other similar cards (e.g. Walled Village), in which case the card in question is not gained in many kingdoms because a slightly stronger card is gained instead

Trade Route is not "slightly" weaker than other $3 trashers. It is way, way weaker than most of them. Even if it's the only trasher, it's a waste of time if terminal space is tight but you still have decent draw.

It is absolutely not a waste of time. Trashing an Estate is one of the strongest things you can do in the game.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Simon Jester on May 16, 2018, 04:16:48 pm
Then there is still Counting House, Trade Route etc..

That's a super weak card and a super strong card that do completely different things, I'm having a hard time knowing what the "etc" is supposed to be.

This is tiresome.  A card is not “super strong” if it’s correct to gain it in fewer than 20% of the kingdoms it appears in.

doesn't take into account a scenario in which a card is only very slightly weaker than many other similar cards (e.g. Walled Village), in which case the card in question is not gained in many kingdoms because a slightly stronger card is gained instead

Trade Route is not "slightly" weaker than other $3 trashers. It is way, way weaker than most of them. Even if it's the only trasher, it's a waste of time if terminal space is tight but you still have decent draw.

It is absolutely not a waste of time. Trashing an Estate is one of the strongest things you can do in the game.

Yes, sure. It is. But most cards that do trash estates do more stuff than just trash one card at the time, being more or less a junk-card itself there of.

Look. Trashing is good, by providing trashing Trade rout is good, but it can still be one of the weakest trasher in the game and thus not a "superstrong" card over all. It can be really strong, when it is the only trasher it sure is, over all it's decent, but I do know that you now all this already.. Why do you let writing styles trap the discussions like this, I must ask? It seems not worth it..
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Screwyioux on May 16, 2018, 04:38:22 pm
If something is the only way to remove estates from your deck, it rarely matters what it is-- it's a strong card on that board. If there is more than one way to remove estates from your deck, their strength is in relation to each other.

I think that's 90% of evaluating Trade Route. Is it a strong card? Dominion doesn't have inherently strong or weak cards. It has situations and tools that apply to those situations in different ways.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: jonaskoelker on June 30, 2018, 04:31:02 am
Buying an Inn to cause the perfect shuffle makes me want to start smoking just so I can quit and see if the euphoria from that "last cigarette" I've heard so much about measures up.

I don't think I should be taking literally, but just in case: I would recommend against taking up smoking. The nicotine high from your first <10 cigarettes are not enough compensation for the elevated risk of an early death from lung cancer unless you have seriously weird preferences. Also, I've quit several* times and I never experienced any last-cigarette euphoria.

* The first n-1 don't really count ;D

I hope I don't come off as a nagging nanny.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: ClouduHieh on July 14, 2018, 06:31:14 pm
My favorite to most hated expansion is this:

1. Adventures

This was the 2nd expansion I bought after the base game. I love the reserve cards, the durations are awesome, I like most of the events. I enjoy playing with all the different tokens. My favorite cards from this one is: giant, storyteller, bridge troll, relic, coin of the realm, port, royal carriage.

2. Cornucopia

I love the fact that this expansion is all about variety. And there’s some unique cards in this expansion. In fact the only reason it isn’t on the top of my list is the fact that it’s small. Favorite cards: menagerie, tournament, fairgrounds, farming village and hunting party.

3. Empires

I love the events more in this expansion than adventures. But events don’t make an expansion on there own. I love the landmarks even more than the events. I really enjoy most of the split piles. The castles are cool. And all victory and debt tokens are even better than adventures. However I love more action cards in adventures then I do in empires. Favorite cards: plunder, catapult, archive, enchantress and farmer’s market. Favorite event is donate favorite landmark museum.

4. Promos

Black market is my most favorite card! And a few of the others are pretty cool too. So it’s number 4.

5. Dark ages

I love the ruins. The shelters are nice change. Especially giving them out. And yes it’s so interactive. The knights are cool. The cards not in the supply are cool too. And the fact that this expansion has the most attack cards.Favorite cards: squire, rats, maurader, rebuild and hermit/madman.

6. Alchemy

Despite the difficulties of buying cards in this expansion I enjoy playing with most of the cards in this expansion the only down side I wish it was bigger. Favorite cards: scrying pool, vineyard, apothecary and golem

7. Hinterlands

This was my first expansion I bought. And although the cards aren’t as eye catching like some of the other expansions it’s a simple expansion. This is an expansion I recommend to newbies. And there’s still a lot of cards I enjoy playing with in this expansion. I also like the fact that it has 3 victories 3 reactions and 3 treasures. It’s kinda funny. And I don’t think there is any expansion that has more than this one. Favorite cards: I’ll gotten gains, nomad camp, cartographer, margrave and border village.

8. Seaside

I love durations but some of the durations in this one aren’t as awesome as the ones in adventures and empires. Also I feel like it’s missing something? Like where’s the sharks? I feel like there should be a shark action card. So it’s kinda disappointing in that regards. Also I feel like treasury should be a treasure not an action although it wouldn’t really work as treasure anyway. The mats are cool but not as cool the tavern mats. I guess I just don’t like how one mat only works for one card. And the fact that there’s not many trashers in this expansion. There should be more in real life you lose a lot of stuff in the ocean. The embargo tokens are my favorite part of the expansion.
Favorite cards: embargo, caravan, bazaar, outpost and wharf.

9. Intrigue first and 2nd edition

I don’t own this. 2 of my friends do though. The biggest reason why this is so close to the bottom is because I liked most of the cards from the original, but can’t find them anywhere. If the original cards are so bad then why isn’t anyone selling them. There still selling a lot of the other cards. So I put this closer to the bottom cause they removed some of the more interesting cards. Favorite cards from 2nd expansion: swindler, nobles, and lurker.

10. Guilds

I like the coin tokens. But the overpay thing doesn’t quite always work, as in pay off. Out of 3 smallest expansions this one has more cards I hate than the other 2. Favorite cards: baker, herald and soothsayer.

11. Base game 2nd edition

Yes It gets boring after awhile. But it still has some pretty fun cards to play with. Favorite cards: harbinger, moat, and market.

12. Prosperity

Since you need to buy prosperity to get the platinum and colony cards. This expansion doesn’t have a lot going for it. Most of the actions are bland and even some of the treasures are bland. There’s a lot more bland cards than hinterlands has. And the only reason people speak highly of it is because of colony and platinum. If they never made those cards I wonder how many people would put this close to the top of there list. Favorite cards: goons, Bishop, monument and grand market. And few more I enjoy playing with from this expansion. It’s less than 10.

13. Nocturne

Too complicated! I can only play it online. It would be too complicated for my friends to enjoy. And the night phase is interesting but very wonky. It doesn’t seem to work well with other expansions either. Plus I’ve always liked dominion for the fact that it’s more realistic. And this one is like a fairytale version. Favorite cards: tracker/pouch, Shepard (not goat) and conclave.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: msw188 on July 15, 2018, 04:59:40 pm
Browsing by and saw this thread reappear, thought I'd post my own thoughts as a self-proclaimed 'intermediate' player.  Top is favorite, bottom is least favorite.  Asterisk is unowned, but played online plenty

1. Adventures - What's more exciting than going on an adventure?  Love events, love reserves, love tokens.  Less into the Travelers, but still think they're interesting.  Distant Lands is beautiful; I always want to force Miser to work out rather than trashing; Raze is cRaze-y; Dungeon is my favorite sifter, and I love it when sifting is strong enough to makeup for weak trashing; Amulet; Relic might be my favorite attack in the game; oh but wait there's Bridge Troll; Transmogrify is definitely my favorite remodeller in the game (sorry Butcher, you're still cool though); half the time when I look at a board I think, "wouldn't it be great if Seaway were an event here?;" Storyteller is so weird!!!; I could go on and on.

I think this set has a LOT of cards that are impactful in a large variety of ways, and the tokens just multiply the possibilities from there.  Nothing feels quite as bonkers as, say, King's Court, but a lot of stuff feels more powerful than the average card to me.  I think I'd recommend this as a third or fourth purchase to most players.  I think the events, reserves, and tokens are pretty intuitive concepts that absolutely alter the game without complicating it beyond 'Dominion'.  But I have a couple friends who disagree, and feel like this goes a bit too far.

2. Cornucopia+Guilds - I've only ever known these as a single box, and man it's a great box.  I recommend this as the second buy (after Base) to friends, and there are a couple reasons.  First off, once the player understands how money cards work, the coin tokens feel like a very natural offshoot.  We usually ignore the details and say use them whenever during the buy phase - very simple.  Second, there are a lot of fun cards in here that feel pretty balanced to me.  Merchant Guild is one of my absolute favorites; Herald is great; Butcher is second only to Transmogrify (like I said, you're still super-cool) as a remodeller; who doesn't love Menagerie?; I think Plaza is a great village for beginners who usually still have some treasures around to discard, and then feel clever about drawing again later; Jester is ridiculous; I'd probably put Advisor on 90% of boards if I could; Horn of Plenty!!

I think the simplicity here would threaten to trump the craziness of Adventures, but I have to admit that there are some cards I really don't like in this box.  Hunting Party just feels like an overpowerful Laboratory, which already felt like a pretty strong card.  Tournament isn't very fun, and seems to dominate the strategy on every board it appears.  I don't think I've ever successfully used Harvest to any good effect.  And I wish I felt like I knew how to win with Fairgrounds on a 'standard' board (ie no piles with individually named cards).

3. Base 2nd ed - Man, this box is great.  Not much more to say, really.  I need some Vassals.

4. Empires - This feels like a dangerous tipping point to me.  I like the Landmarks, but they don't feel like as much fun as Events, sometimes altering the rules beyond the point where it still feels like 'Dominion' to me.  There are lots of well-balanced cards here I think, but some of them can really require spending time thinking about the future.  Like, if Villa's on the board, not only could a turn have two action phases, the player also spends more time trying to figure out if it's worthwhile to plan on eventually having two action phases.  Does anyone actually know when to start buying Castles?  Archive is great, but it takes a minute, and the payoff is in the future, not now.  Debt necessitates comparing future costs with present gains (despite this, I really like Debt overall).  Groundskeepers are potentially useless until the right future turn.  So do I buy them now?  Also is it just me, or is Wild Hunt potentially bonkers?  If I complained about Hunting Party up above, I probably should complain about this one too.  I do love Farmer's Market though.

That was a lot of rambling to explain why this isn't higher.  It isn't any lower because, man, these are some interesting, thought-provoking cards!  Does Charm suck?  Probably not, that's probably just me sucking!  Also, Enchantress is actually probably my favorite attack, even though I still love Relic.  All in all though, I don't recommend this one as an early buy.  This set expands the 'headspace' around Dominion more than the 'playspace', if that makes any sense.  I really don't think the box should say 30min for a game on this one.

5. Hinterlands* - When I look at card lists for expansions I don't own, man does this one look great!  Maybe no game-changers in here, but so many interesting cards!  I haven't played with them as much so I won't do another goofy list, but this one's almost certainly next on my to-buy list.  How have I lived without Haggler in my life??

6. Intrigue 2nd ed - This is not at all a slight against Intrigue.  I like a lot of these cards.  Wishing Well is hilarious; Masquerade is a favorite; Lurker is super-interesting; Conspirator and Bridge are classics for sure.  The attacks are pretty great too.  Maybe Swindler and Torturer could have cost more...?  But they're still ok.  Love Duke and Nobles too.  It's interesting to think that, before this expansion, there was no concept of choosing between actions on a card, or Victory-Action cards.  But having been introduced to Dominion at a point far beyond that, I take a lot of this for granted now.  And there are not many true favorites for me in here.  I think Intrigue is the ultimate complement - I feel like I can always turn to it to fill out a board, but I rarely start here when thinking of cards it'd be fun to put in.

7. Seaside* - First off, the box has that nice shade of blue.  Secondly, lots of these cards are great!  Again since I haven't played with them as much, I won't do a list.  But I should point out that there are a few cards in here that feel like duds.  Merchant Ship for $5?  Explorer for $5?  And Ambassador sounds cool in theory, but in practice is it really that fun?  Same with Embargo, which is sad because this sounds like such a great idea, but I don't think I've ever played a game where it ended up adding much.

8. Dark Ages* - Looks like there are lots of cool interesting cards in here (Band of Misfits, Count, Sage, Storeroom, plenty more), but some real bummers to play with as well (Cultist, Rebuild, Beggar?, Knights).  I'm not sure how much Shelters really add for me - you want to trash them anyways usually, right?

9. Alchemy - I like several of these cards.  Golem is pretty fun even if it takes so long to get and probably wasn't the fastest option.  Apprentice is awesome.  Actually as I look over these cards, I really enjoy all of them other than Herbalist (which is just too boring), Scrying Pool (takes too long), Philosopher's Stone (takes way too long, and I was forced to read the first Harry Potter in grade school and thought it was awful before turning around on the series later), and Transmute.  The issue is, of course, that there are just not many cards in here period.  Also, even though I like Possession, I understand that it can create un-fun games.

10. Prosperity* - I know a lot of folks like this one, but honestly I look at the card list and I'm pretty underwhelmed.  Lots of treasures that are kind of neat, but only Quarry gets me actively excited.  Oh and I genuinely love Contraband.  But is Venture really worth $5?  City sounds like a cool idea, but I haven't played many games with it where it turned out to be very interesting.  The real problem though is that there are lots of cards here that feel super powerful without feeling very interesting.  Goons might be my least favorite card in the game.  Mountebank is also not very fun.  Grand Market has the cool buying condition, but it's not so interesting once it's in your deck.  King's Court is just bonkers - sometimes fun, but not always.  Is Expand really worth $7?

??? Nocturne - I've barely played with these cards at all.  In the few games that I have played, I'd say that Night is pretty cool and the alternative treasures to start with are great, but Boons and Hexes and States(?) push the game past what I think of as 'Dominion', at least at the moment.  Just reading the cards a bit, I really like the idea of playing a card that you don't yet have a copy of in play (Imp, Conclave).  I also remember liking the Vampire and Bat thing from a game I played.  Is Cobbler a good card?  Sounds pretty interesting, but like Band of Misfits (also an interesting card), I don't often get the feeling I want to pass up some other $5 for the chance to have more $4's.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: werothegreat on July 17, 2018, 12:02:12 am
I didn't realize it had become so popular to hate on Prosperity.  I remember when that was everyone's favorite expansion.  I mean sure, it has Trade Route and Counting House and a few dud Treasures.  But it also has some of the strongest cards in the game - King's Court, Grand Market, Goons, Mountebank.  Rabble is a solid draw card, Cities can get insane, Worker's Village is a solid village, Watchtower is quite good.  And getting free Peddlers is awesome!  You can make a golden deck with Bishop, and Monument is pretty nice if you can get it rolling early.

Anyway, I love all the expansions, and couldn't possibly rank them, except Bridge Troll is probably my favorite card.  So props to Adventures for that.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Asper on July 17, 2018, 02:27:33 am
I didn't realize it had become so popular to hate on Prosperity.  I remember when that was everyone's favorite expansion.  I mean sure, it has Trade Route and Counting House and a few dud Treasures.  But it also has some of the strongest cards in the game - King's Court, Grand Market, Goons, Mountebank.  Rabble is a solid draw card, Cities can get insane, Worker's Village is a solid village, Watchtower is quite good.  And getting free Peddlers is awesome!  You can make a golden deck with Bishop, and Monument is pretty nice if you can get it rolling early.

Anyway, I love all the expansions, and couldn't possibly rank them, except Bridge Troll is probably my favorite card.  So props to Adventures for that.

I think you make a mistake arguing about a card being strong when people say a card isn't fun. Rebuild is also one of the strongest cards in the game, which doesn't make it fun. I do like Prosperity, but Goons, King's Court and Mountebank can be really oppressive and I definitely understand why people might not like them.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Awaclus on July 17, 2018, 06:13:49 am
I didn't realize it had become so popular to hate on Prosperity.  I remember when that was everyone's favorite expansion.  I mean sure, it has Trade Route and Counting House and a few dud Treasures.  But it also has some of the strongest cards in the game - King's Court, Grand Market, Goons, Mountebank.  Rabble is a solid draw card, Cities can get insane, Worker's Village is a solid village, Watchtower is quite good.  And getting free Peddlers is awesome!  You can make a golden deck with Bishop, and Monument is pretty nice if you can get it rolling early.

A lot of the most fun cards in Prosperity don't have anything Prosperity-specific about them, which makes people sort of forget that they were from Prosperity especially because the set has been around for so long. When Empires came out, it made a lot of the Prosperity-specific things not as Prosperity-specific anymore, as well as dull in comparison. The only thing that really sets Prosperity apart from the other expansions at this point is the Treasures, and a lot of them were duds.

Also Trade Route is a pretty strong and unique card.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: markusin on July 17, 2018, 07:53:12 am
I didn't realize it had become so popular to hate on Prosperity.  I remember when that was everyone's favorite expansion.  I mean sure, it has Trade Route and Counting House and a few dud Treasures.  But it also has some of the strongest cards in the game - King's Court, Grand Market, Goons, Mountebank.  Rabble is a solid draw card, Cities can get insane, Worker's Village is a solid village, Watchtower is quite good.  And getting free Peddlers is awesome!  You can make a golden deck with Bishop, and Monument is pretty nice if you can get it rolling early.

A lot of the most fun cards in Prosperity don't have anything Prosperity-specific about them, which makes people sort of forget that they were from Prosperity especially because the set has been around for so long. When Empires came out, it made a lot of the Prosperity-specific things not as Prosperity-specific anymore, as well as dull in comparison. The only thing that really sets Prosperity apart from the other expansions at this point is the Treasures, and a lot of them were duds.

Also Trade Route is a pretty strong and unique card.

Even Colony/Platinum is not exclusive to Prosperity now that Base Cards can be bought separately.

Prosperity has a lot of stand out power cards and duds, but I guess it also has some unsung heroes like Worker's Village, Watchtower, Forge, and like all the Treasures in its set that cost less than 5 coins. Still, it feels a bit dry to me when I think about it.

Also, saying Trade Route is subpar is like the Awaclus version of "Hey Kool-Aid".
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: teamlyle on July 17, 2018, 10:19:08 am
But it also has some of the strongest cards in the game - (...) Mountebank.

No doubt Mountebank is strong, but I hate it. Seeing that ugly image on the randomized board immediately lets me know that it's going to be a long, painful game.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Screwyioux on July 17, 2018, 10:43:57 am
But it also has some of the strongest cards in the game - (...) Mountebank.

No doubt Mountebank is strong, but I hate it. Seeing that ugly image on the randomized board immediately lets me know that it's going to be a long, painful game.

Imo, the worst part about Mountebank is the little unpredictable escape hatch built into the attack. I know it's a very strong junker, but I actually think it would be a lot more fun to play with if it didn't just randomly not work sometimes. It just feels so bad to fall behind on junking because your opponent happened to have curses in his starting hands and you didn't.

Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: crj on July 17, 2018, 11:36:10 am
I've not bothered ranking all the expansions, but Prosperity is definitely one I don't hate. It contains several of the game's signature cards!
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: tripwire on July 17, 2018, 11:42:14 am
I've not bothered ranking all the expansions, but Prosperity is definitely one I don't hate. It contains several of the game's signature cards!

Are there expansions you do hate? If so, why?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: LastFootnote on July 17, 2018, 12:05:55 pm
Prosperity is probably still my least favorite expansion. I like it, but not as much as all the others. I guess Seaside is down there too.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: werothegreat on July 17, 2018, 12:48:42 pm
I didn't realize it had become so popular to hate on Prosperity.  I remember when that was everyone's favorite expansion.  I mean sure, it has Trade Route and Counting House and a few dud Treasures.  But it also has some of the strongest cards in the game - King's Court, Grand Market, Goons, Mountebank.  Rabble is a solid draw card, Cities can get insane, Worker's Village is a solid village, Watchtower is quite good.  And getting free Peddlers is awesome!  You can make a golden deck with Bishop, and Monument is pretty nice if you can get it rolling early.

Anyway, I love all the expansions, and couldn't possibly rank them, except Bridge Troll is probably my favorite card.  So props to Adventures for that.

I think you make a mistake arguing about a card being strong when people say a card isn't fun. Rebuild is also one of the strongest cards in the game, which doesn't make it fun. I do like Prosperity, but Goons, King's Court and Mountebank can be really oppressive and I definitely understand why people might not like them.

Whaaaaaaaaat Goon's and King's Court are awesome!  Don't you like scoring more than 100(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/92/VP.png/16px-VP.png) in a game?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: crj on July 17, 2018, 12:56:42 pm
Are there expansions you do hate? If so, why?
Not that I hate, but honestly I'm not much liking what's happened to Dominion in the past couple of years. Empires, Nocturne, the second-edition changes to Base and Intrigue, "you may X for Y", the new reshuffle rule and especially that "Coffers" change to Guilds don't thrill me. )-8

Adventures was great, apart from the manufacturing fubar. I'm really hoping I'll like whatever happens next that much.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: msw188 on July 17, 2018, 03:45:18 pm
I don't think I hate any expansion, but yeah Prosperity is at the bottom for me.  I remember a friend had this box, and we'd get groups together to play, and I'd always start out thinking "I should use cards from this since I don't get to play with it as often," then looking over the cards and having trouble picking some.

I'm no expert, but I will stand by Goons as probably the worst card in Dominion in terms of "promotes monolithic play".  I'd be interested to see a board with Goons where "be able to play as many Goons as quickly as possible" isn't the only winning strategy.  I guess maybe some sort of extremely fast pileout board, which would probably also trounce anything else considered monolithic (like Rebuild, say).

There are several cards in Prosperity that are fine, but a bit boring.  This isn't just because it's an early expansion.  Compare Worker's Village (a fine village!) with Mining Village which is probably a less helpful village, but a lot more interesting to play with.  In fact, Worker's Village ends up making buys on other cards feel less valuable, because you know you're going to need a couple villages anyways, so you'll be getting "buys for free".  Another example is Monument (I do like this card though!).  Loan and Trade Route are others where, it seems okay as a single card trasher, but is it really that fun?  If there's any other trasher, this is probably redundant and of questionable utility (and Loan can cause you to skip your other trasher).  If there is no other trasher, I always feel like these guys force themselves to be useful, rather than feeling fun/interesting in their own right.  I'd also prefer it if Loan could put the revealed treasure back on top as an option.

There are also cards that are just old cards +1, but where this extra +1 warps the potential strength of the card so greatly that it must be priced too high for early gameplay.  As a result I end up enjoying the earlier versions better, unless Platinum/Colony are in:
-Throne Room (almost always fun!) vs King's Court (sometimes just too bonkers for me, also 'sort of' monolithic).  Meanwhile, I love the middle ground of Royal Carriage.
-Remodel (almost always fun!) vs Expand (sometimes fun, but other times is this even worth it by the time you can afford it?).  Meanwhile, I love the middle ground of Transmogrify, Butcher, Taxman, some others.  I also like Forge as a more interesting version of an expensive super-remodeler.
-I think Market and Grand Market are both a bit boring, but at least Market is available for more of the game in some sense.

All that said, let me list some other cards from Properity I do really enjoy, since I claim not to hate it:
-Watchtower (super cool reaction especially for certain boards)
-Contraband (one of my favorite interactions)
-Rabble
-Bank
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Asper on July 17, 2018, 07:01:16 pm
I didn't realize it had become so popular to hate on Prosperity.  I remember when that was everyone's favorite expansion.  I mean sure, it has Trade Route and Counting House and a few dud Treasures.  But it also has some of the strongest cards in the game - King's Court, Grand Market, Goons, Mountebank.  Rabble is a solid draw card, Cities can get insane, Worker's Village is a solid village, Watchtower is quite good.  And getting free Peddlers is awesome!  You can make a golden deck with Bishop, and Monument is pretty nice if you can get it rolling early.

Anyway, I love all the expansions, and couldn't possibly rank them, except Bridge Troll is probably my favorite card.  So props to Adventures for that.

I think you make a mistake arguing about a card being strong when people say a card isn't fun. Rebuild is also one of the strongest cards in the game, which doesn't make it fun. I do like Prosperity, but Goons, King's Court and Mountebank can be really oppressive and I definitely understand why people might not like them.

Whaaaaaaaaat Goon's and King's Court are awesome!  Don't you like scoring more than 100(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/92/VP.png/16px-VP.png) in a game?

Quote
Prosperity, Landmark
At the end of the game, multiply your score by 10.

So much fun would be had.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: LostPhoenix on July 17, 2018, 08:24:00 pm
I didn't realize it had become so popular to hate on Prosperity.  I remember when that was everyone's favorite expansion.  I mean sure, it has Trade Route and Counting House and a few dud Treasures.  But it also has some of the strongest cards in the game - King's Court, Grand Market, Goons, Mountebank.  Rabble is a solid draw card, Cities can get insane, Worker's Village is a solid village, Watchtower is quite good.  And getting free Peddlers is awesome!  You can make a golden deck with Bishop, and Monument is pretty nice if you can get it rolling early.

My thoughts exactly. Prosperity was my first expansion, mostly because of the good reviews I saw on this forum. Maybe the most recent expansions have changed some opinions.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: markusin on July 17, 2018, 08:39:42 pm
Prosperity is probably still my least favorite expansion. I like it, but not as much as all the others. I guess Seaside is down there too.

I feel like Seaside is a set I enjoy more when I only see a couple of cards from it at a time.

Oh wow, I had to check if Cutpurse was from Seaside or Prosperity. That kind of set mixup normally never happens to me, maybe because I took note of the more commonly confusing ones like Talisman (Prosperity) and Treasury (Seaside).

I recently bought Prosperity, but still don't own Seaside. I am also missing Alchemy, Hinterlands, Empires, and Nocturne.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Commodore Chuckles on July 17, 2018, 11:39:04 pm
I'm no expert, but I will stand by Goons as probably the worst card in Dominion in terms of "promotes monolithic play".

Not Rebuild? Rebuild seems to me like far and away the worst promoter of monolithic play. With Goons you have to buy stuff to draw and give you +actions, and then a bunch of cheap stuff for the VP. With Rebuild you mostly just get Rebuilds, Silvers and Duchies. Rebuild stands out for how powerful it is combined with how few other cards it actually interacts with.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: ipofanes on July 18, 2018, 03:31:11 am
Indeed, with Goons I see less snowballing than with King's Court, which shines even when drawn with Pearl Divers. To set up a Goons winning strategy, especially if there's no convincing +Cards or +Actions in the kingdom, requires some skill. Do I buy another Goons or rather several cheap cards which advance my strategy less than a new Goons? I feel that this dilemma appears earlier than the engine/VP one.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Asper on July 18, 2018, 04:17:27 am
I personally think that one of the best parts of Prosperity are its high number of non-attack player interaction cards: Bishop, City, Vault, Trade Route, Counterfeit...

Just like Seaside, but also like Base, Intrigue and Hinterlands, it suffers from the fact that later expansions would re-use and improve core mechanics it introduced.

I'm no expert, but I will stand by Goons as probably the worst card in Dominion in terms of "promotes monolithic play".

Not Rebuild? Rebuild seems to me like far and away the worst promoter of monolithic play. With Goons you have to buy stuff to draw and give you +actions, and then a bunch of cheap stuff for the VP. With Rebuild you mostly just get Rebuilds, Silvers and Duchies. Rebuild stands out for how powerful it is combined with how few other cards it actually interacts with.

Rebuild is far more monolithic in my book, too. But whereas Goons drags the game out, Rebuild shortens it. Also, whereas Rebuild just makes the game boring, constantly being on the receiving end of Goons feels just frustrating.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Screwyioux on July 18, 2018, 08:35:17 am
What do we mean by Monolithic?

Regardless of power level, I think the big difference between Goons and Rebuild is interactivity with the rest of the kingdom and variability of builds.

Rebuild is powerful in the same way in every kingdom in which it appears and those games feel pretty much the same, whereas Goons, while centralizing, is an expensive, terminal stop card, meaning you need to support your deck in every way imaginable to maximize it, making the way it centralizes the board different every game.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: GendoIkari on July 18, 2018, 10:49:00 am
Even Colony/Platinum is not exclusive to Prosperity now that Base Cards can be bought separately.

If you're playing by the official rules, there is no way to have Colony/Platinum in the game unless you have at least 1 Prosperity card in the Kingdom. Of course, of all the official rules, that seems like the best candidate for not following it if you don't want to.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: markusin on July 18, 2018, 10:57:30 am
Even Colony/Platinum is not exclusive to Prosperity now that Base Cards can be bought separately.

If you're playing by the official rules, there is no way to have Colony/Platinum in the game unless you have at least 1 Prosperity card in the Kingdom. Of course, of all the official rules, that seems like the best candidate for not following it if you don't want to.

I know you aren't supposed to use Platinum/Colony without a Prosperity card on the board. But like, if someone sees a board and feels like adding Platinum/Colony, it would feel a bit dumb to say "okay hold on, let me replace this card here with Venture to make that legal." I'm sure a bunch of people ignore the rule already.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: crj on July 18, 2018, 12:31:57 pm
If you're playing by the official rules, there is no way to have Colony/Platinum in the game unless you have at least 1 Prosperity card in the Kingdom.
Quote from: The official rules
Prosperity includes two new base cards, Platinum and Colony. You can include them whenever you want to; they are always used together. If you want to determine when to use them randomly, choose a random Kingdom card being used, and if it is from Prosperity, use Platinum and Colony.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Asper on July 18, 2018, 12:33:28 pm
If you're playing by the official rules, there is no way to have Colony/Platinum in the game unless you have at least 1 Prosperity card in the Kingdom.
Quote from: The official rules
Prosperity includes two new base cards, Platinum and Colony. You can include them whenever you want to; they are always used together. If you want to determine when to use them randomly, choose a random Kingdom card being used, and if it is from Prosperity, use Platinum and Colony.

But...
What if I want to play using Colony only?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Commodore Chuckles on July 18, 2018, 01:27:51 pm
What do we mean by Monolithic?

Regardless of power level, I think the big difference between Goons and Rebuild is interactivity with the rest of the kingdom and variability of builds.

Rebuild is powerful in the same way in every kingdom in which it appears and those games feel pretty much the same, whereas Goons, while centralizing, is an expensive, terminal stop card, meaning you need to support your deck in every way imaginable to maximize it, making the way it centralizes the board different every game.

Right. In my mind, "monolithic" is not the same as "must-buy." "Must-buy" is not necessarily bad design, as the decision of how to use it can still be interesting. But "monolithic" generally is bad design, as the decisions of whether to buy and how to use it are both uninteresting.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: markusin on July 18, 2018, 01:54:25 pm
What do we mean by Monolithic?

Regardless of power level, I think the big difference between Goons and Rebuild is interactivity with the rest of the kingdom and variability of builds.

Rebuild is powerful in the same way in every kingdom in which it appears and those games feel pretty much the same, whereas Goons, while centralizing, is an expensive, terminal stop card, meaning you need to support your deck in every way imaginable to maximize it, making the way it centralizes the board different every game.

Right. In my mind, "monolithic" is not the same as "must-buy." "Must-buy" is not necessarily bad design, as the decision of how to use it can still be interesting. But "monolithic" generally is bad design, as the decisions of whether to buy and how to use it are both uninteresting.

When I hear of "monolithic", I think of a card where optimal use of it uses very little of the rest of the kingdom and happens to be decently effective. Rebuild doesn't mesh well with many other cards, but Wharf does.

I wonder if a hypothetical version or Museum that gave 8VP per differently named card would be considered "monolithic" since the part where you almost certainly pursue it heavily is uninteresting but it has you use the rest of the kingdom. I guess Donate already fits that description.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: msw188 on July 18, 2018, 10:26:52 pm
Okay maybe I should have said "centralizing" instead of "monolithic" about Goons.  And it's more an opinion than an actual fact of any sort.  I feel that any board with Goons on it automatically becomes "how can I maximize my Goons output as early and as consistently as possible?"  Practically no other payload matters in comparison.  The attack is brutal, contributes to snowballing, and typically is impossible to ignore.  The coin payload is large enough to hold its own.  It comes with its own buy.  It comes with its own VP without necessarily worsening your deck.  Very few cards do even one of those things better than Goons, and it does them all.  Of course, it's terminal.  Like almost any other worthwhile payload.  So yeah, you need to use the rest of the Kingdom to support it.  But that feels like what always happens - the rest of the kingdom is relegated to support, and any other terminal better have something to do with playing more Goons (same as all the rest - draw, villages, trashing, etc).

I don't mind attacks!  I like Militia, Ghost Ship, Legionary etc, because alone they only provide about half of what Goons does.  You need some other payload together with them to make it all work at the end.  I like Witch and Torturer.  Even though junking can snowball too, it runs out after awhile and at least at the end of the day you need some other sort of payload.  A lot of the later attacks (Adventures, Empire) are more interesting and less snowball-inducing, which is great.  They also don't provide all the forms of payload you need.

I wonder if people would like Rebuild better if it were terminal.  In such a case, would we call it less monolithic, even though it might still have the ability to be centralizing?  Or would it even be so great in that scenario, since it doesn't really earn THAT much VP per play?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Awaclus on July 19, 2018, 04:07:13 am
Okay maybe I should have said "centralizing" instead of "monolithic" about Goons.  And it's more an opinion than an actual fact of any sort.  I feel that any board with Goons on it automatically becomes "how can I maximize my Goons output as early and as consistently as possible?"  Practically no other payload matters in comparison.

The megaturn payloads like Bridge Troll still matter, because they can make Goons VP completely irrelevant.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Asper on July 19, 2018, 08:41:11 am
So, as an honest suggestion, maybe we should actually have a dedicated semantics subforum or sticky thread? I am all but against discussions like this, but I feel they are often very distracting to those of us who want to talk about the original topic of a thread. If we had an environment where somebody can say "Created a thread for this, let's talk about it here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0)", it would probably benefit all parties.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: GendoIkari on July 19, 2018, 10:02:59 am
If you're playing by the official rules, there is no way to have Colony/Platinum in the game unless you have at least 1 Prosperity card in the Kingdom.
Quote from: The official rules
Prosperity includes two new base cards, Platinum and Colony. You can include them whenever you want to; they are always used together. If you want to determine when to use them randomly, choose a random Kingdom card being used, and if it is from Prosperity, use Platinum and Colony.

Woah, is this an update to the second edition? Did Dark Ages make the same change with regards to Shelters?

*Edit* No, the new Dark Ages rulebook still has the old rule. Donald, why did you update the rule for Prosperity, but not for Dark Ages?
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: crj on July 19, 2018, 12:24:34 pm
Firstly, Platinum and Colony are in the Base Cards set, so you don't need Dark Ages in order to play with them.

But secondly, that wording didn't surprise me, so I'm guessing it was also in first edition.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Donald X. on July 19, 2018, 02:31:20 pm
If you're playing by the official rules, there is no way to have Colony/Platinum in the game unless you have at least 1 Prosperity card in the Kingdom.
Quote from: The official rules
Prosperity includes two new base cards, Platinum and Colony. You can include them whenever you want to; they are always used together. If you want to determine when to use them randomly, choose a random Kingdom card being used, and if it is from Prosperity, use Platinum and Colony.

Woah, is this an update to the second edition? Did Dark Ages make the same change with regards to Shelters?

*Edit* No, the new Dark Ages rulebook still has the old rule. Donald, why did you update the rule for Prosperity, but not for Dark Ages?
The intention was to generate this question. Bam, success.

Any time there is a discrepancy, probably I would have preferred no discrepancy. Things happened at different times, something was thought of and something else missed, blah blah blah. There's never a story here and there isn't this time.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: GendoIkari on July 19, 2018, 03:03:22 pm
If you're playing by the official rules, there is no way to have Colony/Platinum in the game unless you have at least 1 Prosperity card in the Kingdom.
Quote from: The official rules
Prosperity includes two new base cards, Platinum and Colony. You can include them whenever you want to; they are always used together. If you want to determine when to use them randomly, choose a random Kingdom card being used, and if it is from Prosperity, use Platinum and Colony.

Woah, is this an update to the second edition? Did Dark Ages make the same change with regards to Shelters?

*Edit* No, the new Dark Ages rulebook still has the old rule. Donald, why did you update the rule for Prosperity, but not for Dark Ages?
The intention was to generate this question. Bam, success.

Any time there is a discrepancy, probably I would have preferred no discrepancy. Things happened at different times, something was thought of and something else missed, blah blah blah. There's never a story here and there isn't this time.

I think it's just a big money-grab; to force those like me who already own Prosperity First Edition to buy Second Edition; just so that we can start playing with Platinum/Colony in Kingdoms without Prosperity cards.  >:(
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: ClouduHieh on July 19, 2018, 09:52:02 pm
Everyone seems to have their own ideas of what they love and hate about prosperity. For me the real reason why prosperity is practically the bottom of the barrel. Is because there’s not enough actions and too much treasures. I mean I played with a family member once and all they bought were treasures and victories, sure they won. But they hardly ever play it because it wasn’t any fun. The actions make it fun. And prosperity had about as much actions as alchemy did. The actions are what really make an expansion fun. Sure the events and landmarks have certainly added to the fun. But it’s not fun if there’s no actions involved. And another reason was because there was no actions costing $2. Sure I love most of the actions, even counting house (I like copper strategies). It just wasn’t enough action cards for my taste. I don’t like mint, forge, venture or loan, and I have mixed feeling with trade route. If he replaced the first 4 I mentioned and put in 7 new cards, as in adding 3 more. And made 5 of 7 of them actions. I’d probably like it more than guilds and intrigue and maybe even seaside. Then it would be worth re buying or at least the little pack that he did for the other 2. For 2nd edition of prosperity.

And yeah I’m not a big fan of the coffers for guilds. There’s no point in buying an expansion unless there are new cards involved.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: LastFootnote on July 20, 2018, 12:05:35 am
Prosperity has 17 Action cards in it.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Holunder9 on July 20, 2018, 04:03:18 am
I mean I played with a family member once and all they bought were treasures and victories, sure they won. But they hardly ever play it because it wasn’t any fun. The actions make it fun. And prosperity had about as much actions as alchemy did. The actions are what really make an expansion fun. Sure the events and landmarks have certainly added to the fun. But it’s not fun if there’s no actions involved.
Whether a Kingdom enables a Treasure- or Action-heavy strategy has little to do with how much Treasures there are in an expansion. It has more to do with the density of villages and non-terminals. Take, the first version of the base game, it has no Kingdom Treasure and yet it most heavily leans towards BM because it has so many terminals.

So if you take a look at Prosperity don't look at Platinum or all the Kingdom Treasures. Look at Grand Market, look at Goons, look at Kings Court. And if you look at the Kingdom Treasure, really look at them: Loans is best in a Treasure-less strategy and Quarry is only good if you go for Actions.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Screwyioux on July 20, 2018, 12:02:20 pm
I mean I played with a family member once and all they bought were treasures and victories, sure they won. But they hardly ever play it because it wasn’t any fun. The actions make it fun. And prosperity had about as much actions as alchemy did. The actions are what really make an expansion fun. Sure the events and landmarks have certainly added to the fun. But it’s not fun if there’s no actions involved.
Whether a Kingdom enables a Treasure- or Action-heavy strategy has little to do with how much Treasures there are in an expansion. It has more to do with the density of villages and non-terminals. Take, the first version of the base game, it has no Kingdom Treasure and yet it most heavily leans towards BM because it has so many terminals.

So if you take a look at Prosperity don't look at Platinum or all the Kingdom Treasures. Look at Grand Market, look at Goons, look at Kings Court. And if you look at the Kingdom Treasure, really look at them: Loans is best in a Treasure-less strategy and Quarry is only good if you go for Actions.

This is pretty accurate^^^
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Aleimon Thimble on July 24, 2018, 04:34:57 am
I mean I played with a family member once and all they bought were treasures and victories, sure they won. But they hardly ever play it because it wasn’t any fun. The actions make it fun.

Want to build an engine? If there's King's Court, there's a way.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Asper on July 24, 2018, 06:59:10 am
I mean I played with a family member once and all they bought were treasures and victories, sure they won. But they hardly ever play it because it wasn’t any fun. The actions make it fun.

Want to build an engine? If there's King's Court, there's a way.

Challenge:
Kingdom is King's Court, Throne Room, Treasure Map, Vampire, Prince, Coin of the Realm, Duplicate, Quarry, Silk Road and Outpost.

(even this kingdom should have better strategies than just buying VP and Treasure, though)
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Commodore Chuckles on July 25, 2018, 09:54:22 am
I mean I played with a family member once and all they bought were treasures and victories, sure they won. But they hardly ever play it because it wasn’t any fun. The actions make it fun.

Want to build an engine? If there's King's Court, there's a way.

Challenge:
Kingdom is King's Court, Throne Room, Treasure Map, Vampire, Prince, Coin of the Realm, Duplicate, Quarry, Silk Road and Outpost.

(even this kingdom should have better strategies than just buying VP and Treasure, though)

You can make a kingdom from just Prosperity cards where it's useless: King's Court, Watchtower or Counting House, and all 8 kingdom treasures.
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Asper on July 25, 2018, 01:15:06 pm
I mean I played with a family member once and all they bought were treasures and victories, sure they won. But they hardly ever play it because it wasn’t any fun. The actions make it fun.

Want to build an engine? If there's King's Court, there's a way.

Challenge:
Kingdom is King's Court, Throne Room, Treasure Map, Vampire, Prince, Coin of the Realm, Duplicate, Quarry, Silk Road and Outpost.

(even this kingdom should have better strategies than just buying VP and Treasure, though)

You can make a kingdom from just Prosperity cards where it's useless: King's Court, Watchtower or Counting House, and all 8 kingdom treasures.

If you have both Watchtower and Counting House, 2 King's Courts will enable you to play both of them in the same turn to first increase your handsize and then pick up the Coppers...! ENGINE!!
Title: Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
Post by: Aleimon Thimble on July 25, 2018, 01:29:54 pm
I mean I played with a family member once and all they bought were treasures and victories, sure they won. But they hardly ever play it because it wasn’t any fun. The actions make it fun.

Want to build an engine? If there's King's Court, there's a way.

Challenge:
Kingdom is King's Court, Throne Room, Treasure Map, Vampire, Prince, Coin of the Realm, Duplicate, Quarry, Silk Road and Outpost.

(even this kingdom should have better strategies than just buying VP and Treasure, though)

You can make a kingdom from just Prosperity cards where it's useless: King's Court, Watchtower or Counting House, and all 8 kingdom treasures.

Proverbs have exceptions.