Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: jimjam on March 03, 2012, 11:28:21 pm
-
Dominion, like many games, is quite thematic. For the most part, the names accurately reflect the function:
Villages gives +actions, implying that you need people to carry out orders
Conspirator makes sense, you need a lot of them to be useful.
Etc.
As pointed out before, Minion and Pawn aren't too good for names. It's hard to see how they line up with the function.
JoaT makes sense in that it does a little of everything, but as the recent DS article points out, chances are you go doublejack (or some other simplistic BM-type strategy) or skip it entirely. Maybe it should be called Master at One?
What nicknames would you give to the cards (perhaps some derisive ones for Familiar)?
Or, if you were given a whole set and decided to base it around a different theme, what would it be?
edit: Ah, what a coincidence, somebody recently posted a retheme.
-
Minion and Pawn are part of the Pawn-Steward-Minion-Nobles Intrigue chain of people actions that give you explicit choices.
Most of the badly-themed cards are from the base set. Donald remarked in his Secret History of Dominion:
If I had it to do again, I might put a little more work into these names; a lot of them are fine - Thief steals treasures, Moat stops attacks, and while at first you figure, I guess the Thief can't swim, later you see the Moat art and realize it's not the kind of Moat that's swimmable - but some are odd - Feast is a big Workshop that only works once? See, you're talking shop at the feast. Names were just not an issue we looked at. Everything seemed fine because it had been called whatever for so long. It's the Raiders of the Lost Ark phenomenon. Raiders of the Lost Ark? Some thieves robbing a boat? But once you get used to it, it's Raiders, that movie. Anyway I have spent more time on expansion card names since.
-
Raiders of the Lost Ark? I just call it Indiana Jones 1 anyway. :)
I agree that a lot of the names are poorly chosen, but the incredible gameplay more than makes up for it. Unfortunately there are no do-overs for printed media. :-\
-
Minion is fine, it implies that you should go get an army of them to do your bidding.
Festival is one name that bothers me a bunch. Should have been "Logging Village" or something, by analogy with FV and Woodcutter. The worst names are probably Nomad Camp and Goons, though.
-
I remember reading in one of Donald's secret histories or posts or something that the name Woodcutter itself is a relic from when the game had 'build' instead of 'buy', so Woodcutter gave you +1 build and that made sense. But then build was changed to buy, and it no longer makes particularly much sense why a woodcutter gets you an extra buy.