Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Rules Questions => Topic started by: majiponi on May 16, 2022, 03:25:56 am
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Do 2 Blockades give my opponent 29 Curses if I gain a Garden and a Curse and they gain a Garden on their turn?
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If you Blockade a Curse, then yes you can potentially give out the entire Curse pile. It doesn't sound very scary in practice. For one, they can skip gaining anything you Blockaded, and you can only Blockade $4's. And unlike Swamp Hag, doing this lowers Curses, so it's not going to stalemate.
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Do 2 Blockades give my opponent 29 Curses if I gain a Garden and a Curse and they gain a Garden on their turn?
It really embargoes things.
Now I see. Really really. Like, 29-Curses-Really.
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If you Blockade a Curse, then yes you can potentially give out the entire Curse pile. It doesn't sound very scary in practice. For one, they can skip gaining anything you Blockaded, and you can only Blockade $4's. And unlike Swamp Hag, doing this lowers Curses, so it's not going to stalemate.
Some Japanese players do this with Black Cat.
Alice gains a Mill.
Bob reacts with Black Cat.
Alice gains a Curse.
Alice gains a Curse.
...
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Caravan Guard -> Way of the Mouse -> Ambassador threatens your opponent with gaining the card against their will. Would that be enough to prevent anyone from playing an attack card? And then you can eventually Ambassador the Curse back.
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Caravan Guard -> Way of the Mouse -> Ambassador threatens your opponent with gaining the card against their will. Would that be enough to prevent anyone from playing an attack card? And then you can eventually Ambassador the Curse back.
Even without Caravan Guard, there are other ways to play Ambassador on your turn (like Black Cat). So players would have to avoid gaining any Victory card on their turn as well.
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Somehow I just know I'm going to buy a cursed village thinking "what are the odds I get plague" and then end up with the whole curse pile.
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For sure the infinite Curse-gaining thing seems like the sort of thing that in the past Donald would have used alternate wording to avoid.
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For sure the infinite Curse-gaining thing seems like the sort of thing that in the past Donald would have used alternate wording to avoid.
For a while it prevented multi-cursing via saying "Gain a card costing $3 or $4," but no-one could ever remember that it couldn't gain $2's, because it's so unusual. The actual card goes a sufficient distance to make giving out all the Curses difficult, without causing problems in the endless ordinary games where it was never happening. Hooray, well done Donald X.
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I guess it could have had "non-Curse" on the gain requirements. I know it's never been established whether that would mean "not named Curse" or "without the Curse type," but it probably wouldn't matter.
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I guess it could have had "non-Curse" on the gain requirements. I know it's never been established whether that would mean "not named Curse" or "without the Curse type," but it probably wouldn't matter.
That rules question wouldn't be any different than any card that says "gain a curse".
But it would still look super awkward on a card.
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For sure the infinite Curse-gaining thing seems like the sort of thing that in the past Donald would have used alternate wording to avoid.
For a while it prevented multi-cursing via saying "Gain a card costing $3 or $4," but no-one could ever remember that it couldn't gain $2's, because it's so unusual. The actual card goes a sufficient distance to make giving out all the Curses difficult, without causing problems in the endless ordinary games where it was never happening. Hooray, well done Donald X.
And on further thought, you end up gaining the card you Blockaded, so if your opponent avoids triggering the Curse cascade, you end up just giving yourself a Curse without hurting your opponent, so a lot of the time trying that strategy would end up hurting yourself more than your opponent
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Caravan Guard -> Way of the Mouse -> Ambassador threatens your opponent with gaining the card against their will. Would that be enough to prevent anyone from playing an attack card? And then you can eventually Ambassador the Curse back.
Even without Caravan Guard, there are other ways to play Ambassador on your turn (like Black Cat). So players would have to avoid gaining any Victory card on their turn as well.
Black Cat doesn't even need Ambassador (which may well be removed from 2E as well) to give out Curses on opponents' turns. The question is whether it's worth it to gain a Curse yourself with Blockade instead of a $4 card, in order to prevent the opponents from buying VP cards, should you have a Black Cat in hand during their turn (which you may or may not be able to set up in advance, depending on the kingdom). I suppose you'd only do it in the end game, when it really hurts not to be able to gain VP cards during your turn.
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Swamp hag seems especially brutal. Can't buy *anything* without gaining the whole curse pile? I think getting a curse myself is well worth putting my opponent in that situation.
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Swamp hag seems especially brutal. Can't buy *anything* without gaining the whole curse pile? I think getting a curse myself is well worth putting my opponent in that situation.
Indeed, and unlike Black Cat or Caravan Guard it doesn't require setting up your next turn (or hoping for shuffle luck).
On boards without other gainers, this comes close to a new 2-card pin: The first player who can reliably play a Blockade and Swamp Hag each turn can prevent their opponent from buying a card without gaining the curse pile for as long as they're willing to gain a curse each turn themself. The opponent can only gain cheap cards by playing Blockade themself, but they cannot pin the first player back since this would require gaining a Blockaded Curse with Blockade. :o
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The pin is much worse if player 1 has a way to reliably trash the Curses (which is easier than usual to set up, since the Curses to right into their next hand), or they're doing this at the cost of junking up their own deck pretty bad. And at least it depletes the Curse pile, so it only lasts for a limited number of turns.
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For sure the infinite Curse-gaining thing seems like the sort of thing that in the past Donald would have used alternate wording to avoid.
For a while it prevented multi-cursing via saying "Gain a card costing $3 or $4," but no-one could ever remember that it couldn't gain $2's, because it's so unusual. The actual card goes a sufficient distance to make giving out all the Curses difficult, without causing problems in the endless ordinary games where it was never happening. Hooray, well done Donald X.
Wouldn't "gain a card costing from $2 to $4" solve that problem?
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or "gain a non-curse card"
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For sure the infinite Curse-gaining thing seems like the sort of thing that in the past Donald would have used alternate wording to avoid.
For a while it prevented multi-cursing via saying "Gain a card costing $3 or $4," but no-one could ever remember that it couldn't gain $2's, because it's so unusual. The actual card goes a sufficient distance to make giving out all the Curses difficult, without causing problems in the endless ordinary games where it was never happening. Hooray, well done Donald X.
Wouldn't "gain a card costing from $2 to $4" solve that problem?
It makes it happen less often, but you'd still have games where e.g. you played Highways and thought you could gain a card and oops no, it had to cost at least $2.
"$2 to $4" and "non-Curse" were not impossible-to-see options. I went with what seemed best to me.
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For sure the infinite Curse-gaining thing seems like the sort of thing that in the past Donald would have used alternate wording to avoid.
For a while it prevented multi-cursing via saying "Gain a card costing $3 or $4," but no-one could ever remember that it couldn't gain $2's, because it's so unusual. The actual card goes a sufficient distance to make giving out all the Curses difficult, without causing problems in the endless ordinary games where it was never happening. Hooray, well done Donald X.
Wouldn't "gain a card costing from $2 to $4" solve that problem?
It makes it happen less often, but you'd still have games where e.g. you played Highways and thought you could gain a card and oops no, it had to cost at least $2.
"$2 to $4" and "non-Curse" were not impossible-to-see options. I went with what seemed best to me.
And like you wrote in the secret history, the idea for $3-4 was to get around shenanigans with both Curses and Estates.