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1

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Idea for non-terminal drawer

« on: September 10, 2012, 03:50:03 pm »

the problem I have is that there's so little incentive to discard anything but a copper or a curse. at its best (without opponents trying to help you) it is a lab. in any games without poor house or shelters there is nothing that costs 1. since the average value of a card is generally going to be more than $1 pretty quickly, you pretty much never want to discard a $3 just to stop the +$1, especially since you lose your $3. so maybe you drop an estate to cost them $1. I feel like it'd be more interesting if the spectrum of available discard options was a little wider. maybe take out the drawing part and just make it no draws if a player discarded since, in 90% of cases, that's what will happen anyway. you could then up the power by shifting the $1 into the main part so that when it went off it was a copper-lab and when it didn't it was a copper. or you could even up the thing to "if any player didn't discard, +2 cards" to make it better in multiplayer. that way it opens up more interaction (heck, I could discard a $7 to it if I get stuck with two terminals and want to play the other) and it makes all other players act together, which is neat. although the politics involved in being third-seat and promising you'll discard just to pass up on it when the other players do are annoying. you could do a complicated vote-and-reveal system if you wanted, but that's lame.

2

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: "New Upgrade Mechanic" - Swag

« on: September 10, 2012, 06:59:53 am »

swag is a little too modern and informal to be a good word here. Bounty, maybe?

as for the mechanics itself I find it somewhat hard to believe it's ever right to not save up for at least gold.

it's also somewhat awkward that a lot of those rules would have to be hidden in the rulebook. I mean I get the "gaining swag means paying X swag tokens to gain a swag piece" part, but things like "you can gain as many as you want", "once I choose to gain I lose all the tokens I don't spend", and "I can only have 8 tokens max" are completely unintuitive to the actual card.

3

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Excavation: A Choice Treasure Gainer

« on: September 09, 2012, 12:19:49 am »

I don't know if this could cost 4 but a part of me really wants the last ability to be just gain a gold.

4

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Pet peeve rant

« on: September 07, 2012, 05:38:50 pm »

Another pet peeve is the text "that costs $x more than this card" (or with "less" instead of "more"). If your card costs $4 and x=1, why not just say "that costs up to $5." This wording is simpler and easier and they are almost always the same. Only use this phrasing if absolutely necessary, which is usually not true. Maybe sometimes they will be slightly different with Highway, Bridge, BoM, etc., but it usually doesn't matter - plus, let those cards catch a break!

This actually matters a lot. If Border Village said "up to $5", then having one Highway/Bridge in play would allow you to empty the Border Village stack in 1 buy.

Sure, I'm not saying in all cases - it's the right thing on Border Village, and I'm sure other circumstances may warrant it. But, no other official card has this wording (that I can find), and most of the fan cards would be fine with "up to $5", etc. If it needs to be "up to $2 more than this", that's fine, but most don't have that need.

Band of Misfits feels left out.

why does BoM have that wording, anyway? just so you don't have to deal with the infinite regression of BoM as BoM as BoM as BoM ad nauseam? does that actually make a difference? I don't know that dominion rules have a way to handle infinite loops as of right now since to my knowledge no such method exists, but it's not a hard one to add intuitively. you can just borrow the Magic rule of "okay we get it you can do this infinite times now tell us how many you're actually gonna do it for so we can move on." and there's no actual upside to playing BoM as BoM a million times before you decide its actual target. is it just for power reasons, to prevent it from being big expensive stuff with a couple highways/bridges?

5

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Strategies that lead to unlimited number of victory points

« on: September 05, 2012, 06:07:47 pm »

I think jomini's answer summarizes all the available strategy kernels.

Regarding super-linear strategies, I think we can show that they do not exist.
The basic idea is to show that there is an upper bound on the number of cards that can be played during a turn (*) and thus an upper bound on the number of VP tokens that can be gained in a single turn. That yields a linear bound.

(*) This assumes that possessed turns count as separate turns. Otherwise, it's easy to have infinite turns.
Even so, it's not easy to prove. For example, there are a few ways to play the same card multiple times (e.g., Feast with Graverobber), but I assume no way to go on indefinitely.

it's hard to prove, but it's easy to disprove if such a method exists to play the same cards indefinitely. I can think of no way to remove an action card already in play during the action phase, therefore any cycle of actions is doomed to run out of at least one action eventually unless all parts remove themselves. furthermore, the only method I know of to remove an action that has entered play is to trash it. no self-trasher that I could find can return cards from the trash. therefore any action chain is doomed to run out of something eventually. (Graverobbers, for instance, or Processions if you use those to trash graverobbers) the same can likely be established with treasures, as the only way to move treasure around at a time where you can still play more treasure that I know of is to HoP for Mandarin, and you need to then play a Venture to get the HoP again. plus the Mandarin pile runs out.

6

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Card: Gazebo

« on: September 05, 2012, 05:17:17 pm »

You cannot topdeck it with Scheme. It needs to be discarded on it's own for Scheme to kick in.

Am I the only one that, when reading the title, though this would be about the RPG story with poor Paladin trying to conquer the evil Gazebo?

now it's a gazebo with an arrow in it.

anyway this doesn't feel like an action. yes, there's some interactions it has because it is, but it doesn't play like one at all. it plays like a permanent. if you're gonna make a new type, just make it a new type. don't worry about the lost interactions, just make new ones.

7

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Clasic_Cards - (Copper Week) - #38, 39: Metallurgist

« on: September 05, 2012, 05:08:10 pm »

OK, I actually really like the concept of Metallurgist. The exact implementation may even be balanced. Tough to tell without playtesting.

Here's my suggested wording:

Metallurgist (5)
Action
+1 Action
Gain a Copper, putting it into your hand. Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Copper. Put one of the revealed cards into your hand and discard the rest.

The biggest possible issue I see is that it could take a very long time to reveal your entire deck card by card if you have no Copper, but that's not really a dealbreaker.

this problem already exists in Golem and, to a lesser extent, Hunting Party. with Copper though, if you are 100% sure that you have no coppers left in your deck I doubt anyone's gonna mind if you just flip over your whole deck at once to prove it.

also, I misread this at first as putting the revealed copper into your hand. which would be an interesting card too, although very different. a non-terminal silver that populated your deck with coppers and helped cycle through would certainly be interesting in an alt VP strategy, although it seems pretty bad outside of that. probably doesn't do enough to be worth it.

8

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Clasic_Cards - (Trash Week) - #34, 35, 36: Vagabond

« on: September 03, 2012, 03:58:53 pm »

the one concern I have is that no official card, to my knowledge, has messed with pricing on a single card other than itself. I don't know if this is a real issue though. the only difference it makes mechanically is that it changes something's price in relation to other things, meaning you can buy a Border Village and take a gold, which is otherwise not possible. similar interactions exist with Haggler.

but like I said I'm not sure those interactions are a bad thing, so whatever.

9

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Playtesting: Soothsayer (Challenge #2)

« on: September 02, 2012, 03:39:37 pm »

if it's too easy a choice to discard, why not up the discard amount? or make it scale to the number of curses on your mat? that would certainly make it a much tougher decision once you got a couple, and I think it'd play better too because at some point you just have to give, (literally, once you get to 6 you have no choice) which has the bonus of getting rid of the nagging feeling later. yeah, you had to take a four-curse hit. but now you're not discarding any more. would make it play more as intended, even if it is a significant power increase. if you did that, of course, you'd have to drop the treasure clause, which would have the bonus of weakening it early when curses matter most, because they can just drop an estate.

10

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Card: Fishing Well

« on: September 02, 2012, 03:04:41 pm »

the drawback makes no sense with the card.

11

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Clasic_Cards - (Trash Week) - #34, 35, 36: Vagabond

« on: September 01, 2012, 08:25:57 pm »

I don't think we need more cards that let you dump treasures into play during the action phase. it's an awkward mechanic to begin with. I like the setup idea, I just wish there was a simpler main ability. it also seems kinda worthless to start with, since turn 3 there's a 66% chance that I will do exactly what I'd have done if this was just a terminal silver. without any trashers on the board, all this will ever be is a 33% shot at half a mountebank. if there's a good trasher, this can get kinda nuts, but still, nothing will ever wind up in the trash that you couldn't just buy so the ability to purchase things is kinda weak. (with the exception of a Feast in the Black Market or something, but like, don't plan for that.) the only time you'll be happy about it is if the pile is empty, and a) that means the game's nearing a close, and b) if it was so popular that everyone bought out the pile, what were they doing trashing it? does everyone just love Embargoing stuff?

12

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Giving ruins over curses

« on: August 31, 2012, 06:46:37 pm »

Don't feel like I have to spoiler this because this isn't a particularly edge case or anything but

Ruins hurt a deck that relies on Wandering Minstrel for +actions more than Curses

also I guess one that's trying to use Shanty Town to draw but the +action ruins doesn't do that. but if it's the +buy one then yeah, nonterminalsplusshantytown.dec gets hosed. unless it has villages. like shanty town. okay it only works if it's in the hand with the first shanty town alright this strategy is terrible never mind.

13

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A New Look on Cursed Gold

« on: August 31, 2012, 06:42:13 pm »

Again.

Regardless, these solutions still come up short, although they're improvements on the original idea. The problem is that a power card can't be balanced with a fixed VP cost, for the simple reason that VP totals vary wildly from game to game, depending on the board. Dominion games can be won with 5 points and lost with 100. The difference between scores can be very small, meaning a -2 VP penalty could be decisive, or very large, making it insignificant.

Another thing is that -2VP on the card will usually hurt less than just gaining a regular Curse.  Yeah, -VP sucks, but it doesn't clog.

I never really understood the point of that line in the fan card creation guide.  I mean, isn't it a good thing that the card strength might vary a lot between games?

The point I was getting at was that it varies wildly beyond the scope of what would make for a good game.  As a trivial example, let's say you had a card as follows:

Variance
$5 - Action
When you play this, if Baron is in the supply, +3 Buys, +$20.  Otherwise, if Duke is in the supply, lose your next 4 turns.  Otherwise, if Cellar is in the supply, +$3.

To be sure, this card varies in strength from game to game.  But when it's strong, it's too strong, and when it's weak, it's too weak, and when it's just right, that's a rare thing indeed.

Obviously this is more of an extreme case than the breed of card I was talking about, but that was the idea.

I would buy that card in a Baron game. I think it would be pretty good.

14

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Giving ruins over curses

« on: August 31, 2012, 01:04:32 am »

you have torturer and you don't want to run out the curse pile and kill the attack.

15

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Clasic_Cards - (Trash Week) - #34: Groves

« on: August 31, 2012, 12:17:06 am »

In games without other trashers, this becomes a rather straight-forward race. I don't have huge issues with that (yet), but it could seem a bit lackluster. I like the condition, but maybe a more nuanced form of trashing would like to be involved. Perhaps a Reaction trash ability.

As for card types, I have no huge issue over them all being considered "card-types", but it would be nice to have wording technology to differentiate between types that can stand alone and types that require something to attach to. I'm not sure if it's necessary, though.

in the case of this card, it's fairly unlikely that you'll ever need to check for card types other than the big four. Attacks, Durations, Ruins, Knights, and Looters can only be actions so if actions are less than victories then all of those will be too. reactions could technically outnumber them without another type also doing so, since reaction-treasures and reaction-actions exist but it's unlikely. prizes are almost all actions, and if you went to the trouble of gaining them odds are you're not going to trash them. in games with shelters you'll have to check those I guess.

16

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Clasic_Cards - (Trash Week) - #34: Groves

« on: August 30, 2012, 03:58:51 pm »

I somewhat agree with razorborne, but there are other cards that are like this too (Trade Route, Forager, even City).

it feels different to me because it's a victory instead of an action, but I have no idea why exactly that feels different.

@razorborne, I think Duke is worded like that because it counts 1:1 with Duchy.  Compare:

a) "Worth 1 VP for every 1 Duchy..."
b) "Worth 1 VP per Duchy..."

c) "Worth 2 VP for every 5 differently named cards...."
d) "Worth 2 VP per 5 differently named cards..."

(b) reads better than (a), and (c) reads better than (d).  Granted, Duke could have just said "Worth 1 VP for every Duchy" and that would be fine and consistent.

seems likely, although as you pointed out, all you have to do to line Duke up is remove the numeric qualifier on the Duchies, and it reads just fine.

17

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Clasic_Cards - (Trash Week) - #34: Groves

« on: August 30, 2012, 03:28:09 pm »

personally, I'm not a huge fan of victory cards with fluctuating values where the total value is going to be the same for all players. that sentence is worded really awkwardly but hopefully you know what I mean. I feel like the point of non-fixed-value victory cards is so that you can set up yourself to be in a better situation with them than your opponent. if I do all the work to set this up so it's worth 4 for me, my opponent can just buy it and it'll be worth 4 for them too. that feels wrong because they didn't do the work, I did.

also, on an unrelated note, is there a reason Duke is worded differently from the other non-fixed-value victory cards? as far as I can tell, all the others say "Worth X Victory Point(s) for every Y Zs in your deck." whereas Duke is "Worth 1 Victory Point per Duchy you have." cards were printed with the other wording both before and after Duke.

18

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: The Contest Set Card List

« on: August 29, 2012, 10:15:02 pm »

Them cards are looking nice!

I wonder if there's general rule of thumb of how the card costs are distributed. The base set has lots of $3 and $4 cards. Prosperity has  more expensive cards, but it's mostly because they got Platinum as well.

So far the majority of our cards are $4 and $5...I wonder if we'll be doing a few lower costing cards to balance out?

Here's the table I made for this. I haven't gotten around to adding DA yet, but will soon. I'll also add and update this fan expansion so we can compare

I updated my spreadsheet to include DA cards and our fan cards. We could use another 2 and 3, and maybe a 4, but we're pretty close to the distribution of the rest of the expansions!

that distribution is thrown a decent amount by prosperity, though.

19

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Expansion: Dominion - Eureka

« on: August 29, 2012, 08:38:05 pm »

how is Erratic Engineer not a megafeast?

Well, I will assume two levels of concern here.

The first Erratic Engineer won't be able to gain anything costing $5, as the line for cost reduction occurs after the gain. My interpretation is that the gain will take place first, then the cost reduction activates and stays in place as long as that Erratic Engineer is around. If this is not how the order of operations occur, then I will make amendments.

But yes, the second Erratic Engineer will be able to pick up cards that originally costed $5, due to the cost reduction from the first Erratic Engineer. The third will be able to pick up anything that originally costed $6, and so on. If this is also considered too strong, then okay, I guess I should make amendments on that too.

I do not believe this is true, although I am admittedly not the most familiar with the intricacies of the dominion rules. the way I read it, though, "while this is in play" is just a static modifier. it's in play when you choose what to gain. it's not another action that needs to be taken, like Warehouse, or Oasis, in which case I'd definitely agree that they're done in the order on the card. it's just a thing that is true while Engineer is in play. maybe this is my M:tG biases showing through, though.

20

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Clasic_Cards #30 - King Midas

« on: August 29, 2012, 07:35:06 pm »

This could interact in very weird ways with Black Market.

It would need a special ruling, for sure. I would rule that it gets put on the bottom of the Black Market deck, which makes things rather simple.

No, no, that's not what I mean. Black Market and King Midas in the kingdom, with at least one King Midas having been bought. Black Market then allows you to play your Actions-which-are-now-Treasures in the Action phase.

the only difference would be that making villages treasures would get better.

If you put the token on a terminal, you can now play any number of that terminal during the Black Market phase even though you have no more actions.

right. and you can do that in the buy phase too. I suppose it matters on card-draw terminals if there are also villages, since you can play village, then play BM to drop a bunch of Treasure-Smithies. so there's that too.

21

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Clasic_Cards #30 - King Midas

« on: August 29, 2012, 06:16:10 pm »

This could interact in very weird ways with Black Market.

It would need a special ruling, for sure. I would rule that it gets put on the bottom of the Black Market deck, which makes things rather simple.

No, no, that's not what I mean. Black Market and King Midas in the kingdom, with at least one King Midas having been bought. Black Market then allows you to play your Actions-which-are-now-Treasures in the Action phase.

the only difference would be that making villages treasures would get better.

22

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Expansion: Dominion - Eureka

« on: August 29, 2012, 05:56:47 pm »

how is Erratic Engineer not a megafeast?

23

Simulation / Re: Apothecary Golden Deck-Simulation help

« on: August 28, 2012, 11:47:09 pm »

Well, just scheme works, but throne-scheme lets you add and play a terminal attack every turn.

How?  TR-Scheme lets you return two cards to the top.  Aren't you just going to put TR and Scheme back on top?  KC-Scheme is the combo that lets you keep itself and something else indefinitely.

it gives you +2 actions, which means you have an action to spare with which to play the attack. not sure this is what he meant though.

24

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Getting the most out of a kingdom

« on: August 28, 2012, 11:34:37 pm »

Before any (non victory) kingdom card could be played at most 30 times (King's court on all 10 cards).

I don't think you can KC a Horde. I could be wrong though.

25

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Mini-Set Design Contest, Challenge #13: One-Shot Card!

« on: August 28, 2012, 02:16:22 am »

You may not include an event clause that undoes the effect of the trashing/returning.  For example, "When you trash this, gain a copy of this card from the trash."

if you want to be insanely pedantic, I think this rule disqualifies Feast, as Feast can gain another Feast. it doesn't undo it entirely, in that in doing so you effectively trash a feast from the supply, but the fact remains that, when you use a Feast to gain a Feast, you have the same total amount of Feasts in your deck before and after playing the action.