No-one minds which breed of dog it is.
Small Castle could be "trash this or a castle from your hand and gain a castle."
That would allow a hand of Small Castle and KC to gain three Castles, I think. It would also mean Necromancer on a trashed Small Castle would let you gain a Castle (with no other Castle in hand).
I know, but it doesn't seem obvious that those are bigger problems than for soothsayer. They're stronger but will happen less often. And KC has lots of super-strong combos. If you KC a remodel on a fortress you gain three cards.
Small Castle could be "trash this or a castle from your hand and gain a castle."
I also think that you can exaggerate interactiveness. If you judge the Kingdoms correctly and see that the best way to play is aim for a 2 Provinces per turn engine, you should build until that very moment, i.e. relatively independently of what the opponent does. The notion that you should build up (although you reached the sweet spot) further because it is not a solo game is then highly dubious.
Not everyone implements their own storage solution. I leave the cards in their boxes, and I know I'm not alone in that.
An obvious difficulty with "boosters" is how to package them so that they're easy to use. Base cards and the second edition upgrade packs work around that by expecting that you slot them into your existing base game / Intrigue boxes in place of old cards. I can't see them putting time and money into designing a box for a quarter-size expansion when they've already taken the decision to merge two of the three half-size expansions into a single full-size box!
I put in whatever I can into my hobby lobby box. It became heavy enough for the handle to break. Already I have a few expansions I left in their boxes, and any new expansions I get will be left in their boxes too.
It's just as well. You can simply carry a couple of expansion boxes with you when you go to teach people Dominion and then it might feel less intimidating for them.
It's possible for two copies of a card to have different abilities. This causes problems, the worst (extremely exotic) situation being, you play a card and don't actually know what it should do.I'm curious what exactly this means and what the specific situation is that causes it to happen. Is there some way to have two cards competing to apply becomes-a-copy effects to a single card?
King's Court not #1? Sacrilege!
I don't get the hype over Worker's Village. It's useful, but not exactly game-changing (at least not any more than any other Village or +Buy).
I always think of how Paul Erdos couldn't believe the answer to the Monty Hall problem. He didn't accept it until seeing a computer simulation.
Are you sure the Donate person is a female?
No; there are many of these I'm not 100% sure of. But I think it's reasonable to go with how an artist would choose to portray a man or a woman - i.e. assuming that there's no reason why an artist (in this context) would choose to depict a man with feminine features or a woman with masculine ones.
In the past few years, Dominion either is nowhere to be seen, or perhaps you may see a game or 2 of it in play. But that's out of "a sea of tables" (up to 40 tables in some cases). Or, I see someone with a very large box, I look inside, and see he's got 10+ sets of Dominion cards in there, so even though that copy wasn't being played at the moment I walked by, it does show someone has it and brought it in.It seems nice to have presence at cons, but that may be skewed towards new games, and there are other metrics. For example: https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/42622/top-10-hobby-channel-card-dice-games-fall-2018
I don't have more of a release date yet; there isn't art yet so they're months away. I don't know if they will come out at the same time or what.
As an alternate exercise, what is the expected number of games (full random setup) you would play in order to encounter every mechanic?
I don't know, but I'm sure it's a lot. I've played a lot of random games (mostly IRL, and probably not as many as others who play mostly online),
Just one word of caution with the stats ranking is that some hexes are close and the differences not statistically significant.
If you want to have one number: receiving Misery makes you go from 50% to 44% win chance. (95% confidence interval about [42%,46%]. Bad Omens for comparison would be [45%,49%].)
 | #1 =0 Delusion Weighted Average: 94.2% ▲9.6pp / Unweighted Average: 93.0% / Median: 100.0% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 14.8% There is nothing else like this Attack in the game. While its strength depends on the card-pool (presence of Events, Projects, Night, alt-treasure cards diminish its impact), action-card denial in the early or middle stages of a game can seemingly put a player a full turn behind their opponent. It received 9/13 first place votes. Interestingly, this falls just middle-of-the-pack in markus’ stats. Is it possible that we remember those times Delusion kills us early but forget when it does next-to-nothing late? |
 | #2 ▲4 Poverty Weighted Average: 74.5% ▲7.8pp / Unweighted Average: 75.5% / Median: 81.8% ▲9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 19.3% This year’s biggest riser in the rankings, Poverty was voted first twice. Given that this is just a bog-standard Militia attack, I was a little surprised to see it this high. This can hurt with Leprechaun but is generally a Hex you hope to see when buying Cursed Village. The stats rate this as the 10th most effective Hex. Two Hexes in, and two major disagreements between the stats and the rankings. |
 | #3 ▼1 Locusts Weighted Average: 71.9% ▼7.0pp / Unweighted Average: 72.7% / Median: 72.7% ▼9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 15.1% There are plenty of Locusts horror stories: gaining a Cursed Village on an empty deck, an opponent hitting your Champion, or a Vampire getting turned into a Pirate Ship. Generally, the outcome isn’t that bad. What many might suggest as the most common nightmare case – getting a Province trashed – is typically a 3-VP deduction, an outcome on par with Misery. While some of the Hexes diminish when combined with other Hexes, Locusts hits no matter when or how you receive it, and arguably gets stronger with Haunting, Bad Omens and Greed. This ranked 5th in the stats. |
 | #4 ▼1 War Weighted Average: 68.4% ▼1.2pp / Unweighted Average: 70.6% / Median: 72.7% ▲9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 16.4% Similar to Locusts, War always “works”. It may find nothing, or it may find something you can convince yourself you didn’t want anyway, but it’s generally doing something harmful every time it is received. Not every Hex can say that. The stats also place War 4th. |
 | #5 ▼1 Plague Weighted Average: 67.2% ▲0.7pp / Unweighted Average: 63.6% / Median: 54.5% ▼9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 16.7% As Cursers go, this one is pretty mild, but even weak junking is harmful. As with War and Locusts, there is no minimizing the impact of this Hex while Curses remain in the supply. You could argue that this one hurts more to receive with Cursed Village than from an opponent’s attack. This Hex ranks 3rd in the stats. |
 | #6 ▼1 Envy Weighted Average: 57.6% ▼8.6pp / Unweighted Average: 62.2% / Median: 72.7% ▼9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 25.2% Like Delusion, Envy’s attack is unique. The average effect may not be very harmful, but it can completely derail end-game turns that rely on treasure payload. I had a game once where my opponent twice got Envy on what would have otherwise been double Province turns. Seems pretty bad, right? Let’s revisit the language I just used: “I had a game once…” This anecdotal experience has stuck with me, and as a result, I probably overrate Envy. So, what does the data tell us? It’s quite harsh: Envy ranks as the most impotent Hex. |
 | #7 ▲2 Misery Weighted Average: 44.2% ▲8.6pp / Unweighted Average: 44.1% / Median: 36.4% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 23.3% Getting two “anti-VP tokens” often feels inconsequential. After all, the card does absolutely nothing to directly affect your deck or your ability to build. But this Hex does something irreparably bad to your score each of the first two times it hits. Simply put, there is no escaping the damage it does, and it has a very real, measurable effect on the outcome of the game. This is the top-ranked Hex in the stats by a comfortable margin. |
 | #8 =0 Greed Weighted Average: 41.7% ▲4.2pp / Unweighted Average: 40.6% / Median: 45.5% ▲9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 18.1% Greed follows Plague’s theme of weak junking by handing out a slightly more palatable type of junk but putting it where you least want it: the top of your deck. How bad could that be? Well, the stats think it’s pretty bad: it ranks second only to Misery. Notably this puts it just above Plague. |
 | #9 ▼2 Haunting Weighted Average: 30.7% ▼12.1pp / Unweighted Average: 32.2% / Median: 27.3% ▼9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 15.8% This mini Ghost Ship attack feel less than half as harmful as a regular Ghost Ship, but that seems to be consistent with the power level of Hexes. It interacts with many of the other Hexes, so consider carefully what you top deck when you’re getting hit with multiple Hexes on a turn |
 | #10 =0 Bad Omens Weighted Average: 24.3% ▼2.5pp / Unweighted Average: 20.3% / Median: 9.1% ▼9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 21.7% This Hex is only occasionally harmful and can actually be very helpful in certain situations (such as triggering a shuffle between turns 1 and 2). The better your deck is, the less this one hurts, and even if you do get two Coppers on top, knowing that they’re there can be useful. Here we see general agreement between the voters and the stats, where it finished 11th. Two people voted it last. |
 | #11 =0 Fear Weighted Average: 23.6% ▲0.8pp / Unweighted Average: 23.8% / Median: 27.3% ▲9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 7.6% It’s easy to underrate this Hex or dismiss it as merely a Cutpurse. The difference is that this it scales with your deck. Getting hit with this late is comparable to a Raider attack, which isn’t nothing. It can fail to hit when combined with other discard Hexes (such as Poverty or Haunting). |
 | #12 =0 Famine Weighted Average: 1.6% ▼1.5pp / Unweighted Average: 1.4% / Median: 0.0% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 3.3% If there’s a Hex on this list that makes me question the stats, it’s this one. Almost unanimously picked as the weakest Hex (11/13 picked it last, the other two picked it 2nd-to-last), the effect of this Hex according to the data is on par with Delusion and Fear, but a step below Locusts. Perhaps this is another case of a Hex hitting every time, and therefore having a larger average effect than we tend to notice. |
 | #1 ▲1 The Swamp's Gift Weighted Average: 85.6% ▲1.7pp / Unweighted Average: 85.5% / Median: 90.9% ▲9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 14.4% The top three Boons are very close in the rankings, but for me (and the voters) this is the Boon that moves the needle the most. Popping a first-shuffle Pixie for two Wisps can provide a huge head start and I always take notice if Druid has Swamp’s Gift. Non-terminal draw is quite good, you know. Seeing it move to the top of the list, despite fewer first-place votes than the third-ranked Boon, makes me happy. Interestingly, the stats aren’t as favorable to these little flying Spirits: Swamp’s Gift ranks 6th in impact per extra Wisp gained. Maybe the low marginal benefit of the 3rd and 4th Wisp is dragging down the average gain advantage metric? |
 | #2 ▲1 The Earth's Gift Weighted Average: 84.4% ▲10.5pp / Unweighted Average: 81.8% / Median: 81.8% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 12.0% I was surprised to see this jump to rank 2, but hey, gains are good! Finding this with an early Blessed Village can provide a nice complementary engine piece. With a Pixie, this can add two components or something useful and a replacement Pixie. This Boon occasionally answers late-game prayers, providing a desperate player with a timely point or two. It certainly passes the “Boons you might track” test. It ranks just above Swamp’s gift in the stats. |
 | #3 ▼2 The Flame's Gift Weighted Average: 82.7% ▼12.0pp / Unweighted Average: 86.1% / Median: 90.9% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 17.5% Last year’s top Boon tumbles to number three, despite receiving more first place votes (6) than Swamp (4) or Earth (2). Trashing is good, yes, but weak and/or unpredictable trashing much less so. Getting Flame’s gift with a Pixie or Blessed Village early is great, of course. Flame on a Druid merely turns it into a mid-grade Trade Route. Nevertheless, trashing is trashing, and you’ll almost always be happy to see this Boon. Somewhat astonishingly, the stats have this ranked an 8th. Perhaps what this is really telling us is that excessive receipts of this Boon might be misguided or a sign of desperation. |
 | #4 ▲1 The Forest's Gift Weighted Average: 70.8% ▲8.3pp / Unweighted Average: 70.9% / Median: 72.7% ▲9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 21.3% Despite a weighted average over 14 percentage points behind Earth’s Gift, it has a lot in common with the second-ranked Boon: it can provide a late-game points swing and deserves to be tracked on a single-gain board. It suffers in that comparison from not always being as relevant early. Another intriguing difference from Earth’s Gift: this Boon received twice as many first-place votes. Maybe those voters are on to something: this is the top-ranked Boon in the stats. |
 | #5 ▼1 The River's Gift Weighted Average: 66.8% ▼1.5pp / Unweighted Average: 64.8% / Median: 63.6% ▼9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 15.5% River’s Gift is only a few percentage points behind Forest’s Gift but over 17 ahead of the next Boon. In fact, it’s the last Boon with a weighted score above 50%. It provides a little bit of Duration-like draw. Weird edge-cases aside, you’re never sad to see this one. The stats have this 4th, on par with Earth’s gift. |
 | #6 =0 The Field's Gift Weighted Average: 49.7% ▼8.2pp / Unweighted Average: 50.9% / Median: 54.5% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 23.9% Field’s Gift retains its spot in the ranking, but the gap between it and the fifth-ranked boon has widened from about 4.5 percentage points last year to 17 (as noted above). It can be a village if received at the right time and therefore might merit tracking in a desperate situation. It turns Druid into a Candlestick Maker variant. The stats sandwich this boon between Flame’s Gift and Swamp’s Gift. |
 | #7 =0 The Sun's Gift Weighted Average: 45.6% ▲1.6pp / Unweighted Average: 43.0% / Median: 45.5% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 15.7% At this point in the list I think it’s fair to ask how many people reading this could tell me, without looking, what Sun’s Gift does. And what does that tell us about this particular boon? It's unremarkable, occasionally useful and largely inoffensive. The stats seem to agree: it ranks 10th on that list. |
 | #8 =0 The Sea's Gift Weighted Average: 43.2% ▲9.7pp / Unweighted Average: 43.0% / Median: 45.5% ▲9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 12.2% The other drawing Boon, Sea’s Gift often feels inferior to its freshwater cousin. It can be awkward to receive it as part of a terminal action (e.g. with Druid, Tracker, Bard, own Sacred Grove) or with Idol because you might trigger a bad shuffle or draw something dead. Nevertheless, the stats rate it higher than River’s Gift. |
 | #9 =0 The Wind's Gift Weighted Average: 30.0% ▼2.9pp / Unweighted Average: 32.1% / Median: 27.3% ▼9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 17.8% In certain decks, if received at the right time, Wind’s Gift provides some useful sifting. When received at the wrong time, it can feel like a Hex: it might trigger a shuffle or even reduce hand size. I see you nodding. We’ve all been there. Now here’s shocker: the stats suggest this is the second strongest Boon on a per-receipt basis. Look, I’m just as skeptical as you are, but three of the top four Boons in the stats provide card draw, so maybe it’s not as crazy as it might seem. Its highest vote? One person voted it fifth. |
 | #10 ▲1 The Mountain's Gift Weighted Average: 20.7% ▲7.9pp / Unweighted Average: 17.0% / Median: 9.1% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 15.2% Mountain’s Gift has recovered a little from the backlash it got last year, where it finished dead last. This year it received three last-place votes, the second-most. I wonder where it would rank if the Silver gain was optional (I suspect a little higher); similarly, I wonder how different the gain rates would be (I suspect not that different). I guess people just don’t like having gross yellow cards foisted on them without their consent. The stats are slightly more favorable to Mountain’s Gift than the voters, ranking it 9th, just behind Flame’s Gift. |
 | #11 ▼1 The Sky's Gift Weighted Average: 17.5% ▼6.6pp / Unweighted Average: 20.6% / Median: 18.2% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 14.3% It’s rare for the trade offered by this Boon to be a good value. If it’s early, you may not want to add a stop card over adding a more effective piece; later in the game, the value of three cards in your hand will hopefully exceed that of adding a Gold. Nevertheless, if the stars align, this boon can be good. And hey, I finally have a mnemonic device to remember what this one does. |
 | #12 =0 The Moon's Gift Weighted Average: 2.9% ▼13.4pp / Unweighted Average: 4.2% / Median: 0.0% ▼9.1pp / Standard Deviation: 7.3% In another setting, if I called something “The Harbinger of Boons”, you might think that good things were about to happen. In this setting, we all know better. |
