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Messages - Shvegait

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1
The on-play effect of Weaver, a "gain" effect varying both quantity and class of cards gained, has wording precedent with the on-trash effect of Hunting Grounds: "When you trash this, gain a Duchy or 3 Estates."

Elder + Weaver doesn't seem to be an especially good or important combo to be worth changing the wording just for that reason (plus they are in different sets).

The longer wording "Choose one: Gain 2 Silvers; or gain a card costing up to (4)." might struggle to fit on two lines with the large font.

2
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Hinterlands 2E Preview 3
« on: July 02, 2022, 12:14:20 pm »
If I'm not mistaken, luckily no current cards care about card ownership, except at the end of the game of course.

Market Square cares about card ownership. That said, I don't think there are any ways to trash cards that are in a state of ambiguous ownership.

3
I was looking at the Allies suggested sets of 10.  The following cards are listed in the Allies & Hinterlands section: Farmland, Haggler, Jack of All Trades, Margrave, Tunnel, Border Village, Crossroads, Highway, Inn, and Spice Merchant.  Since DXV was already working on Hinterlands 2E as he was also working on Allies, I think that it is fair to say that those cards are definitely staying.

This turned out not to be true for Prosperity. The recommended sets of 10 include references to Talisman and Trade Route, which were removed from Prosperity 2E.

4
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Seaside 2E Announced
« on: February 01, 2022, 09:28:03 pm »
Given that there are 9 new cards, and there will be an update pack product, I'm assuming the update pack will contain an even 100 cards. Each non-Victory card requires 11 cards, and if there are 9 of those, that uses up 99 cards, for 1 blank. There's not room for a single new Victory card. Based on that, I am predicting Island won't be cut and remains the single alt VP card in the set.

As Seaside currently has enough blanks for one more non-Victory card, it's logical that 8 cards would be cut from the set.

Here are my predictions of what stays and what goes:

100% chance of staying:
Caravan
Fishing Village
Salvager
Warehouse
Bazaar
Tactician
Lighthouse
Ghost Ship
Ambassador
Outpost
Wharf
Smugglers
Haven

Probably staying:
Island (errata to not reference a mat)
Native Village (but what about the mat?)
Treasure Map

Take it or leave it:
Merchant Ship
Treasury (replaced with a Hireling for +$1?)

Probably leaving:
Navigator (art issue?)
Pearl Diver (art issue?)
Explorer
Cutpurse

100% chance of leaving:
Pirate Ship
Embargo
Sea Hag
Lookout

If Pearl Diver and Navigator both have to stay, then probably Merchant Ship and Treasury are gone instead. If Native Village has to go (which would be a big shame), then either Explorer or Cutpurse stays.

Regardless of what is cut, I can't wait to see the new cards! Seaside was my first expansion, and it was good times. The attacks are brutal, the swings are big, but that's all part of the charm. Despite the duds, there are quite a lot of unique concepts in this set. The new cards in Base and Intrigue added a lot of life to those sets, and I'm looking forward to breaking out Seaside again with some new cards.

5
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Distribution of Dominion card costs
« on: December 20, 2020, 09:53:43 pm »
It's surprising that an expansion called Dark Ages would have the second highest average cost, though.

The Dark Ages calculation is weird, with Knights counted as nine 5-costs and a 4-cost. But also, the five 0-cost Ruins are included.

Counting Knights as a single 5-cost pile and not counting ruins, the average for Dark Ages is 4.06, close to the center.

6
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Comedic Easter Egg for dominion
« on: October 25, 2020, 01:30:03 pm »
But isn't the word "finally" there just to make clear that the Silver was the last card revealed which stopped the revealing of additional cards, because the other cards listed are not shown in the order they were revealed? I don't think it's supposed to be for comedic effect... It's striking a balance between readability and clarity of the game rules. It's important that Silver was the last card revealed, whereas the preceding list could have been in any order without making a difference.

Grammatically, it's a bit awkward to say "...2 Coppers and a Bat and finally Silver", but it's probably two separate routines. One that takes the list of all cards except the one that triggers the end of the search, giving the output "3 Fisherman, ... and a Bat", and a separate one for the last card on its own, "and finally Silver". This probably had more to do with it being easier to program this way than trying to make it funny (if this is even considered funny).

7
Over here too: "Otherwise" is how the card got to exist. I have a ban on using the small font.

And your argument can be, "okay, therefore this shouldn't exist." I respect that. I was a sucker for good times.

How about "If you didn't, discard it" though, like I said in the other thread? It looks like it could fit? Obviously for any future printing.

With this wording, when the card is not a Treasure or Action, it's actually not clear whether this instruction has to be followed. Because the verb is missing, the reader has to interpret that this is referring to the "you may play it" clause. But that clause doesn't apply when the card is not a Treasure or Action, so one interpretation is that this sentence is still conditional on "If it's a Treasure or Action".

There is another out for this card, but maybe it was already tried, which is getting rid of the "you may":

"+1 Buy
Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's a Treasure or Action, play it. Otherwise, discard it."

There's no ambiguity now. And if you have something you don't want to play, well, it's called Gamble. Is that too awful for some reason?

8
You'll never discard the card, because you're instructed to discard it "from your deck", and that's not where it is, it's in the <revealed cards area>

In that case, what causes a card to move from the <revealed cards area> back to the top of the deck? (Or, why does Vagrant not break the game? Other than that the FAQ says so.)

Edit: Nevermind, the rulebook says
Quote
"Reveal a card" - All players get to see the card. • After revealing it, return it to wherever it was (unless otherwise instructed).

So this would be an instruction on where to move the card, negating the return to the top of the deck. Good catch.

Then:
"+1 Buy
Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's a Treasure or Action, you may play it. Discard it if it's not in play."

But that's longer again.

9
How about this awful wording that invokes the stop-moving rule? It's slightly longer than "Otherwise" but shorter than "If you didn't play it".

"+1 Buy
Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's a Treasure or Action, you may play it. Discard it from your deck."

10
Rules Questions / Re: Phrasing the new Reaction timing rule
« on: October 21, 2019, 12:09:45 am »
A new working draft:
Quote
Optional abilities are defined as those that say "you may" (currently Reactions and Urchin). All others are mandatory.
When there are several abilities at the same time and the correct order might matter in the game, procede as follows.
1. First, the current player may resolve any of their abilities in any order, but must resolve all mandatory abilities. If they have no mandatory abilities, they may pass.
2. When a player passes, continue with the next player in turn.
3. When a player resolves an ability (mandatory or optional), go back to the first player (the current player in the game), and continue from there. This means that the players who already either resolved some abilities or passed, get a new chance to resolve abilities.
[SMALL TEXT: If you pass without resolving an optional ability because you want to see what the others do first, you risk that everybody else passes too and you don't get the opportunity to resolve it.]
4. When everybody passes, the players are done resolving these abilities.

I don't think it's accurate to say Reactions and Urchin are currently the only optional abilities, there are tons of "you may" cards (Reserve cards for instance). Those are maybe just the ones that require the complicated multiplayer rule, but it's misleading as worded.

I think step 1 is not entirely accurate as written. The current player may only resolve one such ability before step 3 kicks in. That doesn't matter if you're just talking about the current player, of course, but since step 2 seems to imply that you follow step 1 for the next player, it would seem to say the next player may "resolve any of their abilities in any order", but my understanding is that they only get to pick one at a time.

I agree with GendoIkari that this rule is similar to the MTG priority rule. So how about something like this:
Quote
Optional abilities are defined as those that say "you may" (such as revealing a Reaction card). All others are mandatory.
When several abilities could resolve at the same time and the correct order might matter in the game, proceed as follows:
1. The current player starts with priority.
2. The player with priority may resolve any one of their abilities. If they have any mandatory abilities, they must resolve an ability (whether an optional or mandatory one). If they don't resolve an ability, they pass.
3. After any player resolves an ability, the current player (first player) gets priority.
4. When a player passes, the next player in turn order gets priority.
5. When everybody passes, the players are done resolving these abilities. (Optional abilities that could have resolved at this time may no longer resolve.)

Edit:
Getting rid of the word "pass" because it's used on Masquerade, if you care about that kind of thing, but the last rule becomes clumsy:
Quote
Optional abilities are defined as those that say "you may" (such as revealing a Reaction card). All others are mandatory.
When several abilities could resolve at the same time and the correct order might matter in the game, proceed as follows:
1. The current player starts with priority.
2. The player with priority may resolve any one of their abilities. If they have any mandatory abilities, they must resolve an ability (whether an optional or mandatory one). If they don't resolve an ability, the next player in turn order gets priority.
3. After any player resolves an ability, the current player (first player) gets priority.
4. If the current player gets priority as the result of the last player in turn order not resolving an ability, the players are done resolving these abilities. (Optional abilities that could have resolved at this time may no longer resolve.)

11
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cards with the Best Flavour
« on: May 06, 2019, 06:53:12 pm »
Mint, Sage, Spices

12
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Remodel variants from a meme
« on: May 04, 2019, 12:39:50 pm »
Quote
Reuse $3 Action
+1 Action
Play this as if it were a different Action card in play. This is that card until it leaves play.

Overpowering. If I play Necropolis, Smithy, and Reuse, it will be double-lab. You should remove +1 Action.
A misleading example as Thone Room achieves the very same thing.
Reuse is weak than TR as you cannot Reuse Reuse (and TR-TR-X is usually pretty strong). Probably not that much weaker to justify a price of $3 but due to TR too good for $4.

If you play Lab and draw Reuse, you can play Reuse as another Lab. If you draw Throne Room, you can't. So Throne Room is not strictly better than Reuse. I think Reuse can easily cost $4, or even $5. It's worse than Royal Carriage when it doesn't collide with any action you want to duplicate, since you can save the Royal Carriage for another turn. But it can even be better than Royal Carriage sometimes because it can duplicate any other action in play, not just one you just played. It's especially powerful with Duration cards played last turn!

13
Rules Questions / Re: Haggler with Multiple Buys
« on: March 20, 2019, 10:20:54 pm »
It's not just that you "can", but actually you must gain a cheaper non-Victory card if able, because it doesn't say "you may". For your example, when you buy a Silver, you must gain a cheaper non-Victory card than it, which might mean you have to gain a Copper even if you don't really want it.

If you have multiple Hagglers in play, you get the effect of each one, for each card you buy. So if you had two Hagglers in play, then buy a Gold, you must gain two cards each costing less than the Gold; if you then buy a Silver, you gain another two cards costing less than the Silver.

14
Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's Discuss Second Edition Cards: Replace
« on: January 29, 2019, 11:00:30 pm »
Also, the card touches your discard pile before being topdecked, so you have to figure out all the lose-track fun.

None of those cards are in base or Intrigue, so this only comes up when you're playing with later expansions.

If you wanted to pick a card that is more advanced/more difficult to master than the first expansion is "supposed" to be, I would go with Lurker. That one is a mind bender.
If you wanted to pick a wordy card that is difficult to comprehend on first glance, I would go with Diplomat.
Or for both of these, if you include base 2nd edition, maybe Sentry is a bit too complex there.

Replace does have a lot of words, but it's just a Remodel+, so if you already understand Remodel, you just have to learn the extra part.

Also, Replace works great with the dual-type Victory cards, especially with Mill costing 4 replacing Great Hall costing 3. If you want, you can go Estate -> Mill -> Harem/Nobles -> Province, doling out curses each step of the way. So it's a good fit in that way.

Finally, if you consider Replace as, uhh, replacing, Saboteur, you haven't really changed the wordiness level of the expansion at all. (And there are clear parallels. Replace is a +$2 remodel for you, Saboteur is a -$2 remodel for the other player(s). Both are attacks that can make your opponent's deck worse.)


If I had to criticize:
It does mean Intrigue has 3 attacks that give out curses, but at least they are all conditional or optional so they don't usually run the curse pile down too quickly.
Upgrade in the same set also does the whole trash a card, gain a more expensive card thing. It plays differently enough, though.

15
Rules Questions / Re: Band of Misfits as Fortress - Procession
« on: January 19, 2019, 10:29:39 am »
Yes. See discussion here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=7889.0

From the DA rule book, FAQ on Band of Misfits:

"If you play Band of Misfits as a card that does something when trashed or discarded from play, and that thing happens, Band of Misfits will do that"


By the way, whether the Procession was Procession itself or Band of Misfits played as Procession doesn't make any difference.

16
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Cursed Bottle / Bottle Imp
« on: December 12, 2018, 10:33:34 pm »
What if instead of Cursed Bottle you made an Event: "Buy the Bottle Imp"

Cost $0

If there are any coin tokens on this, you may pay $1 for each coin token on this to take the Bottle Imp. If you do, remove a coin token from this.

Setup: Put X coin tokens on this. (Maybe 8, 9, 10? It's probably significant in 2 player whether this amount is odd or even.)


Then you still get the decreasing cost thing as the game goes on, but you take away the player's ability to send the cost to the minimum.

17
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Het Koninkrijk Dominion
« on: November 02, 2018, 11:43:14 pm »
Weird product!

It doesn't seem like the aim is the simplest cards, just a small set of cards that play well together, to give you a flavor of what Dominion is about. With such a small set of cards, it makes sense to include cards that do multiple things instead of just one thing. So you get Rabble instead of Smithy, Steward instead of Chapel, Farming Village instead of Village, Bridge instead of Woodcutter.

Also, there's no Moat, so the attacks need to have other counters. Even though Farming Village is basically Village, it can counter Rabble. And of course, Library counters Militia. There's non-attack interaction with Smugglers and Vault. Harem is the simplest alt-VP card there is, plus it works with Mine and Crossroads, and it might have more value in a world with no other alt-VP and not even Estates available. There's some logic in the card choices.

Seems like games would be pretty fast with this set and mostly money-ish. No Lab variants and a lot of terminals, the non-terminals are pretty expensive, relatively weak $5s. Engines will be tough to build given the very limited +Action and the need to use actions on draw, but you might try anyway if Bridge is out there.

Funny thing about Remodel. Because there are no Coppers, Curses, or Estates in the supply, if Cellar and Crossroads aren't in the kingdom, Remodel can be a straight Copper trasher. A weak one, but still.

18
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards
« on: July 08, 2018, 06:39:59 pm »
Chaplain feels like it would run out of utility fast. I mean sure it's incredible for the first 3 plays, but after that, phew. I'd bump it to +3 Cards.

Chaplain is hard to judge. For the first 3 plays it is better than Laboratory (unless you draw a hand without an Estate and a $2), for the next 3-6 plays it is worse (depends on whether you have $6s or Provinces in your deck/hand) and then it is identical to it.
So if the junk trashing compensates for the trashing of good cards it is similar in strength to Lab.

Going along with this, when you do get to that point in the game, the card as written would become unwieldy, as you can wind up with an obscene number of tokens on your Chaplain mat, and have to reveal your hand for no reason every time (See, I don't have any $25s. Look, now I don't have any $26s, etc.). If you gave this +3 Cards, it would be such a strong unignorable draw card that I'd expect you'd see this happen in every single game! (if there's an engine, at least)

To balance that, if you did decide to try +3 Cards, I would make the adding a token to the Chaplain mat contingent on actually trashing a card. Then you can't easily bypass the Province (and other good card) trashing by just waiting until you have 9 tokens on the mat.

I was going to say that revealing your hand nearly every time on a spammable card might bog the game down too much, but then I realized Hunting Party already does that... Still, something to consider.

19
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Ruined cards
« on: July 05, 2018, 11:46:54 pm »
Quote
Blind Lookout: Look at the top 3 cards of your deck. Discard one of them and put the rest back on top in any order.

How about: Set aside the top 3 cards of your deck face down (you may not look at them). Trash one of them. Discard one of them. Put the other one back on top of your deck.

20
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Ruined cards
« on: July 01, 2018, 09:12:34 pm »
Humble Ruins (Treasure-Victory-Ruins)
$0, 0 VP

Crumbling Ruins (Ruins)
When you gain or trash this, gain a Copper.

Small Ruins (Action-Ruins-Looter)
Trash this or a Ruins from your hand. If you do, gain a Ruins.

Haunted Ruins (Ruins)
When you gain this during your turn, gain a Copper, and each player with 5 or more cards in hand puts a card from their hand onto their deck.

Opulent Ruins (Action-Ruins)
Discard any number of Ruins cards. +(1) per card discarded.

Sprawling Ruins (Ruins-Looter)
When you gain this, gain a Ruins or 3 Ruins.

Grand Ruins (Ruins)
When you gain this, reveal your hand. +1 VP per Ruins card in your hand and/or in play.

King's Ruins (Victory-Ruins)
Worth 1 VP per Ruins you have.

21
Dominion General Discussion / Re: What should Dominion do next?
« on: March 11, 2018, 09:04:51 am »
"Turn over a sand timer. If it is empty before your next turn, then at the start of that turn +1 card."

Ruined Scout.

How can they tell the difference?



Strictly than Ruined Village!

There are probably some rare cases where this is more useful than ruined village.

1) If you already know the identity of at least one of the 4 cards (its exact position), you could change its position
For example, this card could give some benefit with Wishing Well. If one wish fails, you can play Blind Scout, and move the top card to the second-from-top position, then your next Wishing Well could hit guaranteed.
2) If you want to trigger a reshuffle.

22
Dominion General Discussion / Re: very short strategy article
« on: March 02, 2018, 02:11:44 pm »
Upon further reflection, I think the term I'd be using is that one card is a better version of another. "Festival is a better version of Woodcutter", "Mining Village is a better Village", etc. That term doesn't imply that the costs are the same, so I feel like it's close to what people are after.

As I say, a friend suggested "bigger", and I like it.

"Festival is a bigger Woodcutter"; "Mining Village is a bigger Village". Not bad. Not bad at all.

I think "bigger" has the implication of one of the numerical stats being "more". Like, Hunting Grounds is a bigger Smithy. But would you say "2E Throne Room is a bigger 1E Throne Room"? Probably not, even though it's in fact strictly better. So it seems to be natural English sometimes but not in all cases you might want this kind of comparison.

I think the "A is a better B" construction is great. Simple, concise, carries the connotation that A does everything B does, but also does something more, which is probably what you are trying to convey most of the time you are using this type of comparison.

23
Dominion General Discussion / Re: very short strategy article
« on: March 02, 2018, 12:31:13 pm »
A fancy term obscures the meaning. You want to convey "better in at least one way; worse in no ways", with an emphasis on the "worse in no ways" part, I believe. So why not flip it around, "never worse"? Festival is never worse than Woodcutter. Worker's Village is never worse than Village.

Now, you could complain that "never worse" is not technically correct, because of edge cases. But the same thing applies to "strictly better", since "strictly" means "with no exceptions; completely or absolutely". You could also complain that two cards that are identical could be compared using "never worse", but when are you ever comparing two identical cards?

24
Dominion General Discussion / Re: very short strategy article
« on: February 25, 2018, 10:30:40 am »
When talking about costs, there are two separate concepts:
1) The cost to add the card to your deck
2) The cost to play the card

In MTG, cards all cost the same to add them to your deck, i.e. nothing. (meta-game financial costs notwithstanding)
In Dominion, cards usually cost the printed coin cost and a buy. Of course, gainers can change this calculation.

In MTG, the cost to play the card is highly variable.
In Dominion, actions can be considered to cost an Action to play, most other cards can be considered free once drawn. (All cards can be considered to cost "a card" to play.)

So trying to equate the "cost" of a card between the two games doesn't make much sense.


When people say that they'd rather have a Mining Village in their deck because it's "strictly better" than having a Village in their deck, it's actually the same as the MTG concept (since in MTG, cards start in your deck). Both cards cost the same to play (the card itself and 1 Action), with Mining Village having an additional effect.

But saying that this therefore means that Mining Village is "strictly better" than Village is incorrect, because the $3 price point of Village could be an advantage over the $4 price point of Mining Village.


So it depends on your frame of reference. When talking about cards in the Supply, you have to factor in the cost for the "strictly better" comparison. But when talking about cards in your deck, you do not.

When talking about the cards in general, they are not in your deck, so cost should be factored in. And by this view, there are no two cards in Dominion with one "strictly better" than another.


But when talking about cards in your deck, I don't think just saying "better" always captures what you want to convey. For example, Mountebank might be "better" than Fortune Teller, but it's not "strictly better", even when it's in your deck.
However, a Bazaar in your deck would be "strictly better" than a Village in your deck. If anyone has a term that conveys this difference more eloquently, when a card is like, pretty much always better (but maybe not in edgecases), but we're talking specifically about when it's in your deck and not just in the Supply or another pile, and without using the word "strictly"... please share it.

25
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Forced Wins Training Sessions
« on: October 06, 2017, 12:50:31 am »
That is impressive...
The win Singletee found in chat during the game  was just going to the buy phase, buy a Copper, HoP gain Villa, then draw the last HoP and Copper with Steward. That leaves you enough to pile Villa/Menagerie and buy 2 Estates

Here's a method that uses $1 less. Suppose you don't have the Lighthouse:

Play Copper, Villa = $11, 5 Buys
Buy 2x Menagerie, 1x Villa = $1, 2 Buys
Play Villa = $2, 3 Buys
Play Steward for +2 Cards. You drew at least one Menagerie. You also drew either Menagerie or HoP (it won't matter, you'll draw the other card before you need either one, and you won't have duplicates in your hand either way).
Play 2 HoPs from your starting hand, first for Hoard, then Villa
Play Villa = $3, 4 Buys
Play Menagerie (you have at most one HoP in your hand, at most one Menagerie, and no other duplicates). You draw the Menagerie/HoP you didn't draw the first time and the Hoard.
Play Hoard = $5, 4 Buys
Play HoP, gaining Villa
Play Villa = $6, 5 Buys
Buy Estate, gaining also a Gold = $4, 4 Buys
Buy Copper = $4, 3 Buys
Buy Villa = $0, 2 Buys
Play Villa = $1, 3 Buys
Play Menagerie, drawing Estate, Copper, Gold
Play Gold and Copper = $5, 3 Buys
Buy Menagerie, and Estate (gain a Gold also) = $0, 1 Buy, 2 VP, Villas, Menageries, HoPs empty

The key is that using HoP to gain Villa is great because it gives you +$1, but you can't play HoP in the same buy phase after you buy another card. That's why the 2 Menageries have to be bought up front and there's only room to buy 1 Copper and not 2. But I suspect there's an even more efficient solution out there.


Improvement:

This change gets you to 6 VP, also without Lighthouse. Doesn't need Hoard.
Similar to above, but just use the 1st HoP to gain a Province instead of Hoard; skip buying any Estates; later, buy 2 Coppers (or 3, but this doesn't accomplish anything) when you previously bought only 1 (the last Menagerie will draw all the Coppers since you aren't picking up any Estates or Golds). This lets you afford the 3rd Menagerie at the last step. You can't afford any Estates.

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