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1

Dominion Articles / Re: Thief

« on: June 13, 2012, 04:21:52 pm »

Another Thief pin: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111213-213545-d55615f1.html

It's pretty rare that they're worthwhile, though. 

2

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Putting Your Opponent Out of His/Her Misery

« on: June 07, 2012, 04:37:44 pm »

It's a very nice gesture to end your last turn ASAP, even if you have more actions to play.  It's annoying to sit through 2 minutes of engine wankery when the other guy could end it immediately.

It's less of a big deal to me when people don't end things on their turn when they could.  If they don't see it, there could a tiny chance I can still pull off a win.  If there's no chance for me to win, I resign, so there's no extra waiting.  I definitely don't think it's bad form to resign in a situation when they should have won outright the previous turn.

3

Goko Dominion Online / Re: ZOMGZ The Dominion Online website is doing something!

« on: May 27, 2012, 09:46:20 pm »

Including jQuery and jQuery Validation just to validate a single email field is probably more troubling than a citation in the Javascript, as is locking down copyright yet allowing directory listing in Apache.  I'll agree with the others, though, and say the citation indicates it's probably a designer and not a programmer.

On the flip side, I can't imagine a designer letting those cards get into his or her work.  Every single designer I know is completely anal about typography.

Putting those things together, my bet is that this was thrown together during a lunch break because the developer/designer had real work to do, and we shouldn't read too much into it.

4

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Challenge: Hypothetical Exception to the Rule

« on: May 26, 2012, 04:17:37 pm »

While this is in play, whenever you are granted an action, gain a Silver, placing it on top of your deck.

5

Dominion Articles / Re: Questions about Gardens

« on: May 21, 2012, 02:40:29 pm »

If you don't want silver, Bcrat is a  (potentially) slightly boosted Fortune teller attack without the 2 coins. That's almost as good as a thief in a 2 player mountebank game.

One Bureaucrat, yes.  Unlike Fortune Teller, though, Bureaucrat's attack stacks.  Two Bureaucrats is (potentially) a slightly boosted Ghost Ship without the two cards.  More than two Bureaucrats can be completely devastating.

6

Dominion Articles / Re: The Fourth Ending Condition

« on: May 21, 2012, 12:40:23 pm »

A word of caution: knowing these numbers will make a lot of games very ugly.

Whenever I have more than about 30 points in a Province game with a couple of Provinces left in the pile, 43 becomes the goal.  The cost of victory is a very green, drawn-out, and ugly end game. 

Also, though your victory may be secured at 43 points, it does not actually end the game.  You may very well end up in the awkward position of knowing you've won, but being unsure of how to break it to your opponent.

7

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: May 21, 2012, 12:39:43 pm »

8

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The first Dominion quiz

« on: May 21, 2012, 12:17:15 pm »

Dangit! Trader/silver is better than Smithy-silver for Duke/Duchy? Really?

Well, now I know.

I think Trader explosion is generally good in low-costing VP rush strategies.
After you've exploded a couple of Estates and/or Silvers, you can easily hit $5 for a long time and possibly the occasional $8.

Also in high-costing VP rush strategies.  <3 Trader.

9

Game Reports / Re: Double Golden Decks

« on: May 15, 2012, 10:13:10 am »

Also note that if you set up a Golden Deck with Bishop + Gold + Gold + Silver + Province, you can convert to burning Golds while keeping the Province in-hand, which is a tiny VP boost.  It's not worth delaying the deck setup for, but it's a nice bonus if that's the situation you find yourself in.

10

Council Room Feedback / Re: Stylesheet missing from logs (i.e. no color!)

« on: May 14, 2012, 08:32:57 pm »

Aww, I liked the B&W, it was very Arty!

If you really really want to.

It's a nice tool to have around anyway if you ever do any sort of web design.

If you're using Firefox, you can just select View -> Page Style -> No Style.  No extension necessary.

11

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Has Isotropic crashed?

« on: May 09, 2012, 07:59:09 pm »

Please hurry home.  I'm dangerously close to getting work done.

12

Dominion General Discussion / Re: THE Dominion Card List(s): Potion cost cards

« on: May 09, 2012, 01:59:56 pm »

The main thing about Explorer (and other treasure gainers) is that they let you green more aggressively.  Obviously, that's great for Duke.  It's also good on boards Tunnel, Silk Road, or Gardens - not so much for pursuing those strategies, but for allowing your deck to cope with a late-game card worth 2-4VP.  In a game with heavy greening, you want an Explorer in your deck

It would also be an awesome partner for IGG, except why didn't you buy an IGG or Duchy instead?

Also, while it doesn't yield Gold reliably, if you pick up 3-4 Provinces, you'll probably see a Gold or two with no additional effort.

13

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What is your favorite Dominion Downer?

« on: May 09, 2012, 01:20:52 pm »

..I had to edit the chrome on Firefox...

You did what now?

Yeah?  You don't know about that?  It's like editing the explorer on Safari. 

I don't know if this is what the OP is talking about, but if you dig deep into Firefox, they call the markup that controls their interface "the chrome."  The term pre-dates the Google browser.  https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL_School/The_Essentials_of_an_Extension#The_Chrome

14

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A different way of starting the game

« on: May 09, 2012, 01:16:36 pm »

This idea was brought on by a game against JFrisch where the game was essentially decided by the starting split:

Opening splits have massive effects on the game, but...
I don't think any game is totally decided by the opening split. Of course, often you need a key one of their cards to miss the ext reshuffle or something, but it's certainly not just over.

Obviously with the right luck, any game is salvageable beyond the split, but there are certainly rare games that are, say, 90% decided by an opening split difference.  Mint / Fool's Gold comes to mind (assuming the rest of the Kingdom supports it) because the trashing offered by Mint makes it much less likely that future luck will impact the outcome.

The situation I dislike more is a 5/2 start with powerful $3-$4 cards, mediocre $5 cards, and no $2 cards.  You just lose a turn.  It's not by any means crippling, but it saps a little of fun out of the game.

15

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A different way of starting the game

« on: May 09, 2012, 09:53:44 am »

I think it's something players should agree upon after seeing the kingdom but before drawing.  Most of the time the difference won't make or break a game and adds interesting variation.  Occasionally, a 5/2 vs 4/3 start will be really lopsided to the point where one player doesn't stand much of a chance.

When you do this, do you get to pick whether you start 4/3 vs 3/4?  How do you handle that?

16

Dominion General Discussion / Re: THE Dominion Card List(s): Potion cost cards

« on: May 08, 2012, 03:22:30 pm »

This is the biggest thing I learned from Young Witch. By seeing how often it's okay to skip Young Witch, I realized that Sea Hag is also not really as much of a "must-buy" as I had previously thought.

It's funny how these sorts of things happen: reminds me of how it took witnessing the power of JoaT to realize that Bureaucrat was actually good once in a while.

And Explorer!

17

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Where's the official app?

« on: May 08, 2012, 03:21:20 pm »

There is nothing more hipster than complaining about hipsters.

That's so mainstream now.  I was complaining about hipsters before it was cool.

18

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Farmland

« on: May 08, 2012, 02:06:35 pm »

If you go for Farmland like crazy, you can turn your Farmland into a Province every time you buy Farmland, essentially turning all but a couple of your Farmlands into $6 Provinces. I've never actually tried this and it probably doesn't work very well, but it's an option.

Farmland can work well with a strategy that takes advantage of green cards, particularly Silk Road and Crossroads. But usually, I've found that Farmland doesn't work super well in any particular strategy. A move I like to make with it late-game when I have $9 is buy it and then turn a Gold into a Province, getting you 2 VP more than just buying a Province. That's the best use I've ever made of it.

Similarly, if you go for Gold like crazy, you can just buy Provinces.

Buying a Farmland and trashing a Farmland for a Province only nets 6 VP.  Any time you do that, you could have just bought a Province if you had any other source of $2 instead of a Farmland.  Further, other sources of $2 aren't nearly as bad to have in your hand as Farmland when you only have $5.

Ways I use them:
  - As BubbleBoy mentioned, late in the game, trashing a Gold to a Province for 8VP instead of 6VP.  Especially good in Gold-heavy games.
  - Trashing a Curse into a $2 card, especially a late-game Estate.  Buying a Duchy gives you 3VP, +1 dead card.  Trashing a Curse to, say, a Lighthouse is 3VP, +0 dead cards.  Trashing a Curse to an Estate is 4VP, +1 dead card.
  - Trashing a card that's no longer useful into a card that's more useful.  This is generalizing what LastFootnote said.  Potion -> Gold seems to come up most frequently.  Things like Witch -> Expand are also decent once the curse pile is empty.
  - Estate -> Silk Road.  It's marginally better than just buying a Silk Road.
  - Copper -> Crossroads.
  - Bishop fodder.

I've never used them as an integral part of a strategy, though.  Almost always, they're just ever so slightly better than what I would have bought or a slight boost to VP totals in the final turns.  I'd love seeing game logs and descriptions of situations where Farmland really comes into its own.

19

Game Reports / Re: Coppersmith shines

« on: May 08, 2012, 01:24:22 pm »

Scrying Pool definitely helped.  KC always helps, but I didn't necessarily need it, and certainly wouldn't have if there was any other source of +actions.

I only bought Coppersmith because I knew I'd have problems getting to $7 with just Monument and no +action, so the help on turn 10 can't be underestimated.

The game is noteworthy in my mind for two reasons.  First of all, pure Copper strategies are fun, especially in Colony games.  Secondly, there was a ton of potential here, which is masked by the lack of +buy.  I generated $34 on turn 17 in a game where I couldn't use it.  If I had ample +buy, there was serious mega-turn opportunity, since I could have loaded up on KC, Coppersmith, and whatever else.

20

Game Reports / Coppersmith shines

« on: May 08, 2012, 10:04:24 am »

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120505-210519-0cde955c.html

This is a game I played the other day (as That's Numberwang!).  I was originally going for a Scrying Pool / KC / Monument engine to load up on VP tokens, but Coppersmith stole the show.  Note that there's no +buy, so it's hard to see just how much Coppersmith was rocking.  I had at least two turns with enough coins for 3 Colonies.  And yes, I ignored Counting House and stand by that decision.  It could have been good, but I didn't have an opportune $5 hand for it.

It was the closest I've come to buying no additional sources of coins in a game.  I had all engine components in place without buying any kingdom cards or treasures that gave +coins.  I could have easily done without the +$2 from Monument.  It demonstrates that even the typically ignorable cards occasionally have their uses.

3rd worst $4 card?  No, 41st best $4 card!

21

Rules Questions / Re: (Resolved) Haggler - Buying cards with Potion cost

« on: May 06, 2012, 12:59:06 am »

Yes.  Allowing $2P and $3 would make sense.

The behavior I saw or thought I saw was that I was allowed to buy a $3 card, but not a $2P card, which would make no sense.

However, as I mentioned / edited, I tried a solitaire game and everything worked as expected (both $2P and $3 allowed).  I'm not sure what happened originally.

22

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Governor + Possession + Ambassador, can you make it work?

« on: May 05, 2012, 04:09:04 pm »

I think it would be tough to make this work for a few reasons:

1) Governor accelerates the game, making Possession's speed more of a problem and ignoring Ambassador more viable.
2) Your opponent will buy Governors too, taking Golds and flooding your deck with Silvers, which (a) puts distance between your Governors and Possession, and (b) makes it harder for you to line up Ambassador + Province in his deck.
3) Before you set up the combo, what are you doing with all those Governors?  If you're taking Golds, you're making the problems in (2) worse.  If you're not taking Golds, you're helping your opponent tremendously.
4) If your opponent chooses to go with both Ambassador and Governor, your deck will probably be huge before you ever get this going, which increases your risk of not finding Possession with your Governors.

It's not that this couldn't work, but if you're a position to make this work, you probably would have won by just buying Provinces.

23

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Hunting Party + Herbalist - what do you topdeck?

« on: May 04, 2012, 01:41:37 pm »

You definitely don't want to put back Copper. If your rationale is that by having Copper, you're less likely to draw Copper with HP, that's fallacious since you actually force yourself to draw the Copper that you top-decked. So you're not saving yourself from anything.

I would think it should be Gold, because you eventually want a HP to draw the Gold, so you might as well just have it in your hand to begin with. With some other form of Lab, it's possible that you might at times prefer to have Labs than Golds, since each Lab can draw multiple more Labs, but since an HP at most draws one more HP, there is nothing to really gain from not top-decking Golds.

I agree with what you said about Golds, but although Hunting Party can only draw at most one Hunting Party, the Hunting Party it draws can (and with any luck will) draw yet another Hunting Party.

24

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Hunting Party + Herbalist - what do you topdeck?

« on: May 04, 2012, 12:36:35 pm »

Probably nothing and try to magically trash the Herbalist somehow (=not buying it in the first place)

Yeah, the problem with Herbalist is that you're going to get only +$1 from it.  Gold + Silver + Copper + Herbalist puts you at $7, which is a little inconvenient.

The ideal HP deck uses exactly 4 cards to get to $8 (Gold + Silver + Copper + terminal $2).  I'd probably swap out Herbalist for a Monument or Swindler or even Navigator/Chancellor.

In theory

In practice, you don't need your unique cards to add up to $8, since Hunting Party nearly always draws extra Copper.  Hunting Party / Bishop, for instance, does quite well, better than Hunting Party / Cutpurse or Hunting Party / Woodcutter.  Herbalist is not nearly as good, but it would do the trick if there were no terminal Silvers available or possibly if the terminal Silvers were weak and you opened 5/2.

Monument and Chancellor are good choices, but were they available?  The presence Swindler seems like a good reason to not play a Hunting Party strategy.  I'm very skeptical about Navigator because of the reshuffle issue.  Triggering a reshuffle at the end of a Hunting Party chain can destroy your next couple of turns.

25

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Hunting Party + Herbalist - what do you topdeck?

« on: May 04, 2012, 09:32:43 am »

Before the Hunting Party pile runs out, definitely top-deck Gold.  If you don't make $8, that pretty much guarantees you $5.

After it runs out, probably still top-deck Gold.  Copper collision doesn't cause problems as often as not having enough HPs to find your Gold.  Also, not having your Gold in your draw pile means that HP has an easier time finding HP and Silver.