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26

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition: $3 cards (Part 1/3)

« on: January 10, 2013, 02:04:38 pm »

Ranking the $3's I found hard because there aren't actually that many bad $3 cards. Other than the very best, most of them are the type of card which is going to be pretty useful sometimes, and not useful at all other times, but nothing (other than maybe chancellor?) in the counting house, sab extreme that you tend to see at the $5 level.

I think I have a general agreement with the order given here. My biggest miss is probably fortune teller, which is criminally underrated still for reasons I don't understand. The attack hurts when played consistently. A lot. Now because it's terminal and doesn't offer +card (like rabble) it needs a good bit of support to play consistently, which is why it's probably sitting around the middle of the pack for me, but it's not bottom third.

Oh also to all the people saying shanty town should be higher. No. It's super terrible. As a village it's probably the worst one there is. Worse than native. You can sometimes make use of the +2 cards as an opener or a counter to something like ghost ship, but in general, it kills engines that any other village would enable.

I definitely agree that there aren't many bad $3s- even the worst $3s can be quite useful.

Can't agree on Shanty Town though: I used to think it was super terrible, but then there was that experiment where I went Village/Torturer and HME went Shanty Town/Torturer... and guess what, Shanty Town/Torturer consistently crushed the vanilla Village approach.  And you'd think Torturer would be a worst-case scenario for the Shanties, since terminal draw engines are most likely to leave you stuck with just the +2 Actions.  But, no, the early pseudo-Lab is that useful. My perspective was changed rather drastically after that experiment.

27

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition: $3 cards (Part 1/3)

« on: January 10, 2013, 01:56:55 pm »

Loan/Transmute is an actual thing in Colony games, by the way.  I've pulled it off multiple times.

28

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition: $3 cards (Part 1/3)

« on: January 10, 2013, 01:55:26 pm »

Smugglers continues to be drastically overrated.  Had I submitted a list, it would have been dead last for me yet again.  I feel like Black Market belongs in this tier, too, but I am no longer so confident of that- it has atrocious win rates on Council Room, but it can be so crucial in engine games.

Most of the other cards here feel like they should be higher... but what would take their place?  However, there are two cards I feel confident don't belong here.  I'd like to defend Loan, which is very strong whenever there are Colonies or a good source of non-Treasure income.  Even light trashing can be crucial, and light trashing that doesn't cost an action for only $3 deserves better than this.  Shanty Town is also a lot better: the pseudo-Lab ability is a lot more commonly useful, especially as a Turn 1/2 buy, than many people realize, and it works in both BM-esque and engine games.  (My opinion of its utility has certainly skyrocketed over time.)  It's probably still a slot or two below Village because there is the danger of anti-synergy... but only a slot or two.  It deserves the next tier up.

Chancellor, of course, also remains underrated, but not by enough to really matter.

29

General Discussion / Re: Favorite quotes? "No. I don't think I'll ever get over Macho Grande."

« on: January 07, 2013, 08:17:52 pm »

Oh, we got both kinds.  We got country and western!

30

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition: $1-$2 cards (Part 2/2 posted)

« on: January 07, 2013, 06:47:53 pm »

I didn't put in a list this time, since I've been busy, trying to wean myself off online Dominion, and didn't think I'd be fairly able to evaluate the Dark Ages cards since I haven't played them except for 2 IRL games once.

But this looks reasonably solid.  Poor House and Pawn feel like they're probably low, and both Fool's Gold and Haven are a smidge high for sure.  But there isn't anything else that stands out- you can rejigger the order below Beggar/Cellar, but they're all mediocre and none are truly awful, so who cares?

I love the idea of Poor House because I love treasureless decks, so my judgment may not be trustworthy there, and as for Pawn it gets back to flexibility, and that ever-so-crucial +Buy when you need it.  Haven is just not often that useful even when you buy it, and while Fool's Gold can be powerful more than I originally thought, it is still too fragile too often.  Eh, maybe it's still #5, but Attack games are frequent enough that those two need to be swapped at a minimum- with even mediocre attacks, Lighthouse vaults past FG for sure.  I think Haven might actually be the most misranked card here, actually.

Glad and a little surprised to see Hamlet > Courtyard still. I agree with HME's reasoning.

31

Council Room Feedback / Re: Council Room Updates, 2012-12-21

« on: December 29, 2012, 06:22:46 pm »

I think it is to do with the number for games you have played.
This works for -Stef- (3000 games) http://councilroom.com/popular_buys?player=-Stef-
But not for me or chwhite (9000 games) http://councilroom.com/popular_buys?player=chwhite

Looks like the cut off is about 4500 to 5000 games.
TheSadPanda works
http://councilroom.com/player?player=papaHav doesn't.

That's... sort of what I was afraid of.  Ah well.

32

Council Room Feedback / Re: Council Room Updates, 2012-12-21

« on: December 28, 2012, 02:20:14 pm »

CR is still timing out on me whenever I try to look at my popular buys, as well as getting an "internal server error" when I try to search games by card.

Chwhite, don't put spaces between the cards when you list them, just put commas. That solved it for me.

Doesn't fix it.  I have the problem even if I only search for one card, BTW.

33

Council Room Feedback / Re: Council Room Updates, 2012-12-21

« on: December 28, 2012, 12:19:18 pm »

CR is still timing out on me whenever I try to look at my popular buys, as well as getting an "internal server error" when I try to search games by card.

34

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A thread to Share Scout kingdoms

« on: December 28, 2012, 12:12:10 pm »

CR is giving me an internal server error when I try to search for Scout boards (or, really, search for anything.)  Bah!

But I've had several.  There was one just two days ago with Scrying Pool (for draw), Baron (for $$), and Moneylender (for trash) where Scout was actually decent support, greasing the wheels for the Pool and Baron to work.

35

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition

« on: December 22, 2012, 07:43:40 pm »

While I hate to stifle discussions, wouldn't it be better if we didn't discuss what we were ranking where?  Otherwise we could end up with a kind of group-think which isn't really the idea.

Agreed.  All conversation about why Scout should be ranked last needs to stop. <snicker>

Couldn't help it, sorry Piemaster.

It does need to stop.  'Cause it's inaccurate. 

(Sorry, couldn't help myself.  Actually just yesterday I got good use out of Scout in a Scrying Pool-Baron deck, so there.)

36

Other Games / Re: Twilight Strategy

« on: December 22, 2012, 07:02:43 pm »

Only 7 more cards to go in Twilight Strategy.  This feels somewhat sad.  It is amazing how much easier it is to write analyses of cards that don't interact with each other much.

What comes after TS?  RaStrategy?  RFTGStrategy?  ChutesAndLaddersStrategy?

I could see RTFGStrategy having an audience.

37

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition

« on: December 19, 2012, 09:06:11 pm »

I'm debating whether even to submit a ranking; it wouldn't feel right to ignore Dark Ages but it also doesn't feel right to ignore them either.

I feel like one of those ignores is supposed to be rank or something; that or I just don't know what you're trying to say for some reason

Yeah, whoops.  That's what I meant.

38

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition

« on: December 19, 2012, 03:00:47 pm »

Oh man. Time to again try to decide how to consider multiplayer games, to figure out how to rank the reactions.

Remember, Thief can be important in multiplayer! But Scout doesn't improve in multiplayer. This is my only basis for ranking Scout beneath Thief. If you consider the totality of Dominion 2p, 3p, 4p, Thief is better.

Except that 4p is an inferior game to 2p and 3p (mostly because of even stronger 1p bias and fewer Provinces per player), so I'm inclined to weight it much less.  (3p, OTOH, definitely is worth taking into account).  And Thief doesn't improve that much, the only thing I can really see is that Thief-Gardens becomes somewhat viable.

I'm debating whether even to submit a ranking; it wouldn't feel right to ignore Dark Ages but it also doesn't feel right to ignore them either.

39

Dominion General Discussion / Re: I rarely find [insert card here] useful, but when I do it is a TON of fun!

« on: December 18, 2012, 09:34:33 am »

Mandarin -- I can't stand Mandarin.  Even when I find a way to make it work (like I did yesterday against... umm... I can't remember who (maybe chwhite?), but it involved using disappearing villages and Watchtower for draw, so Mandarin's half-Ghost-Ship component was effectively neutered), I still don't really have "fun" with it.  It is just such an annoying/dull card to me, even when I force it down my gullet to make it work.

That was indeed against me.  I actually think Mandarin can almost be fun with a select number of 5(/5/5...)/2 openings (Apprentice, Hunting Party, Mint?), but I mostly agree on that card.

...

Anyway, the three cards that immediately come to mind (two of which you mentioned already) are Coppersmith, Outpost, and Transmute.

40

General Discussion / Re: Fantasy (American) football?

« on: December 17, 2012, 11:42:32 am »

Come on Ridley + NYJ!  You can combine for 41 points! 

I had three choices for my WR3.  I picked the one guy that did not end up outscoring all my WR's combined.  And Jesus, Connor Barth goes off for double digits the whole season, then puts up 0 my week?  And Blair Walsh puts up 25 freaking points?

I guess The Justin Tuck Rule is not happy about this week either.  Seems like this is the third week in a row where all the lower seeds win.

I'm more unhappy about what happened in real football.

41

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fortune Teller/Jester

« on: December 16, 2012, 02:03:14 pm »

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=128.msg1251 

It's not a world-beater, but it is pretty cute.

42

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Thoughts on Counting House

« on: December 11, 2012, 11:27:20 pm »

I played a game recently with... Warehouse?  Cellar? one of those, Counting House, Colony/Platinum, no big attacks, and the closest thing to a power engine card was Stables, which is great at discarding Coppers.  It was a freakishly good board for the card.

CH probably is, sadly, the worst $5*, but I'm not sure there's a good buff for it.  I used to think a +Buy would be good, but then you might run the risk of making it too easy to build a weird Herbalist/PStone-style strategy around: just buy nothing but Counting Houses, Coppers, and Provinces.  Maybe that risk is overblown, I don't know.  And letting you top-deck it or reshuffle seems okay until you realize that basically ensures a best-case scenario for CH every reshuffle.

* I still really don't know Dark Ages, so caveat.  Not because I'm "boycotting" Goko, just because I need to set hard limits on the amount of time and money I spend on this game, and forbidding myself from Goko is the best way to do that.

43

General Discussion / Re: Fantasy (American) football?

« on: December 11, 2012, 10:22:21 pm »

Also, I'm convinced that the best way to get value in the draft is rookie running backs.  Doug Martin has absolutely been my MVP here, and I think Trent Richardson has that honor in my other league.

44

General Discussion / Re: Fantasy (American) football?

« on: December 11, 2012, 10:19:50 pm »

I still can't believe I made the playoffs, let alone the #2 seed, after that seeming disaster of a draft where I was offline for most of it and got stuck with the f'n Philly D in like Round 8 or something.  I'll admit the autopicker gave me a boost with Jordy Nelson and Eric Decker being decent, and I'm kinda glad I forgot all about Ryan Matthews.   Have him in my other league, which I drafted better overall except for him stinking up the joint.

45

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What helps you play?

« on: December 07, 2012, 03:15:02 pm »

Councilroom data plus scads of experience is what did it for me.  I suppose it's possible that I've improved since CR went down, but probably not by nearly as much (and not at all on Dark Ages, since I haven't been to Goko in awhile).

The "Popular Buys" page, in particular, was revelatory.

46

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Shall we rank the Mint openings?

« on: December 05, 2012, 02:20:29 pm »

Mint/Duchess, especially when Transmute is on the board.

(Obviously Fool's Gold is the best, but several others can be situationally useful.)

47

Dominion General Discussion / Re: "Most hated" dominion cards discussion

« on: December 05, 2012, 02:15:43 pm »

But even more than that, I HATE being able to play Treasures outside of the buy phase. I view Action-Buy-Cleanup as fundamental to the game and it bothers me that Black Market messes so much with that clean delineation.

But that's the best part of Black Market!  It lets you do so many cool things with Tactician, Library, Menagerie, etc...

48

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Card-specific beginner traps

« on: December 05, 2012, 02:03:21 pm »

I think the really interesting comparison is between Festival and other terminal Silvers at the $3/$4/$5 price point.

Agreed. If I hit $5 and was going to be buying Silver anyways, I'll take Festival over Silver unless my game plan is something like Smithy-BM or Envoy-BM. However, in such a deck, I'll generally have something like Militia, Monument, Haggler, Jester, Mountebank or even Fortune Teller or Chancellor which will take a terminal Silver spot.

The other comparison point for Festival is some of the alt-treasures at $5. I will typically take Festival over Contraband, but Venture wins pretty much any day and Royal Seal comes close. Cache is also a good choice at this price range.

Well, how are you comparing Festival to the $5 alt-treasures?  If you're comparing them in a vacuum over the entire range of possible boards, I'll frequently take Festival over Venture and almost always over all the others, because most boards (especially boards with Festival) will have some engine potential that wants the +2 Actions and/or the +Buy.

If you're limiting your analysis to Big Money-favoring setups, then I'd agree Venture is certainly superior.  But the others are all pretty mediocre even then, and I'd often prefer Festival, even if for just the +Buy, over the Seal or Cache.

49

General Discussion / Re: How old are you?

« on: December 05, 2012, 01:19:48 pm »

First and foremost, I was born the same year as Calvin.  Everything I know about life I learned from Bill Watterson, and that's not an exaggeration.

A close second, my first two memories of sporting events are both field goals: the one Matt Bahr made to win 15-13, and then a week or two later (I can't remember whether they had a bye back then or not), Wide Right.  Two sweetest words in the English language.

I mostly didn't pay much attention to pop culture when I was a kid.  However, I was in high school during the ska boomlet.  Since I was also in marching band, all the saxophones and trombones and trumpets were obviously fans, and I noticed that at least.  Funny thing, I actually like a fair amount of '90s music now, but that only happened in the past five or so years.

My sense of time is a little weird for somebody my age, since I didn't have the internet until I got to college (by now, this was notably weird), and also I finished high school early. 

50

General Discussion / Re: My Post to Boast a Bit

« on: December 01, 2012, 10:10:06 pm »

I also read some crappers this year as well. Here are the books I would suggest to avoid.
Bleak House (I have never read a Charles Dickens novel that I enjoyed, but a someone told me that this one would be different. It wasn't. Never, ever again am I picking up Dickens).

I have also never been able to stomach Dickens.  Though to be fair the entire 19th century is pretty much not my cup of tea as far as literature goes, with the possible exception of some Russian stuff.

I've never read Lolita, but Pale Fire is probably my all-time favorite novel and I keep telling myself I'll pick up more Nabokov someday.