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51

Dominion Articles / Re: Shelters

« on: January 08, 2013, 02:36:08 pm »

  The player who saves his Hovel has just as much junk as you do until that first Province buy - then he has less.  Now, if you can think you can make a really quick three-pile ending before your opponent has a chance to pick up any Provinces, then Hoveling an Estate might be a good idea, as winning 1-0 is still winning.  But, how often will such situations arise?

This if faulty logic... it makes the assumption that you will always have Hovel in hand when you buy your first Province. That's not very likely, unless you are building a deck-drawing engine. In a game without much drawing, to buy a Province with Hovel in hand means you got to $8 using only 4 cards... it's much more likely that you can get to $8 with 5 cards than it is with just 4 cards.

I'm definitely not saying that I know for sure that buying an Estate on 5/2 isn't usually the wrong move... it very well might be. But you definitely can't assume that you'll have the chance to trash it on a Province buy later on. I remember this being discussed at great length in another thread, and I thought that there was still no consensus; with a lot of people making good arguments on both sides.

I think wero's logic is an abridged version of what he meant to say. The classic argument (from the old Hovel thread, which I remember as ending in a fairly strong consensus) is that at SOME point you will get to buy a Province or some other victory card and trash the Hovel without really going out of your way. It might not be on your first Province buy; that part is an oversimplification. But experience seems to show that it will usually happen well before the stage of the game when you would welcome a bonus Estate, which is the relevant question.

Also, and this should probably go in the article unless it's considered too obvious, mixed-type Victory cards are great with Hovel as they can be bought much earlier and more reliably than Province even on a Hovel turn. Island, for instance, almost doubles its effectiveness if it trashes a Hovel for free.

52

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Math in Dominion

« on: December 06, 2012, 06:10:33 pm »

Math and Computer Science major here; level 40 when I stopped playing registered games. Hard to say how that affects my playing.... I think it tends to be logic skills more than math skills that help me be good (though most math people should have good logic skills).

Yeah I agree, I guess logic is mostly what I had in mind. I don't think there's actually a ton of reliance on standard mathematical tools beyond basic numeracy and rudimentary probability (probably less than poker for instance). Of course as a game Dominion literally is a branch of math but the more I think about it, maybe that's neither here nor there.

I have my doctorate, which explains why I prefer talking about Dominion to actually playing it. 

Heh, I'm not the only one then! Ever get that feeling you need to play more games just so you won't embarrass yourself in the theoretical discussions?

53

Dominion General Discussion / Math in Dominion

« on: December 06, 2012, 05:57:05 pm »

Of course I'm not the first to notice, there is a lot of math in Dominion. There's the obvious stuff like the average card value in your deck and probabilities and when to buy a Duke, on down to the little stuff like simply counting VP or the amount of coin in the deck. But it goes beyond this; much of the theoretical discussion amounts to full-fledged proofs of theorems (albeit usually rather informal) and the creativity that goes into them can be very impressive. And it's very obvious from many posters' diction and argument style that they have some training.

So I'm wondering, how many of the strong players here have a significant background in math or a related field (especially involving some proofs)? Do you think this background (or lack thereof) significantly affects your skill level?

If Donald X. is reading this thread I'd be very interested to hear his thoughts. I seem to remember hearing or inferring that he has some math background; if correct was this very influential in the design of Dominion and your other games?

For my part I have BS degrees in math and physics, but my Iso rating topped out somewhere around 27 (and is much lower now, but I'm less active), so I'm probably not the most interesting person to ask. I do feel like it's helpful, but it's easy to get carried away debating theory and forget that sometimes the clear-cut problems with cool pithy solutions are small potatoes.

54

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Card-specific beginner traps

« on: December 05, 2012, 06:42:04 pm »

Hunting Party

This card works best if you have relatively few unique cards in your deck, because this means you will hit the unique ones you do have much more often. So don't spend that extra $2 or $3 on a Pawn or Great Hall, just because you can. That single Great Hall may be the reason you didn't skip everything until you hit your Mountebank.

1 Gold + 1 Silver +1 Copper +1 terminal providing at least $2 (Mountebank, Monument, Horse Traders, Mandarin, etc..) = Province

Beware of cantrips and make sure you play them before your last Hunting Party, otherwise you'll trigger a reshuffle with all of the skipped cards (most likely Coppers and Estates).

This, but sometimes I get the feeling people have forgotten you CAN just use HP as a Lab. It's a little niche because HP engines are so strong that they're usually the best option, but not always. Sometimes they're counterindicated by things like Shelters/Ruins/Swindler, and on rare occasions there might just plain be something better available.

55

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens

« on: November 16, 2012, 08:38:35 am »

It's a fun combo, but I doubt anyone will write it up as an article unless you can draw some more generally applicable lessons from it. Nobody really writes articles on specific three-card combos anymore; there are so many cards out these days that the reader expects rarely or perhaps never see this situation.

56

Dominion Articles / Re: Bandit Camp

« on: November 15, 2012, 02:42:05 pm »

I'd be really interested to see an article on Spoils itself. When to spend it and when to save it for later; and how to foresee (and either mitigate or prevent) the problem that Spoils are a dead card in the latter case.

57

Dominion Articles / Re: Mystic

« on: November 01, 2012, 03:29:09 pm »

I don't think that's a proper analogy. Once you've activated one Conspirator, you've activated all of them, whereas with Mystic, you have to inspect for each one to guarantee the draw.

But on the other hand, Mystic and Pearl Diver both give you side benefits that aren't contingent on the combo. Even when you put them together, you've got flexibility. You don't have to bring up the bottom card of your deck if you'd rather wish for something you really need at the moment.

Besides, the analogy doesn't rest directly on how the cards play; it rests on how you BUY them, and whether it's a worthwhile use of your buying power. Sure you could fuel a long Conspirator chain with a single Village, but you're not just going to buy a single Village and trust your luck, so it's sort of a moot point.

Now you can maybe buy a couple more Conspirators than Villages and get away with it; especially if you had other support. But then it would seem you can just as well have more Mystics than Pearl Divers! Especially since the worst-case scenario of too many Mystics is still pretty good (guaranteed $2 and extra cards if you get lucky and/or your Mystics collide) while the worst-case scenario for Conspirator collisions is horrifying.

58

Dominion Articles / Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please)

« on: November 01, 2012, 02:27:57 pm »

I think the basic tunnel ethos is to get get tunnels out of hand and get gold into hand. This may seem obvious but it clarifies why some of the weaker tunnel enablers fail. When you just plan to discard your tunnel to militia attacks you are not getting gold into hand and you're relying on your opponents to let you discard the tunnel. A secret chamber is only discarding the tunnel but again doesn't find gold. This compares badly to warehouse type cards that not only discard the tunnel from hand but also find gold to keep in hand. Embassy, young witch, and vault all draw extra cards and again allow you to keep gold and discard tunnels.

Another way to look at this is, Tunnel decks tend to be composed largely of very strong cards (Gold, whatever you buy with your Gold), junk cards (Tunnels, Provinces, maybe your starting cards) and a few utility cards that hopefully don't take up much effective space. This is the polar opposite of something like a deck full of Silver, such as Double Jack; or a deck full of Coppers and IGGs, or whatever other fairly uniform deck you might name.

This means a few things. Sifters are of course more valuable in decks like this, even beyond the fact that many of them can trigger Tunnel. This is also nice against Militia/Goons since you're likely to have some junk you're happy to throw away (even if not a Tunnel) and some strong cards to give you a strong 3-card turn. Finally, unless you can draw huge hands or sift effectively you're likely to have very high variance: your Golds might all clump together or they might not. This can mean lucky Province buys very late in the endgame when both players' decks are shot, or it can mean getting screwed.

59

Dominion Articles / Re: Mystic

« on: November 01, 2012, 02:04:40 pm »

Mystic does well with cheap deck-inspectors, particularly Vagrant and Pearl Diver.  If you always bring a card up from the bottom, Pearl Diver guarantees Mystic will be a cantrip.

Is Mystic's effect (essentially activated Conspirator) worth $7 and 2 buys?

It seems better than buying Village+Conspirator for $7 and 2 buys, and people do that.

60

Dominion Articles / Re: Band of Misfits

« on: October 30, 2012, 04:25:54 pm »

Speaking of Procession, I think there's an interesting contrast between Procession and BoM. To grossly oversimplify, BoM likes finely tuned combo decks where it can provide much-needed reliability. Procession on the other hand is very powerful but terrible for reliability, because not only does it come up dead, but it tends to change your deck composition unpredictably depending on what you draw it with. (In some decks you might have enough control to choose your Procession targets reliably, but the easiest Procession decks, outside of special combos like Fortress, are just sort of mishmashes of strong cards.)

When they're in the same game, they seem to compensate for each other's weaknesses. You can play BoM as Procession when you want power. But BoM provides reliability in multiple ways: it can act as something other than Procession if you don't have a Procession target; and it allows you to effectively play Procession as a Throne Room or better, if desired, by turning the target into BoM. BoM might also allow you to set up finicky combos that would otherwise require a more carefully constructed deck than Procession can provide. (Though Procession+X might be the strongest combo out there anyway.)

61

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: "When trash" oneshots

« on: October 30, 2012, 01:16:26 pm »

I hope they take this approach with future oneshots.

Not to be a downer, but I seriously doubt there will be any future oneshots.

Wasn't there originally an entire expansion of oneshots/self trashers (from which only Feast and Mining Village survived)? I thought oneshots were a dead concept, and was so surprised when Pillage was revealed. Guilds could very well have one. I also like to hope that there'll be expansions for as long as the game remains popular and good ideas still exist.

Not just Pillage but also Spoils and Madman. You can also make a case for Hermit, Urchin, Death Cart, and Squire, and probably others, especially if you're counting Mining Village as a one-shot.

The thing is though, Guilds is a small expansion, and probably also has a theme to live up to. It might be hard to squeeze weird stuff in. Besides, one-shots are kinda-sorta on theme in Dark Ages and we got a bunch of them; I'd be surprised if Donald had any more and said "I should hold these back for Guilds."

62

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Open With Estate in Apprentice Game?

« on: October 19, 2012, 02:16:35 pm »

Apprentice is a good end game card when you can trash other action cards which have outlived their usefulness to crawl your way to those last couple of Provinces.

Not only the obvious Sea Hag, but also small utility cards like Caravan are ideal for this.
You can often trash your Potion as well if it's not a Vineyards or Alchemist game.

Other things that can be good:

*Trashing a Province for 8 cards might well be good enough to buy you another Province in addition to what you would have bought anyway. This can let it act like Remodel, Salvager, and the various other cards which can trash and replace a Province to accelerate the game end.

* Cads with on-gain benefits. Once in your deck they look overpriced. Border Village is a good example: many times you only took the BV because it was free, and you won't miss it at all when it's gone. Same for that Duchy you bought with your Hoard (sometimes the Gold too).

* Pretty much any inexhaustible source of $4 or higher cards can be good.  Ironworks, Fortress and Rats (which is effectively $5), etc. Obviously other cards with on-trash benefits are nice too.

Of course there's a lot more to be said. And a lot of this goes for other TfB cards like Remodelers, Bishop, etc. as well.

63

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Countering Ill-Gotten Gains?

« on: October 17, 2012, 06:07:16 pm »

Have you read the IGG article on the main site?

Some cards have the potential to make the IGG/Duchy rush very awkward by ensuring the Curses and IGGs don't run out at the same time. Then your opponent is forced to either buy Curses or buy IGGs without the benefit of Cursing you, to a degree that might become impractical. This ist includes Cursers, Ambassador, Moat, Trader, Watchtower (if you buy Curses and trash them yourself) and probably others.

Like all cards with on-gain benefits, IGG is also a pretty decent TfB candidate.

64

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Legions

« on: October 17, 2012, 04:38:30 pm »

I understand what you mean, WheresMyElephant, but your opponent does have to play an attack card for the bottom to activate at all, and it really is not that good of a top...a terminal silver with one card cycling. And, when the bottom activates, you are still hit by the attack...

The top is a lot better than you're describing. Drawn on turn 3 it has somewhere in the area of a 50% chance of being a terminal Gold, and is still better than plain terminal Silver otherwise. I don't think you can name another $2 card which is ever a terminal Gold on turn 3*, and you'd be hard pressed to match the above description even at $3-4. I think Smithy's and Horse Traders' odds of being worth $3 are inferior; Quarry and Baron carry significant risks and drawbacks  (including that Quarry's buying power is often wasted with no $6 Actions available). You can make what you will of Death Cart I guess.

If this is a $2 effect it's certainly one like we've never seen, and again this is neglecting the Reaction!

*Edit: Poor House can be a turn 3 terminal Gold if you're very lucky, but not in a situation where it's very useful: it'll give you a $4 hand so it might as well be a Workshop. I guess there's a miniscule chance to draw PH/Silver/3xEstate for a $5 hand but whatever.

65

Dominion Articles / Re: Hard counters vs. soft counters

« on: October 17, 2012, 02:17:13 pm »

I think you guys are talking about different things. The first post is mostly about countering specific instances of attacks, i.e. if I have card C in my hand then attack A does nothing (if not less). Some of you are looking at strategies countering other strategies, in which case of course most counters are going to be soft.

But the second viewpoint seems like it's clearly the more important one. When you decide to buy a Moat, you're not just judging it based on the strength of the Reaction effect: you're judging its effectiveness in the big picture. Obviously the strength of the Reaction is part of how you evaluate the latter, but it's just one factor.

The other problem is that many "counters" simply don't work by countering individual plays of the Attack card at all. So if indeed this is the basis for the article's definition of "hard" or "soft" counters, the article seems incomplete as an introduction to the basic vocabulary of counters in Dominion: it's leaving out whole classes of counters.

66

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Combo: Pearl Diver and Mystic

« on: October 17, 2012, 01:41:47 pm »

Vagrant works here too. Well, assuming you won't complain if the Vagrant draws the card instead of the Mystic. And it can even happen that the Vagrant draws an Estate and then you get lucky with Mystic after that!

67

Dominion Articles / Re: Hard counters vs. soft counters

« on: October 17, 2012, 01:28:04 pm »

A totally hard counter to an attack (or strategy), to me implies that the attack (or strategy) will simply never be pursued (or if it is, it will be an objectively bad choice).

But most counters are at least slightly soft.

I agree with this. In particular, I absolutely don't consider Moat a hard counter as suggested in the original article. If anything it's a textbook soft counter: it reduces the impact of attacks but you're still going to suffer somewhat. It's very rare that Moat is the center of a plan that almost or completely nullifies an attacking deck. (It's possible with Scheme and such, but you usually can't just flood your deck with Moats).

Hard counters to me include things like a Minion engine versus Chancellor/Stash, or a really good YW bane.  Or using a Curser to derail an IGG/Duchy rush. As you say, they're rare in Dominion; or at least it's rare that one card counters another so strongly that the latter can't be saved with good supporting cards (i.e. hard counters exist but are usually board-dependent). Unless of course you count weak strategies, which are trivially "countered" by everything.

68

Dominion Articles / Re: Rats (draft)

« on: October 17, 2012, 01:10:33 pm »

One noteworthy subtlety is that Rats turns regular junk into cantrip junk. That is to say, s far as deck cycling alone is concerned, if you don't have terminal draw then turning your Copper/Estates into Rats is as good as trashing them (at least, until and unless you reach a point where you don't want to play the Rats in your hand and can't trash it). This alone isn't a good reason to play Rats, of course.

69

Dominion Articles / Re: suggestions on article writing: a manifesto

« on: October 16, 2012, 12:47:23 pm »

Count me as a dissenter. I don't think we have a quality problem as much as we have a supply problem, and I'm hesitant to discourage people with a lot of requirements.

People who want their articles vetted better and aren't willing to read a short discussion thread can always wait until they go up on the main site. Alternatively I guess we could consider allowing anybody to go back to old dead threads and make new versions of the article to incorporate whatever criticism or discussion came afterward, if the original author is not inclined? (Not that this is exactly against any rules now, but I think most people would feel this was too presumptuous.)

70

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Legions

« on: October 16, 2012, 12:05:14 pm »

The top of Fortifications certainly isn't weak. Even on the first reshuffle it's a terminal Gold more often than not. And even if it hits Estate, it's a lot stronger than Duchess because Duchess's main problems are:

a) The opponent gets the same benefit so it's basically nullified
b) Like Spy, it sometimes just doesn't do anything because the card on top is one you want to keep.

Successfully filtering an Estate off the top is actually quite good for your next hand; it's basically the same effect as Caravan. Of course Fortifications isn't stackable like Caravan but I'd even argue that its same-turn effect is stronger. I think this is a $5 card, though I probably wouldn't buy it much.

Edit: I guess this is all assuming you have an Estate or Curse to discard, which is true more often than not. (And of course is always true in the scenario where it draws an Estate.)

71

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Card that name: Tax Collector

« on: October 15, 2012, 04:55:52 pm »

What else but a Bureaucrat/Cutpurse hybrid!

Action: $4. Gain a Silver. placing it on top of your deck. Each other player places a Copper (or Treasure? ) from their hand on top of their deck (or reveals a hand with no Copper).

Probably too strong for $4 though? And definitely not strong enough for $5. It's a shame, I like the symmetry but it's hard to tweak and not ruin that.  Maybe at $5 with +1 Action or something?

72

Dominion Articles / Re: Farmland (draft)

« on: October 12, 2012, 12:34:37 pm »

c) You’re remodeling a Farmland into a Province.

This will net you 4 VP for $6 while inching you closer to the end game. This is an easy choice over the Duchy if you have the $6 or $7 to buy it (barring considerations that make the Duchy better, a Duke-Duchy strategy being the most obvious).

But you might also ask yourself, if pushing toward the endgame and/or possibly break the PPR is to your advantage. It's a tough question with its own complications, but we won’t get into them now. It’s enough to note that the situation is essentially like buying a Fairgrounds (pumped up to 4 VP, of course) that also happens to reduce the Province pile by 1.

The other reason to do this, of course, is if you’re not planning to buy any more Provinces and just plan to remodel the rest of your deck into whatever you can get it to -- that is, you’ve given up on improving economy and are, most likely, in the home stretch trying to get as many points as possible.

Here’s how ecq put it: “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.”

You have a big typo here at the beginning: 4VP should be 6VP.

Apropos of ecq's quote, this is my own weird perspective and probably doesn't belong in the article, but I like to think of Farmland as a Harem variant. Once in your deck it's basically a Harem with the caveat that it's $2 may only be spent on Province. If you buy Harem over Gold you're sacrificing some buying power for VP. If you buy Farmland over Harem (supposing both are available) you're sacrificing almost all the remaining buying power for the Remodel effect. So it certainly seems like you had better be getting value out of this Remodel.

73

Dominion Articles / Re: Explorer

« on: October 12, 2012, 12:14:58 pm »

 

Nice article. Glad people are getting back into writing these things. A couple points:
1. The Chapel/Explorer opening is a special case of the more general idea of using Explorer to refill economy when you can draw a large portion of your deck. If you build an engine that draws the whole deck but has no money, it's easier to fill in the money via Explorer than actually spending money (and buys) on the Treasures.
2. I don't think Explorer is actually bad in junky curse games. Sure you'll never gain Golds with it, but that's not the point. Your deck quality is going to be really poor, so stuffing Silver is a much bigger upgrade than it usually is.

I don't think gman had in mind those games where everyone's deck is completely destroyed by Curses, and it's totally impossible for anyone to buy Provinces or even Gold. I'd think there are a lot of middle ground cases (think for instance YW+mid-level Bane in 2P; or games with some trashing) where Curses are relevant and could be annoying enough to interfere with Explorer finding Provinces, but where you're still trying to maintain some semblance of a normal deck and buy Provinces.

Maybe this could be made clearer? "Weak Cursing" isn't really part of the Dominion lingo the way that "weak trashing" is, but I'm sure the idea could be conveyed.

74

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Dark Ages combo ideas

« on: October 11, 2012, 06:28:29 pm »

Crossposting from the "How to make Scout better" thread:

What about Adventurer/Counterfeit? They both love trashing Copper and, later, even trashing Silver. You can prioritize Adventurer over Gold early, supposing you're content to keep doing this Counterfeit+Copper thing for a while: it'll help you cycle and hit the combo more, so the Adventurer doesn't conflict with Gold as much as usual.

And hey if you wind up a little low on Treasure later (always the Achilles' heel of Counterfeit) it's okay: Adventurer will still scrounge up your last Gold or two. As a bonus, you have +Buy so that whenever your Adventurer gives +$5 it isn't wasted.

Full disclosure: I habitually overestimate Counterfeit. But this does look fun: they seem to cover each other's weaknesses in a pretty way.

75

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Good teaching sets with Intrigue + Dark Ages only?

« on: October 11, 2012, 02:56:20 pm »

It usually does..

You usually want Nobles.  Three of them, and your opponent has to get 5 Provinces just to tie with you.  If you manage to snag them all, your opponent is kind of screwed.

5 Provinces against 3 Provinces and 3 Nobles isn't a tie...