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151

Rules Questions / Re: Thief can trash Spoils, but not gain it - right?

« on: February 28, 2013, 12:07:13 pm »

Inn / Royal Seal:

They trigger at the same time. Do them in either order.

Inn first: Shuffle any number of action cards from discard into deck. Let's say you don't include Inn. Then you want to put Inn on top of your deck with Royal Seal. Royal Seal will "lose track" of Inn if it gets covered up in the discard pile. That may or may not have happened; if it didn't happen, you can move it. The rulebook doesn't specify that having fun with your discard pile makes you lose track of Inn; only that covering it up does (or the other situations in which you lose track).

Royal Seal first: Put Inn on top of your deck. Then shuffle any number of action cards from discard to deck. Even if you pick zero, you still shuffle, so Inn won't stay on top.

Isotropic / Goko may not handle this correctly.

So the order of the discard pile matters? I was under the assumption that it didn't matter at all and could be rearranged when I "look through the discard pile'. But I look through the discard pile, pull one Inn out to shuffle it back in, put a second on the bottom and a third on the top, how do I know that the Inn on the top of the discard pile is the one that I just gained? Or does the watchtower 'regain track' of the Inn and doesn't actually care that it isn't the same Inn as before?

See the next few posts; I think he cleared this up. Watchtower/Royal Seal doesn't "regain track" of the Inn, it will never lose track unless you specifically rearrange your discard pile in such a way that you cover the Inn up. You don't just notice that Inn was on top of the pile when you started, and Inn is still on top when you finished... rather you always have your eye on that specific Inn that's on top of the pile, and if it is always visible, because it's always on top, then no track-losing takes place.

And there is just player trust (like with Throne Room) that I didn't use slight of hand to switch the Inn with another one in the deck?

It just strikes me as weird that two successive snapshots of the game can look exactly the same to an outsider, but the legal moves are different because in one case the top card was covered for a bit and then undone, and in the other case it wasn't. I don't get why always being visible helps with losing track - if I put any random card on the top of my deck via WT, I and everyone else knows exactly what that card is. (especially if its a stash). But WT has still lost track of the card.

But hey at least now we have an official ruling (even if I personally still don't fully understand the reasoning)

152

Rules Questions / Re: Thief can trash Spoils, but not gain it - right?

« on: February 28, 2013, 11:34:04 am »

Inn / Royal Seal:

They trigger at the same time. Do them in either order.

Inn first: Shuffle any number of action cards from discard into deck. Let's say you don't include Inn. Then you want to put Inn on top of your deck with Royal Seal. Royal Seal will "lose track" of Inn if it gets covered up in the discard pile. That may or may not have happened; if it didn't happen, you can move it. The rulebook doesn't specify that having fun with your discard pile makes you lose track of Inn; only that covering it up does (or the other situations in which you lose track).

Royal Seal first: Put Inn on top of your deck. Then shuffle any number of action cards from discard to deck. Even if you pick zero, you still shuffle, so Inn won't stay on top.

Isotropic / Goko may not handle this correctly.

So the order of the discard pile matters? I was under the assumption that it didn't matter at all and could be rearranged when I "look through the discard pile'. But I look through the discard pile, pull one Inn out to shuffle it back in, put a second on the bottom and a third on the top, how do I know that the Inn on the top of the discard pile is the one that I just gained? Or does the watchtower 'regain track' of the Inn and doesn't actually care that it isn't the same Inn as before?

153

Rules Questions / Re: Thief can trash Spoils, but not gain it - right?

« on: February 27, 2013, 09:46:24 pm »

But if you do not shuffle the Inn into your deck, the royal seal can topdeck the Inn, right? Because it's still on the top of your discard pile.

Wait on Iso, yes. I thought I tried that before and it didn't work. Is that a bug?
Like, if I buy a Nomad camp, I can use my Royal Seal to move the nomad camp to the top of my deck. But I can't then reveal a watchtower to trash it. I also can't reveal a watchtower, trash it, and then use Royal Seal to move it to the top of my deck.

Are discards different because they are face up? Or is it just that the Inn never moved more than once? Or should you not be able to top deck Inn after shuffling your actions, even if you didn't pick the Inn.

154

Rules Questions / Re: Thief can trash Spoils, but not gain it - right?

« on: February 27, 2013, 07:18:48 pm »

It doesn't say "gain the card from the trash" so it can't lose track of it.

This doesn't follow. Lose-track applies whenever a card tries to move a card that isn't where it's expected to be. ActionThief would expect Fortress to be in the trash, it wouldn't be there, so it wouldn't get gained.

why does ActionThief expect Fortress to be in the trash? All it knows is the card was Trashed.

 

...Because if you put a card in the trash, that's where you expect it to be?

That's all totally different stuff than my original question, but well...
I second this. If you discard or gain a card, it is supposed to be in your discard pile. That's why you can shuffle Inn back in your deck. So if you trash a card, you expect it to be in the trash.

Hrm. So it turns out on Iso you can't buy an Inn, trigger the shuffle, then use the Royal Seal to fish the Inn out of the deck or discard pile and topdeck it. Which seems a little weird. There is still no assumption the gained card is going to the discard pile (I mean, you can trash a NC with a WT, right?)

But then, I guess you can't reveal a WT, trash a Rats, draw a card, reveal another WT, move the gained card from the Trash to the top of the Deck, reveal WT again, Trash the card again etc... so there is the implication that WT can only move the gained card from the mythical 'the card you are in the process of gaining' spot. Once it actually moves, (i.e. becomes trashed, goes to your discard pile, Inn gets reshuffled, NC topdecks...) WT and Royal Seal loses track and can't move it again, right? So if buying cards also has this hidden location assumption, I guess Thief can too as there aren't any cases that move a card from location A to B or location C to B without clearly specifying "A or C" (like Hermit does).

155

Help! / Re: How did he keep drawing his one Gold?

« on: February 27, 2013, 01:10:49 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201302/27/game-20130227-070825-fc7ff980.html

And how come he keeps sab'ing me with all the early Lighthouse buys? And how did those hits actually seem to matter? And how is it that he seems to have way more drawing power when I'm the one who actually picked up a Rabble?

You gained your first lighthouse turn 8. His sab hit 5,8,9, and 11 and then missed from there on out. You didn't reshuffle after gaining the first lighthouse until turn 10, so there was only one turn you could've played it to defend 11 which isn't that unlucky.

If you don't have any silver in your deck, the sab is going to hit your better cards.

The lighthouses also hurt your drawing power. If you're just using it for the draw/cycling, Warehouse isnt that much worse than Rabble.

156

Rules Questions / Re: Thief can trash Spoils, but not gain it - right?

« on: February 27, 2013, 12:54:02 pm »

It doesn't say "gain the card from the trash" so it can't lose track of it.

This doesn't follow. Lose-track applies whenever a card tries to move a card that isn't where it's expected to be. ActionThief would expect Fortress to be in the trash, it wouldn't be there, so it wouldn't get gained.

why does ActionThief expect Fortress to be in the trash? All it knows is the card was Trashed. Its not like with Madman where the "return" implies you can't do it a second time.

157

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Iso or Goko?

« on: February 27, 2013, 02:29:40 am »

Finally caved in and bought the expansions on Goko. Been playing a lot against the bots. Sometimes they can be really stupid had a (KC + Apprentice game and two of them soon trashed the whole hands, bought copper, and then trashed in the next turn...) but generally they put up a fair challenge and its even faster than playing against humans on iso...

158

Rules Questions / Re: Thief can trash Spoils, but not gain it - right?

« on: February 26, 2013, 07:46:05 pm »

If Thief trashed actions instead of treasures, could it gain your Fortress from your hand?

I think blue dogs prevent that, upon review.

It depends on if the Fortress still counts as a "trashed card" after you move it to your hand. I'd say yes, it is still a card that was trashed. So it is still one of the "trashed cards" and you gain it. It doesn't say "gain the card from the trash" so it can't lose track of it.

159

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Stupid Pet Tricks

« on: February 24, 2013, 03:45:05 am »

Just noticed the Golem + Tactician "combo". Even throwing KC in to help, it took a while to actually get it to work even in a solo game, so I can't imagine there are many kingdoms where its a worthwhile strategy (maybe in a game with Festival + KC + Golem + Tactician + Colonies it could work but it still would probably be too slow).

Regardless, its still one of the cooler combos in the game if you can actually get it to work.

160

Game Reports / Re: Fairgrounds and Vineyards fueled comeback

« on: February 21, 2013, 04:10:09 pm »

That curse was a pretty iffy choice for your 15th card too.  Especially since a duchy would have got you to 15 as well.

I had the buy to spend on it there. If I have waste a turn when I have 6 buying a duchy instead of a Fairgrounds to get a 15th card, that's -3 points. Buying the curse is -1 point. At that point I still needed two more cards, I couldn't spend another buy not greening.

Like I said, buying the Mine instead of a Duchy was a poor choice that wound up helping. But I think the curse was the right buy.

161

Game Reports / Re: Fairgrounds and Vineyards fueled comeback

« on: February 21, 2013, 03:12:25 pm »

Yeah, I certainly wasn't planning on going after Vineyards from the start. No cheap cantrips, no good draw sources, all that screams "stay away". But my chances of hitting 6 + P with two buys were better than hitting 11 so when I fell behind it was my only shot. Plus I needed the extra cards for Fairgrounds and none of the other actions were all that appealing.

Good point about the fairgrounds vs duchy. I wasn't really paying attention to how much coins he had, just what he bought.

almost always bury that copper.  You want that island out of you deck asap.

And yeah, tactician is a pretty great card, not sure why you are questioning his turn3 buy.  Especially with stuff like island and explorer on the board where getting things to line up is especially nice.

Normally islands get out of the way early on enough so their presence alone isn't enough to warrant a Tactician, I hadn't considered the explorer lining up bit (of course, he didn't use it). I also at the time didn't realize the Haven synergy. Hence why I wound up buying one later when I realized I needed to get 15 different cards.

162

Game Reports / Fairgrounds and Vineyards fueled comeback

« on: February 21, 2013, 02:40:41 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201302/21/game-20130221-111715-55a4b71a.html

Really happy with this win. Other guy buys Tactician turn 3 which I thought was a little odd but I guess works well enough with Haven, my island misses any Estates so I'm already a little behind. Then he hits 6 on turn 5, by turn 8 he has 4 gold and I have none. My deck is a little thinner due to Islands, but I'm still in trouble. With haven to help, he can pretty much always get two provinces from his Tactician plays now.

I won't be able to catch him in provinces, neither Vineyards or Fairgrounds would be fast enough. But fortunately, neither really hurts the other and the two of them we're just fast enough. Get to the end, one province left, he's just played a Tactician so I'm not getting another turn. Cross my fingers, snag the last province, win 50-49.

I definitely got lucky, (really should've bought a duchy instead of a mine turn 17 but it wound up being the copper I needed to win at the end, so there's that). Also the duchys the other guy bought probably wound up slowing him down too much and if he had just bought silver instead I've been screwed. But all that being said, feels good to pull off a comeback like that.

On a related note, I'm sure its been discussed before, but is the general consensus if you open Island and miss an estate to bury a copper anyways or wait to kill of the estate?

163

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: February 20, 2013, 05:16:30 pm »

To all the edge-casers:

-Yes, he knows that, because of a failed Bureaucrat.
-No, he doesn't win the game with this.
-No, he doesn't buy a Colony.

Ok, now it's your turn ;-)

If he knows he is going to lose, what's so bad about ending the game early instead of sitting through the other guys turn? Especially if you aren't playing with the point counter and he doesn't know for sure who will win if he three piles, its most certainly the right move to make.

164

Dominion Articles / Re: Highway

« on: February 20, 2013, 03:42:52 pm »

I like that you point out the TR and KC don't combo with Highway like they do with Bridge, but you might also want to point out one other major non-combo partner: Gang of Misfits.  I played a game the other day with both cards, and had it in my head that GoM would let me copy $5 cost cards after playing a single Highway.  Of course, given that GoM can only copy cards that cost less than it, my cunning plan did not work out in the way I expected...

Also while Procession can be good to play after your highway, its a terrible card to play your highway with.

165

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Veto Quiz #1

« on: February 19, 2013, 04:21:53 pm »

Personally Trader is one of my favorite cards and I always overuse it, but I'd still veto Pirate Ship simply because its a good Trader counter...

166

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition: $4 cards (Part 4/5)

« on: February 18, 2013, 07:05:32 pm »

Why are you assuming you want your Ironmonger to be a village? While obviously price != value, Peddler with a small drawback is $3, Lab is $5, and Village is $3.

What's the small drawback? The discard is optional. If anything, Ironmonger is Peddler, Lab, or Village with a small advantage (the card filtering is even better than Lab in the case of a Victory card), and it tends to help the kind of deck that you're building (e.g., if you have a lot of Actions, it'll tend to be a Village more often, and if you have a lot of Treasure / Victory, it'll tend to be Peddler / Lab more often).

EDIT: another way to think of Ironmonger is a Spy without the attack but with a pretty substantial vanilla bonus tacked on. That's pretty strong for a $4 too. Spy's attack is really weak and tends to only be good if you can play it a lot.

I was referring to Oasis, the closet thing we'll get to a non price fluctuating Peddler, which has the "small" drawback of discarding a card and costs $3, the same as a Village without any drawbacks. You're right that it is those three with a small advantage of deck filtering.

167

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition: $4 cards (Part 4/5)

« on: February 18, 2013, 01:37:56 pm »

3. Ironmonger at 13 seems way too high. It's at least 10, if not 20 spots too high. Ironmonger can only be reasonbly reliable as a village with strong trashing (or some way of controlling your deck top), otherwise there's too a great a chance that you don't hit an action. It comes with the nice side-effect of being a lab or sifting peddler when you miss, but most of the time you'd rather just have the village. It is also usuable in decks without strong trashing, but not as a village. In this case, it's kind of a single-card-sifting peddler or lab, which sounds good, but a peddler or lab in an untrashed deck really isn't anything to write home about. It's something you'll gladly buy for $4, but not something  that's a huge impact card.

Why are you assuming you want your Ironmonger to be a village? While obviously price != value, Peddler with a small drawback is $3, Lab is $5, and Village is $3. So the value of things, at least price wise goes Lab > Peddler > Village. Sure in a kingdom without other villages and strong trashing it can be an invaluable engine component, but it seems to me the weakness of the Ironmonger is that its too often just a 4 cost village with top card filtering (and I mean, if you hit an action you're probably going to keep it), not that it isn't a village enough.

168

Game Reports / Re: One Draw Nets The Win

« on: February 15, 2013, 05:32:19 pm »

Maybe I'm missing something here. What did you do on your last turn that let you win? Buying the estates was the right move (just shuffled, game likely won't another shuffle, as long as you get four estates you have to win so that forces him to hit two markets on each of his next two turns) but technically even if you hadn't bought them you'd still have tied because he went first.

169

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Does Saboteur cycle through your bad cards?

« on: February 15, 2013, 04:11:03 pm »

But your point 1. is just wrong, or I should say, not well defined. What do you mean by "provided the reshuffle is not triggered"?

For any given specific draw that leaves more than one card on your deck, the expected value may rise or fall depends on that specific draw.

If you average over all draws that do not trigger a reshuffle by drawing the next card, for a deck containing more than one $3 cards, this basically means average over all draws and yes, the expected value of the next card does not change.

However, in the specific case with exactly one $3 or more card in your deck, for all the draw that do not trigger a reshuffle by drawing the next card, the expected value of the next card is worsened. This has nothing to do with reshuffle.

True, but this isn't due to bad card cycling. It's due to lowering the overall value of their deck.

A Saboteur that ended with "After doing so, he puts the other revealed cards onto his deck and then shuffles his deck" (instead of the "reshuffle" line) would not change the expected value of the next drawn card in the don't reshuffle case.

170

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Exception to the Rule: Solitaire Sabotage

« on: February 14, 2013, 01:42:17 pm »

They are the only fours in the kingdom, and you want to Graverobber then into a 7. (or in general, you are at the point where you can draw your hand and have trashers for benefit that need food)

171

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Iso or Goko?

« on: February 11, 2013, 07:49:34 pm »

My only real qualm about Goko is that it is an online service. There is no guarantee they'll still be up and running six months from now, especially when you consider the struggles they have had so far. And if that happens, the $50 is then lost. Sure something can happen to all the cardboard I buy and then it will be lost, but if something does it'll have been my fault. Are there any plans to release a desktop client with support for private servers so that even if Goko shuts down people will be able to continue to play on it?

172

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Greatest Dominion moments 2013

« on: February 07, 2013, 05:45:35 pm »

I know it's not unknown for Silver to run out, but on turn 13, in a game not featuring Feodum?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201302/07/game-20130207-023113-f25fa752.html

Even without Feodum, "fill your deck with silver" is a reasonable Trader strategy and IGG makes it all the more viable.

173

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Greatest Moments uhh... I mean Misclicks of Dominion 2013

« on: February 05, 2013, 02:01:41 pm »

After having played 8 unique cards, I discover that my HoPs were only worth $7 because... I had trashed all of my Mining Villages when I didn't even have to.

reminds me of the time when I trashed my last HoP to gain a fairgrounds (and of course only had 15 card types before that. and I didn't even really need to begin with. had a big lead and was just driving the piles down)

174

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reversing cards

« on: February 04, 2013, 09:08:57 pm »

Reversed Venture (also known as Adr get it?)

When you play this, reveal cards form your deck until you reveal a Treasure. Play that Treasure. Discard the other cards.

Only difference current difference would be interaction with other Ventures. Can't combo with Tunnels anymore, so probably slightly weaker. On the other hand, if your discard pile is better than your deck but only has other ventures in it this might be better (as you do all your treasure searching first, and then so don't shuffle the cards you've pulled off the deck in)

Did you forget to reverse it?  The text is the same as regular Venture.  Your description seems to suggest that you are taking cards back from the discard and then maybe topdecking the non-Treasures?

In the original example, nothing is reversed, just the order things happen. Same here. But yeah, the difference is rather minor but still enough that its kinda cool to consider.

175

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reversing cards

« on: February 04, 2013, 06:06:12 pm »

Reversed Venture (also known as Adr get it?)

When you play this, reveal cards form your deck until you reveal a Treasure. Play that Treasure. Discard the other cards.

Only difference current difference would be interaction with other Ventures. Can't combo with Tunnels anymore, so probably slightly weaker. On the other hand, if your discard pile is better than your deck but only has other ventures in it this might be better (as you do all your treasure searching first, and then so don't shuffle the cards you've pulled off the deck in)