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2876

Rules Questions / Re: Remodel question

« on: January 18, 2012, 07:42:27 pm »

Hey folks, I am new to the game (obviously) and had a question about the Remodel Card. Simply put, do you have to gain a card after using it or can it be used to just trash an unwanted card and strengthen your deck?

For instance, in a game that we played recently with a random supply deck, the only $2 value card in the supply deck was Chapel. So, after one of the players had played Remodel once or twice it became apparent that all they could do was load their hand with Chapels if trying to get rid of coppers using remodel. So, do you have to gain the card or not?

You're required to gain a card if you use Remodel. (Note that Chapels weren't the only thing you could have gained—you could have gotten an Estate too, or I suppose a Curse or even another Copper. But it's not like getting a lot of those would be any better than getting a lot of Chapels.)

2877

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle

« on: January 18, 2012, 01:31:55 pm »

After that puzzle, I ask myself, if it would be nice to have a standardized short notation for Dominion turns like in Chess ("e2-e4")
That would have the profit, we could log games relatively quick in real life games too.
And after a little time if you're already accostumed with the notation, a short notation may even be easier to read, as it is shorter and maybe more clearly arranged.
I think the biggest problem would be define short codes for 157 cards instead of 6 in chess. Maybe we define only short codes for the base cards and redefine fitting letters to the kingdom cards individually like in this puzzle. I mean, even it was the first time reading it, I could read it really fast and if I would have known what each card is, it would be even easier.

What do you think? Maybe this is just a crazy idea, I don't know.

Well I don't think you can redefine letteres for each Kingdom... you would have to have standardized notation. If you use 2 letters to describe a card, that allows for up to 676 different cards. However, you'd have to use meaningless letters for many of the cards. I would allow up to 3 letters per card. That keeps it short, while allowing you to actually tell what card it is. All the base cards would be just 1 letter, though. C, S, G, E, D, P. Curse would have to be 2 letters though.

Well, or you could use something like X for Curse.

2878

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle

« on: January 18, 2012, 12:56:14 am »

All this "full solution" thing kinda took me aback a little. I would have thought the more natural way of "solving" it - especially for people who frequent here - is to check CouncilRoom after figuring out a few cards (in the off-chance the game was played on isotropic)? Unless the rules of the Hunt somehow forbids that?

The rules of the Hunt certainly don't forbid that, and in fact that's a really clever think-outside-the-box way of solving the puzzle. That said, my team at least obviously totally didn't think of that—in fact, it didn't even occur to us that this might be a real game of Dominion that had actually ever been played, on Isotropic or elsewhere; we pretty much assumed it was a model game constructed for the purpose of the puzzle.

2879

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle

« on: January 17, 2012, 07:47:50 pm »

We didn't even notice that Swindler was a possibility during the Hunt. At least, when I joined in working on this puzzle, my teammates—who had already been working on it for a while and figured out some of the notation—said "Hey Aaron, what's a $5 card that makes opponents reveal a card from the top of their decks" and I said "Jester" and they were like "Oh okay, that's why player so-and-so on a later turn plays a Silver they never bought" and we were like "cool". They didn't notice till much later that what they should have asked me was $5 or less, and by that time we were already happy with Jester.

City was what took us the longest to figure out, largely because we spent a long time thinking Harvest was Scout because we didn't notice that it was giving +$. So we saw Card C had to be giving +card, +action, +$, and +buy, and Grand Market was already taken, and we were like, well, Market's the only other card that does that...! Fortunately eventually we figured out Harvest, which is terminal, which meant card C had to be +2 actions, which solved it for us.

2880

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: MIT Mystery Hunt Dominion Puzzle

« on: January 16, 2012, 01:34:44 pm »

Now at http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/12/sheila_sunshine/sovereignty/ .

2881

Rules Questions / Re: Reactions are confusing, man

« on: January 13, 2012, 09:46:42 am »

It asks you multiple times because you're allowed to reveal Secret Chamber multiple times. That is, if someone plays an Attack and you have a Secret Chamber in hand, you're allowed to swap out the top cards of your deck as many times as you want, as long as the Secret Chamber stays in your hand. (Occasionally this makes a difference.) Once you've swapped out your top cards as many times as you want, you can stop revealing Secret Chamber.

Secret Chamber never stops attacks from going through, except when it's the Bane for Young Witch. If someone plays Torturer and you have Secret Chamber in hand, you're going to be discarding or taking a curse no matter what.

2882

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A dark expansion

« on: January 12, 2012, 10:40:25 am »

Morgue
Action - Attack
Cost: 6$

+2 cards
Each other player reveals his hand and discards the highest priced non-Victory card from it.

Needs clarification on what to do in the case of a tie.

Or in the case of, like, "I have Possession and Forge in hand; which one costs more?"

2883

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: How do you Develop a $4 card into two $5's?

« on: January 12, 2012, 12:10:15 am »

If I played them, why don't they cost me action points?

The same reason Black Market doesn't use up your buy.

2884

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: My Fan Expansion

« on: January 11, 2012, 01:12:51 am »

MISSIONARY ($4) ACTION-ATTACK
+1 Action. Choose one: gain a silver and put it in your hand OR Each opponent gains a copper.

I think there is some anti-synergy here.  If Big Money is the optimal strategy, gaining a Silver helps you and giving out Coppers doesn't hurt that much.  So you use this as a Silver-gainer and probably nothing else.  If some sort of engine is the optimal strategy, then the presence of this card probably MAKES Big Money the optimal strategy, because your buying this likely makes Big Money better for your opponent, which in turn makes Big Money better for you, since those Coppers aren't hurting like you wanted them to.  Then your opponent buys one, because, hey, it's probably a good X for BM+X, and that seals the deal all around the table.

It's also worth noting that, as described, $4 seems too cheap for this. It's not strictly better than Explorer, since Explorer gives you a chance of gaining Gold; but Explorer gives you Gold infrequently enough that a card that's essentially a non-terminal Explorer in most situations should probably be at or above the $5 tier as well.

2885

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: My Fan Expansion

« on: January 09, 2012, 06:57:17 pm »

I think the problem is that it's almost certainly undesirable after the second shuffle, and in the meantime it doesn't offer a very great chance at hitting $5, which is really what you want out of it.

Hold on, I don't quite follow. You play Alcove, and the +1 Card puts you at 5 cards in hand. Discarding 3 cards for $3 converts 3 cards in your hand to Coppers. Even in the "near-worst" case scenario of drawing all 3 Estates with Alcove, you're guaranteed $5. As far as the action component goes, it's almost strictly better than Horse Traders, since you're discarding the same number of net cards for the same amount of coin, but this one is non-terminal.

What you're calling the near-worst–case scenario is actually the best-case scenario, isn't it? The worst-case scenario is that you'll draw Alcove with nothing but copper (or better), and then you'll have used a $3 buy on a card that may as well not have been in your deck.

2886

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Copper-scaled victory

« on: January 08, 2012, 01:11:18 am »

So I guess really what would be needed here would be for a Copper-scaled Victory card to be fairly coarse-grained: since Copper is so easy to get, it should take a lot of copper to pump up their value.

Since Copper is almost as easy to acquire "a card" (i.e., in the large majority of cases when you gain any card at all, if you wanted to you could chosen for that card to be a Copper), maybe Gardens' granularity is the best comparison: it takes 10 gains to increase the value of Gardens by 1 point. So maybe Copper-scaled Victory should have a comparable level of granularity—maybe not as coarse as 10, since unlike in the Gardens case the green cards themselves and your gaining aids like Workshop don't contribute to the total, but perhaps 1VP per eight or so Coppers.

2887

Variants and Fan Cards / Copper-scaled victory

« on: January 07, 2012, 02:22:59 am »

Okay, so there's Vineyard (Action-scaled Victory) and Silk Road (Victory-scaled Victory). Occasionally in this forum people suggest a Treasure-scaled Victory card, and the answer is usually that that wouldn't be interestingly different from a Province game, since getting as many Treasure cards as possible seems to enable Province acquisition pretty well already.

But: could a Copper-scaled Victory card be feasible?

There are two different ways to do it, I guess. One is to make it like Silk Road and Gardens, and be fairly easy to acquire with a deck full of Copper and green:

$4
Worth 1 VP for every 3 Coppers in your deck

...In which case you'd rush them while trying to get as much Copper as possible, not too different from the way you build a Gardens deck. This is probably overpowered since you can grow its value a lot faster than Gardens, although you have to sidetrack yourself from Copper-gaining in order to end the game on piles.

The other possibility strikes me as more interesting, but conceivably also broken in some way:

$6
Worth 1 VP for every 2 Coppers in your deck

This version introduces some tension: You want a lot of Copper in order to boost their value, but flooding your deck with Copper actually makes this card harder to buy (unlike the $4 version), so you have to thread the needle of boosting your Copper density, but not so fast as to make the $6 victory card unaffordable.

Thoughts?

2888

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reaction effect idea

« on: January 06, 2012, 10:26:59 am »

  Too situational?

If yes, than you might want to buff it from "discarded" to "revealed".

That could really cripple cards like Pirate Ship, which don't necessarily need any more crippling. Opponent plays Pirate Ship and reveals a treasure from your deck; you say 'ha ha, that treasure is going into my hand'; and by the lose-track rule the Pirate Ship is no longer able to trash it.

2889

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan expansion: Wedding (early design days, some playtesting done)

« on: January 05, 2012, 03:01:59 pm »

My only comment at the moment is that it seems like it would be a pain if every time someone plays Illusionist someone else has to ask "is that an Attack?" Presumably the answer is always no—declaring it an Attack has no benefit for the person playing it, and would allow everyone else to use their Horse Traders and Secret Chamber—but I think the rules would still require it to be asked.

(Also, instead of "visible", perhaps it's better to be more explicit: "when this is in play or revealed, and at the end of the game", for instance.)

2890

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Places with Dominion card names

« on: January 05, 2012, 09:10:01 am »

There's a hotel I occasionally drive past called the Crossroads Inn. Last time I did, I thought, 'well, that's a pretty lousy combo'.

Eh, it's not bad if you've got Tunnels in hand with the Crossroads.

I guess Inn–Crossroads is a worse combo than Crossroads–Inn.

2891

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ill-Gotten Gains - bad for the game?

« on: January 05, 2012, 01:01:39 am »

Huh?  The dead draw on Jack requires you to stick to treasure, until you decide you can add another dead draw/double terminal card, at which point you add a Jack.  IGG doesn't have any dead draw

But you get to look at your draw. If it's going to be a collision, then discard it.

One of my most annoying recent Dominion moments was playing a Jack, looking at and discarding a Grand Market, and then drawing my other Grand Market.

2892

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Places with Dominion card names

« on: January 05, 2012, 12:59:20 am »

There's a hotel I occasionally drive past called the Crossroads Inn. Last time I did, I thought, 'well, that's a pretty lousy combo'.

2893

Rules Questions / Re: Haggler + Quarry + Mint

« on: January 04, 2012, 10:54:58 am »

With Mandarin, the Quarry has to still be in play when you trigger the Haggler. So you can't gain the Potion, but can gain the Caravan.

So, for a card B that you buy, you have to trigger any on-buy effects, before you trigger any would-gain or on-gain effect? Whereas, with reference to the Quarry+Talisman+Royal.Seal+Mint interaction, if an on-buy effect like Talisman's causes you to gain a card G, you must settle all the would-gain and on-gain effects of G fully, before going back to whatever you were doing for B?

That's right.

2894

Rules Questions / Re: Haggler + Quarry + Mint

« on: January 04, 2012, 12:35:10 am »

1. You can't pick up a Gardens with Haggler; Haggler can't give you Victory cards. I'll assume you're talking about Potions instead.

2. I'm pretty sure you should be able to gain the Potion. Consider the case of Smugglers, which (a) is restricted to cards costing up to $6 and (b) refers to a card gained at an earlier time. What matters with Smugglers is the cost of the gained card at the time Smugglers is resolved, not at the time the card is gained. So what should matter with Haggler is the cost of the target card at the time Haggler is resolved, not at the time the triggering card is bought.

With Mandarin, the Quarry has to still be in play when you trigger the Haggler. So you can't gain the Potion, but can gain the Caravan.

2895

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is it too early to speculate on the Spring 2012 expansion?

« on: December 31, 2011, 09:26:01 am »

I really don't get why people are so against curse dual type cards.

In part, I think it's because "Curse" is both a card type and the card name, and so if there were alternate cards of the "Curse" type, a lot of instructions ("gain a Curse") would become annoyingly ambiguous.

2896

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Really bad Dominion joke

« on: December 29, 2011, 04:43:10 pm »

So what happens when you ambassador a card that is not originally in the supply?

Nothing.

2897

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Experiment

« on: December 28, 2011, 12:37:55 pm »

Now, did you realize that it was the same-ish as bridge?

I did, because I was recently thinking of Bridge in basically these terms for the "quadratic cards" thread.

2898

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is it too early to speculate on the Spring 2012 expansion?

« on: December 27, 2011, 09:20:44 pm »

If I remember correctly, Donald X (and feel free to correct me!) doesn't like to make one-shot cards, because a lot of people hate one-shot cards, apparently.  There are still only three, being one each in each of the first three sets.

There are three one-shots in Seaside alone. (Embargo, Island, Treasure Map.)

2899

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Quadratic cards

« on: December 26, 2011, 12:48:23 pm »

The initial concept for FG was actually for an exponential bonus, but that was too tricky to explain with the rule that Treasures are played one at a time.

From the description in the Secret History, it looks like FG was intended to be exactly quadratic.

2900

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Quadratic cards

« on: December 26, 2011, 12:05:10 pm »

I wanted to write an article about this for dominionstrategy.  There are lots of cards that have quadratic interactions with other cards.  Talisman or hoard and +buys.

Don't let me stop you! I was only thinking about cards with quadratic interactions with themselves, obviously.

Then there are even multiple axeses of this multiplicative effect. You can have a buy duplicater with +buys with a buy cheapener and get a cubic effect.

Oooooh.