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7851

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: One action, big change

« on: March 15, 2012, 03:27:06 pm »

Somehow, after ensuring I'd checked every possible alternate victory card so there wasn't anything else that could screw up the puzzle, I somehow overlooked Vineyards existing TWICE. My original solution didn't use Vineyards, but it looks like it could just about beat my solution if optimised. Fortunately, I don't need to do anything nearly as complex... if the game is set up correctly, at least.

Here is what I was originally thinking:

Pre-req stuff: The game is a Black Market game with a full Black Market deck (i.e. every kingdom card not in the game is in it). It is also a Colony game, and because of BM (or otherwise) Potion is in the supply. In the supply there are Fairgrounds, Silk Roads, Black Market and Gardens as well as various other cards. You have lots of victory cards still - you've put them all on your native village mat. You have over 165 different cards in your deck - There are 10 basic cards and 157 kingdom cards, which you have one of each of. Your opponent also has 20 different cards.

The action you play is Masquerade. You draw nothing, and pass nothing. Your opponent passes you a Fairgrounds (the fact the game has taken this long probably means your opponent has been playing strangely anyway, but if you really need the confirmation, he has 5 Fairgrounds in hand). That loses him 8 VPs, and gains you 66. It also puts you up to a multiple of 4 victory cards and drops him away from 1, gaining you 8 VPs from Silk Roads, and the same for a multiple of 10 for Gardens (he has to have at least 1 SR or 1 Garden to have the 20 different cards. Fortunately it's a two player game so him losing points is as good as you gaining them). That's immediately a difference of 66+8 (Fairgrounds)+8 (SR)+8 (Gardens), for a swing of 90 points.

Now, for added insanity (not that I expect anyone to want to solve this...), what if the same conditions as I originally stated held (play one action & fully resolve it etc.) except you have any number of cards on deck, in your discard and in hand? You can still play an absurdly large number of actions, thanks to Throne Room, King's Court and Golem. It's enough that I certainly don't want to tackle the problem .

7852

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: One action, big change

« on: March 15, 2012, 10:47:24 am »

The puzzle already excludes that... as you explicitly only play one action then end your turn.

edit: Although I should mention more clearly that you don't have any 'open' KC's or Throne rooms in play (i.e. you can't play your action 3 times)

7853

Puzzles and Challenges / One action, big change

« on: March 15, 2012, 10:14:18 am »

You're playing a two player game, and your partway through your turn. You've done things already, and as a result the game is ending this turn. And ending the game this turn was probably pretty stupid - you're 85 VPs behind, and you only have a single card (action) in hand and nothing on deck or in your discard. Sighing, you play that one action. After fully resolving it, you do nothing else in your turn (end your action phase and skip your buy phase), and win the game

What was the card, and what happened?

(As far as I know there's only one solution, although you can change some of the details to get slightly different results. As a bonus, what's the maximum VPs you can win by?)

7854

Game Reports / Re: Dear My Opponent: I am Sorry

« on: March 11, 2012, 05:55:25 pm »

Dear SummerAnna,

I'm sorry that I made you sit through minutes of King's Court/Embassy/Hamlet combo clicking, only to follow that up with 9 possessions. I'm sure it wasn't fun for you. http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201203/11/game-20120311-143712-0f0692f8.html

7855

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Tournements in the U.K.

« on: March 11, 2012, 04:09:39 pm »

The University of Warwick Games & Sci Fi society ran one recently at (surprisingly) the University of Warwick (in Coventry), which I was involved with. I'm intending to make sure another is run around this time next year, and hopefully making it a much bigger event. Of course, that's a year off, so there's plenty to happen in the meantime.

7856

Dominion General Discussion / Re: If you had to fill up a single Dominion box with cards, which would you choose?

« on: March 06, 2012, 09:13:47 am »

Yes, they are. Also Potion.

7857

Dominion General Discussion / Re: If you had to fill up a single Dominion box with cards, which would you choose?

« on: March 06, 2012, 08:13:49 am »

@Tables
1) Your name makes me hungry
2) I didn't know the card was spelled Warehoue.
3) Why not take out Woodcutter and put in Ambassador?
4) Take out Spy for Gardens. I've never seen a deck that needed Spy.
Also, what set are you getting next?

1) Thanks!

2)

Pretty sure Sob is actually a $5...

3) Because Ambassador is boring, generally a must buy, leads to slow annoying games with 3+ players and they're so far apart in the alphabet I can't just substitute it in. On top of that, Woodcutter is one of the few Silk Road enablers in the set and there's enough deck filtering cards like Ambassador already. I could see the argument for having a Junker but, eh.

4) I don't have enough attacks already, Spy is generally okay even if it's not a power card, and I already have Silk Road which is similar enough to Gardens.

5) It's a tough call. I'm unlikely to buy any more sets for a while. It'd probably be Prosperity, because I like having Colony games occasionally and like the positive player interaction. Intrigue's base cards are definitely a kicker in it's favor, but I don't particularly like much of the set enough. Cornucopia and Alchemy are relatively more expensive per card so I'd rather save up for a big expansion, but I do love Alchemy.

7858

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: New Dominion A-Z Blitz Quiz

« on: March 05, 2012, 09:27:30 am »

Waahh. 1 minute really, really isn't enough . I got 15, and most of that time was spent typing. 2 minutes should be enough to be interesting, I think...

7859

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: The BMU kingdom

« on: March 05, 2012, 09:05:56 am »

How does this kingdom sound?

King's Court
Loan*
Talisman
Alchemist
Philosopher's Stone
Golem
University
Scrying Pool
Transmute
Quarry

I'm not sure if BMU+Loan beats BMU, but if it does, perhaps Apothecary in there. It strikes me that all of the potion cost cards need some support to be worthwhile, from non-potion cards, so amusingly I think you can hide most of them together in a single BMU set. Also possibly Bank... I think might work.

7860

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: The BMU kingdom

« on: March 04, 2012, 06:19:15 pm »

WW is right. This demolishes BMU about 85/14, and it's nowhere near optimal. Turns out the real game winning condition was buying a second potion early. Take out that single line for buying a second potion, and it's about a 50/50 game.

Code: [Select]

<player name="Random Vineyards" author="Tables" description="Apparently, this board is dominated by Big Money. WW thinks otherwise. He's right.">
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
   <buy name="Vineyard">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="University"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="University"/>
   <buy name="Potion">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="9.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Potion">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Throne_Room">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Action"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Peddler"/>
   <buy name="Walled_Village"/>
   <buy name="Village"/>
   <buy name="Chapel">
      <condition>
         <left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
</player>


7861

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: The BMU kingdom

« on: March 04, 2012, 04:55:50 pm »

I think with very specific buy rules, City should beat BMU by the tiniest of margins. Perhaps small enough that it'd be indistinguishable from a more optimised BMU (I've got 45.936%/45.820% in favor over 500,000 games, I'll let someone else work out if that's statistically significant). But basically, I've added a buy rule in the BMU (opt) script above Estates (in the full green stage) for Cities when:
A pile is out
The game isn't right about to end (<2 gains to end game)
You're about to shuffle (<=4 cards in deck).

It comes up incredibly rarely. But it's enough to make cities not totally useless. With better buy rules I suspect you could get a perceptible edge.

7862

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A new card idea

« on: March 04, 2012, 04:26:41 pm »

That's something for playtesting to answer. I suspect $5 is the correct answer, it's generally going to be silver but occasionally a gold or better, and sometimes only a copper (especially early game). It'd generally be a weak $5, but strong in Colony games and ones with funny powerful treasures.

7863

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A new card idea

« on: March 03, 2012, 06:07:06 pm »

So it's pretty much a gimped Merchant Ship? Sounds weak. The idea is alright, but playing a treasure twice isn't like playing an action twice. It just means you get +$2 or +$3 generally - there are too few interesting treasures to 'double'.

There's also a few syntax problems. You can't play this card, as it doesn't have a type. And I can't guess if it's supposed to be a Treasure-Duration or Action-Duration. I presume Treasure-Duration, otherwise this is an obfuscated treasure Throne Room (as your next buy phase happens the turn you play it).  Returning to your hand seems bizarre, if you're then obliged to play it twice. It'd be better to just say play the set aside treasure twice. In fact, it'd be better if the treasure was placed under the Stock, so other things interacting with set aside cards don't screw this up (which arguably is what'd happen under the current rules, e.g. Adventurer would see this as one of it's two set aside treasures), and also to make it clearer where that card is.

7864

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Three custom card idea - Investment, Assassin, Concubine

« on: March 02, 2012, 07:39:44 pm »

Hmm... you gain it from Thief and are told to put it into your Investment mat, which you can't because there is no mat, so you can't do that, and it goes in your discard pile. Is that wrong?

More important is it's interaction with Royal Seal and Watchtower.

7865

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A slightly different card idea... Bluff.

« on: March 02, 2012, 03:41:06 pm »

As it's currently worded, that'd be legitimate. Platinum isn't an action, but it still has rules for how it's played, so you're able to play it. Regarding the tweaks:

1) Agreed with being in the game, primarily for simplicity (Man, I hate when I'm playing Dominion and my opponent plays a Black Lotus). Situations like the one you described seem rare, and if you can activate them, well, they're just clever combos.

2) Yeah, that seems reasonable.

How does this sound?

Bluff
Action - $5
+1 card
Place a card from your hand face down and name an action card in the current game. Each other player may claim you are bluffing, or choose not to. If every player declines, play the face down card as if it were the named card. If any number of players call bluff, reveal the face down card. If it was the named card, +$1 per player who called bluff. If it was not, discard the revealed card, +1 action and each player who called bluff draws a card.

So a few notable changes. Everyone can call bluff or not, but 1 person is significantly different to 0 people calling (that should be taken into account by the bluffing player - you probably want to bluff less with more players). Everyone who bluffs could get an advantage, but gives the bluffing player more money if they're wrong - perhaps that's not the best solution but it works. Finally if you don't play the named card, that card is just discarded and you get an action.

7866

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: 7 copper and 3 estate vs. 50 _____?

« on: March 02, 2012, 09:59:59 am »

I've been thinking a bit about Adventurer with this... can it ever win? I'm thinking of a FG/Venture kingdom it might just compete in.

Turn 1+2: Buy copper
Turn 3+4: Buy FG
Turn 5-7: Buy Venture with $5, FG with $4 or less.
Turn 8+: Buy Gardens with $4, FG with less?

I'm not really sure, and it doesn't seem like it'll empty another pile quickly enough, but assuming there're no good Garden enablers, it might beat the standard opening?
Adventurer should easily lose any board without FG and Gardens, I think.

Another card I've consdered was Goons. The strategy basically being, buy out the Native villages, then the Hamlets, then the Crossroads. Should be pretty quick and leave you with easily 100+vps, generally winning an otherwise dull board. OTOH a game with no $2's and perhaps I dunno, Watchtower/JoAT/Library will probably be a loss for the Goons... but it's hard to say.

7867

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A slightly different card idea... Bluff.

« on: March 02, 2012, 08:27:01 am »

Thanks for the feedback.

Regarding politics, I'd have to see it in practice, but I suspect the potential politics is going to be less than, say, Swindler would be. The first to the left condition could be abused, I guess, though. Making everyone draw a card, not just the calling person, could mitigate that, but then again you could have one person always calling likely legit plays. It could be majority decision, but that's a bit clunky and doesn't work in 3p or 5p.
Maybe each person may choose to call bluff, and if anyone does then they all get rewarded if they're right but punished if they're wrong (e.g. they gain a curse, if they don't, they gain two coppers). But then you can safely call sometimes because you can trash the cards you'd gain. Maybe that's okay though...

Re: Shark Bait: It's not $5 for +1 card, it's $5 for essentially +1 card, +1 action (as you get to play an action for free). Of course, if you bluffed with e.g. a Victory card (not unlikely) then it is just +1 action. Re: eHalcyon, I've tried to ensure getting caught isn't too damaging - you end up playing a suboptimal card and giving your opponents a card, that seems bad enough generally. But I like your Militia strategy.

7868

Variants and Fan Cards / A slightly different card idea... Bluff.

« on: March 01, 2012, 08:50:27 am »

Bluff
Action - $5(?)
+1 Card
Place a card from your hand face down and name an action card. Any other player may announce that you are bluffing. If no-one does, play the face down card as if it were the named card. If someone calls bluff, reveal the face down card. If it was the named card, +$2 and play the card (if possible). If it was not, that player draws a card, and you play the revealed card.

So, this is an idea I thought of recently based obviously on bluffing, which I was inspired by from another game (the Gambler race in Cosmic Encounter to be precise). The idea is obviously, you can play any card from your hand as though it were any other card, but anyone else could call your bluff and leave you forced to play a copper, or (fail to play an) estate and give them a free Lab effect. I'm really not sure how much it should cost, but I suspect $5 as a start mark might be good start - it's a different cantrip even if it's effect fails, it can be a Psuedo-Grand Market OR transform anything into anything else for a turn if it succeeds.

Just in case I'll give some rule clarifcations for it: If two or more people call your bluff simultaneously take the first one clockwise as the calling person (first on your left). If you would have to play a card which cannot be played after your bluff (e.g. claim an Estate is a village and someone called it), then return it to your hand. Note that you CAN play action cards and it doesn't take an action to do so (which is why I caled the card a 'different cantrip'.

And just for reference the benefits/penalties are changable, they're what I initially thought of which would be good. But something else may be better.

7869

Dominion General Discussion / Re: If you had to fill up a single Dominion box with cards, which would you choose?

« on: March 01, 2012, 08:36:55 am »

Fun fact: I actually do this already! I only have Base+Seaside+Hinterlands, but I've used my one-box-for-going-places a few times, with a set I devised over a worrying small period of time. It has 30 cards (3 sets go in the curse slot - so I deliberately avoided curses to get those extra 3 sets in (and as an aside, you can only really fit 27 sets if you want curses )), and I intentionally chose more simpler cards than complex ones, so I could use it with new players (similarly, I avoided any really nasty attacks, to make games a bit quicker in general and because I personally think 4 player games with too many attacks tend to be dull).

So here's what I have:

$2:
Cellar
Chapel
Crossroads
Moat

$3:
Chancellor
Oasis
Oracle
Scheme
Warehoue
Woodcutter
Tunnel

$4:
Cutpurse
Moneylender
Noble Brigand
Remodel
Salvager
Smithy
Spy
Throne Room
Silk Road

$5:
Bazzar
Cartographer
Embassy
Festival
Laboratory
Library
Margrave
Market
Stables
Treasury

No $6+.

The set used to have Council Room instead of Crossroads, and Navigator instead of Noble Brigand. Back then the set had too much big draw (CR, Margrave, Smithy, Embassy) and too much sifting (Navigator, Warehouse, Embassy, Cellar, Cartographer) which was a bit crazy, and it had no cheap +actions (only Bazzar and Festival - both costing $5 gave +2 actions) and I wanted one more attack. And I wanted to keep things alphabetical and those two fit like a glove.

These cards, in case you're wondering, are written on the back of the Dominion insert.

7870

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Lookout-style attack?

« on: February 28, 2012, 09:18:57 am »

Hmmm, so, this has nothing to do with Lookout, really, but a potentially interesting idea is:

Whatever - $whatever
Action - Attack
Whatever generic bonuses

Each other player turns over the top two cards on their deck and trashes one of their choice.  If the trashed card costs $0, that player gains a Curse.  Otherwise, the player draws cards equal to half of the cost of the trashed card (round down).



So, the idea (no doubt imperfectly implemented) is that the card mitigates the swinginess of its own attack.  If you benefit from the trashing, then you get a Curse.  Otherwise, if you're forced to trash a high-value card, you get a bonus.

Plus: Bridge/Highway/Princess interactions!  In a probably broken way!

Getting the card right would, I think, take a huge amount of playtesting.

I'm not sure I would want to buy that card. Maybe at the beginning there's a chance they pull copper/copper and have to take a curse, but they could also pull an estate and then you played a half-apprentice for them! Even toward the end if they get very unlucky and pull Province/Province, an extra four cards in hand should all-but guarantee that they buy a replacement Province. Plus in combination with rabble this could really be abused.

Arguably the effect is better than an Apprentice for them (they've ended up with a 6 card hand with 1 action, Apprentice-estate gives you a 5 card hand). But asides from that case, I think the attack would be reasonable. It has some potentially powerful combos (Rabble/this) as you've noted, and a reasonable amount of the time it's probably not worth it... doesn't that make it just like lots of other fun cards? Board dependant, but never going to be totally worthless.

7871

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Most points with no VP chips.

« on: February 25, 2012, 07:45:57 pm »

Hm, having looked at the intrigue rules (which I'd never read before, not owning the set and never needing to refer to it during play) it does indeed mention that you can combine both Base and Intrigue treasures, which means if players agreed to it, you could have up to 104 Coppers, 80 Silvers and 60 Golds. But that's still a finite supply. Obviously, if you've lost a few cards you can play with slightly smaller supplies, and if you actually wanted you could take two or more base games and combine them with an intrigue... but that's a house rule. The official rules (unless there's something other than Intrigue) is: "The Treasure cards from Dominion and Dominion: Intrigue can be combined, since these cards are intended to be in abundant enough supply to not run out. (If a type of Treasure card does run out, that becomes an empty pile in the Supply, which can be important for game ending conditions.)"

So formally, two options. One set of cards, or two. Not as many as you want.

7872

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Most points with no VP chips.

« on: February 25, 2012, 05:51:37 pm »

Why do people keep saying there are officially supposed to be infinite basic treasures, when that's very much not the case now, and never was? Donald X has said, on one occasion, that ideally the basic treasure supplies would be infinite but real world constraints mean they aren't. In fact, I can't even find a link to him saying that in the DonaldX section of the forum.
But That's VERY different to saying the basic supplies are supposed to be unlimited. There are supposed to be 40 Silvers, 30 Gold and 32-46 Coppers in the supply - an amount which is essentially unlimited in 98% of games, but occasionally they run out - and the rules make it very clear an empty basic treasure pile is still an empty pile.

Compare, if you want, to Thunderstone, where the Plague (~Curse) cards ARE unlimited, any trashed Plagues are returned to the supply and if they run out, you put a suitable replacement card in it's place.

7873

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cards you only need one copy of

« on: February 25, 2012, 05:43:07 pm »

Actually, on the topic of Goons, my housemate recently built a Goons engine in a game which (ab)used multiple chapels, along with cities and some +draw (which apparently mostly came FROM the cities...) to draw decent portions of his deck, trash away coppers, then use extra buys with the Goons for more coppers. It was probably not quite the best strategy, but beat his opponent's fairly standard but Goon light deck by a landslide.

7874

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How thematic are the expansions?

« on: February 24, 2012, 12:13:51 pm »

Hm, I guess so. That seems like a pretty loosely defined category, but I can see the argument for Jester and Remake fitting the "variety" theme. Actually, there's kind of another subtheme of cards which can cause you to discard things as a consequence of playing them (Hamlet, Young Witch, Horse Traders, Tournament), which I wasn't sure I wanted to count either.

I guess you could make a more well defined category of cards which help get variety, including all the cards I stated plus Hamlet and Horse Traders. What kind of variety (in hand, in deck, or both) is left up to the individual card, but they all help with variety in some sense.

I don't really count Worker's Village as a "bigger and badder version of Village"; it's just a Village which also does something else, in the grand tradition of Bazaar (Village plus money), Farming Village (Village plus filtering), Mining Village (Village plus optional trash-for-cash), and so on. City on the other hand really is a bigger and badder version of Village—although a fully powered-up City is in a class by itself, it starts every game as nothing more than a Village clone. So I really do feel like that makes it describable as "just like Village, only more powerful", in a way that Worker's Village isn't (it has a bonus, but doesn't really feel powerful in that way). But this is all splitting hairs about subjective impressions. I take your point about Goons, though.

Hm... I guess strictly speaking, Goons, Worker's Village and Village are all just bigger versions of old/base cards. They all fit as better versions of base cards, even if they're either just X with a bonus or are really totally different. There's also Rabble (although +3 cards isn't really a rare effect, but it still counts maybe?)

I guess strictly speaking a lot of the treasures could be considered copper/silver + cards, but I guess we just restrict the category to kingdom cards.

7875

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How thematic are the expansions?

« on: February 24, 2012, 07:50:31 am »

I'd also point out Cornucopia has another subtheme you missed: Cards which help you get variety into your deck(/hand). Of which there are: Remake, Tournament, Young Witch, Hunting Party, Jester. Arguably also Horse Traders (it draws a card in it's reaction and can discard duplicates with it's action).

Regarding the bigger basic cards from Prosperity, I'm not really sure I count City and Goons, but I would certainly count Worker's Village (Village with +buy). City isn't really just a village, it's something completely different, although yes it is just an improved village in the end. Goons also, is really not just an improved Militia/Woodcutter, it's buy effect is it's defining ability. But strictly speaking I guess I'd include them.

Otherwise, it looks like a good list. An interesting read, if you've never really thought about it before.