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76

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: October 31, 2017, 01:01:03 pm »

Has anyone tried Inheriting Shepherd? I haven't but I'm guessing it's pretty awesome.

I had the chance to, but I went with Faithful Hound instead. I figured that way I could still use my Shepherds to discard the Estates, and then they'd always come back for the next hand too.

77

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Strength of Delayed Effects

« on: October 31, 2017, 12:57:16 pm »

I think if you wanted to seriously implement the concept, you would have it give you +1 card +1 Action on the turn after you gain it, and on every turn after you play it.

I see what you did there...

78

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Bonus Preview $5: Necromancer

« on: October 27, 2017, 10:09:30 am »

Bonus Preview $5: Necromancer

<Insert joke about $5 Necromancer variant.>

Edit: The quoted text was the original thread title. It's fixed now.

79

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #1: Devil's Workshop, Raider, Ghost Town

« on: October 26, 2017, 02:47:46 pm »

I've been thinking about Ghost Town a lot, and there's one aspect I've been missing so far. The bonus cards next turn don't actually help you at all. I mean, obviously drawing cards is a good thing, but on average, the extra card you're going to be drawing is literally just another one of your Ghost Towns. Assuming an average distribution of cards, you're always going to end up with a starting hand of some Ghost Towns along with the same 5 card hand you would have had if you never bought a GT in the first place. (I'm ignoring the on-buy bonus for all this.) I've been thinking of a larger starting hand as automatically increasing reliability, but since the extra GTs you draw don't help you on that turn, the larger starting handsize doesn't actually make your deck more reliable at all.

The extra action, on the other hand, is where the value of this card comes from. It's great to start off every turn of a terminal-draw engine knowing that you will be able to play your actions even if you don't draw that Village initially.

So yeah, pick up two most games to add action reliability and compliment your other villages (which are your real source of +actions). Or buy them all if it's the only village and you want to play a bunch of terminals.

Edit: where "a bunch" apparently means a maximum of 5 per turn.

80

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Strength of Delayed Effects

« on: October 26, 2017, 02:17:27 pm »

Okay, back from Theta's linked thread. It's interesting that the majority of the discussion there was concerning the relative value of a card that does nothing this turn but is +1 card +1 action next turn. Which is obviously quite similar to Ghost Town (but minus the magical Night phase technology). Obviously, being a Night card makes GT much better than it would be otherwise. Plus the on-gain.

81

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #4: Werewolf, Skulk, Cursed Village

« on: October 26, 2017, 12:17:22 pm »

I think it's fair to note that Sea Hag's attack is probably about twice as harsh as getting a Hex.
...
But yes, possibly Skulk is the stronger card overall. (I have no idea.)

Oh man, tell that to 2012-2014 dominion players and watch them freak out. A $4 attack that might be stronger than Sea Hag?!?

Edit: In before Awaclus quotes me -- I'm not talking about a group of two thousand dominion players...

82

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Strength of Delayed Effects

« on: October 26, 2017, 12:10:46 pm »

Thanks for the "3 more pages" link. I'll have to read that over. Of course everything has been discussed at least once before.

The delayed Silver example does seem like it would suck. The distinction is that you don't (usually) care when in your turn you get your +$ or +Buys. On the other hand, you really care about having +cards and +actions at the beginning of your turn.

The DelayedSmithy example is really interesting. I guess it's also a lot harder to draw your stuff dead with that card compared to Smithy.

83

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #4: Werewolf, Skulk, Cursed Village

« on: October 26, 2017, 11:51:09 am »

Man, Cursed Village looks awesome. It seems like we've been getting a lot of "half an engine in a box" cards recently. Lost City, City Quarter, and Cursed Village are all cards that can single-handedly give you all your draw and actions. Interestingly, they all have on-buy penalties (if you consider CQ's high debt cost a penalty).

84

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #1: Devil's Workshop, Raider, Ghost Town

« on: October 26, 2017, 11:35:42 am »

So I think we mostly all agree that FastTac is simply a different card and not a good way of evaluating this concept. Also, people want to discuss the new cards in these threads, not random variants of old cards.

So I made a new thread for a "delayed effect" conversation: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=17789.0

85

Dominion General Discussion / Strength of Delayed Effects

« on: October 26, 2017, 11:35:05 am »

There was a big discussion in one of the Nocturne threads about how strong Ghost Town is. To illustrate its strengths and weaknesses, the discussion got derailed onto Caravan and Tactician variants (because, obviously). People looking to discuss the new cards don't want to see that stuff though, so hey, here's a new thread for it!

First an (arbitrary) definition. When I say "delayed effect", what I mean is an effect that triggers at the start of your next turn.

One side of the argument was that delayed effects are inherently weaker than an immediate effect. An easy example of this is comparing Lab and Caravan (we all agree Caravan is weaker than Lab). Each card gives you net +1 card, but Caravan waits until next turn to do it.

The counter argument is that Caravan is weaker, not because the draw is delayed, but only because the card has to stay out for 2 turns every time it's played.

After thinking about it, I tend to agree with the second opinion. An extra card drawn at the very start of your turn is much more valuable than an extra card at some point in the middle. To illustrate this, imagine a card called DiscardCaravan. The text is exactly the same as Caravan, except there's a new line that says "Discard this card during cleanup on the turn you played it." This means that in a draw-your-deck engine, you can play all of your DiscardCaravans every turn (and get a bonus from each of them at the start of each turn).

Now compare having 5 DiscardCaravans to 5 Labs. If you're drawing your deck, both situations would give you +5 cards per turn. The DiscardCaravan is way better though because you get your bonus cards right at the start of your turn rather than the middle, and it's pretty hard to dud when you're starting with a 10 card hand.

Obviously you will want different things in different situations, but this example clearly indicates that all things being equal, in a draw-your-deck engine, delayed draw is simply better than immediate draw.

What do you guys think? Are there holes in my analysis? Does any of this actually make a difference in how card strength is evaluated? Does it make any difference if the draw card was terminal or not? Do delayed +actions behave similarly to delayed +cards?

86

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Is there any update on Nocturne?

« on: October 26, 2017, 10:10:51 am »

There was a delay shipping the trays, and we now expect Nocturne to ship (from RGG) on November 13.

My birthday!

Me too!

My unbirthday!

87

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #1: Devil's Workshop, Raider, Ghost Town

« on: October 25, 2017, 01:48:13 pm »

Well... GT big money has to be just a tiny bit better than regular big money since it could be used as a mini expedition in the late game, which is probably almost never good, but all the best option in a tiny number of scenarios.

That's what I was originally thinking. But those 2-3 extra cards you draw? Yeah, they end up being your other Ghost Towns.

88

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #3: Blessed Village, Idol, Druid

« on: October 25, 2017, 10:07:10 am »

Did anyone else read the thread title as "Blessed Village Idiot"?

"Oh man, I can't believe Donald used that name for a card!"

89

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #1: Devil's Workshop, Raider, Ghost Town

« on: October 25, 2017, 09:53:25 am »

However, taking many turns buying nothing but Villages, while it doesn't hurt your deck, does hurt your game, and there's even a name for a player who does that.

Can confirm. GT - Big Money is equally effective as Village - Big Money.

90

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #1: Devil's Workshop, Raider, Ghost Town

« on: October 24, 2017, 05:13:54 pm »

I like JThorne's 4 Wharf - 1 Village example, so here's a comparison of what that would look like if you replaced Village with Ghost Town. I'm defining a "dud" turn as not drawing your deck every time.

Village - 14 cards total.
You only need 1 Village to play the Wharves.
Your initial hands will have 9 cards and 1 action.
You have a 5/14 chance of a dud turn because of not starting with your Village.
You could dud if your Wharves are near the bottom of your deck.

Ghost Town - 14 cards total.
You need 2 Ghost Towns to play the Wharves.
Your initial hands will have 10 cards and 2 actions.
You will never dud because of not having enough actions.
You could dud if your Wharves are near the bottom of your deck.

The two big discrepencies here are that you don't have to buy 2 Villages, but you're much more likely to dud in that situation. So maybe it's more fair to give the first example a second Village. Then it's more reliable, but there's still a dud chance (how do you calculate that? 5/15 * 4/14 or something?) But then double Village would have one spare action.

So my overall analysis is that Village gives you more raw +actions, but overall Ghost Town is way better for being able to draw your deck every turn.

91

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #1: Devil's Workshop, Raider, Ghost Town

« on: October 24, 2017, 02:04:56 pm »

Thought experiment: keep Caravan exactly the same except add a clause "this gets discarded during cleanup on the turn you played it".

Now how does that compare to Lab? I can see a lot of situations where it would be significantly better than a Lab (even if it cost $5).

No disagreement here, being a Night card instead of a plain non-terminal Action is an asset
...
But drawing the card next turn instead of now is a liability.

I don't think so. The easy situation to see how the delayed draw is better is in any draw-your-deck situation. The modified Caravan and a Lab will both draw you the same number of cards each turn. The Caravan+ gives them to you all at the beginning of your turn though, whereas you have to actually find the Labs to get the extra cards. So theoretically you'll draw the same either way, but you're way way more likely to kick off with a 10 card starting hand (assuming an even Caravan+ split).

92

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #1: Devil's Workshop, Raider, Ghost Town

« on: October 24, 2017, 01:22:42 pm »

So we all know that Caravan is worse than Lab. What we're disagreeing about is why. trivialknot is saying it's because you don't get to discard it, and josh56 is saying it's because the drawing is later.

Thought experiment: keep Caravan exactly the same except add a clause "this gets discarded during cleanup on the turn you played it".

Now how does that compare to Lab? I can see a lot of situations where it would be significantly better than a Lab (even if it cost $5).

93

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Bonus Preview #2: Faithful Hound

« on: October 24, 2017, 10:44:31 am »

There's gotta be some sort of powerful golden deck type thing with this card. Vault + 2 Hounds discarded previously would be a Province. Scheme the Vault so you can do it every turn. Might work out well...

94

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #1: Devil's Workshop, Raider, Ghost Town

« on: October 24, 2017, 10:28:20 am »

So with Ghost Town, you have to draw an extra dead card at any point during your current turn. Then it (barring edge cases) guarantees a free Lost City play at the start of your next turn.

I'll have to play around with it some more, but I'm thinking this is way better than a vanilla Village on average. In general with Dominion, you want cards that don't care when in your turn you draw them, and you want things that boost the start of your next turn.

95

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #2: Shepherd, Pooka, Cemetery

« on: October 24, 2017, 10:08:24 am »

Ghost sounds fun (and powerful)! It's a digging Summon-Throne that you can't draw dead.

96

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat card interactions that were useful in the game you found them in.

« on: October 24, 2017, 09:49:35 am »

Overlord/Band + Imp: If you play an Overlord or Band, it becomes the copied card, so you can play another Overlord or Band with Imp.

And that will always work, even for Overlording the same other action over and over, right? The Imp only ever cares that the Overlord is "new", and the Overlord doesn't have any restriction about that. Fun.

97

Dominion General Discussion / Night cards are not action cards

« on: October 23, 2017, 03:56:19 pm »

While trying to Process Witches into Raiders (you gain nothing), I realized that the fact that Night cards are not Actions has some pretty serious implications for some of the older cards. Which cards get the biggest buffs and nerfs from this new card type?

In addition to Procession interactions, I'll start off with Shanty Town. This is a big buff for Shanty Town because you can have a hand full of Night cards, and Shanty will still draw for you!

98

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Annoying and potentially harmful card anti-synergies

« on: October 23, 2017, 02:07:00 pm »

Tactician + Night Cards

I have all these lovely Night cards that I'm saving for then end of my turn...and then Tactician discards them all!

99

Dominion General Discussion / Re: New German Promo 'Abbruch'

« on: October 23, 2017, 01:15:33 pm »

Woodcutter can also gain $5s in combination with Gold, just not midturn.

Which is why that crazy-OP card was removed in the 2nd edition.

100

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Previews #1: Devil's Workshop, Raider, Ghost Town

« on: October 23, 2017, 12:42:19 pm »

Ghost Town sounds awesome! Think of all those times when Summoning a random cantrip is worth it just for the Village effect. Well, now it only costs $3, and you can still get bonus actions out of it later on.

How does Ghost Town, Smithy compare to Village, Smithy? Can someone math for me? Seems like it'll be great simply because of the increased starting hand size coupled with the starting actions.