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676

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: OP with, or UP without?

« on: December 06, 2013, 07:33:18 am »

I think the card is too strong with the italicized part; you could then use it as a one-shot "+5 cards, gain a Ruins" or even better by discarding more cards. It'd also kill looter attacks by transforming ruins into better smithies. (Making them better moats is bad enough.)

The card seems still good without the Ruins clause to me; in an action-heavy deck it potentially becomes a not-self-trashing terminal Madman, with the chance to get two more cards for a Ruins or the trashing.

677

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Playing certain potion cards without potions

« on: December 03, 2013, 06:17:56 pm »

No way, Golem is nowhere near as good as KC - KC effectively lets you play more action cards than are actually in your deck, never mind your hand, and anyway KC is liable to put everything in your hand, and also lets you choose which actions it plays.

But KC may be drawn dead with a low action density. The higher the action density, the better KC becomes - it's better than Golem in engines, but Golem is better in BM games and slogs (except with looters). Overall, you may be right that KC would be better at the same price but I don't think it's so clear-cut.

And this begs the interesting question: why didn't KC get a potion cost instead of Golem? It's better in multiples too, due to its stackability...

678

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Playing certain potion cards without potions

« on: December 03, 2013, 03:38:03 pm »

Note that Donald X. himself playtested two potion cards at non-potion costs and found them okay: Vineyards at $4 (originally in Base) and Philosopher's Stone at $7 (originally in Prosperity). With University, you're following his "rule" by replacing the Potion cost by a $4 cost increase. I think this "translation" could work for most Alchemy cards, except maybe for the most expensive ones (and Alchemist, of course).

Golem  cost $5 and added this clause: You may only buy this if you discard a curse from your hand. (I thought it was appropriate to have to have something special in order to buy a golem, and this makes a minor use for having a curse without nullifying its penalty)

Essentially, you're just replacing the potion cost by a "curse cost". This may work in the absence of cursers, but it would seriously weaken cursers since they effectively give out (worse) potions.
I think Golem may work at $7 or $8; it's about as good as King's Court IMO (both let you play two more action cards that you don't have in hand "for free").

679

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Unlimited buys

« on: November 29, 2013, 04:47:14 pm »

What about, "You may buy any number of cards costing more than $0 this turn"?

I think this would be reasonable (though very situational) at $2 or $3; it's rarely better than Squire. (Edit: Ninjaed.)


For mail-mi's original card, I would try it at $6 or $7, and ban Gardens, Goons, Bridge and Highway. That price should prevent it from being an automatic buy in most games - you could usually buy a Gold or even a Province instead, which help you to win the game, not just give the option to end it one shuffle later. It does completely mess up the endgame, but I think that could be interesting. When there's no cursers or looters, the card effectively allows you to:

(i) end the game on 2 empty piles (by buying all Coppers), or
(ii) end the game on 1 empty pile when leading by >10 VP (by buying all Coppers and Curses)

This would shorten the game notably, but should not allow the Duchy Rush to be a viable strategy in most games. However, with cursers or looters (for an extra $0 pile) in the game, it might be too dominant.

680

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Theory about what is going on with Goko

« on: November 29, 2013, 07:41:15 am »

Rebuild and Scout were printed as currently written.

AND WE ARE PERMITTED TO USE THEM IN COMBINATION!

There's a house rule to fix both at once:

"You may only play Rebuild if you have a Scout in play."

681

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Dominion Cards by... Me!!!! :D

« on: November 27, 2013, 08:12:59 pm »

Chapel is an exceptional case.

Lookout is not cantrip.  The +1 card matters a lot.  Moreover, it gives you far reduced selection (3 cards instead of your hand) and it gets very dangerous to play in the mid game.

Loan is a copper, which is not at all like a cantrip.  And it only trashes treasures.  If you buy any other Treasures it will start to whiff (hitting your Silvers and Golds) quite a lot.

Lookout doesn't have +1 Card, but since it trashes from deck instead of hand, it keeps your handsize the same as a cantrip trasher would do, so it seems equivalent to a (nerfed) cantrip trasher to me. The same holds for Loan, which neither costs an action nor decreases handsize any more than Junk Dealer does. (If the top card of my deck is a Copper, playing Junk Dealer to trash a Copper and playing Loan actually do exactly the same thing, both for my current term and for my deck content.)
Of course both cards have the substantial nerfs that you mention, but they also have the advantage of mild filtering resp. giving $1 over a "vanilla" cantrip trasher.
The question is if Lookout and Loan are so weak only because of these nerfs, or if a cantrip trasher isn't that strong to begin with.

It's not about the hand size though.  With Loan, it's like you played a cantrip and it drew a Copper.  If you played an actual cantrip, you would get an average card from your deck which should be better than Copper.  Copper is the stuff you want to get rid of, after all.  But alright, "nerfed cantrip" is an OK approximation.  The nerfs do matter a lot though.

Upgrade without the card gain is easily worth $4, because you often play it without the card gain anyway (trashing Copper).  Sweeper does better because the trashing isn't even forced.  That is why I say that it is certainly too strong for $3 and quite possibly too strong for $4.

I agree that "Upgrade without the card gain" would probably be fine at $4; I'm not sure if it becomes too strong with the suggested buff. Anyway, thanks for the discussion!

682

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Dominion Cards by... Me!!!! :D

« on: November 27, 2013, 07:37:55 pm »

Chapel is an exceptional case.

Lookout is not cantrip.  The +1 card matters a lot.  Moreover, it gives you far reduced selection (3 cards instead of your hand) and it gets very dangerous to play in the mid game.

Loan is a copper, which is not at all like a cantrip.  And it only trashes treasures.  If you buy any other Treasures it will start to whiff (hitting your Silvers and Golds) quite a lot.

Lookout doesn't have +1 Card, but since it trashes from deck instead of hand, it keeps your handsize the same as a cantrip trasher would do, so it seems equivalent to a (nerfed) cantrip trasher to me. The same holds for Loan, which neither costs an action nor decreases handsize any more than Junk Dealer does. (If the top card of my deck is a Copper, playing Junk Dealer to trash a Copper and playing Loan actually do exactly the same thing, both for my current term and for my deck content.)
Of course both cards have the substantial nerfs that you mention, but they also have the advantage of mild filtering resp. giving $1 over a "vanilla" cantrip trasher.
The question is if Lookout and Loan are so weak only because of these nerfs, or if a cantrip trasher isn't that strong to begin with.

683

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Dominion Cards by... Me!!!! :D

« on: November 27, 2013, 07:07:07 pm »

You can't really assign linear value to vanilla bonuses like that, but I didn't say the benefit was marginal.  I said it was mild.  There's a difference.  

  Sorry, I meant to say I don't consider it a "mild" benefit, due to the comparisons I gave (which seem like reasonable heuristics in the absence of actual playtesting; of course they don't prove anything).

More specifically, the +$1 on Junk Dealer is nice, but it is small compared to the benefit of trashing.  Trashing is just that good!  I also said that I thought Sweeper would be too weak for $5 but too strong for $4.  The main point was just that cantrip trashing is extremely good.  Countering junkers isn't even a factor here -- it's about the early game momentum that you can build from quickly cycling and trashing through your deck.

And I did say at the end that it might still work at $4.  It would still be very, very strong at that price though.

I don't quite see why you think it to be so strong. Of course trashing is very strong, but a single Chapel can trash faster than even two or three Sweepers (even if you count the Chapel as a dead card afterwards, while the Sweepers remain "almost" cantrips).

Also, we already have two cards that are essentially ("nerfed") cantrip trashers at $3: Lookout and Loan (since trashing from the deck doesn't decrease handsize); and they're both quite weak.

(Edit to clarify; see also my next post)

684

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Dominion Cards by... Me!!!! :D

« on: November 27, 2013, 06:07:09 pm »

Sweeper (Action, Cost:3)

+1 Card
+1 Action

Choose a card in your hand. Discard it, or trash it.

There has been some discussion on this, saying that this should cost $4.  I am going to go further and say that it probably doesn't work at any price as is, but if a price had to be given it would be $5.

Sweeper gives cantrip trashing.  That is very powerful.  Off the top of my head I can think of 3 official cantrip trashers -- Upgrade, Junk Dealer and Rats.  Upgrade and JD are pretty similar -- $5 cantrip trashing with a mild benefit.

Junk Dealer's benefit is not marginal, but quite big - adding +$1 typically increases a card's cost by $2 or $3 (Silver vs. Gold, Village vs. Bazaar). Therefore Sweeper seems reasonable (if strong) at $4 to me, since its benefit is much smaller; I think it would be slightly stronger than Masquerade, which also has optional trashing. Sweeper might seriously hurt Junkers since you can spam it, but that might be considered a plus since junkers are so strong usually.

685

Simulation / Re: Dominiate: a Dominion simulator that runs on the Web

« on: November 27, 2013, 08:32:26 am »

Thanks. Not buying the third Rebuild changes very little; TerminalRebuild seems to become marginally (<1%) weaker against most cards, but now loses also to Monument (probably because BM-Monument tends to longer games).

I've also tried replacing one Rebuild by a Gold; this marginally helps against one card but hurts against another.

686

Simulation / Re: Dominiate: a Dominion simulator that runs on the Web

« on: November 26, 2013, 06:33:08 pm »

With Rebuild being so awfully strong, I've been interested to see whether removing the "+1 Action" would balance it. I expected it to remain strong, while Donald X. said that this version "couldn't compete". Since I didn't know how to add new cards to the simulator, I just "simulated" this with the existent Rebuild strategy (by ragingduckd and SheCantSayNo) by setting "WantsToRebuild" to zero when there's already a Rebuild in play, which seems to work as intended. The buying strategy is still close to optimal. This "TerminalRebuild" turns out to be significantly weaker than the original card:

TerminalRebuild loses to the strongest BM cards: Wharf, Goons, GhostShip, DoubleJack, all Cursers.

It essentially ties with Monument (51:49), Envoy (48.5:51.5), Smithy (52:48) and Courtyard (50:50), and wins against all other implemented one-card strategies (Militia, Masq., HP, Amb., Library, ...).

So BM-TerminalRebuild is about as strong as standard Smithy-BM, i.e. far from overpowered, but occasionally useful on BM boards. This seems to me to be an interesting "mediocre" card: It'd be worse in an engine, but great for slogs, or when combined with Walled Village (making it non-terminal again) or Tournament.

687

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What do you think about the house rule...

« on: November 24, 2013, 02:50:47 pm »

It's easier to take a lead, or end the game, than it is to take the lead and end the game. If Player 1 can win by doing those two on separate turns, and doesn't have to actually still be in the lead on the turn he ends the game, then he has an advantage.

But by my rule suggestion, Player 1 has to be in the lead on his last turn to win; and even this might not be enough if he didn't lead already before his last turn.

Interesting idea. Not sure whether I'd want to play with it though (as it's pretty complicated). I don't think it solves the 3-piling problem either, because P1 would still be reluctant to, say, 3-pile-plus-estate when ahead, because it'd be easy for P2 to match that for a tie. Because P1 is spending $ to ensure the game ends while P2 isn't, it puts P2 at an advantage in that situation.

P1 can still 3-pile for a secure win if he was ahead before his last turn (which is as it "should be" for a fair game IMO; you shouldn't be able to win just because of your extra turn). And if the players are tied before P1 3-piles by taking the last estate, P2 would need a duchy (or some other VP card) to tie, so the cases in which P2 has a potential advantage are very rare.

688

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What do you think about the house rule...

« on: November 24, 2013, 12:23:30 pm »

Currently Dominion does have a very significant first player advantage, and it would be nice if there were some reasonable way to fix it. Equal turns doesn't quite do that, but I think it would make things closer. It would however mean the first player could rarely trigger the endgame with a guaranteed win, but normally they'd be alright.

I think there is a way to remove the "extra turn" advantage without giving the last player an end-game advantage, when players count points during the game:

Play equal turns, but after the ending condition was triggered, a player may not gain more points in his "extra" turn than the "triggering player" did in his last turn^* - or rather, any surplus points gained don't count for the score.

So in a 2P game, if the first player ends the game, he can essentially choose whether the final score, or the score after the penultimate round, counts.
This way, each player can end the game with a guaranteed win (the first player by ending the game when leading before their last turn, the last player in the usual way). The first player can also "risk" to end the game without a secure win, e.g. by buying the last province or doing a megaturn. The PPR remains in force for both players (though with different numbers for first/second player).
I haven't tried it yet, but this rule should substantially reduce the first-player advantage, though not remove it completely.


^*and may not remove VPs from him (due to cursers, trashing attacks etc.)