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Messages - Epoch

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51
Game Reports / Re: Victory by Develop?!?
« on: January 06, 2012, 11:05:07 am »
On the contrary, this is precisely why Chancellor is so bad, and a large part of why Fortune Teller is bad. Cards that are "just" +$2 on a +$3 card have to perpetually justify why I should get them over Silver - available in every game - in a way that say Shanty Town & Smuggler do not.

Well, one hopes that you find the justification pretty straightforward:  Fortune Teller means that your opponent's next hand is effectively 4 cards.  Chancellor lets you cycle your deck.  Above & beyond what the Silver does.

BTW:  Does anyone EVER get Workshop outside of the particular case of "combo with Gardens"?

52
Since there are so many posts about poker, I'd like to ask, in poker what do you mean by playing a hand perfectly? In my limited understanding to the game, does the game not rely more on reading your opponents, once every player knows well about the probabilities?

They mean that even if you perfectly read your opponent, perfectly sucker them, so that they play a MUCH worse hand against your MUCH better hand, they'll get lucky cards that will put them over you after you're both all-in.  Or whatever.  I think it's called a "bad beat" in Poker -- where you do the "wrong" thing according to the odds, but win anyway through luck.

The Dominion equivalent would be, like, ignoring Masquerade and getting Treasure Map in your opening, only to connect your TMs on turn 5.

53
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Nice Interaction: Potion/Farmland
« on: January 05, 2012, 04:35:37 pm »
Note that you're giving up a Gold buy to get this.  So if you'd spent the $6 on a Gold, you'd have Gold + Potion.  Instead, you have Gold + Farmland.

So I don't know that it's true that you "increase your buying power" or "create the possibility of Farmlanding the Gold."  What you do is replace an all-but-dead draw with no virtually no effect on your deck in play, to a dead draw with no effect on your deck in play, but which is worth 2 VP.

Probably worth doing a lot of the time.  But really, you're just saying, "My Potion is now worth 2 VP."

I guess that it's the case that in the Gold + Farmland scenario, you have two 6 cost cards that you could potentially Farmland into a Province instead of one.

54
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.

Though that's not really a big problem.  Create a card that's, like, some other negative-vp-card-that's-not-called-Curse.  Um.  Hex.  Curses still refer to Curses, and you can have a card that gives out Hexes, or one that trashes Curses and Hexes, or whatever.

But there are other, bigger problems with cards that are worth negative VP but have some conciliatory benefit with them.

55
Game Reports / Re: Victory by Develop?!?
« on: January 05, 2012, 12:35:26 pm »
I really don't understand the level of hatred that Chancellor seems to provoke.  It's not a lot more useful than a Silver, certainly, but it's +$2 on a $3 cost card.  It just can't be that bad.  Of course Develop is worse than it.  Develop is actively terrible for almost all decks out there, while Chancellor is essentially a minorly useful card in pretty much any deck that doesn't have lots of dead draws or terminal conflicts.

It feels like the sentiment that Chancellor is a uniquely terrible card is driven by, I don't know, early impressions from people before they understand the importance of tempo and the not-terribly-difficult skill of managing terminal conflicts?

56
Game Reports / Noble Brigand FTW
« on: January 04, 2012, 08:06:00 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/04/game-20120104-170006-db1876c1.html

I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that this game was largely won by the use of Noble Brigand, with which I stole 3 Silvers, 2 Golds, and gave out 1 Copper, crippling his buying power and interrupting two Upgrade-chains he was attempting through to Province.

(Admittedly, my opponent, presumably accidentally, Remade one of his Provinces, but the game would not have been close even without that mistake).

57
Help! / Re: What went wrong in this big draw board?
« on: January 04, 2012, 01:00:31 am »
Looks to me like he just get luckier.  With virtually identical decks after turn 4, his turn 5 is Village -> Envoy, while your turn 5 is Envoy -> $2 because you draw your villages from the Envoy.  His turn 6 is Village -> Rabble, while your turn 6 is Rabble -> I'm guessing mostly now-useless Actions.  His turn 7 is Village -> Rabble again, while your turn 7 is Village -> Village -> no drawer.

And at that point, it sounds like game to me.  Doubt there was much to be done.

58
Help! / Re: Why did this go so badly for me?
« on: January 03, 2012, 06:25:06 pm »
Yeah, I think that GendoIkari and DG are right, and more specifically, the answer is actually fairly simple: you've got a lot of terminal +cards (3 Embassies and a Witch) and no village-like cards.  This is never a good idea.

I think you also went overboard on the Tunnels.  The thing about Tunnels is that they ARE dead cards if you can't discard them.  You bought seven of them.  You should've concentrated on getting your deck to turn over quickly with Hamlets + Embassies to turn a smaller number of Tunnels into a larger number of Golds.

59
Dominion Articles / Re: Silk Road
« on: January 03, 2012, 02:08:12 pm »
It does seem holistically to me to be the case that pure rush strategies for Gardens aren't necessarily super-awesome.  I haven't had a lot of luck with them recently, in any case.

60
Dominion Articles / Re: Silk Road
« on: January 03, 2012, 01:39:48 pm »
I'm pretty dubious about Silk Road rushes being "like Garden rushes."  It may be easy to get to 12 or 16 green cards, but the game isn't ending when you have 12 green cards, and your opponent has a lot of opportunity to catch up to you.

It feels like in the Gardens rush case, if you go divergent strategies (that is, your opponent isn't Garden-rushing), your opponent doesn't have a lot of recourse.  If he buys Gardens, they'll be very low-points Gardens because his deck isn't bloated and can't be (and if he tries to convert over to a bloat strategy quickly, he'll be even more screwed).  Whereas a non-rushing opponent who dips into SRs has something close to as much upside on his SRs as you do (he has fewer Estates, but probably more Duchies and Provinces).  And during the crucial final stage of the game, after the SR and Estates piles are emptied, you have the uncomfortable choice of trying to empty your enabling pile -- which dues nothing at all for your score -- or delay the game-end buy contesting Duchies.  It seems harder to make the optimal choice there.

Plus, cursing attacks are much more effective against an SR player than they are against a Gardens player.

61
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Really bad Dominion joke
« on: December 29, 2011, 04:46:24 pm »
So what happens when you ambassador a card that is not originally in the supply?

In the case of prizes or BM cards, I think the answer is nothing.

There are no cards that are available in multiple copies but are not in the supply, to the best of my knowledge.

62
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Really bad Dominion joke
« on: December 29, 2011, 02:45:08 pm »
No. Ambassador cannot return Princess to the supply, because Princess is never in the supply.

Ah, yes.  In that case, I'm going to go with "it's impossible as the game presently exists," because I'm pretty sure that there's nothing else that can do any kind of shenanigans with returning cards to the supply or pseudo-supply other than Ambassador.

63
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Really bad Dominion joke
« on: December 29, 2011, 02:33:36 pm »
Inb4 some weird edge-case where it can.

It's actually not super hard.

Player 1's hand:  Tournament, Ambassador, Province, X, X
Player 2's hand:  Smuggler, Moat, and several non-Province cards.

Player 1:  Plays Tournament, reveals Province, gains Princess (and draws it), plays Ambassador (player 2 reveals Moat), selects Princess for the Ambassador's target, it gets returned to supply, but does not go to Player 2 because of the Moat.  Turn ends.

Player 2:  Plays Smugglers, gains Princess (a card that costs $6 or less).

Of course, this is bad play for Player 1.  And sort of for Player 2, since he could've done the whole thing just by not Moating the Ambassador (but, then, he didn't know what Player 1 was going to choose).

64
Game Reports / Re: Ventures are so lovely
« on: December 28, 2011, 07:45:27 pm »
I don't know if I would've went for Ventures in that game, I'll admit that having Thief in the supply looks really uncomfortable, even if Thief is not a strong card. Knowing how I'd normally play, I'd probably go Militia/Silver too, and grab a Stables asap. If I was feeling really gutsy, I'd get a bunch of Worker's Villages and Thieves.

The thing about Thief as a counter to money-based strategies is that your opponent probably isn't going to buy it that early, and if they do, you can respond and hurt them.  Like, well, if they buy a Thief during turns 1/2, lol (and, at any rate, they can't know you're going Venture during turns 1/2).  If they buy it during turns 3/4, you have plenty of ability to pivot to a different strategy and punish them.  If they buy it at turn 5+, then it doesn't come back to them until like turn 9, and they probably only play it once or twice in the game -- if they eat a Venture or two, it shouldn't be that critical to you.

Thief only works as a counter if you buy it into a deck that has the ability to spam it pretty hard -- a "draw my whole deck" engine or an ultra-thin deck that cycles itself very quickly.

65
Hmmm.  If we considered an ongoing problem in Dominion being that fast no-combo decks (BM + Smithy or Smithy variant, Doublejack, BM + Masq) are too good, I could see a Conquest theme allowing slower play.  A card like:

Raid
Action
All opponents reveal their hands.  Gain coin equal to the cost of the highest-value Victory card that is revealed.

(Or whatevs, not trying to balance).

Or other stuff that gives you an advantage based on your opponent having high-value green cards.  So it would encourage decks which set themselves up and knock out their end conditions very quickly, and discourage, "Oh, hey, I got $8 on turn 6, I'll get a Province...  and then another on turn 10, then turn 12, then turn 15."

A catch-up mechanic.  If you wanted something less swingy than what's described above, the Trade Route deal of the card getting better as more types of Victory card are bought works something like this.

66
Game Reports / Re: Successful Mint Opening - thanks to Duchess
« on: December 28, 2011, 05:18:59 pm »
Mint/Pawn is worse than Mint/Curse on councilroom.

In all fairness, there can not be a statistically significant amount of data on Mint/Curse.

67
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Hunting Party w/o Buys
« on: December 28, 2011, 04:24:28 pm »
If you already have all of your unique cards in hand (EG: your deck consists only of estates/copper/silver/gold/hp/militia/province) your choice should depend on how many of your HP you've already played.  If you've gone through 50% of them (including the one in hand), you should play the last HP as a chancellor, while otherwise you shouldn't.

This surely depends on the size of your remaining draw deck.  If you have played 3 HP and have 3 HP left, and your draw deck is currently 10 cards, while after a Chancellor it will be 25 cards, then you shouldn't Chancellor it.

68
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Hunting Party w/o Buys
« on: December 28, 2011, 04:14:52 pm »
I don't think that there's a general single answer here.  What you're trying to do is have a decent draw pile.  If you've played most of your Hunting Parties already, or have most of your Golds, and those are your "good cards," then I think that what you want to do is try to eliminate as much of your remaining draw pile as possible, to cycle the "good cards" that you're playing this turn back into your deck as quickly as possible.

If, on the other hand, you're in a situation like, "I started with $5 + 2xHunting Party, and I played the HP and got a Copper and a Silver, and I know I have 4 more HPs in my draw deck," then no, I don't think that you want to play your second HP.

And if playing the HPs will result in a reshuffle into a big draw pile right NOW, before your clean-up phase and thus before the HPs you play this turn get shuffled in, then you probably want to avoid it.

Finally, if you have no idea about all of this, delay your reshuffle as you're buying green, and you know that that card at least is dead in your new draw deck.

69
Help! / Re: How do you defend against this set?
« on: December 28, 2011, 04:09:23 pm »
My experience with FV->Torturer is that it's surprisingly not-that-strong compared to other villages->Torturer.  FV->Torturer on this turn is net +1 card.  That's not a lot.  Sure, next turn, you get another net +1 card from the FV, but the point of a village/torturer engine is to put together a big chain THIS TURN, to force your opponent to either lose their entire hand or take massive numbers of Curses.  In my experience, FV/Torturer tends to result in lots of turns in which you play one or two Torturers, not 3 or 4.

Since the engine is its own payload, the additional +actions aren't that useful -- you aren't going to be buying many if any terminals other than Torturer.  The money of FV is also not a terribly big deal: you aren't trying to explode into a multi-Province turn, all you really need to do is hit $5 so you can keep buying Torturers -- the idea is to ruin your opponent's deck so totally that you can buy Provinces at your leisure.

More specifically about that game, I don't like using the +cards of Governor here -- you limit the damage that your Torturers do if your opponent has greater than 5 card hands.

70
I've actually never played with a real-card Pearl Diver -- it seems like it might be kind of a physical pain in the neck.  If you move the card to the top of the deck, is it awkward to avoid exposing the penultimate card as well?

71
I like the idea of negative money on cards, but I don't think negative buy could ever work. They would be completely worthless on any boards without +buy (and probably overpowered on boards with +buy), and all cards are designed to work in any Kingdom.

Not necessarily.  "Gain a card costing $5 or less that is not a Victory Card.  -1 Buy."  Or whatever.

For that matter, one might argue that Chapel would not be much worse if it had -1 Buy on it.

72
Cards that give a disadvantage in play: an Action that gives -$2.  An Action that gives -1 Buy.  Actions that force you to discard.  Actions that make Coppers worth $0 when the Action is in play.  That kind of thing.  With, obviously, some kind of concomitant benefit that would otherwise be disproportionate to their cost.
 
(Not Actions that give Curses to you or any other -VP thing, for all the reasons that we've discussed at length).

Cards that interact heavily with the bottom of your draw pile, like maybe a Golem-like thing:  Reveal the bottom card from your Draw pile.  If the card is not an Action, discard it.  If it is an Action, put it into play.

Cards that interact with "bad" standard cards, like Copper, Estate, and Curse (a VP card that gives you 1 VP per 3 Curses in your deck.  A card that lets you discard any number of Estates for +1 Card, +$1 each.)

Not really trying to do specific balanced examples, just ideas for themes.

73
How about an attack that scales down? It starts out as an awesome attack but diminishes as cards deplete or tokens are gained - like an anti pirate ship.

Mountebank is kind of like this, with the "discard a Curse" clause.  Ill Gotten Gains, of course, is very much a one-shot attack (even if it's technically not an attack).

Some kind of Ultra-Cutpurse for $5?  Discard 2 Coppers?

74
Game Reports / Re: pure luck!
« on: December 27, 2011, 09:41:16 pm »
Since my first post here was a KC-game, too, I didn't say "oh man, KC Bridge again". I asked something different - where is the luck here? Did I miss it? No cynicism on my side.

Yeah, I'm with you.  Dude's got double-activated Cities with, unless I miscounted, an 8-2 City-split.  That's gg.  You don't need luck to win then.  Your opponent needed to not allow that to happen.

75
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Hamlet/Gardens?
« on: December 23, 2011, 10:39:08 am »
Does Bureucrat/Gardens crush Workshop/Gardens? Or, does Bureucrat/Hamlet/Gardens crush Workshop/Hamlet/Gardens?

I think that the more on-point question is whether Bureaucrat/Hamlet/Gardens beats Bureaucrat/Gardens.

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