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151

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Greatest Card -- NOMINATIONS OPEN

« on: October 21, 2016, 02:27:15 pm »

First of all, Events aren't cards, they're "card-shaped-objects" in semi-official DX canon.

But more importantly:

define it how you'd like

makes this entire discussion virtually meaningless. At the very least, it requires a re-framing.

If you are allowing people to use their own criteria, then you are not looking for the "Greatest" card, you are looking for the community's "Favorite" card, a purely subjective measurement.

In which case, Roadrunner is entirely reasonable in nominating Scout because there is no objective criterion by which it can be dismissed. It is his favorite card.

Any discussion where that makes sense definitely needs some tighter ground rules.

Also, I would submit that the Ace of Spades is the greatest card in the majority of traditional card games. The Queen of Spades is only the highest ranking card in a few systems, such as the point values in Hearts, and has special meaning in Pinochle. Most other games put Ace as the highest rank, and most games (such as Bridge) rank Spades the highest suit. (Shout out to Duplicate Bridge players. And no I'm not talking about gaining a second copy of a cost-reducing action, or playing two cost-reducers in order to gain a second copy of Province.)

152

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Greatest Card

« on: October 21, 2016, 01:53:15 pm »

I sounds to me like what's being asked here is not what "the greatest card" is but what "the most powerful effect or combination of effects" is that is printed on a single card-shaped object.

The list obviously ignores cost. If we are taking coin/debt/opportunity cost into account, then the greatest card in Dominion is Chapel, debate over.

When listing Champion, Teacher and Prince, my assumption is that the card is already in play (aside or tavern mat) ready to do its thing. When listing Donate, my assumption is that you are imagining a scenario in which you could just Donate whenever you wanted without regard to cost, because cost is not being taken into account in this rating.

So, starting with those assumptions, I have two comments.

First, I want to give at least some props to Teacher. Champion's immunity to attacks probably puts it over the top, but my thought is that often, you only need to +action a single key terminal action card in order to make an engine hum, not ALL of the terminals. The ability to also add +card and +coin is extremely powerful. There are very likely many kingdoms where free Teacher would beat free Champion. But attack immunity is a deal-breaker. Advantage Champion. That said, I'm not sure the top effect(s) is one of those two guys(gals) anyway.

Including Dominate raises an interesting issue: VP effects are extraordinarily hard to rank outside of their opportunity cost. If Province cost $2 it would be far more powerful than Dominate, because the pile would empty long before anyone could Dominate. If Dominate was free...let's see...the most powerful card in the game would be, what, Squire? Ranking effects ignoring cost is starting to seem silly.

And including VP effects raises the same sort of issue as ranking Chess pieces: Is the the Queen or King "greater?" The Queen is a more powerful attacking piece, but the King is the actual victory condition. If the direct victory condition can be included in the ranking, the King is infinitely more important. Therefore, Dominate, if included, is the single most powerful card-shaped object in the game, because who ever has the most of them wins, period, regardless of everything else. For that reason I would suggest omitting anything VP-related from consideration (and if that's not a slippery slope...)

Secondly, I want to give extra props to DX for outstanding overall game design. Look at what just happened. In a discussion about the most powerful effects in the game, the majority of the cards don't actually do anything! They're all cards that make other cards better directly (Champion/Teacher/Prince/King's Court/Fortune) or get rid of junk so that other cards have more of a chance to shine (Chapel/Donate.) It says a lot about good game design when synergy is this fundamental and no single card wins games all by itself (even Goons!)

153

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion and Intrigue second editions

« on: October 20, 2016, 04:38:05 pm »

But how does it work at all? Harbinger puts the card on your deck. Sentry then draws it.

Right, of course. I meant Lookout, not Sentry. Brain freeze. Making Lookout guaranteed not to hit three good cards is sometimes handy.

154

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion and Intrigue second editions

« on: October 19, 2016, 05:51:59 pm »

Harbinger sentry doesn't look good or am I overlooking something?

Oh, it's not exactly good. It's just interesting. Bad Poacher/Harbinger/Sentry is probably one of the most convoluted "trash one card from your hand" plays I can think of. But it did actually happen a few times in a game with those cards and no cards that actually trash from your hand.

So far, Harbinger has been most useful in slogs, and Sentry has been most useful for filtering and topdecking (such as putting a cantrip or other action on top for Vassal, my second-favorite new card.)

(Hmm. Puzzle idea? Most convoluted "trash one card from your hand" play. No using the same action twice.)

155

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion and Intrigue second editions

« on: October 19, 2016, 10:53:25 am »

We've been playing a few games with the new cards just to get used to interesting interactions. The deck manipulation stuff is just too much fun.

Bad Poacher ended up being a minor benefit: Discard junk, topdeck it with Harbinger, then play Sentry (or Lookout, which really appreciates not accidentally turning up three good cards.)

Of course, my absolute favorite: Secret Passage, puting a junk card FOURTH from the top. Secret Passage again, putting a junk card SECOND from the top. Sentry, drawing a card, then revealing the two junk cards and trashing both. That just makes me giggle like a little girl.

Also: Secret Passage, putting a VP card fourth from the top. Patrol, drawing three plus at least one VP card.

I also watched a someone win a Colony game playing something close to Secret Passage/BM with light trashing in a board with terminals and no villages. At first, it looked like he was just spinning his wheels turn after turn, but Mined up to a couple of Platina and ended up with a green-proof single-Colony engine that didn't stall once. It's that good a sifter. Definitely my favorite new card.

156

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion and Intrigue second editions

« on: October 15, 2016, 06:37:57 pm »

Rabble is about as likely to make your opponent skip their Traveller as to make them fast-forward to it, but the two results are not equivalent.

Ah, but they ARE equivalent, in that they are, as you say, equally likely. Therefore, the play of Rabble is not the determining factor that denied you your Champion. Shuffle luck is. The shuffle was just as likely to have put it at the bottom as in Rabble range, but players react as though it was the Rabble that denied them their Champion. It wasn't. It was the shuffle. Yes, the result is the same, but it's the reaction that's wrong, in that it's a mental error that causes people to believe that Rabble's cycling is part of the attack.

And, in fact, in a Traveler game, Rabble is usually more helpful than not, because it gets you back to your upgraded Travelers more quickly so that you can upgrade them again. Travelers love cycling, and Rabble cycles your opponents!

157

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion and Intrigue second editions

« on: October 15, 2016, 06:23:03 pm »

First impressions of the new cards, having played a few games with them:

Harbinger

It suffers a bit from Settlers Syndrome: If you're engine-building, it's a do-nothing card, because a huge amount of time you have no discard pile. At least Settlers works with sifting because it increases your handsize once you've discarded a Copper and pulled it back. Sifting and Harbinger is almost completely useless.

It might end up being a decent card in Slogs or Rushes to re-use key cards, on the other hand. I used it in a Rebuild game to topdeck Rebuilds or sometimes Silvers if I needed to hit $5 for another Duchy.

Merchant

Nothing to report yet. It hasn't been a key card in any kingdom we've played so far, but I can't imagine it won't be. We just had another Peddler game that came down to Peddler mania, even with only a trash-one (Then again, two Foragers and Bonfire will turn your entire deck into a Peddler party pretty darned quick.) Merchant will have its day.

Vassal

My new favorite terminal Silver. Oh, wait. It's not usually terminal. Seriously, it does an amazing impression of Conspirator. All you have to do is get it a little help, and there are a LOT of cards that help it, including the new kids: Sentry and Secret Passage! It's so great playing a terminal Silver, turning up a Cantrip and then continuing on your merry way.

Also, it's a very happy King's Court target, even without deck manipulation. But then again, what isn't a happy KC target?

Poacher

Very interesting card. I watched several players buy at least two, and nobody wanted to be the first to pile something out. We ended up with several one-card piles. I'm going to watch for TfB the next time it appears, because I feel like I might start the Poacher rush, then TfB mine and buy the last one just to inflict Oases on opponents.

Bandit

Gain a gold is interesting. In 4P, everyone's so paranoid about losing treasure that they all play treasureless engines if possible. Definitely a huge upgrade over Thief, but you'll have to ask yourself how much Gold you want.

Sentry

I had high hopes for this card, but I'm having second thoughts. At first, I though it would be a better trasher than Junk Dealer, and it emphatically is NOT. It has only two cards to choose from, and JD has five. Getting it to match up with junk is surprisingly difficult, especially because it's a $5 and you've bought four keepers by the time you play it even once.

That said, I do have to say that the discard/inspection/topdecking capability is perhaps the most important thing about this card. It enables Vassal, Mystic, Wishing Well, Herald, Tunnel, etc., it skips the green, and it's non-terminal. It's actually a pretty great utility card. It's just not an elite trasher.

Artisan

Came up in a Rebuild game. Believe it or not, it wasn't relevant. Maybe it's because I just didn't try hard enough to hit $6, but after buying some Rebuilds you really have to hammer the Duchy pile. I really wanted to Artisan a bunch of Duchies, too, but I won without an Artisan at all. That said, it's a great $5-gainer, and if you don't have extra actions, putting the gained card on top is especially nice to avoid the collision. That seems to be predominant play for this card so far: Gain/topdeck the gained card.

Lurker

Nobody in my playgroup is sold on this so far, but the interesting thing is that as soon as one player buys one, others jump in and buy one to try to snipe the trashed actions. No one has yet built an engine and subsequently bought two at once.

Diplomat

Hasn't been great so far. Some tried handsize-decreasing to enable it, but it's been difficult to get it to match up with handsize-decreasers because you don't want too many of those. It could theoretically work with optional handsize-decreasers like Mill.

Mill

Money for green is relevant. However, it's not good if there is other sifting, because you're already discarding your green. For example, I tried one Mill in an engine that also had Embassy. Nope.

Secret Passage

Possibly my favorite new card. I love that it enables so many other cards that care about the specific location of a card in your deck, especially ones that care about the SECOND card in your deck. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a top-decking card and thought about how it might work with Herald or Wishing Well...nope.

I also really like sifters that don't decrease your hand size. Forum and Archive are great. Secret Passage is right up there.

It's also relevant to smooth out draws; sometimes you bottom-deck a green card or several, knowing that you're going to get your draw components quicker and re-draw the green anyway, but after you have your engine pieces in hand, rather than tripping on them along the way. Or you can put the green second from the top and turn your Vagrant into the Lab it so desperately wants to be but usually isn't.

You also have to love that it enables new cards like Sentry and Vassal.

Courtier

A bit underwhelming. Flexibility is good, though, and it's been relevant even in games without multiple-identity cards. Gold gaining can be quite good. Sometimes you really need a +buy that badly, and sometimes you really need $3 that badly. It's almost always worth buying one. ONE. Don't get carried away.

I have to say it can be hard to evaluate cards depending on the type of game you're playing. Courtier and Bandit, for example, get quite a bit better in a Palace game. You can lose out on points by not having enough Silvers!

Patrol

I would buy Smithy at $5. +3 cards is just that good. Sifting Green while you're at it is great. This card slaps Scout's stupid face right off. No surprise there.

158

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion and Intrigue second editions

« on: October 15, 2016, 05:32:22 pm »

I have always hated Tribute.  It just felt too much to me like an attack that I couldn't react to or prevent in any way.

It is (was) absolutely, unequivocally not an attack. In fact, it helps you by cycling your cards more quickly.

This is a critically important thing to understand, because it helps you mentally adjust your attitude toward randomness. What you're doing is "counting the hits" which is the same fallacy that causes people to believe in psychic powers or assign magical explanations to coincidences. You only remember the times that Tribute "skipped" your good cards, and ignore all the times it skipped cards you didn't want, or got you to your good cards one turn quicker, or triggered a reshuffle so that you had access to a recent purchase sooner.

It's the same reason you don't play Millstone in a Magic deck unless your win condition is, specifically, decking your opponent. Otherwise, all you're doing is swapping out one set of random cards for another set of random cards and it has absolutely no effect. Magic newbies who believe that Millstone is a denial card will point to the cards in your discard and say "see, I milled your [X], therefore I denied you that card." No, you didn't. Shuffle luck denied me that card. It had just as much chance of being at the bottom.

It's the same reason Rabble "skipping" cards is absolutely NOT part of the attack. Only putting green on top is relevant in a Rabble attack. The card cycling is actually helpful. I swear I'm going to have to start smacking people at the table if they keep saying "Oh, no! You Rabbled my [X]!" like it mattered. If I've trashed my Estates and I'm engine-building, I BEG people to Rabble so I get my purchases quicker.

159

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Matching up cards

« on: October 15, 2016, 11:05:45 am »

I definitely like "Savers," and I think there are enough of them to warrant an article. We even have a new one in Secret Passage.

I just thought of another saving mechanism: Draw almost all of your deck, then use a sifter to discard a card or cards you want to save, then intentionally draw just enough cards to trigger a reshuffle of a 6-card discard pile, then stop drawing. (There's a small chance of accidentally drawing a card you wanted to save for the next hand, of course, if you can't trigger the reshuffle with an inspection) This might be handy if an engine needs a little help kicking off next turn.

This is an application for saving that doesn't fit with the "matching up cards" article, however, because if you have this much control over your deck, you're already matching everything up.

Another general application for matching up cards: Getting trashers to line up with junk. I know the optimal way to use a trasher is to trash down, then build up, precisely because when you start out, it's all trash. And I still berate IRL players who use that Steward for cards or coin the first time they play it (ARGH!) But some trashers (particularly $5s) sometimes need some help matching up with junk.

160

Dominion General Discussion / Re: RIP Adventurer

« on: October 10, 2016, 04:53:56 pm »

If someone plays Militia or Witch along the way, then I add those cards to my discard and keep on shuffling. On my turn, I put that under my one card and resume my play.

That's perfectly fine; no harm, no foul. The sticky wicket is the players who pre-shuffle, then immediately put the pre-shuffled cards under the one remaining deck card while it's still other players' turns. That's where you have to draw the line.

I guess that for IRL play, shuffling the discard at any time could be allowed, but putting those shuffled cards under the small number of cards left in your deck would have to wait until it was your turn and were needed for drawing/revealing.

161

Dominion General Discussion / Re: RIP Adventurer

« on: October 10, 2016, 11:21:23 am »

It doesn't allow you to, but if you're not gaining anything between turns, there's no consequence to doing it that way.

Gaining between turns, or being forced to discard between turns, or discarding reactions, or being deck-inspected, or changing your mind about which card you were going to play first after seeing what opponents do and playing sift before draw.

Now there's an interesting puzzle: A complete list of every possible situation that can make it relevant whether you shuffle with a small or empty deck while other players are playing, or whether you have to wait for your turn to avoid corrupting the process. I'll enumerate what I can think of.

-- Gaining: Junkers (curses/ruins/coppers), gifters like Messenger/Embassy

-- Drawing: Council Room, Lost City

-- Topdecking: Ghost Ship, Haunted Castle

-- Inspecting: Spy/Oracle/Scrying Pool

-- Sifting: Oasis/Inn/Warehouse (If you change your mind about the order after watching what others do, Even playing Market/Oasis instead of Oasis/Market could change whether the shuffle triggers before or after you've discarded the card to Oasis.)

-- Reactions: Any reaction that gains, draws or discards can matter, even if played on your turn like self-trashing/Market Square, depending on the order you play them, and the decision about the order can follow what other players do.

-- Changing your mind: Having written two "changing your mind" items, I just had one of those "oh, no" moments. Shuffling is technically relevant at all times and should never be done outside of your turn. I'm going to have a hard time selling that to the playgroup, though. Scenario: Your hand is Smithy/C/C/C/E. You have 1 card left in your deck and it's not your turn. Your opponent draws some cards and plays treasure and you realize that you're light on economy. You decide NOT to play the Smithy and buy a Silver now so that it doesn't miss the shuffle. Therefore, shuffling before your turn would have changed the outcome.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to have a hard time selling that one, especially since early shuffling only hurts the shuffler. But let's flip it around. Shuffler has draw in hand, late in the game, but decides to buy VP after doing a mental point count. But they've already pre-shuffled. Now their newly purchased VP card misses the shuffle.

162

Dominion General Discussion / Matching up cards

« on: October 07, 2016, 01:39:37 pm »

I was responding to a "neat and useful" message when I realized that there might be a hole in the wiki.

It occurred to me that a great deal of the time, certain cards/combos rely on getting two or more specific cards to match up in the same hand (or at least during the same action chain.) It also occurred to me that there are a number of ways to get that to happen, but that they should be enumerated.

So, first of all, is there a generally accepted term for this phenomenon? I know that cards in the same hand are often referred to as "colliding" but more often than not that's use to indicate a negative connotation, such as colliding terminals (crash!) Should we be using the same term for getting cards to meet up that want to meet up?

The list of cards that want/need intentional collision is pretty long. Some of them are absolutely required (Treasure Map), some are strongly implied (Urchin/Urchin) and some are simply beneficial (Market Square/self-trasher.)

In any case, here's the list of ways to collide (match?) (meet?) cards that I can think of, loosely categorized:

1. Draw your whole deck

Kind of a no-brainer. If you can draw everything, all your cards meet. Included for completeness.

2. Trash everything else

See item 1. If your deck is very small, everything meets, so this is basically an extension of 1. Again, included for completeness.

3. Sifters

Cards like Warehouse and Inn and Forum may decrease handsize or keep it the same, but they give you an opportunity to match up cards much quicker than waiting for shuffle luck to do it for you, and can be faster than trashing down in the absence of multi-trashers. If this were a wiki article, I'd refer to the sifter page.

4. Diggers

The wiki does have a digging page. Some diggers like Hunting Party/Sage/Golem can help action combos meet up, though I'm not certain it's faster than just buying more copies of the pieces you want to match.

5. Waiters(?)

This is a group of actions/events that's almost guaranteed to produce a match because they set aside a card for the next hand in one way or another, continuing to set them aside until the two or more cards that want to be together are together.

This category includes Save, Haven, Courtyard, Archive, and arguably even taking advantage of topdeck attacks like Ghost Ship or Haunted Woods. You could possibly include Prince in this overall category, since it ensures that the Princed action meets up with its mate in a future hand.

Perhaps this concept deserves its own article on the wiki? It's one of those things I suspect people look for when evaluating a kingdom: If certain cards rely on synergy to be good, are there enablers in the kingdom that allow the match to happen quicker than it would by chance/draw/trashing?

I notice that the wiki has pages for "trasher" and "sifter" and "terminal draw" and "digger"(digging) but no article on this category of card that sets cards aside so that they can meet up with their combo pieces, unless I'm missing it.

Comments? Any mechanisms for matching up cards that I neglected? Any cards that could be listed explicitly in a wiki article for this purpose?

163

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

« on: October 07, 2016, 01:10:51 pm »

Plan + Market Square

On weak BM boards this can be a strategy in and of itself. Just open Plan / MS and trash Estates and Coppers, gaining roughly one Gold at a time this way. Sometimes you'll get two! You should then be ready to green. Obviously this isn't that strong but it can work out OK if you're otherwise bored.

That puts the "potentially" into "potentially useful" for sure.

Well, there is a grain of usefulness there: Market Square basically "combos" with any self-trasher (as opposed to what beginners might assume was primarily a "reaction" to a trashing attack.) The only trouble with using Market Square with most trashers is getting them to match up in the same hand, whereas Plan doesn't have that problem, because you can always buy Plan when Market square is in your hand.

To a certain degree, a great many of the suggestions in this thread really represent basic synergies, and almost all of them have multiple possible replacements for one or more of the cards.

In a way, this observation simply belongs in the Market Square wiki article: It's a card that like self-trashers, some self-trashers are events such as Plan and Trade, eliminating the need for matching. If you're using it with a trashing action, refer to the article on...um...matchers? Is Dominion missing a term?

Is there a list of cards/strategies somewhere that can effectively get cards to meet up in the same hand without shuffle luck? I'm thinking this needs a separate thread. I'll go make one now.

164

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Improving my game

« on: October 06, 2016, 04:57:28 pm »

Although even in occasional straight base games, my strategies are hampered by poor shuffle luck, and I don't know how to recover. The last game I played was a pretty simple board with Militia, Moneylender, and Witch as the key cards. Anyway, I thought the strategy would be to open Militia/Silver, grab a Witch if I hit $5 and a Gold if I hit $6. Except I hit $4 on my first four draws while my opponent went Moneylender/Silver, jumped to $6, grabbed a Gold turn 3, and that was all she wrote.

Hmm. I'm guessing some better players will jump in here, but let me see if I'm guessing right; it's hard to know without knowing what the rest of the kingdom is, but my guess is that you both made mistakes. What did you do after your first shuffle? (Stef reminds everyone to think of Dominion in terms of what happens after each shuffle, not after each turn. Your deck only improves after shuffles.) Missing $5 after your first shuffle can certainly happen, but it's not unrecoverable. On a Witch board, buying Witch on $6 is probably the right play because winning the curse split is everything, so I'm reasonably sure that was a mistake on your opponent's part, which potentially let you back in the game. Surely you bought Witch after your second shuffle?

And if you were planning on using Militia and Witch as your key terminal attacks, I'm not sure that you also want Moneylender. Even if there are Villages or other +actions, you don't want too many terminals unless it's an engine board.

Also, don't think about what you'll buy with each amount of money you could have. Instead, think about what you want your deck to have in it, and buy the pieces that you can afford as you can afford them, in the order that makes the most sense for deck development. Don't buy Silver just because you have $3, don't buy more Militias than you need just because you have $4, etc.

165

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

« on: October 06, 2016, 09:08:39 am »

You can't re-buy Encampments or inherited Estates the same turn you have to set them aside.

True. Good clarification. I didn't re-buy them the same turn, but that's exactly the kind of thing I make sure to point out in games. Lots of IRL players do things like lay their victory cards on the table, discard them before buying, shuffle their discards when it's not their turn, discard durations on the second turn, and a host of other things that seem like they don't matter, but do. Putting back Encampments immediately on-play is definitely in that category.

Speaking of which, handy hint: I always turn cards on their way back to the supply upside-down to call extra attention to them when cleaning up.

Inheriting Encampment gives you a whole Estate pile to work with though.

That was enough in that game, though usually in an Inheritance game with +buy I'm guessing that the Estate pile drains in no time.

Also in the kingdom was Silk Road and Castles. Interesting, but nothing worth skipping buying more Estates for. I double-checked, and they would have been worth 5 points each for me at the end of the game. In hindsight, if it had been a closer game, I might have gone for the Silk Road 3-pile (Encampment-Plunder/Estate/Silk Road) instead of emptying Provinces.

166

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion and Intrigue second editions

« on: October 05, 2016, 01:16:13 pm »

So with no discard attack, Diplomat is a Moat, which is bad.

Diplomat is going to be great with any handsize-reducers, which includes sifters like Warehouse/Inn, or any +Action card that doesn't draw cards, including Mystic, missing Shanty Town, Haven, non-terminal hand-size reducing trashers like Forager and Raze...a long list of cards, some of which are marginal, but if they upgrade Diplomat to a level-2 City/Lost City, could be worth it.

Sure, if you're drawing deck, once your hand gets over a certain size, Diplomat stops generating actions, but if you have four of them and the first two generate actions, then it's like playing four Labs. A $4 card that can stand in for several different $5 cards in the right circumstance is worth pondering.

167

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

« on: October 05, 2016, 12:55:19 pm »

My new favorite no-cost-reduction Inheritance target: Encampment. It's drool-worthy.

Depending on your priorities and your opponents, you can use the Estate-Encampments at the beginning of your turn in case you have to put them back into the Estate pile and rebuy them.

Forget Estate-Ironmongers and Estate-Magpies. It's hard to beat +2 Cards, +2 Actions. Encampment would be an overpowered card if there were more than 5 of them. 13(17) of them is a LOT.

I managed to do this in a game with good trashing, +buy and Windfall. Yeah, I know. I also snagged the reset of the real encampments first before my opponents could inherit one, which doesn't take long since there are only 5 and Inheritance removes one. This was in a kingdom with no other draw. And a bunch of terminals and no other Villages. Ouch. One Windfall is plenty: Every subsequent turn was draw deck, Militia attack, Workshop an Estate-Encampment, Golds and two Plunders for points/coin, buy two Provinces and an Estate-encampment, repeat. It never stalled, even after buying 10 Provinces.

168

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The most missed removed card.

« on: October 04, 2016, 05:11:35 pm »

I voted for Woodcutter purely because I have seen way too many kingdoms with no +buy. No extra actions happens sometimes; no draw happens sometimes; no trashing happens sometimes, but no +buy seems to happen quite a lot. The fact that it didn't get replaced with another +buy card is going to make that phenomenon slightly more common.

169

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why i love Dominion with all its Duds

« on: October 04, 2016, 04:57:10 pm »

(village&smithy - its boring, its more "bad", in my eyes, that getting rid of thief)

The ability to draw your entire deck into your hand every turn and execute whatever specific strategy you have in mind is the cornerstone of Dominion.

So much so that there are many, many +2 Action cards in Dominion, many +3 Cards, and a smattering of handsize-increasers that do both, such as +2 Cards +1 Action, or Stables (discard a treasure, +3 Cards, +1 Action.) If that's a "boring" combination, then 2/3 of Dominion is boring.

It's so often the dominant strategy in the kingdom that really, that's what Dominion is all about; there's a phrase that circulates here: "You Make Your Own Shuffle Luck." Dominion isn't about that surprise excitement of drawing a good card. It's about building your deck so that you get consistency. That moment when you draw every card in your deck into your hand, the world is your oyster. Cue evil laughter. Draw ALL the cards!

I just played a lovely engine today, even in a 5-player game. Shanty Town/Catacombs/Nobles/Fool's Gold/Merchant Guild (Sacrifice for trashing, which made me a little nervous; trash-ones are slow.) But I waited and watched and built up as other players bought a few Provinces one at a time, then a run of four turns: Double-province, Double-province, Province/Duchy, Province, Game over. Now THAT's fun.

Some new players feel that long action chains take the fun out of the game because they make the game longer, but trust me, once you've played a little while, they speed up dramatically.  That 5-player game drained a 20-Province pile (I always play with 4 Provinces per player, as suggested by DX himself) in less than an hour. None of my turns took longer than 15-30 seconds, even with all the cards flopping down on the table.

It's the inevitable end-game of Dominion, even for casual players. The beauty is that the immense variety of cards give you many fascinating ways to get there, with many great things to do once you have your whole deck in your hand (including going for a megaturn buying all the remaining provinces, or unleashing a string of attacks every single turn to keep your opponent limited.) If you think Pirate ship is fun, isn't playing two or three or four Pirate ships in the same turn even better?

And the problem with the weak cards that were eliminated is that the really were bad. I tried to make them work. Some in my group tried to make them work. They simply didn't work, and they would nearly always get vetoed or just never bought. They really did result in 9-card Kingdoms, fewer strategic decisions, and less overall variety and fun. That's even for casual players who most play multiplayer IRL games, not just the hardcore competitive dualists.

The problem with the idea of thinking of "casual Dominion" in the same vein as "casual Magic" is that everyone has access to the same cards. Casual Magic players build fun decks that don't have power cards and aren't tuned for maximum beatdown, but you just have to play the best you can with what you draw; those decks are often fun to play, if they're balanced, even if you use optimal playing strategy. If you sit down and play a game of "casual Dominion" you have access to the same cards as your opponent, and bad cards just don't get bought once both players know what they're doing and are using optimal buying and playing patterns.

...which brings us to a big question: How do you treat games in general? If you're winning a game like Monopoly, do you give a losing player money so that they can stay in the game longer and continue having fun? Do you ever deliberately misplay something in order not to offend or upset another player? There are plenty of people who do. Personally, I never do, because that's a political/emotional metagame that I don't believe ends well. The fact that Dominion lacks targeted attacks is one of my favorite things about it that helps prevent that sort of nonsense at the table; you can't single out a player for help or harm.

My recommendation: Keep playing, keep learning, and above all else, share what you learn with your SO so that you can learn and get better at the same pace. I've taught a lot of people to play, and for beginners, I always point out any combos, synergies and different strategy options on the table. (I only ambushed someone by piledriving the Provinces with KC-KC-Bridge-Bridge-Bridge once because it was quick and the sheer jaw-dropping was worth it.)

Trust me, the more you learn, the more fun it gets, even for casual players, and you won't miss the cards that went away.

170

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Improving my game

« on: October 02, 2016, 01:13:51 pm »

Thanks for the advice.

I have definitely learned not to just buy something with extra money, particularly Silvers. I'm sticking to maybe one Silver to get to $5, and maybe one Gold depending on how much Copper I can trash and get to $8, and I'd much rather have virtual coin to get to $16 than buy more Golds, but I watch for free Gold opportunities if they're around. I'm buying $5 actions with $6 much more often than I used to. I will occasionally play a Silver flood if that's the best strategy on the board, but that's rare. I'm still the only player in our group to ever win Feodum games. They just can't seem to get their head around it.

I'll be more careful about trying to play rushes, then. It sounds like rushing piles is more difficult than I was imagining. The only rush I won recently was a kingdom with Distant Lands/Battlefield, which sure seemed like a no-brainer to me; build to consistent $5 and just hammer the Distant Lands pile. Everyone else was building a typical action/draw/buy engine and didn't catch on until I had five or six of them on the mat and most of the Battlefield points, and by that time it was too late.

The note about Salvager is a good point. Even if I can't get a huge lead, if it it's a small lead I'm starting to learn when to mill provinces with cards like Salvager and Remodel just to end the game before the guy attempting double-buys can pull it off.

The control comment is another good point. I'm starting to be a little more patient and watching what everyone else does. If I know my deck is better and my engine is more consistent, I'll wait to pull the trigger on greening because I know that more turns will benefit me more than them, and that I'll be able to buy more green, so I don't need to be in any hurry; no need to start single-Provincing, which could give them a chance to build to doubles and catch up when I stall.

In addition to combos, I'm also starting to see card synergies early and decide if they're going to be relevant. I no longer look at Courtyard as a weak draw or BM enabler, but look around for cards that really need to meet in the same hand so that the topdeck is a feature, not a bug. Then there's Peddler/Fortress and TfB, Mystic and deck knowledge, and a whole catalog of others.

Everyone in my playgroup knows how to play an actions/draw/treasure engine. They rarely play a golden deck or a disappearing money/draw-to-X, never play a megaturn, and never BM. I basically always win games with no draw engine because most of them can't see that it's just never going to happen with no draw or weak draw.

But let me back up to a BM question:

I don't mind occasionally playing BM just to remind the group that it's sometimes the best strategy against a weak engine. I've won Wharf-BM in a kingdom with no +2 action card (I have no idea what other people were trying to do.) I won a Third Gear game. Wow, is that ever a fast BM. I love that opening three gears can allow you to skip Silver because you can go right to a 6-Copper hand. I even tried double-Jack when the engine was really awful. (Yeah, you guys just keep buying those Oases.) Engines are so seductive that they'll often try it even when there's only Peddler variants like Treasury or even Market, and a draw-3 like Smithy or Rabble, but no +2 actions and no trashing. That's just not gonna happen. BM or bust.

But let me make sure I understand what the really noteworthy BM-enablers are. The wiki may be a little outdated and/or a little scattered when it comes to this subject. The BM article lists every draw card up to a certain point and refers to the individual card articles, many of which don't discuss BM at all (BM-Moat isn't a thing, for example.)

Embassy(!)
Council Room
Gear
Wharf
Catacombs
Envoy
Courtyard
Vault
Hunting Grounds(?)
NOT Royal Blacksmith, amiright?

Are all the other draw-3 cards potentially worth considering for BM? Torturer/Rabble/Smithy/Wild Hunt/etc.? Even trickier: Is Stables-BM a thing? What about sifters like Warehouse and Forum? I feel like the engine would have to be really, really bad or non-existent for one of those to make BM better.

171

Dominion General Discussion / Improving my game

« on: September 30, 2016, 10:53:02 am »

I mostly play IRL, several times a week, practice against AI, and read the forum and wiki.

I know tons of combos and deck archetypes, and the advanced strategic considerations like being careful when to trigger a reshuffle, the importance of cycling, etc. I win a lot of IRL games against players who don't study as much, but I also feel like I lose more than I should, and I can usually look back and see where I made a mistake.

Some mistakes are obvious. In a Stables game with no +buy, a single-Province engine as quickly as possible seemed smart. Donate was on the board, and after two Silvers and four Stables, I donated down to exactly $8 (SSCCCC) and four Stables. Ten cards, 5-card hands, 8 cards worth of draw, so it overdraws the deck by 3 and should buy singles for three turns dead reliably. Except that I'm an idiot. It's not just that it MIGHT stall after 3 Provinces...it's GUARANTEED to stall after 3 Provinces. It took until that turn where I was staring at that one Copper in the discard pile to realize that. D'oh!

But barring dumb mistakes like that, there are a few other things I'm trying in order to improve my win rate, and I'm interested in opinions about their relative importance. I may have played hundreds of games, but I know there are those who have played thousands. One other note: Even though I play IRL and often in 3- or 4-player games, we always play with 4 Provinces per player, so multi-Province-buy engine strategies are relevant, which usually isn't true when there are only 3 Provinces per player and BM or single buys has a huge advantage.

Here are some considerations:

Point counting

I'm not good at this, and it's really hard for more than two players. Also, Empires makes that miserably difficult! I know that the online game adds point counters, which is a little cheaty. And I do sometimes lose by a tiny number of points, but boy, it's hard to tell if you should buy that VP or go for the pile-out if you don't know who's winning by +/- 5-10 points.

Piling out

Draining piles deliberately is a tricky one. If it takes two turns to pile out, I'm giving everyone else two turns to catch up on VP. Am I far enough ahead? More to the point: When should I be anticipating that the game could end on piles before anyone's opening buy? Certain cards: Haggler, Peddler with +Buy available, strongly imply some piles draining quickly. But I lost a Develop game recently that I would have sworn would pile, and I was even helping it, but the third pile was elusive. Are pileouts something that you usually plan or from the beginning, or simply look for opportunities for towards the end-game, or both?

I've won a few deliberate pile-outs, but I just lost one in which I Salvaged a couple of Peddlers with some +coin into two Colonies before anyone even had a single Colony (they didn't catch on to the Salvager/Peddler thing until it was too late.) I three-piled after that, being the only player with any Colonies...and lost to Keep points in a game with two Kingdom treasures and Platinum (25 Keep points for player 2!) Have I mentioned that Empires makes things really tricky?

Singles vs. Doubles vs. megaturn

Megaturns are rare. I had one yesterday where everyone else was singling, and I happily paid $10 to buy Ball twice and get four more Highways to go with the two I already had. In a Port/Wharf game. Yeah, I know. How was everyone else singling? Like I said, not everyone I play with is super sophisticated. They saw the light when I bought a massive handful of Provinces the next turn. And yeah, I've played HoP decks and other cost-reduction decks.

But the single-Province engine vs. the double-Province engine is the trickiest, partly because they're the most common, and it's often the most important choice. First of all, I should note that with the improvements in card quality, engines are almost always the answer. BM rarely wins, though I occasionally play it, and I'm sometimes wrong. Our group also usually vetoes all cursers, so we rarely play slogs (multi-player curse slogs are the worst.)

But more to the point: Trying to figure out when other players have started buying singles and I should hold out for doubles is really, really tricky. I feel like I'm guessing wrong more than half the time.

What do you think are the best indications that a double-Province engine is going to be faster than a single-Province engine? Assuming there's a +buy (duh) my general guidelines are looking for a trash-two vs. a trash-one, +3 cards vs. +2 cards, and quality of attacks. Trash-twos get you very thin, very fast, and you can get the draw-your-deck, exponential-growth thing going fast. +2 cards just don't get there, except if you can load up on LOTS of non-terminal ones.

Really good sifters usually lean in the direction of singling, but they can also eliminate the need to overdraw by a lot of cards before greening.

You might say that double-Provincing is rarely the right call in a 4P game because there aren't enough actions. But I've lost to it many times because many actions are just that good and you don't need 7 of them. Plus if there's duplicate villages and draw cards, there may be plenty to go around. But I also hate deciding on doubles, getting two double-buys in a row and then having the Provinces go empty and losing to the guy who bought 5 singles.

So how do you decide between singles and doubles? Do you do it on the fly or when planning? What are the best indicators it's going to work?

172

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Lurker

« on: September 30, 2016, 10:14:40 am »

King's Court + Lurker seems easy: Trash something you want, take it, then trash something that's not all that great, or a terminal that your opponent already has and really doesn't want another copy of (something Messenger frequently does.)

173

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Seaside 2nd generation

« on: September 29, 2016, 10:57:51 am »

I don't understand all the hate for Lookout. It's a non-terminal trasher. Two of them can thin a deck quite nicely, and by the time you get the unfortunate reveal of three cards you want to keep, well, it's obviously done it's job! Totally worth it.

I can think of plenty of times when a kingdom has had no trashers, or not enough terminal space, when a Lookout would have been the best thing ever. I almost always buy it unless there's a trash-two.

Plus, the topdeck and discard are enablers for other cards like Tunnel and Mystic.

174

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion and Intrigue second editions

« on: September 27, 2016, 11:11:05 am »

Diplomat synergizes well with discard-for-benefit like Secret Chamb... well, damn.

Truthfully, what it really wants is a Warehouse or a Minion or even a non-drawing +1 action card like Scou... well, damn.

Ok, how about a Candlestick Maker or a Mystic or a...Rebuild. Uh oh.

I suspect Diplomat chains are going to be really interesting, because they could make a disappearing money engine work with a bunch of terminal money actions, as long as you can kick off the first Dipolmat.

175

Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Events: Pathfinding

« on: September 23, 2016, 04:56:08 pm »

Or is "golden deck" specific for the Bishop variant of that thing?

I think a "golden deck" refers to any deck build that is fundamentally guaranteed to do exactly the same thing every turn regardless of shuffle luck. I think it can even be "engine-y" such as a deck of ten Groundskeepers, a Sacrifice and an Estate.

The wiki has the following:

http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Golden_deck

So I think that even though you don't always start with the same hand, you can always get the same draws, which means it doesn't have to be a 5-card deck.