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1426

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Don't bother getting the yellow cards out of the box

« on: June 22, 2018, 09:21:00 pm »

There is a (large) middle ground between a big money strategy and a no-Treasures strategy.

Not that large, actually. You have the case where there's no better payload for the engine. But having that and still an engine that's better than BM is kind of rare. The second case is where you use money for TfB, in which case the only important thing about the Treasures is their price point and the fact that some cards gain them easily. Then there is Platinum, which is enough cash in a single card to usually work in an engine.

Wait. Even when there are "better payload" for the engine than treasures, you might need treasures as payload too. If there is no Action-based coin and no (or not enough) straight gaining, you need treasures to get cards. But you usually want the engine anyway, to attack, to trash, to get VP tokens, etc. In those cases you need treasure as payload (in addition to the other payload cards). Or what am I missing?

1427

Rules Questions / Re: Sacrifice and Inheritance

« on: June 19, 2018, 01:59:52 pm »

Sacrifice checks the card after it is trashed. After you trash an Estate-Fortress, it is still yours, unlike anything else you might trash.

Right. That's correct. I see now that it's what this thread has mainly been about. It was mentioned in the fourth post, and it's what I was confirming in my last post too.

1428

Rules Questions / Re: Sacrifice and Inheritance

« on: June 19, 2018, 12:00:42 pm »

From this wording, you should draw cards and get Actions if you Sacrifice an Inherited Fortress.

What wording are you referring to? Sacrifice doesn't have a "when-trash" wording.

EDIT: I didn't re-read the posts carefully enough. Of course Fortress has the "when-trash" wording.

1429

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2017 Edition: $6+ cards

« on: June 13, 2018, 10:57:53 am »

tracer: One of the big risers in the 6+ cost list this year, Pathfinding, like King’s Court, can create engines on boards where there otherwise would be none, though perhaps the more common use is adding consistency and terminal space in an otherwise functioning engine.

How does Pathfinding add terminal space? I thought "terminal space" meant space for more terminals, in which case it's Lost Arts that adds terminal space.

1430

Rules Questions / Re: Inheritance interaction

« on: May 18, 2018, 02:21:18 pm »

Smugglers may be worth mentioning here.

Your right hand opponent gains a BoM, then plays it BoM as Caravan; he gains nothing else on his turn. On your turn you play Smugglers. Do you gain BoM because that's what it was when your opponent gained it? Or do you track the specific BoM and gain a copy of what it is at the moment (Caravan)?

I ask because, in this thread, I asserted that you'd gain a BoM in that situation. I note that this wasn't actually confirmed, so, considering what's been said here, maybe I was wrong about that.

If I was wrong (i.e. you gain a Caravan), then Smugglers also needs to track all gained cards and know what they currently look like. That's useful as an example of something needing to know about a "lost" card for reasons other than playing it.

If I was correct (i.e. you gain a BoM), then Dominion is already using something like last-known information.

Hmm, interesting. I'm re-reading that thread. Assuming you were correct (you gain a BoM), isn't it the case that if we go by the interpretation that I wrote (and you agreed on), then it's not using last-known information?

Namely this: Gain a copy of [a card that the player to your right gained on their last turn] costing up to $6.

So the only past information is the names of the cards that your opponent gained (i.e. the names when s/he gained them). That's not something to track, because it's not information connected to a card. It's just something that is taken from the past game state. It's like you said, Treasure Map and Ritual do the same. They don't look at specific cards, but just information from the past game state.

1431

Rules Questions / Re: Inheritance interaction

« on: May 17, 2018, 02:17:47 pm »

What about (as someone suggested earlier) keeping it as the actual card for as long as possible, and only reverting to the originally-played card when it's impossible to track it?  This keeps all current interactions as-is, and the only time that this would pop up is when people try to engineer it.

I didn't catch that suggestion. ChipperMDW's idea was that you use the original card whenever the game loses track of it. But I guess you mean whenever the players can't actually know what the card's instructions are, which is different. Yes, I think that would solve this and keep everything else the same. Of course, as with the other solutions (2 and 3 above), it introduces a completely new and obscure rule, and Donald said that he would rather change Inheritance, BoM and Overlord.

I suspect that the right call is to change nothing. I appreciate Crj's point from an engineering perspective, and the programmer in me wants this to be fixed cleanly too, but it doesn't seem worth it. Online it works, and if it ever came up IRL, any decision would probably work. The players can assume that it was that card, or not. A judge in a tournament would just... explode, I guess. Hopefully and probably, Dominion won't introduce more cards in the future that make these scenarios more likely.

1432

Rules Questions / Re: Inheritance interaction

« on: May 17, 2018, 01:10:33 pm »

I just want to clarify that there are actually 8 TR variants: Throne Room, King’s Court, Counterfeit, Procession, Disciple, Royal Carriage, Crown and Ghost. (Counterfeit can be played by Storyteller and play Crown, so is relevant.)

Of course Donald made the point that the TR variants are not really the problem.

Trivialknot actually deserves a lot of credit for this post, where he identified that the problem is with any card being moved after having been played. And this is also the first scenario presented which is impossible to resolve IRL, because the player him/herself can't know the answer to what the card actually is. (In the other examples it was possible to keep track of the Estates in your hand.)

It seems like the only workable changes would be:

1) Actually change the three offending cards (Inheritance, BoM, Overlord).

2) Always use last-known-info as suggested by ChipperMDW. (Although I don't like the idea of reverting BoM to choose-before-play, because that created a lot problems compared to how cleanly it works now.) The problem is that it changes the Procession+BoM-as-Fortress explanation in the original Dark Ages rulebook, and probably other "known" interactions, which could be unexpected for many players online whenever it would change there.

3) Introducing a rule like I think Majiponi suggested, that whenever there is doubt about which copy of a card you're playing, you get to choose which. But what if you only have one copy among your cards, so that from a computer perspective there is no choice, but from the players' perspective how many copies you have is not open information (and a player might or might not have kept track)? Maybe that's why Donald said it wouldn't work.

1433

Rules Questions / Re: Resolve and Discard Hex

« on: May 07, 2018, 07:15:11 pm »

I agree that the rulebook isn't completely clear. "Received Boons normally go to the Boons
discard pile". The fact that "received" is past tense makes me think you're right; they go to the discard pile after you receive them.

On the other hand, playing this way requires a new place for hexes to be, other than the hex pile and the hex discard pile. There has to be some sort of "resolving / set-aside" area. For other cards, when they are revealed, they are not considered to be moved (which is why Wishing Well doesn't need to provide instructions for when your guess is wrong). If you consider the resolving hex to be simply revealed, and not moved, then you could argue that if you receive another hex before you are done; you would receive that same hex again because it is still on top of the hex deck. I'm quite sure this is not correct, which means that there must be a place for hexes to move to.

It's in the rules that Boons are taken, not just revealed. So technically you keep it in front of you, like you would a State. After you receive it, you discard it. Some Boons are kept longer, for instance the ones who tell you to keep them until your discard phase, or the ones you get via Blessed Village. So it makes sense that Hexes work the same way (except that sometimes you discard it when everybody else has received it).

1434

Rules Questions / Re: Sacrifice and Inheritance

« on: May 07, 2018, 07:08:41 pm »

Note that this also means that if you Inherit Fortress and Sacrifice an Estate, you do get both bonuses.

Wait, if I Inherit Fortress, once I trash an Estate it is no longer mine and no longer a Fortress, right? Wouldn't this prevent the Estate from returning to my hand, hence preventing me from getting both bonuses by using Sacrifice?

I believe Donald ruled back when Inheritance first came out that trashing an Estate-as-Fortress meant that you did in fact trash a card that says "when you trash this.." so it still happens. Even if it only makes sense intuitively, rather than programatically.

The rule goes back to BoM/Fortress. You trash BoM-as-Fortress (with Procession for example) and so trigger the when-trash ability. Even though Fortress reverts back to BoM when it's in the trash, the when-trash ability was triggered so it resolves and the BoM goes back to your hand. This applies to all when-trash and when-discard abilities. So a BoM-as-Herbalist will still work even though it's not a Herbalist anymore when it resolves. And Overlord-as-Treasury.

As you note, this also applied to trashing Inherited Estates with a when-trash ability.

Many more Inheritance and BoM interactions in the document in my sig.

1435

Rules Questions / Re: Introducing a new rules document

« on: April 29, 2018, 09:10:24 pm »

Version 4.1 is up, with some changes because of some new elements in the 2nd editions of Guilds, Cornucopia and Alchemy.

Complete Rules for Dominion and All Its Expansions

This will be the ultimate version until another expansion shows up.

1436

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Translations

« on: April 26, 2018, 11:24:55 am »

Hm, a Renkesmed I would expect to spread rumours and gossip, whereas a Conspirator would be someone I would expect to be very silent about the matter connected with his clandestine plans.

"Renkesmed" translates to "schemer, intriguer", so it's pretty accurate. A synonym in Norwegien is "intrigemaker". It also has a connotation of spreading rumors in order to further one's plans, but doing so secretly, which is what Oyvind is talking about. I don't know if that connotation is specifically Norwegian and not English/American, but I remember the word "renkesmed" being used that way when I heard it more (some decades ago - it's pretty outdated now).

1437

Game Reports / Re: One of the greatest 2 player games ever

« on: April 25, 2018, 04:08:13 pm »

I wonder if the engine player would have time to set up a many-Bard-per-turn thing. So like if you could play 8 of them per turn or something then you could usually have +Buy for Vineyard+Pilgrimage, plus a Wisp thrown in for good measure. You can always not Curse him too if 3 piling is bad.

I really don't think so. It's hard to gain that many cards fast with no native +buy. And without Cursing he will have more VP and also a better deck and empty the provinces faster. The one thing I should have done differently was to not use my Catapult on Copper in the beginning, like JW said. I should have used the Apprentice to trash Copper (although that sucks more than using it on Estate), and then only used Catapult to give Curses later.

1438

Game Reports / Re: One of the greatest 2 player games ever

« on: April 23, 2018, 07:30:49 pm »

(Tunnel great with Battlefield, but no voluntary discarding, only from opponent's Catapult. Vineyard great with Pilgrimage, but no +buy except through Bard.)

From Bard, Sky's Gift and Wind's Gift let you discard Tunnels from hand, and Sun's Gift lets you discard from the top of deck. In addition, Golem can discard your Tunnels. Playing the moneyish strategy against the Vineyards strategy, I'd go much lighter on Tunnels than your opponent did but get Golem and Secret Passage to accompany them, and then Apprentice to make use of the Golds. Opening Tunnel seems terrible even against double Catapult since an opponent with Catapult can prioritize trashing Estates as well as using Apprentice to trash Coppers.

Good points. The problem with a deck full of Treasure and Tunnels is that you're not going to get to your Action cards very often. But if you combine Tunnel/Bard/Apprentice with thinning, as you say, you might be on to something. At that point though, you might also want Cursed Village and/or City Quarter to be able to play more Bards? (And Cursed Villages will be good because of the opponent's discard attack, which won't help you that much with just a few Tunnels.) Then you're getting closer to my strategy, and I wonder if Vineyards isn't going to be better than Provinces.

1439

Game Reports / One of the greatest 2 player games ever

« on: April 23, 2018, 06:11:09 pm »

Yesterday I had one of the greatest 2 player games I've had. Unfortunately it's one of those blasted "Internal Error" games, so I can't reload it.

I remember all the cards except one:
Tunnel, Bard, Vineyard, Golem, City Quarter, Catapult, Secret Passage, Cursed Village, Apprentice
Battlefield, Pilgrimage

There were several things that made it great:
* Two completely different strategies.
* Both strats influenced the other: He opened Tunnels as a response to my Catapult, I couldn't touch the Provinces because of his continuing lead.
* Both strats had support but also challenges from the kingdom. (Tunnel great with Battlefield, but no voluntary discarding, only from opponent's Catapult. Vineyard great with Pilgrimage, but no +buy except through Bard.)
* Ending the game by buying a Curse.
* The only time I've played where someone used a Fate card to get specific Boons often.
* Final score was 51 to 50 VP. He started with a big lead, which got bigger, then I gradually gained on him, winning with 1 VP.

His strat was to buy all the Tunnels he could straight away! He got all 12 VP from Battlefield, plus I think all the Tunnels - 16 VP. Then he pretty much always had at least one Tunnel to discard to my Catapulting, giving him something like 15 Golds after a while. He also got the "discard 3 for a Gold" Boon from Bard, with 2 Tunnels in hand, giving him 3 Golds at once. With all the Tunnels and the Curses from me, his deck was still not great, but he managed to buy, I guess, 5 Provinces by the time the game ended. He had a Bard and also a few Cursed Villages which sometimes let him draw up after my discard-attack.

I went for Vineyards, gaining Action cards through Pilgrimage, and trashing with Catapult and Apprentice. City Quarter was of course my engine. After a while I was unnecessarily making around $8 to $10 each turn (but of course could absolutely not buy a Province), and the problem is that if you buy Pilgrimage, you can't buy Vineyard. Therefore I was cycling through 4 Bards each turn, getting +1 Buy three or four times in the game, and also picking up 4 Wisps in the end. I also had to slow him down through Cursing, so I had to gain cards for Catapult, I gained Silver and even Gold from Boons just to trash them, but I also had to trash some of the Catapults I was gaining.

He denied me the last Vineyard, so then I Catapulted the Potion, giving him the 9th Curse. I was up to 7 VP per Vineyard and 52 VP, and bought the last Curse.

I don't think a big money approach could have won here against me, because I would discard-attack and curse you pretty good. Big money against him I'm not so sure about. You would have to refrain from discard-attacking and let him drown in his Tunnels, but it's still a 28 VP initial lead to overcome, and you're not really trashing down efficiently to get to your Silvers and Golds.

1440

Rules Questions / Re: Discard Coin of the Realm called on Caravan Guard reaction

« on: April 21, 2018, 03:06:11 pm »

No, this is incorrect... it sounds like that was Donald's intention, but it is not the way the rules (Base and Adventures) are written. The Base game rules say that you only discard your own cards during your cleanup, (by not giving any instructions to any player other than the player taking their turn), and the Adventure rules state that Reserves are discarded the turn they are called; just like how the Seaside rules state that Durations have special discard timing.

Yes, the base game rules do tell you to discard "your cards". This is the kind of blanket, non-specific statement that Donald talked about. Having the base game rules specify that all players' cards get discarded would be confusing.

You're right that nowhere does a rulebook explicitly state this as a general rule. The Adventures rules only mention Reserve cards. But this is far from the first time a general rule is inferred from a specific card interaction.

Donald has used this rule as a basis when ruling about 1st-edition Outpost being discarded in another player's turn. That was the first time we learned that all players' cards get discarded in your Clean-up. Here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=12051.msg440924#msg440924
"The original intention was for cards to be discarded the last turn they did something, even when it wasn't your turn [...]. The rules assume the card will go away on your turn but it's normal for the main body of the rules to focus on normal cases rather than exceptions."

Based on this I always thought that this was a general rule, and was not surprised when it was specified (since it was then relevant) in Adventures.

1441

Rules Questions / Re: Discard Coin of the Realm called on Caravan Guard reaction

« on: April 20, 2018, 07:07:42 pm »

Yes, there is no reason to think that Reserve cards have special rules about discarding them. The Adventures rulebook just clarifies something that was not necessary earlier, which is that in Clean-up all cards in play are discarded. (Durations being exceptions of course.)

It's weird that this is wrong online. With Duplicate it absolutely matters, and it's spelled out in the rulebook.

1442

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Translations

« on: April 20, 2018, 06:41:28 pm »

Well, the Norwegian Intrigue rulebook now says: «The game ends at the end of a player’s turn if one of these conditions are met: Either that the Province pile is empty, or that three other piles are empty (treasures, victory cards, kingdom cards. curse cards).» The period inside the brackets isn’t a typo on my part, by the way, and is probably there because you reminded them of the curse pile counting for a three-pile ending. This is kind of awkward to read, I think. Extraneous words and a dubious sentence at best. And why did they specify «other» piles? While I guess it’s technically correct (if Province is among the first three piles to empty, the Province pile IS empty, so the game would end either way), it seems unnecessary and out of place, as a reference to three empty piles or an empty Province pile, in that order, mind you, like the English rules say, is both much simpler and much shorter: «The game ends after 3 piles are empty or the Province pile is empty». I think they should’ve removed the brackets altogether. People would understand, I think.

I'm amazed that "curse cards" was just added after the period, and nobody even proofread it before print (or it seems not anyway). I don't think adding "other" is that bad, but it's sad that they're not putting a little more effort into making the rules clear and precise.

1443

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Translations

« on: April 20, 2018, 10:30:31 am »

Looking at the notes I wrote to the Norwegian publisher about Intrigue (which as I mentioned I still haven't checked if they followed), I found the following.

In the section about the three piles to end the game, it was explained as "Treasure, Victory and Action cards". (Of course Curse was missing.) I recommended writing "kingdom cards" instead of "Action cards". Although no Kingdom cards existed that were not either Treasure, Victory or Action, I theorized that in the future there might be some. My theory was actually not confirmed until Nocturne!

1444

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Translations

« on: April 20, 2018, 10:03:43 am »

At least the Norwegian translations have done a pretty good job with the flavor part - the card names and such. I would say that getting the actual rules right is slightly more important though.

1445

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Translations

« on: April 19, 2018, 12:13:53 pm »

Well, I did get the file for Prosperity several years after it was published. I proofread the rulebook and had lots of comments, even suggesting ways of making it better. I was so depressed going through it, that I never even got going for the cards themselves (except for the probably known issues of different fonts, Stash saying "Myntkort" at the bottom, while all the other treasures simply saying "Mynt", all-capital or all-lowercase letters on a host of card titles, differences like "kort på hånden" og "håndkort", etc.), if you discount that I already mentioned the functional error on Biskop.

What did the original Tyv and Park say? My printing of these seem fine (N-22024860), though they're still kind of poorly translated.

There were lots of things I would change, mind you, but I don't think I saw any other functional errors, or I've forgotten all about them (as I don't read the Norwegian cards anymore).

Yeah, I also found many, many things to improve in the Empires rulebook. The good thing is that I got paid for it that time. (With Intrigue it was voluntary.) Maybe next time they'll give me the translation job from scratch, but it seems that they have no more plans for Dominion.

Original Tyv used "may" ("kan") for trashing opponents' Treasures!
Original Park was an Action card (Befalingskort). I assume the translator thought it was simpler if Kingdom cards and Action cards were the same thing. In the rules there was no distinction between the two.

1446

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Translations

« on: April 19, 2018, 10:26:50 am »

So far I've "only" seen two functional errors on the Norwegian cards: The Norwegian "Bishop" ("Biskop") says that you can discard a card for VP token gain. Of course you have to trash it. "Governor" ("Guvernør") suggests that trashing is mandatory if the person playing the card chooses the trashing effect, which of course it isn't.

The first edition of the base game had mistakes on Thief and Gardens. (I told them about Thief and they corrected it. I think they figured out Gardens by themselves.) I did a proofreading of Intrigue before publication, back in 2011, and caught two cards with errors (plus several cards that I thought were unclear). I still haven't seen Norwegian Intrigue, so I don't know how it turned out.

I recently did a proofreading of Empires, so I guess they will publish that at some point. I'm counting 19 cards with clear errors that I corrected. And of course many others that could be improved. I also did this for Dismantle.

I also haven't seen Prosperity, which I was not involved in. I would be surprised if there's only one card with an error. But maybe they got someone else with Dominion knowledge to check it.

1447

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Playing the new Guilds & Cornucopia!

« on: April 16, 2018, 05:31:18 pm »

Wero caught this and I've reported it. Also the Possession FAQ has right for left, but that one wasn't printed yet.

It sounds like it's printed now(?). Hopefully you also caught this error, for Scrying Pool:

If you run out of cards without revealing an Action card, shuffle your discard pile and keep going.

I'm pretty sure this should be "non-Action card", as it was in the 1st edition rules.

1448

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Playing the new Guilds & Cornucopia!

« on: April 16, 2018, 02:31:21 pm »

I just noticed that there is a printing error in the rules PDF. In the FAQ section, the image for Followers is repeated instead of the image for Trusty Steed. Of course it's too late to fix this in the published game, but it can be fixed for next time.

1449

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Playing the new Guilds & Cornucopia!

« on: April 16, 2018, 12:04:54 pm »

I just saw that the new card to mark the Bane pile is actually called a "Bane card" in the rules, which is very unfortunate, since the cards from the Bane pile are called Bane cards. This leads to these unfortunate sentences in the rules:

[...] mark its pile with the Bane card (underneath it, sideways). This is the "Bane" pile referred to by Young Witch; cards that start the game in this pile are "Bane cards."

1450

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?

« on: April 10, 2018, 12:16:18 pm »

Prince*
Villa
Mountain Pass
-1 Card token (Relic, Borrow)

Maybe cards like Coppersmith, Merchant, -$1 token (Bridge Troll, Ball) and Envious.

*Prince is probably mostly difficult because of lose track issues. If you have solidly implemented lose track from the start, you should avoid many problems. (Unfortunately, I don't think Shuffle IT has done this yet.) I suspect lose track is the one thing that is by far the most difficult thing to implement as a general rule (not special casing it).