Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

76

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 29, 2018, 01:08:56 pm »

Gilt as perpetual point engine components for the player who got 2 Lilies, forcing the other to try to race out the Provinces.

Gilt isn't "perpetual", you still have to gain it somehow again after you trashed it and returned it to its pile. In the absence of spammable extra Buys the cheap price of Gilt is fairly irrelevant and in far more Kingdoms you'd gain fodder for Lily via gainers.
I also think it is hard to make a powerhouse out of Lily. You need to draw 2 cards to get 1VP and you later have to somehow regain a card to feed Lily. So you need draw power and gainers or Buys to get at best, if you have all 5 Lilies, 5VPs per turn. In a Kingdom with gainers or extra Buys and card that provide draw power going for an engine that can buy 2 Provinces per turn in the endgame seems like the wiser choice.

77

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 29, 2018, 11:41:50 am »

I like the general idea but I doubt that anybody has much of an incentive to go for a Treasure which is a dead card until fairly late in the game.

Thanks for your feedback, but I don’t think so: To avoid this, I put the treasures below ...

Sorry, I totally overread this. With the Treasure underneath it is of course totally fine.

78

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 29, 2018, 11:32:45 am »

This whole thread is a really cool idea


And I'm breaking with convention: pile is 7 Gilt on top, 3 Lilies underneath.

No card from this pile will ever be bought in non-Shepherd Kingdoms without $2 Kingdom cards: you play Gilt, trash a Copper, gain a Gilt and when you later trash a Gilt via a Gilt you gain an Estate.
I don't see much of an interaction between Gilt and Lily.

79

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 29, 2018, 10:00:00 am »

I like the general idea but I doubt that anybody has much of an incentive to go for a Treasure which is a dead card until fairly late in the game.

80

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pearl Diver buff acceptable?

« on: November 28, 2018, 06:07:50 pm »

Last time I checked five divided by two yields as much of an integer as five divded by three.

Try again.

Yes, and in a two-player game, if the player sitting to my left makes the mistake of buying the last Sauna at the wrong time, I'm the one who benefits from that, not the player to my right.

Not that would know it as you don't play 3P games ... but given the scarcity of Saunas in a 3P game buying a Sauna is rarely a mistake.

Try again.

I gotta admit, it is kind of entertaining to read rationalizations for one's dislike of 3P games. Like e.g. Dominion, the way it is playtested and designed.

81

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pearl Diver buff acceptable?

« on: November 28, 2018, 05:45:43 pm »

Looks like the dude or dudette to your right was better than you then ... and won?

Better at sitting next to the player who buys the last Sauna, sure.

Last time I checked five divided by two yields as much of an integer as five divded by three.

Try again.

82

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pearl Diver buff acceptable?

« on: November 28, 2018, 05:23:40 pm »

fun in 3-player and reasonable difficult to play correctly as well..

Lots of fun. You play it correctly, the player to your left doesn't and the player to your right wins as a result.

Looks like the dude or dudette to your right was better than you then ... and won? What the hell, this 3P Dominion totally sucks!

Seriously, given that the game is actually playtested as multiplayer game, people who sell their online-only-delusion preference for two-player-only games as objective truth is utterly preposterous.

83

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pearl Diver buff acceptable?

« on: November 28, 2018, 04:38:56 pm »

A long time ago a 3P game convinced me that Dominion is better suited for 2 players.

I don't know the technical term for that, is it online-only-delusion?

On a more serious note, the game scales best at 3. Ambassador is an obvious example, instead of net-thinning like with 2 respectively net-junking like with 4 at 3 there is a nice balance. Self-synergizing cards which are bonkers at 2 like Fool's Gold, Minion or Sauna/Avanto are more moderate at 3 yet unlike with 4 you can still build a decent engine.

84

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pearl Diver buff acceptable?

« on: November 28, 2018, 02:45:06 pm »

A long time ago a 4P game with Sea Hag and Ambassador convinced me that Dominion is better suited for 2 and 3 players.

85

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 27, 2018, 12:00:39 pm »

I think that in general the price does not matter that much with all these Treasures. You want to actually see the bottom part of the pile in some games so being a bit too cheap is not a big issue and $2 vs $3 doesn't matter much.
Unless there are extra Buys. Just imagine Fool's Gold with an extra Buy, it'd probably have to cost $4 because it would be otherwise far too easy to snowball and pick up a lot of them.

86

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards

« on: November 27, 2018, 11:47:49 am »

I like the old version better. The new one is too automatic with Ruins for my taste.

87

Dominion General Discussion / Re: New/Odd trends

« on: November 26, 2018, 04:18:48 pm »

It was a no +buy/gain kingdom and Fountain was there, but they did actually not save the coppers so Fountain couldn't really be the reason as a whole. I suspect some players might have been burned by over trashing and hesitates to use Chapel, if you only want to trash estates and a spare copper when you have no estates in your starting hands, Chapel might actually be worse than Ratcatcher. I don't think a single buy kingdom is reason enough to go that route though..

Hard to say without knowing the entire Kingdom but without the possibility to gain more than one card per turn this smells a lot like a boring Chapel-money strategy would be dominant. So I guess your hunch that your opponent just wanted to do something more funky is right.

88

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 26, 2018, 04:14:43 pm »

King's Shilling
Types: Treasure
Cost: $2
$1
You may trash an Action card from your hand.  If you do, +$2.

Garrison
Types: Action
Cost: $6
Gain an Action card.
-
When you trash this, put it in your hand.

First of all, Garrison is a great card. Very simple, few words and yet somehow totally frehs. Most of the times it will be weaker on-play than Artisan but there are some Actions that are more expensive than $5 and the Remodel tricks are also nice. Fortress variants seem to be impossible to pull off but you managed it.

But there is the problem that King's Shilling is just a Copper (ignoring Looters and cards like Sea Hag stopping to be useful) until they are all gone. This is probably not an issue in multiplayer but in 2P this can lead to something we know from City: Alice tries to empty the pile, Bob doesn't play along, the City pile never empties and Bob wins. It is not as grave as with City as it is just half a pile but arguably the cost of having $2 Coppers in your deck is often higher than the cost of having $5 Villages. With all those stop cards it is also less likely that you can later match them consistently with Garrison.

89

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 26, 2018, 03:21:01 pm »

Spyglass is a great Venture variant; I like that it also works with Night cards. I don't see the interaction with Ghost Hunt though which looks overpowered. I think that a next turn KC alone is probably already good enough for $4 or $5 and while it hard to compare this card to Gear or Haven as these cards do something vanilla-ish the unlimitedness of Ghost Hunt has to be worth something, even even though there is no vanilla stuff on the card.

90

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners

« on: November 26, 2018, 03:11:53 pm »

I made more explicit my premise that I'm trying to make the sets simpler without decreasing how interesting they are. I’ll admit to also disliking Harem for the flavor, and I don't want anyone to dislike Dominion for the same reason.

The length of time to resolve a card is related to complexity: all else equal, the more decisions, the longer a card takes to resolve (and think about how to play in the first place), and the more complex it is. That’s why Junk Dealer, which only requires you to identify the single card you most want to trash, is simpler and faster to play than Sentry, which offers many more decisions. And if Base had come with Junk Dealer and Dark Ages had come with Sentry, no one would say that it would be better to reverse which sets they appear in.

My point is that you have more than just one goal and thus trade-offs. If you only cared about simplicity you would have chosen the simple Harem instead of the complex Distant Lands. Same with Cargo Ship which you choose instead of the more simple Merchant Ship because it is more interesting.

While it is totally fine that the criterion of "time it takes to resolve a card" should be taken into consideration when choosing cards for your hypothetical sets I disagree that it is always correlated with simplicity. Spy is an obvious example of a simple card that sucks because it takes long to resolve and doesn't do anything interesting.

91

Dominion General Discussion / Re: New/Odd trends

« on: November 26, 2018, 02:30:43 pm »

I've had a lot of games where noone would buy the one very strong attack card, until the first person did it.

Probably because people dislike being constantly attacked by strong attacks.

You provided an irrational reason. In the case of junkers, the rational reason for buying a junkers once the opponent did it has something to do with the distribution of the junk pool. The strength of junkers always depends on whether somebody else has it.

Suppose there is a Kingdom in which Marauder is only moderately good. Nobody goes for it. But once Alice gains one, the prospect of having to deal with 15 Ruins doesn't look too appealing so Bob and Carol also get one.

More technically, Bob and Carol thought that the dominant strategy in this Kingdom is to get no Marauder which is why they did not buy one. But after Alice got one, the strength of Marauder increases and the best reaction to what they considered as suboptimal move is to also go for one. It is basically a prisoner's dilemma but with varying opinions about the payoffs of the Marauder respectively no-Marauder equilibria (only one player getting a Marauder is not stable).

92

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 26, 2018, 01:50:27 pm »

In my opinion the wording is pretty clear. For each card you drew less than 3 is an alternative.
I like Coin Press a lot, it is kind of an inverse of Cursed Gold (instead of you gaining bad stuff, they gain good stuff).

Sure, Smelter prevents your opponents from profiting from Coin Press and Schemes cards in play but I doubt that you are willing to forsake some draw to do that trick. You could argue that to really pull this off you either need to always just draw 2 cards (such that you can at least always topdeck the most likely most expensive card, Smelter) or you get your draw from some other cards and use Smelter exclusively for Scheming.

93

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Simplified versions of Base/Intr/Sea for beginners

« on: November 26, 2018, 01:41:33 pm »

A few concluding thoughts: Even people who have played several games of Dominion before but play infrequently may benefit from reducing the number of mechanics.

Well, something like swapping Harem for Distant Lands does not do that trick. The latter uses an additional mechanic and is also harder to understand.
If your sole goal is simplicity, just playing the Base game and the add one expansion after the other is the best way to go. But you seem to aim for several goals beyond simplicity like strength, time it takes to play a card and so on.

94

Dominion General Discussion / Re: New/Odd trends

« on: November 26, 2018, 01:22:20 pm »

In the latest I have noticed something that I can't help but think is a bit odd: People are starting to ignore Chapel more and more, and not in case of other strong trashers as Donate or Cathedral, just the other game some fella chose Ratcatcher instead. I don't think that they're ignorant players who don't know the true strength of Chapel (in this case they did pretty good anyway, lost only in the very end so no newb there I don't think) but I can't really wrap my head about this.

This is hard to answer in general but the interesting question is rather, why was Chapel relatively bad in this Kingdom. Quick trashing (and junking) is usually best but if you have good draw or sifting trashing quickly becomes less important.
I still doubt that he played what was best. Chapel is simply much faster than Ratcatcher (you often need 2 or 3 Ratcatchers to thin quickly). What can make sense though is Chapel PLUS Ratcatcher.

95

Dominion General Discussion / Re: is royal seal underrated?

« on: November 26, 2018, 10:48:30 am »

What if it cost $4 - but also gained a copper on gain.    That would make it cost less than $5, and wouldn’t be an automatic purchase.  The pile may not auto empty.  There are other mechanics that could be used to disincentivize if gain a copper is meh.  $4 plus a debt, $4 but draw one less card at cleanup, $4 plus gain an estate, $4 but also worth -1vp.

Any of these suggestions probably makes the card even more unattractive than leaving it overpriced at $5. Also, as already pointed out, there is nothing "automatic" about Silver+ at $4 unless one wants to argue that Delve and Patron are "automatic".

Let's also keep in mind topdecking gained stuff is nice but hardly as important as e.g. the Attacks of Idol or Relic, the trashing of Counterfeit or the Buy of Spices and Charm.

96

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 25, 2018, 04:12:05 pm »

Patron is no Treasure but it comes most closest to a Silver+ for $4, even closer than Conclave. Being an Action is on average better than being a Treasure (see this thread) and being sometimes able to save its non-terminal aspect via the Villager is also good.
So Silver+ for $4 is no longer a big design no-no.

Furthermore every split pile wants stuff on top that is as cheap as possible; otherwise you will rarely see the stuff underneath it.
Also, we already have two $5 Silvers with a Buy and something extra, Charm and Spices. I think it is pretty clear that Charm and especially Spices are on average better than the Curse part of Dragonfly which you can nearly always (not every card with "reveal" is Golem or Blacksmith, lots of them like Vagrant or Patrician reveal only one card) only use consistently if you go for a the quite expensive Bug Collector that comes at the downside of mildly forcing you to play a Treasure strategy.

Also, with other Cursers in the Kingdom it is fair to claim that once you can use Dragonfly to Curse the pile will already be empty.

97

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 25, 2018, 11:06:14 am »

Investment is inspired by Plowing from this very thread and similar to something that DXV did during playtesting. Could obviously be too crazy:

Early on I had a Duration card that sat there accumulating Coffers tokens until you popped it.

Banker creates an incentive to keep Investment in play longer than you want anyway. It also becomes better if there are other Durations in the Kingdom. It could still be too weak though and require something extra.

98

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Alchemy, Intrigue or Hinterlands

« on: November 24, 2018, 11:57:35 am »

In my humble opinion the dominant strategy concerning the order of getting expansions is: all of them, at once, as quickly as you can.

99

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Holunder's cards

« on: November 24, 2018, 09:38:37 am »

The vanilla stuff is from Tokenmonger aka Wizard. The attack is fairly mild and when you are hit the second time it is actually beneficial as you get a Fugitive effect, kind of like with Margrave. The entire thing could be too similar to Villain (discard one card, if the guy to your left always discards Copper/Silver you get 2 Coffers).

I first tried to do a discard Attack with Mutineers, the great Militia token concept by Violet CLM, but I didn't come up with something.
Here is the basic idea that is flawed for an obvious reason: nobody wants to ever discard Victory cards to spend Mutineers while somebody else has a Corsair Ship in play. Marketeers (Buy Tokens) are an alternative token that could be coupled to Victory cards but as they are weaker than the other 3 tokens this would lead to the opposite problem: everybody always discards green to spend Mutineers.

$5
Action - Duration - Attack

Each other player gets +1 Mutineer.

Until your next turn, when another player spend a Mutineer, if the discarded card is an...
Action card, +1 Villager
Treasure card, +1 Coffers 
Victory card, +1

At the start of your next turn: +2 Cards.

100

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 24, 2018, 03:31:39 am »

Yeah, tbh the thing I most dislike about it is that if someone makes you discard down to three cards, then it's even harder to get Gallows. Maybe the Villagers are too good, but like Holunder said the opportunity cost is very high, high enough in my opinion.
When's the judging?

You only need to discard 8 to get the Gold, not Gallows.

Yep, you "only" have to, most likely, waste an entire turn to get an Attack card which would be a $5 or $6 if it were a Kingdom card. That is as impressive as a card that says: "You may discard your hand to gain a card costing up to $6."

If another Curser is in the Kingdom my hunch is that in most cases you prefer getting that Curser before Gallows.