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1176

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat card interactions that were useful in the game you found them in.

« on: October 31, 2019, 12:30:55 am »

So, I had an interesting turn in a recent game.  The kingdom was a mixture of Nocturne and Prosperity, including Platinums.  There were no village-type cards or lab-type cards, the only multi-card draws were Rabble and Tragic Hero.  Heirlooms were Magic Lamp and Haunted Mirror, both of which by this point I'd already trashed for the three Wishes and the Ghost

I had a turn where I played Ghost, which hit Peddler.  So, my next turn I started with 7 cards and 3 actions.  As it turned out, I had two wishes in my hand (I think, or at least one at the start, I might've drawn the second one during the turn).  I played a wish, gained a Tragic Hero, and immediately played it.  This left me with 9 cards in my hand, causing the Tragic Hero to be trashed, for a Platinum.  Then I used Necromancer to play the newly-trashed Tragic Hero for yet another Platinum, then finally I played my second wish to get a Tragic Hero, play it, and get a Platinum.  So, in effect, I was able to turn 2 Wishes indirectly into Platina!  And to get THREE Platina in a single turn!  And then, I was able to buy a Colony too in that turn's buy phase

Seems a bit mean to gain a Tragic Hero only to immediately sacrifice him, but, well, I guess that's what makes him so Tragic

1177

Rules Questions / Re: Lurker/Changeling clarification

« on: October 28, 2019, 05:06:39 pm »

this is a couple distinct steps -
1: you gain the card from the trash
2: you exchange the gained card for the changeling
2.1: you return the gained card to the supply or its non-supply pile, as appropriate.
2.2: you move a changeling from the supply to your discard pile.

note that 2.2 is not gaining.

Thank you!  I was pretty sure that's how it worked from how exchange was defined.  Glad to see I understood it correctly :-)  So this would be one of the handful of situations that can cause an empty supply pile to no longer be empty

1178

Rules Questions / Lurker/Changeling clarification

« on: October 28, 2019, 03:39:36 pm »

I want to make sure I understand correctly how Changeling interacts with cards such as Lurker that can take cards from the trash

If I get a card from the trash and choose to replace it with Changeling, what happens to that card?  I'm thinking the card will be returned to the Supply.  Am I correct there, or does it return to where it came from, namely, the trash?

1179

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: October 24, 2019, 10:33:12 pm »

Dictionary
Cost: $6+
Action
+1 Buy
Reveal a card from your hand.  +$1 per different consonant in the card's name (rounding down).  +1VP per different vowel in the card's name.  +1 action per space in the card's name.

You may overpay for this card.  If you do, gain a card with one consonant in its name per $1 you overpay


For example, revealing a werewolf would get you $4 (WRLF - no coins for the second W) and 2VP (EO - no VP for the second E).  Revealing Sir Bailey would get you $5 (SRBLY), 3 VP (IAE) and 1 action

So, revealing Jack Of All Trades would give you + (JCKFLTRDS), +3(AOE - no for the second and third A's) and +3 Actions for the 3 spaces. +3 Actions, +, +3. Pretty darn good.

The really fun thing with this is that what cards are good with it depends on which language you're playing it in!  Jack Of All Trades is awesome in English .... not so awesome in Italian, where it's called Tuttofare according to the wiki

And it's completely broken in Japanese, unless maybe you have to romanize it first

1180

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: October 24, 2019, 11:36:43 am »

Dictionary
Cost: $6*
Action
+1 Buy
Reveal a card from your hand.  +$1 per different consonant in the card's name (rounding down).  +1VP per different vowel in the card's name.  +1 action per space in the card's name.

You may overpay for this card.  If you do, gain a card with one consonant in its name per $1 you overpay


For example, revealing a werewolf would get you $4 (WRLF - no coins for the second W) and 2VP (EO - no VP for the second E).  Revealing Sir Bailey would get you $5 (SRBLY), 3 VP (IAE) and 1 action

1181

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: October 24, 2019, 03:25:13 am »

Buffy
Cost: $5
Attack-Reaction-Night
Every other player reveals their hand.  If they have a Vampire, they trash it
-----------
When any other player plays a Vampire, you may reveal this card to trash their Vampire

1182

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: October 24, 2019, 03:07:37 am »

Cursed Copper
Treasure-Heirloom
Cost: $4

Worth $1, gain a curse when you play this.  When you trash this, gain a curse and put this card in your hand

1183

Let's Discuss ... / Re: Villa and Night Phase

« on: October 22, 2019, 07:11:43 pm »

So, at the time the Villa card was designed, were there already plans to introduce the Night phase, so that the wording deliberately excluded the possibility of Night -> Action?  It seems deliberate to me, cause otherwise the "if it's your buy phase" seems redundant, since there's a general rule that a card can sometimes dictate something you can't do (like "take a curse" if the curse pile is empty), and that in that case there's simply no effect

At the time there was no Night phase. The wording did need to deal with, what if it's not your turn, and otherwise just tried to be clear.

Yeah, that makes sense.  I'd forgotten about the possibility of gaining it on someone else's turn.  Just out of curiosity, if Empires had come out after Nocturne, do you think you might've worded that differently to include the possibility of going back to your Action phase from Night?  Something like "If this is your turn and not your action phase ..."?

1184

Let's Discuss ... / Re: Villa and Night Phase

« on: October 21, 2019, 10:36:22 pm »

Two things:

1) people may get confused by what "return to your Action phase" means when it already is their Action phase, the current wording prevents this.
2) You can gain Villa out of turn. If it just said "return to your Action phase", that would also apply when you gain it on someone else's turn, which is obviously very problematic.

Would the first point be any more confusing than other commands that can't be followed?  E.g., upgrade says to gain a card costing exactly $1 more than the card trashed, which is sometimes impossible, but that's generally considered pretty unproblematic

But the second point is a very good one that I hadn't considered (that would be a superweird effect which would raise a whole bunch of other rules questions), and "if you gain it on your turn" would be a weird phrasing, so I guess "if it's your buy phase" was just the simplest phrasing after all

1185

Let's Discuss ... / Villa and Night Phase

« on: October 21, 2019, 03:02:42 am »

I'm curious about something.  The wording on the Villa card as it is prevents one from going back to your Action phase if you acquired it during your Night phase, such as with Devil's Workshop.  Is that simply an accidental result of the wording used, or is it intentional?

For example, it occurs to me that if the wording were just "return to your Action phase", it would've had the same effect as the actual wording at the time the Empires expansion was issued, and so the "if it's your buy phase" clause was redundant.  The difference between those two wordings would only become relevant once Nocturne was released, since that alternate phrasing would allow one to go from the Night phase back to the Action phase

So, at the time the Villa card was designed, were there already plans to introduce the Night phase, so that the wording deliberately excluded the possibility of Night -> Action?  It seems deliberate to me, cause otherwise the "if it's your buy phase" seems redundant, since there's a general rule that a card can sometimes dictate something you can't do (like "take a curse" if the curse pile is empty), and that in that case there's simply no effect

1186

Feedback / Re: Can we have variants to the "3 piles empty=game over" rule?

« on: October 19, 2019, 05:13:04 pm »

Colonies and Fleet each tweak the game-end condition; on reflection I'm kinda surprised there aren't more things that change it.

I've tried some.

On a related note: What is the reason that Provinces still end the game in Colony games, instead of Colonies simply taking their place for the end-game condition?

1187

Let's Discuss ... / Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Mine

« on: October 18, 2019, 03:38:51 pm »

I like Mine.

I think giving mine +1 action would be a better way of making it a decent albeit not great card.  As is it really kind of sucks.

We already went down that rabbit hole with Rebuild let's not do that kind of shit willy nilly again

I respectfully disagree. The problem with Rebuild is that it allows you to effectively skip building your deck up. Once you can get to $5, you're good. Pageant once let you convert any number of $ into Coffers, and it had a similar issue. After getting a Silver or two, it was faster to just save your $ every turn and buy only Provinces.

I feel pretty safe in saying that non-terminal Mine wouldn't have this issue. I mean the entire function of Mine is to build up your deck. And to be clear, by "build up your deck", I mean build up what it can do. Rebuild doesn't build up what your deck can do.

Also, the digging capability of Rebuild is a big part of what makes it so overpowered.  If Rebuild was more like Mine, and could only work on cards you have in hand, it would be a lot less powerful, since it would be useless if you drew it without any victory cards.  Of course, it would still be very powerful on boards that enable strong engines - if you're reliably able to draw most or all of your deck, then you're still going to be able to use it a lot.  So, it seems to me that this hypothetical card would be a much more situational one that, on a lot of boards, would be useful but not over-powered

1188

Rules Questions / Colonnade with new BoM/Overlord

« on: October 18, 2019, 01:42:44 am »

So, I was browsing the Dominion wiki and saw under Colonnade "A Band of Misfits or Overlord in play will count as a copy of whichever Action it is emulating (unless its emulation was prevented by an Enchantress)."  Am I correct in understanding that this is now obsolete?  Since, with the new errata, a Band of Misfits or Overlord simply plays the card from the Supply, the only thing "in play" is the BoM/Overlord itself, not what it's playing

1189

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: October 13, 2019, 05:35:54 pm »

Hunh, interesting.  I'd always thought of that as simply what the card is worth rather than something the card "does".  Ironic that I discover my understanding was wrong just when it ceases to be relevant!

I doubt it'll ever be relevant, but would that mean that, e.g., gold being worth 3 coins also counts as an ability?

Yeah, of course it does. Gold could also validly be printed as a treasure card that said "3" in a circle below a picture instead of the way the card looks now (e.g., it would look like Cache without the below-the-line text). Wouldn't you say Cache's ability is that it generates 3 coins when you play it? Gold is the same thing.

Well, I would've considered Cache the same thing - a treasure card that's worth 3 coins.  But, I get it now.  So, basically, it's not "worth" 3 coins, it "generates" 3 coins in the buy phase, and estates likewise aren't "worth" 1 VP, they "generate" 1 VP at the end of the game.  So, basically, treasure cards are functionally the same as action cards with +$3 (or whatever) except that they're played in the buy phase, and victory cards are "played" at the end of the game.  I get it now, that just didn't seem intuitive to me.  But it is logical also

1190

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: October 13, 2019, 03:30:37 pm »

But the official FAQ already included a note that an Inherited Estate was still worth 1 VP, so surely that would've guaranteed anyways that it wouldn't take the Inherited card's VP value?

The FAQ said that because of the "non-Victory card" clause on the card. Without that clause, the FAQ couldn't have said that without contradicting the actual card.

I just took that as a clarification that the victory points weren't part of what changed - it takes on the abilities and types of the chosen card, but not the point value, since it doesn't actually become that card - it's still an Estate, it's just an Estate that can do stuff now.  Is the argument here that the VP are an "ability" which would otherwise have been Inherited?

scolapasta and Jeebus have it right. Inheritance said non-VP because otherwise it would have given you any VP that e.g. Mill and Island had. Whatever cards do is an ability; it's clearer when it's e.g. "1 VP per 10 cards you have," but also applies when it's "1 VP."

Hunh, interesting.  I'd always thought of that as simply what the card is worth rather than something the card "does".  Ironic that I discover my understanding was wrong just when it ceases to be relevant!

I doubt it'll ever be relevant, but would that mean that, e.g., gold being worth 3 coins also counts as an ability?

1191

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: October 12, 2019, 10:51:05 pm »

But the official FAQ already included a note that an Inherited Estate was still worth 1 VP, so surely that would've guaranteed anyways that it wouldn't take the Inherited card's VP value?

The FAQ said that because of the "non-Victory card" clause on the card. Without that clause, the FAQ couldn't have said that without contradicting the actual card.

I just took that as a clarification that the victory points weren't part of what changed - it takes on the abilities and types of the chosen card, but not the point value, since it doesn't actually become that card - it's still an Estate, it's just an Estate that can do stuff now.  Is the argument here that the VP are an "ability" which would otherwise have been Inherited?

1192

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: October 12, 2019, 07:48:24 pm »

To avoid "non-Victory non-Command" on Inheritance, I'm dropping non-Victory, which was just there for the old way Inheritance worked.

So, this means that it's now possible to Inherit an Estate as, for example, a Mill?  What was the reason for the old rule where you couldn't do that?  That's something I never understood and seemed weirdly arbitrary to me, but I'm sure there was probably a good reason that I'm not seeing

Well, before this update, when it gained the abilities and types of the inherited card, it meant that it would also be worth the VP (e.g. an inherited Mill estate would have been worth 2 VP), and I'm assuming the idea was to not allow them to be worth more than their original 1 VP.

Now that it just plays the other card, it would not be worth the additional VP.

But the official FAQ already included a note that an Inherited Estate was still worth 1 VP, so surely that would've guaranteed anyways that it wouldn't take the Inherited card's VP value?

1193

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: October 12, 2019, 06:03:16 pm »

To avoid "non-Victory non-Command" on Inheritance, I'm dropping non-Victory, which was just there for the old way Inheritance worked.

So, this means that it's now possible to Inherit an Estate as, for example, a Mill?  What was the reason for the old rule where you couldn't do that?  That's something I never understood and seemed weirdly arbitrary to me, but I'm sure there was probably a good reason that I'm not seeing

1194

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: October 04, 2019, 04:02:20 pm »

Online the program could just not allow the combos to come up randomly. For a tournament IRL, if that's too taxing, you can just not play with those cards. They have errata, maybe some people won't know it, hey a good reason to leave out Possession too.

Something that occurred to me - a rule that says something like "when a card is played from the Supply, set it aside and return it to its pile at the end of your action phase" could work very well for avoiding infinite loops.  Each time you play the BoM or Captain, you set one card aside, and thus, eventually you'd hit the bottom of that pile and break the loop.  Since there's already the rule that you can't play a card from an empty pile, that would fit quite well there, and, in fact, turn that "can't play from an empty pile" rule into simply a natural consequence of the "set-aside" rule.  It's also similar in concept to how the Necromancer can only play a card from the trash a single time.

In most cases, the set-aside rule would work exactly the same as before (and might actually make it slightly easier to remember what a BoM is being played as), the only situations where it would make a difference are in infinite loops like this and occasionally in situations where one wants to play multiple BoM's, but there's fewer cards left in the pile that you want to play them as than BoM's

Wait ... no, I just realized that that would create a couple of other problems.  The first issue is split piles.  If setting aside the top card of a split pile reveals a different card, then a second BoM could play that, despite it not being on top of the pile originally.  Whether that's a serious problem or not (or even a plus) could be argued

But more seriously are knights (well, technically also ruins, but I doubt many people are using their BoM to play a ruin).  With Ferry, any of the knights can be played by BoM, and even without it, Sir Martin can be played if it's on top.  So, when you set a knight aside by this rule, do you then reveal the next knight?  If you do, then that would create a situation where players now know know the order of the top two (or potentially more if multiple BoMs is played) knights.  If you don't, then that would essentially create a restriction where knight can only be played once by BoM or similar cards.  Technically this issue can also arise if you use ambassador to return a knight to the supply, but A) I doubt that happens very often, and B) unless every other player uses a Moat or similar card, someone's going to get the knight that was returned, so in practice it would rarely result in the top two cards being known

1195

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: October 04, 2019, 02:37:45 pm »

Online the program could just not allow the combos to come up randomly. For a tournament IRL, if that's too taxing, you can just not play with those cards. They have errata, maybe some people won't know it, hey a good reason to leave out Possession too.

Something that occurred to me - a rule that says something like "when a card is played from the Supply, set it aside and return it to its pile at the end of your action phase" could work very well for avoiding infinite loops.  Each time you play the BoM or Captain, you set one card aside, and thus, eventually you'd hit the bottom of that pile and break the loop.  Since there's already the rule that you can't play a card from an empty pile, that would fit quite well there, and, in fact, turn that "can't play from an empty pile" rule into simply a natural consequence of the "set-aside" rule.  It's also similar in concept to how the Necromancer can only play a card from the trash a single time.

In most cases, the set-aside rule would work exactly the same as before (and might actually make it slightly easier to remember what a BoM is being played as), the only situations where it would make a difference are in infinite loops like this and occasionally in situations where one wants to play multiple BoM's, but there's fewer cards left in the pile that you want to play them as than BoM's

1196

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: October 04, 2019, 02:26:41 pm »

Online, most tournaments have a stalemate rule that could be modified to basically say "don't give yourself an unbounded number of decisions to prevent the gamestate from meaningfully advancing". On the ladder, I guess it works for now.

What I'm saying is, you don't have to fix this issue in the cards, you can just make this kind of extension illegal manually for tournaments, and in the ladder, well, it's gonna happen no more than once or twice ever.

How exactly would you make such a rule, though? Inheriting Band of Misfits and playing Band of Misfits are totally legal options in and of themselves.

In some chess tournaments, I think it's possible to force a draw if you're losing by making your opponent to repeat a certain number of moves. The same principle could apply here; it's a trick you could pull out to save yourself from a loss.

It's not a tournament rule, it's actually part of the official rules of chess, but also, it's based on positions rather than moves.  The rule is called draw by repetition, and basically means that either player has the option (not required) to claim a draw if the same *position* has occurred or is about to occur at least three times in the game (they do not have to be on consecutive moves either), with the same player having the move and the same set of legal moves available.  The moves that reached those positions, however, can be different, and you can repeat the same move any number of times in a game, as long as other pieces are in different positions each time.  I'm not really sure what the equivalent of "position" would be in Dominion though

But more to the point, Dominion is a point-based game.  Chess doesn't have points, it just has a single victory condition (checkmate your opponent) that one works towards, and which it is possible (and in high-level play actually quite common - the top players generally draw around half their games) to end up in a situation where it's impossible for either player to achieve.  Because of that, rules such as draw by repetition make sense - situations like that generally indicate that neither player has a reasonable chance of actually checkmating their opponent, since otherwise the player in the stronger position would simply make different moves to avoid the repetition.  The same applies to other draw rules in Chess, such as the 50-move rule which states that either player may claim a draw if 50 moves have passed without any captures or pawn moves.  In almost all cases, if that situation occurs it indicates that neither player has a chance of winning.  So, those draw rules boil down to "call it a draw if no one can actually win". A situation like this in Dominion, on the other hand, would be quite different, since it means that a player who has fewer points would be able to force a draw that their opponent would have no hope of blocking.  It would be a cheap trick to avoid a genuine loss

1197

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: September 27, 2019, 01:08:06 am »

Nothing gets trashed, and no Madman is gained, because the trigger is "when you discard this from play". The Hermit is left in the supply when played, so it doesn't get discarded.

Oh, of course!  That makes perfect sense, I should've realized that.  Thanks!

1198

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: September 26, 2019, 07:56:30 pm »

Also, what about using BoM to play a Hermit?  In the old rules, if you played BoM as a Hermit, and bought nothing, it would trash itself and you'd get a Madman.  But in the new rules, a BoM playing a Hermit cannot trash itself, but since the Hermit does not include an "if you do" clause, does that mean that if you used BoM to play Hermit and bought nothing, you'd get a Madman without trashing anything?

1199

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks

« on: September 26, 2019, 07:49:55 pm »

I have a question about the new rules as they relate to Band of Misfits.  So, I understand that it can't trash itself if it plays things like Mining Village, but what about when it plays Sir Martin?  If I use BoM to play Sir Martin, and it trashes another player's knight, what happens?  Does my BoM get trashed, or does Sir Martin get trashed from the supply, or is nothing trashed?