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.

51

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion

« on: June 21, 2011, 04:56:49 am »

Ambassador cancels/reflects cursing attacks.  I get my deck small.  You give me a curse.  You know where that cuse is going to end up?  In your deck.

I think that in general the deck with Young Witch will be drawing and playing both the Ambassador and the Young Witch more frequently than its opponent, unless the other player opened with a better card drawer than Young Witch. So their deck is likely to become small first.

Giving out curses to someone who's going heavy on ambassadors usually isn't a very good plan.

You go amb/YW.  I'll go amb/amb.  My deck is going to shrink faster than yours.

That's certainly possible, but I imagine amb/YW will have an easier time buying good cards. Anyway, I got a chance to try it out (versus Ambassador/Caravan) and went on to lose, though the fact that neither of them showed up until turn 5 didn't help matters.

Getting both your opening cards on T5 vs a competent player is usually a loss, especially when ambassador is in play, regardless of small differences in what you buy other than the ambassador.  I drew both ambassadors on T5 once after my opp played his on T3 and T4... that game was not fun.

52

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: June 21, 2011, 04:48:26 am »

Quote Stuffing
Action
7
+1000 Buys
+$5000
Whenever you buy a card this turn, immediately return it to its pile.

I'll take one with my goons please.

53

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How many coppers are too few to trash with Mint?

« on: June 20, 2011, 02:17:32 pm »

It depends what you can do with the mint itself, along with what you think the chances are of drawing more coppers on a later turn.  So you have to judge the draw power available in your deck/strategy, as well as if there is another trashing action, which would enable you to buy more than one mint, especially if it's bishop, apprentice, salvager or even trade route (which are great for trashing mints, and slow/poor for trashing coppers).  The mint itself is also a lot more useful in colony games due to platinum.


If I think I will draw all my coppers in a turn or two, I would not buy it.  If I have no non-terminal draw power and there's no other trashing, I would buy it to trash the 3.

54

Game Reports / Re: Is that a Horn of Plenty in your pocket, or are you just happy to see your deck?

« on: June 19, 2011, 03:59:30 pm »

I've gotten to 11 with it before, but not in colony games :/. 


Cards like menagerie, pawn, wishing well, market, peddler, pearl diver, etc all work really well with horn of plenty.  If it's in play with menagerie and you can put together a deck that's several menageries and 1 of many other action and 1 of each money type, you'll be getting crazy stuff with the horns (as long as the actions are playable).

55

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Make up your own card?

« on: June 19, 2011, 03:44:51 pm »

I had an idea similar to the Shapeshifter above.


Illusion
$4 (?)
Choose one of the following:
- Name a card. While Illusion is in play, this card behaves like a 0* copper.
- Name a card. While Illusion is in play, this card behaves like a 0* estate.
- Name a card. While Illusion is in play, this card behaves like a 0* action card (that does nothing when you play it)
So that you can trash your estates/curses with mine/mint, or make your scrying pool more efficient. The 0* price is so you cannot use this to buy provinces at the price of a copper.
(maybe you should change the 0* copper to a 0*, 0$ treasure card, and the 0* estate to a 0*, 0 VP victory card, but I wanted to be able to play Baron or Moneylender with this card)

Whack the price up to around $6-7 and make it a duration. Your opponent's making a minion deck? Okay, for the next turn, all minions act like an estate. Good luck!

Yes, this would function far better as a duration attack card to make some of the opponents better cards useless.  As is, it's far too dependent on other cards to be useful in a normal game, as it would *only* function in conjunction with a few specific action cards, and you wouldn't have any actions left after you played it anyway. Also mint would become even harder to get to 5 to buy with this around. A card that needs two other specific cards in hand to have any value at all is not going to work (although one could be removed by adding actions to it).

56

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Make up your own card?

« on: June 19, 2011, 03:38:19 pm »

Terracotta Warrior
$6
Action/Victory
Trash an Attack card. If you do, gain a Terracotta Warrior.
Worth 1VP for each Terracotta Warrior in your deck.

It's a variation of Duke/Duchy with a taste of Remodel. Are you ready to trash your Goons/Pirate Ships to acquire the victorious terracotta army?

Massively overpowered. It's not that hard to get to $6, and if you can get 5 of these, it's better than 4 provinces...

Perhaps if it could be worded in such a way that you could only buy one of them from the supply, but could only obtain additional ones by gaining them with the action.   I think this would be pretty hard to actually squeeze into the rules, and the card text would be crazy.  "You can't buy this if you have any Warriors in play."  "When you buy this card, reveal your hand, if you have any warriors in it, trash this card."  Then you would have to reveal and set aside your entire deck to search for warriors too, so buying your first one would have a free chancellor effect too.  It would probably be better to just play with the house rule of being honest and following the "buy only one" rule instead of forcing actual verification.

You could make them attached to a card like tournament prizes and have them not purchasable, but have an action(should probably be an attack card of some sort, or the card could be useless) card that simply reads 'trash any attack card(including this one), if you do, gain a terracotta warrior' in addition to whatever else it does.  They would then also become much harder to obtain a lot of.

57

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: What would you like to see in Dominion?

« on: June 19, 2011, 05:04:29 am »

Something to break up the opponents action chains, whether it's a sort of duration attack or reaction.  That would take a lot of boards to a new level.
Like... 'while this is in play other players can play no more than x actions on their turn' or 'reveal this card when your opponent has already played x actions and they can no longer play actions this turn'.

58

Game Reports / Re: Bureaucrat Success!

« on: June 19, 2011, 04:56:25 am »

Bureaucrat definitely has its uses - especially if there's a useful victory/action or victory/treasure card in play, or if you're playing an attrition game with ambassadors + any village and can actually use the silvers while making them put their estates back.

59

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pirate Ship in 3+ player games.

« on: June 19, 2011, 04:50:52 am »

It's rare that I buy a pirate ship, but you can find a board where I'll buy it - usually with a village of some sort and a bunch of really useless actions.  Your odds of getting a token just go up in a 3 player game, it doesn't increase in value *that* much (yes, some, thief goes up much more though).  It's really not that good a card, you just can't open silver/chapel and trash down to a 7-10 card deck against it that is all silvers and golds, or you're killing yourself.  On the other hand, if you trash all your coppers and get stewards, markets, conspirators, etc the guy with the pirate ships will never leave the dock.  Or on an average board, you can get a mix, get a lot more  before he has any, let him trash a bunch of your coppers and eventually a silver or gold or two, and beat him to the provinces.


Of course, the first time I ever used the card and we misused it in a 4 player game to give 1 token for every player that trashed a treasure... *then* we thought it was ridiculously overpowered... didn't take long to realize we were doing something wrong with it though.

60

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Do you have non-competitive friends?

« on: June 19, 2011, 04:38:11 am »

Non-competitive probably isn't the right word if they're upset they are losing.  My mother I would classify as non-competitive - she plays games to play, doesn't care if she loses every time (she doesn't play dominion specifically, and as a rule, people like her generally don't ever end up getting to a high level at any game, but it's ok to beat them every time).  It's important to understand the capacity for learning the game the people you are trying to play with have.


If you think they can/will pick it up, just go easy on the attacks/power combos when setting the deck up with them, it's much easier than trying to curb your enthusiasm when you're staring at the goons, mountebank or market+pawn+peddler, etc.  Having one attack card is ok - just not something like a torturer with chain options that will ruin their fun.  Once they pick up on how things work, they may be more inclined to see you use some of the stronger strategies and beat them with them, as long as they understand and can then duplicate it next time.  Best is probably just to use the base set until they understand how it works, as it is much simpler and less brutal than the expansions, then introduce things slowly.


If they'll never figure it out (and you will) and they hate losing... be careful how frequently you play something over their heads with them... it just gets frustrating for both sides as the only other option is to underplay and let them win which is kind of silly if they're over 10 in my opinion.  The person I know like this I now tend to avoid playing with directly and just help give her advice while she plays instead.   


It may be hard to figure out their potential if you don't fully understand the game yourself, but you can compare their general learning curves towards other games... people usually either have it or they don't.

61

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Golem worth it ?

« on: June 18, 2011, 06:52:57 pm »

Golem is an outstanding card.  Aside from the combos with things like tactician and counting house, it cycles through your deck to find your action cards, and can generate an extra action on boards where there are no +2 action cards.  Just don't buy a potion on T1/2 if your intent is to just buy golems... it isn't worth anything if there are no actions in your deck, and it is unlikely to be able to be bought on T3/4 anyway.

62

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which is the card you hate the most?

« on: June 17, 2011, 03:01:07 pm »

Definitely true about goons, there are many ways to use the card, but it is always the dominant card when it is there and there is anyway of playing more than one of them on a turn.  Familiar is only safe to ignore if you can open with a different cursing attack on turn 1 or 2, barring heavy trashing, but you'll still have to get it a few turns later if you open chapel.  Minion dominates province games.  In colony games it needs something that works with it (festival, fishing village or other village and $ action card)  It's attack is seriously annoying though.

63

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Native Village & Bridge

« on: June 17, 2011, 02:48:31 pm »

This strategy is dangerous (but can be utterly devastating) in that if you want more than 2 provinces at once (and you need to because you can only build up 1 big turn with it before the game ends on piles) you need some luck putting your crappy cards on the mat early and not your native villages which will slow you down a lot.  You also have to be very careful that a 3rd pile doesn't vanish before you get your big turn off, or you will wind up with nothing, as there is a good chance the bridges and native villages will be gone.  I've pulled it off, had it fail because I could never get anything but actions onto the mat, had my opps pull it off and prevented my opps from winning with it.  Throw a watchtower or library in there and you can accelerate it though, or just have general good turns instead of going for the one big one.

64

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?

« on: June 17, 2011, 02:41:31 pm »

I agree with the people saying gg/gl are just irrelevant things that are expected to be typed but mean nothing.  There used to be people with very offensive names running around, those at least have vanished from what I've seen.

65

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?

« on: June 17, 2011, 02:39:05 pm »

Minion is such a ridiculously strong card that generally cannot be ignored, it'd be good to have ways to counter it imo.

66

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which is the card you hate the most?

« on: June 17, 2011, 02:27:01 pm »

I dislike cards that tend to reduce the number of viable strategies on the board to 1. Witch, Mountebank, and Torturer (if chaining is allowed) are the biggest offenders of this, and those are the last three cards I want to see when playing a level <20 player, especially Mountebank.

If you're talking about cards that reduce the board to 1 strategy, don't forget goons, familiar and the most annoying of all... minion.  If course, you can always overlap these cards and the game becomes a bit more interesting... but incredibly brutal.

Swindler is the worst card to have vs weak players imo.  On the other hand, the almost as random saboteur is a card I don't want to see vs good players.

67

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which is the card you hate the most?

« on: June 17, 2011, 02:08:24 pm »

I'm surprised swindler and black market didn't make the list of options.  Personally, for the way it affects the game's outcome, I hate swindler the most, it's the most random card along with saboteur, but saboteur is expensive, doesn't give the opponent money, and doesn't also put crap back in your deck.  Possession I also don't like, but a lot of it is because of how long it takes between turns once it gets going, and being able to possess someone 3+ times in a row is silly - time for a 15 minute break if that happens (decks obviously strong and cycling if you can do that).  Not likely to have a chance anymore after someone gets 4 turns either.

68

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Make up your own card?

« on: June 16, 2011, 04:26:08 pm »

It's similar to courtyard, but very different from warehouse.  This card would work very well in decks with +actions that let you have access to extra cards, then enabling you to draw the others back using labs, etc.  Putting cards back also works with lookouts, loans, ventures, farming villages, etc that depend what's on top of your deck (as long as you still have actions except loan). Warehouse cycles through decks heavy in low value cards, trying to play the more powerful cards more frequently and shuffle faster to play them again.  If that's the type of deck you have, you don't want to be returning those cards to it.  That said, the card seems like it would be very situational - very useful in some, and not very in many.

69

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Tournament + Black Market

« on: June 16, 2011, 04:15:54 pm »

There's almost always some reason to go after the black market, access to 25 more cards, some of them will be useful, unless either you've set up a set intentionally where every card is really strong, works together and there's cursing, trashing, actions, draws, buys and no deck dependent green cards as well as no tactician, library or watchtower, or there's no +2 action cards and there are probably vital terminals like witch/mountebank/chapel/wharf and also few/poor +2 action cards from the bm deck.

70

Game Reports / Re: A Cautionary Tale: Skipping the Witch

« on: June 15, 2011, 09:13:33 pm »

Bishop is way too slow to deal with curses, and as you noticed, it helps your opp too.  Skipping the curser is almost surely a loss, except as noted, with
ambassador/masquerade which reflect them back.  I never buy a sea hag with either of those cards in play, other cursers situational and depend on what opponent is doing.  You may well want them in midgame instead of early.

71

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Using Steward's +2 coin early

« on: June 15, 2011, 09:10:03 pm »

Copper copper silver estate steward is more interesting though, whether to take 3 and trash or 6.

72

Game Reports / Re: Mint Fail

« on: June 15, 2011, 07:07:33 pm »

I've seen people open potion with golem as the only potion card on the board a lot lately and just don't get it...
Your chances of drawing 4 + potion are quite low at turns 3/4, and even if you succeed, you don't have any actions in your deck when you play it.

73

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Tournament + Black Market

« on: June 15, 2011, 02:44:47 am »

Gardens being in play actually kept that one close.

74

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Share Your Pre-Game Planning Success Stories

« on: June 14, 2011, 07:26:38 pm »

That's actually one of my big weaknesses: I tend to write off University, Workshop, and Ironworks, but sometimes they prove critical (like here).  I should focus more often on when such cards are essential to maintaining an engine: kudos!

Writing off university when there are very good, spammable 5's is incredibly dangerous(wharf, lab, hunting party etc) - especially if there are no other +2 action cards.  I've written off ironworks more than once to my chagrin though, especially when bridge is in play.

75

Game Reports / Re: Bishop's tiebreaker points

« on: June 14, 2011, 07:22:09 pm »

Bishop isn't always just a tiebreaker... throw in ironworks/workshop with some village and some draw power and all of a sudden you can make a deck that is creating it's own stuff to trash every time, and they're worth 2+1 each, which adds up very quickly if you are playing multiple bishops.  I won a game doing this the other day while letting my opponent get all 8 provinces pretty much just to see if it would work.  Being able to play them after you've played all your other cards can give a bunch of free vps too.  Trashing your golds near the end of the game also can overcome a province disadvantage.