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Author Topic: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.  (Read 20379 times)

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lympi

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Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« on: December 17, 2011, 01:37:19 pm »
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Dominion: Tributary is a teeny tiny not-really-expansion I made. It's my first crack at designing cards. I think you guys will be able to figure out the theme/idea behind it. Probably by the third card? The fourth? Definitely the fifth.



Here we are play-testing a couple of the cards. We're nerds. We're also not great at Dominion, so I don't make any promises re: card balance. I think they're pretty close, though.

I have higher-res versions suitable for printing if anyone likes these enough to do so.



The Dignitary moves a little faster than that Bureaucrat jerk who's always slowing everyone else down. She's so fast, in fact, she even lets other people get to work after she's done.



Your neighbors are sending their cronies into your kingdom. Maybe you should head to the Outskirts of town and recruit some cronies of your own.



Leave enough Messages in Bottles, and they're bound to wind up on shore together sooner or later. If you plan ahead just right, you'll know exactly what's on the horizon.



You've been to the Market. You've been to the Grand Market. You've even been to the Black Market (shhh... don't tell anyone). The Potion Market is a mixture of all three. After all, mixing is what potions are all about.



Like any good Endowment, yours keeps on giving. After a certain point though, money is just money. Perhaps you can reinvest it into some land.



Sometimes it takes a Hero to vanquish evil. And when they succeed, prizes should be awarded. What's that? There was no evil in your kingdom before the Hero arrived? You're right, that is a little suspicious.



You've found a Copper Vein on the border. Sure, it'll help your neighbors, but it will help you more. Tap into it when you're short on money, but don't go overboard... after all, this is Copper we're talking about.



Dominion Tributary FAQ

Copper Vein: Treasure, $2, worth $1
$1 [large coin]
+1 Buy
When you buy a card, you may gain a Copper, putting it in play immediately.
----------
When you gain this, each other player may gain a Copper, putting it in his hand.

Copper Vein FAQ: You may gain a Copper for each card you purchase in your Buy phase. If you have multiple Copper Veins in play, you may gain one Copper per Copper Vein you have in play per card you purchase (i.e. if you buy four cards on your turn with two Copper Veins in play, you may choose to put up to eight Coppers into play immediately). If you reveal a Trader while playing a Copper Vein to gain a Copper, you will gain a Silver instead, but it goes to your discard pile, not immediately into play. Similarly, if an opponent chooses to gain a Copper and reveals a Trader while doing so to gain a Silver instead, the gained Silver does not go into their hand, but rather the discard pile.

========================================

Dignitary: Action, $3
+1 Action
Gain a Silver card; put it on top of your deck.

Dignitary FAQ: If you have no cards left in your Deck when you play this card, the Silver you gain will become the only card in your Deck.

========================================

Endowment: Treasure, $6, worth $2
$2 [large coin]
+1 VP token
If you trash this, you may return 2VP tokens to the Supply. If you do, gain a Province.

Endowment FAQ: You may not simply trash Endowment, you must play a card which allows you to trash a card (such as Remodel from Dominion), or your opponent must play a card which forces or allows you to trash a card (such as Saboteur from Dominion: Intrigue or Bishop from Dominion: Prosperity, respectively).

========================================

Hero: Action, $5
+1 Card
+1 Action
+$1
Trash two Curses. If you do, gain a Prize (from the Prize pile) or a Duchy, putting it into your hand.

Hero FAQ: You may trash a single Curse when playing Hero, however you will not gain a Prize or a Duchy. You can opt to take a Duchy even if the Duchy pile is empty, or a Prize even if no Prizes are left; in these cases you gain nothing.

========================================

Message in a Bottle: Action - Duration, $2
During your Clean-up phase this and all subsequent turns, you may put one of your cards from play on the bottom of your deck.
You may discard Message in a Bottle during any of your Clean-up phases. If you do, you may choose a card you have in play and put it on top of your deck.

Message in a Bottle FAQ: While Message in a Bottle remains in play, you may put a card in play at the bottom of your Deck during your Clean-up phase— this includes Message in a Bottle itself, as it is in play. When you discard Message in a Bottle from play, you may also optionally put another card in play on the top of your Deck. When using a card that lets you play a card multiple times (like Throne Room in Dominion) in conjunction with Message in a Bottle, that card remains in play as long as Message in a Bottle remains in play.

========================================

Potion Market: Action, $5◉
+1 Card
+1 Action
+$1
+◉
+1 Buy
You may discard a Potion. If you do, +2 Cards, +$2

Potion Market FAQ: When playing multiple Potion Markets, you must discard one Potion for each Potion Market to gain its "+2 Cards, +2 Coins" bonus. Potion Market's +◉ is not "a Potion" so its effect cannot be used to put an Alchemist on top of your Deck.

========================================

Outskirts: Victory - Reaction, $4
Worth 1VP for every 3 cards with more than one type in your deck (rounded down).
----------
When another player plays an Attack card, you may reveal and then discard this card
from your hand. If you do, gain a copy of the Attack card, putting it in your discard pile, on top of your deck, or in your hand.

Outskirts FAQ: This is both a Victory card and a Reaction. During the game, if you reveal and discard Outskirts to gain an Attack card in response to an Attack, your discarding of Outskirts and gaining of the Action card occur before the Attack resolves. This is important to note for discard Attacks such as Torturer. At the end of the game, Outskirts is worth 1 Victory Point per 3 cards with more than one type in your Deck. Round down; if you have 11 cards with more than one type, each Outskirts you have is worth 3 Victory Points. Any card with more than one type listed at the bottom of the card (i.e. "Action - Attack" or "Treasure - Victory" or "Action - Duration" et cetera) has more than one type.



Dominion Tributary Design Notes

If you haven't figured it out already, each of these cards corresponds to a different expansion. What follows is a little more information about my thought process while designing the cards.

Dignitary:

Now that we're six expansions in, making a card that would fit into the Base set is actually kind of tough. All the good vanilla +1 combinations have been taken, and even the newer simple cards in Hinterlands are remixes of old favorites (or old not-so-favorites in the case of Woodcutter's and Thief's descendants).

So I thought back to when I only had the base set, and what I wished it had more of, and two things came to mind: more $3 Kingdom options, and some more n00b training wheels.

Enter, the Dignitary. She costs $3, she gains Silver, and in all likelihood you're gonna draw that Silver right away with the four Villages you have in your hand. Because you're a n00b. Hopefully once that Silver is in your hand though, you'll realize there's better money out there... and that you should buy it instead of more Villages.

Fun fact: you'll notice Dignitary reads gain "a Silver card" instead of just "a Silver." I thought that would be cute. Back in 2008, that's what we called Silver! How quaint!

Outskirts:

Intrigue has always been my least favorite expansion. It's the jerk uncle of the Dominion Family. Mostly due to the harsh Attacks and Masquerade (which even Donald has admitted he would have altered to prevent KC pins).

Anyway.

Point is, for Intrigue I wanted a Reaction that responded to the aforementioned jerk Attacks, and Outskirts is it. It's a specialized quasi-Smuggler that while adds to Intrigue's "choice" theme.

Just got Minioned? Reveal Outskirts, gain a Minion on top of your deck and discard Outskirts! That wasn't so bad. In the midst of a Torturer chain? Gain a Torturer in hand, discard a couple cards and watch your opponent squirm. Saboteur? Gain a Saboteur on top of your deck... well, you know the rest. It's versatile.

On the Victory side of things, I decided to make it a Reaction/Victory hybrid to augment Intrigue's "Victory cards that do stuff" sub-theme. (I remember the first time I saw the back of the Intrigue box in the store and I saw Harem and I was like "a Treasure that's ALSO a Victory card? Bwaaaaaaa?") And I made it a weird-mathy Victory card to give you a reason to buy Outskirts even when there are no Attacks out— although obviously with Attacks on the board Outskirts gets even stronger, both as a Reaction and as a Victory card.

Message in a Bottle:

For Seaside, I knew I wanted a Duration that stayed out multiple turns to demonstrate that you don't have to create a new "Permanent" card type to do so.

I didn't want it to be showy, though. I didn't want it to totally break the game if you put it out with a King's Court and its effect tripled for the rest of the game. So probably a $2 card, then. Because Seaside doesn't have enough $2s already.

Looking at Seaside's other $2s, I've always thought Pearl Diver is one of the strangest cards in Dominion. It's Donald at his goofiest. Look at the bottom of the deck, really? So I thought, why not give Pearl Diver a friend... something to to complement him. And thus, Message in a Bottle was born.

During the game, Message in a Bottle is a good way to play those good Actions just a little more frequently. 20% moreish, if my maths are correct. And, if the drawing works out, you'll set yourself up with a custom, ready-made hand at the bottom of your deck.

At the end of the game, it's a quick way to top-deck a Platinum or two (you have multiple MiaBs in play, right?) to finish off that Colony stack.

Potion Market:

The first thing I came up with for the Alchemy card was the price. I knew I wanted to fill the $5+Potion price gap. But what does a $5+Potion card look like?

Following Donald's own design notes, I knew it should be a card that worked well in multiples just in case it was the only Potion card on the board, so I figured it should at least be a cantrip. (Which also helps keep with the "cares about actions" sub-theme of Alchemy.)

So +1 Card, +1 Action. Done. I liked the idea of +1 Potion. No other card had that, and I just liked how it looked. So, +1 Potion. Done.

Hmmmm.... +1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Potion... costing $5... this is starting to look like a Market. So I slapped a +$1 on there. Looking good. And a +1 Buy. Looking better... but still overpriced at $5+P. We need some Zazz™!

After a few different attempts at Zazz™ing, I settled on "discard a Potion for +2 Cards, +$2." For two reasons. One, because I like the idea of giving Potions a secondary non-spendy purpose, ala Alchemist. Two, because the standard argument against Alchemy cards is "well, if you had bought a Silver instead of that Potion, blah blah blah." Well bam, +$2, there's a Silver instead of that Potion. (Plus a little Lab/Alchemist effect to boot... because, well, Alchemy!)

As far as synergies go, obviously Potion Market is huge with Vineyards. Like HUGE. Apothecaries like them too, though. Apprentices find them quite tasty. Alchemist stacks hate them though, since you have to choose between discarding the Potion and not, but, well, if you discard the Potion it pays for a whole new Alchemist on its own. So there's that.

Most of all, like Grand Market, Potion Market synergizes with itself. Once you've got one, it's way easier to buy more. On its own, it's not quite the cash cow that Grand Market is, but with a decent draw engine (which it sort of is on its own), it may have a slight edge. I don't have the simulator skillz to test that theory, though.

Endowment:

Donald said he would have experimented with more VP token-giving cards if they had been a part of Prosperity from the start. Endowment is my way of experimenting.

It seemed fitting to add to Prosperity's Treasure-that-do-stuff assortment, and I like the idea of gaining VP tokens without having to spend actions. And I also like the idea of "reverse Bishopping." That is, grinding tokens into cards. I also like the notion of potentially benefitting twice from a trash-for-benefits card. (Trash an Endowment when purchasing a Farmland to gain a Province, plus return two VP tokens for a second Province? Yes please.)

I originally had it costed at $5, but that was too close to Monument. Besides, $6 puts it in the cool "Silver with a Bonus" club along with Harem and Hoard. You might think $6 is too much to pay on a board with no means of trashing, but hey man, no one is forcing you to buy it.

Hero:

So the winner of the Tournament gets Prizes, obviously. But who else would you reward with a Prize? Maybe a do-gooder. Maybe a Hero? And what do Heroes do? Vanquish evil. Curses!

Mostly I've just always wanted a card that gives a strategic reason to buy Curses. There's a stack of them sitting right there in every game, whether you want them or not. Sure, you can occasionally add them to your Fairgrounds, or buy them for Ambassadoring, but I like the idea of digging yourself into a hole only to emerge victorious later. It's the Hero's Journey.

For a while it was "Trash an Estate and a Curse," but that made it too easy to open 5/2 with Hero/Curse, and nail a Prize on Turn 3. I also liked that changing it to two Curses provides exactly enough Curses to nab all five Prizes in a two player game.

Copper Vein:

Hinterlands central theme is on-gain effects, but to me there's also a "Small Money" sub-them. I decided Hinterlands had enough on-gain shenanigans, so I'd contribute to Small Money. (And wound up adding some on-gainness after all.)

As one of the few Contraband fans out there*, I've always liked the idea of money that provides additional buys. It just makes sense. Both thematically and functionally.

I also thought, "wouldn't it be fun to create a card that solves the '$7 with one buy' problem while simultaneously creating another problem all together?"

Hence the Copper Vein Conundrum: You're at 7 Coins and with an additional buy from the Copper Vein. Do you buy a Copper with your first buy to gain a Copper getting you to 8 Coin to buy a Province with your second buy? Is a Province worth two more Coppers in your deck? The choice is yours!

Essentially a non-cursey Ill-Gotten Gains, Copper Vein works wonders in Gardens decks, and helps the Coppersmith and the Counting House. Copper strategies are gonna be awesome any day now, guys, really!

(*I love the mind games that accompany Contraband, the Vizzini-like thought processes one can go through. "From what I know of your deck, I can clearly rule out you buying a Province, but you know that I know that, so clearly I should veto Provinces. But you knew that I would think that, so clearly I...")
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Then God said, Let there be a Village, and another Village, and another Village, and a Village, and I've got a silver and a copper. I'll buy a Village. -Ousgg on BGG

JazzPianist

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #1 on: December 18, 2011, 12:31:09 am »
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Dude.  This is incredibly thorough, and the cards are perhaps the most creative I've seen on the variants message board (especially message in a bottle and potion market!)

Please - continue to make and post new cards.  I was considering unveiling my expansion but I think I need to do more work now to make it pretty.
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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #2 on: December 18, 2011, 11:30:03 am »
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I think Copper Vein might be better worded if it gave +1 Coin and gained you a Copper into your discard pile. 'Putting a card into play' is probably not the same as 'playing a card', and I'm not sure putting a Copper in play because a card told you to would generate 1 Coin the way playing it would.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2011, 11:34:05 am by LastFootnote »
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Eistee

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #3 on: December 18, 2011, 12:13:52 pm »
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Excellent cards. However, I think there's a word missing in Message in a Bottle. Also,I think Outskirts should always gain the card to one place instead of choosing where it should go, but that's just my preference.

Did I understand right that that Endowment can't trash itself?
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Tables

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #4 on: December 18, 2011, 12:54:43 pm »
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I think Endowment would be clearer with slightly different wording, such as 'If this card is trashed, ...'. Also I think that section should be separated by a horizontal rule. Similarly, Endowment should probably say, 'you may gain a copper in hand, and play it immediately' due to the issue Eistee pointed out.
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...spin-offs are still better for all of the previously cited reasons.
But not strictly better, because the spinoff can have a different cost than the expansion.

lympi

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #5 on: December 18, 2011, 04:02:41 pm »
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Thanks for the feedback, fellas.

Copper Vein seems to be the diciest, as far as rules go. Playing another Treasure after buying a card is verboten by Dominion rules. But then again, Kingdom cards are what change the rules of the game (i.e. you can only play one Action card per turn unless you play a card that says otherwise).

Still, there might be something I'm missing which totally makes Copper Vein a completely unsalvageable idea.

Tables: it hadn't occurred to me to add a horizontal rule to Endowment. I could go either way on it… there isn't much (any?) precedent for on-trash effects.

Eistee: what's missing from Message in a Bottle's text? It's wording is admittedly a bit obtuse, but it's a byproduct of trying to get everything you need to know on the card at a reasonable font size.
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Then God said, Let there be a Village, and another Village, and another Village, and a Village, and I've got a silver and a copper. I'll buy a Village. -Ousgg on BGG

Octo

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #6 on: December 18, 2011, 05:32:27 pm »
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Quote
But then again, Kingdom cards are what change the rules of the game (i.e. you can only play one Action card per turn unless you play a card that says otherwise).
That's not strictly true - "you start with X actions" is the essence of the rules, it's just X is 1, and other cards simply add to that number. The way actions stack up in the background is testament to the fact the number of starting actions is arbitrary, and you could easily start with 2 actions every turn and not need to change the rules on any other cards - no cards would become technically redundant due to the rule they broke now being the norm, they would just be too weak to be worth it.

The vast majority of cards don't really break the rules as such, they just manipulate the numbers involved or the value of a specific piece of data (eg when you gain a card you have to put it somewhere(X) - some cards simply change that value). Messing with the sequence of events is pretty significant I think, and you should be very careful of this. It's for reasons such as these that Black Market and Possession stand out to me and I don't like playing with them - the fact that they clearly break the 'rules' is really jarring to me, whether pretty much all the others don't feel like that. (Outpost is another one that jars with me).

Specifics:
Dignitary - great. Clean, clear, straight-forward and not at all contrived.
Outskirts - three things come to mind, the first has already been mentioned - the place its put should be fixed in order to balance better, second - the previous warnings about actually gaining from attacks can make them cards to avoid due to being too risky - most reactions roughly just nullify the attack to some extent (though some give you a small benefit, and even that is tough), third - the mixed card types is, I dunno, unusual. It seems ambiguous to me. At first I thought it basically meant the multi-coloured stuff, but on reading the FAQ i realise other type are included. It's a little confusing due to some types being exclusive (eg durations and attacks). But I'd be interested to hear how this one went in play testing.
Message in a Bottle - very interesting. Not sure how to judge this one, I think I really like it though. One important point: would five of these mean you could effectively have the same hand every turn once you got to the bottom of your deck? That would be the obvious strat.
Potion Market - awesome. However, the +2 Cards, +$2 would need some careful balance testing as it basically turns a Potion into a super card. With two cards (the potion market and a potion) you're getting +3 cards, +1 action, +$3, +1 buy and +1 potion. That's a lot, but then it is expensive too.
Endownment - again very interesting, but it has one critical flaw: it promotes a never ending game - Monument is only one that doesn't end the game eventually, but it's relatively weak. I suppose the trash -> province element alleviates this somewhat with endowment, but being spammable money perhaps it would be best just to chapel down to four endowments and just nail them every turn without buying anything. Not sure why you'd end that scenario. Maybe some kind of "if you buy something", but then that's a bit too much like Goons isn't it.
edit: just looking over the cards again, and realised this costs $6 which reduces the likelihood of that chapel scenario significantly.
Hero - I like it a lot, but probably useless in games without cursing attacks. You want it to be a reason for buying curses, but I still don't think you would: You could waste two buys getting two curses (that's a big hit), and then hope you get them together along with your hero, or use some convoluted combination of cards to trim your deck etc happen, but we've all been stung by Treasure Map waaay too many times - imagine needing a 3rd card to make the magic happen? Eesh. Treasure Map gives you 4 Golds next turn, Hero gives you a prize this turn - the prizes are good, but not THAT good. I'd much rather 4 golds, but even then I'm very careful of Treasure Map. Would you do all that just for one prize? You have to then get those curses back into your deck again if you wanted another. One approach to that problem could be to make the Hero some kind of cursing attack in itself, worth considering. Or something like "if you don't [trash] then gain a curse" instead or something, so you don't to waste buys. Can I ask though, why did you make it gain into hand? What caused that decision? (Also, this card requires Cornucopia to play, which is a bit odd.)
Copper Vein - this is where messing with the sequence becomes a problem: how does this interact with watchtower? Watchtower only works when you've actually gained something, so the copper has definitely been gained with Copper Vein before Watchtower kicks in. However, it goes straight into play instead of into your hand, which means it's monetary value has triggered immediately (if at all, as pointed out). It is then trashed by Watchtower, though the money value still remains (as with Mint) - so 5 Copper Veins = 6 x $5 cards in one go, with no dead coppers. You can't have the money go into your hand because you can't play it any more. The +buys are very dangerous because you can spam them easily. Contraband is limited in that respect and naturally restricts you (though the +buy is the cleverest touch to Contraband for me). Ok, 5 copper veins in one turn is a big ask, but with the +buys and free money the pile will disappear in no time I'd guess. Still, maybe the situation I'm theorising is pretty outlandish and simply never actually happens. However, I'm pretty sure I don't like messing with the turn order like that.

Overall - great stuff, lovely presentation, and good to see you actually playing with them!!
« Last Edit: December 19, 2011, 11:10:52 am by Octo »
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lympi

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #7 on: December 19, 2011, 12:22:21 pm »
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First off, I think I've come up with a fix for Copper Vein that keeps the spirit of the card while simultaneously taking care of the rules weirdness:



For you non-image-enabled folks:

Copper Vein: Treasure, $2, worth $1
$1 [large coin]
When you play this, you may gain a Copper, putting it into your hand. If you do, +1 Buy and gain an additional Copper.
----------
When you gain this, each other player may gain a Copper, putting it in his hand.

In retrospect, the fix seems obvious, as it's essentially Ill-Gotten Gains, minus the cursing. Which is sort of what I intended the card to be in the first place. So yeah, there's that.

Secondly, Octo, thanks for the feedback. Some feedback on your feedback:

Outskirts: I agree that the gain the Attack "putting it in your discard pile, on top of your deck, or in your hand" is a little complex. The idea was depending on how you were being attacked (a discard Attack, top deck manipulation, et cetera) you could decide where the gained card would go to mitigate the effects of the Attack, but in practice that mitigation is minimal, so it might as well just get tossed for simplicity sake. But then it's even weaker than it already is. Maybe a cost bump is in order as well. Need to think about it.

Potion Market: It is strong, but as you pointed out, it is also expensive. And it does turn Potion into a super card… but that was one of my goals for the card. I have a dream (I have a dream) that one day the Potion pile will be empty! I would like to see a three pile game where one of the piles is Potion. (I like Alchemy games, what can I say.)

Endowment: I don't think Endowment promotes a never-ending game any more than Monument does. I did have the "endless game" in the back of my mind when I made the card. But Endowment gives you $2— which as Donald has said in the past— people like spending. And it encourages you to trash it if possible for a Province, which also hastens the end of the game. My play testing with it never resulted in a degenerative game state… but again, my friends and I aren't great at Dominion.

Hero: I agree in the absence of cursing Attacks that Hero it isn't a great buy. It's basically a Peddler for $5. Again, it's me trying to come up with a good reason to buy Curses, and that's a tough thing to come up with. I like your "if you don't trash a Curse, gain a Curse" idea, though. Innnnteresting. (As for gaining the Prize in hand, I thought that would match it up with Tournament a bit better, since with Hero you get Tournament's +$1 +1 Card bonus regardless of the success of your Hero.)
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Then God said, Let there be a Village, and another Village, and another Village, and a Village, and I've got a silver and a copper. I'll buy a Village. -Ousgg on BGG

Octo

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #8 on: December 19, 2011, 03:38:25 pm »
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Regarding Endowment - for some reason I had it in my head that it cost 2 (probably due to seeing a ton of 2s on it :) - pity they were the wrong ones!), and so that was the main thrust of my argument - a card that cheap means you can safely chapel eeeeeeverything without worry about affording the thing you want, and in THAT case I would definitely just get four and then sit there with them. But anyway, that's not the case. I did see the trashing for province thing and did wonder if that was a deliberate attempt to solve the endless game scenario, and so yeah it turns out it is :) and that's good. Hmm, yeah, I think chapel is the most obvious area that needs checking - if you CAN boil down to four Endowments and Chapel, then you can just sit there until you feel someone is getting near, then trash all four in one go for four provinces.

Also, if you remodel it, does this mean you get 2 provinces? ie one for the remodel and one for the endowment? How has that combo played out? Farmland is another one too. 6 is a very important number for trash-targets. What's the ordering with Bishop btw? Can I Bishop it for four tokens, then return two of them as it's trashed to gain a province? Or must I have the tokens in advance and have to build some up first? This would need some checking I think as it's really good. In the value proposition of most trash for benefit stuff the value of what you're trashing and the fact that you're having to give that up is pretty integral to that trade off, so that's something to watch out for with this card. On the other hand, when is great synergy just great synergy and not over-powered? It's nice to play powerful combos. :) (If it becomes too much, you could always just make a duchy, rather than a province, and sack of the "discard two chips" part - there's plenty of balancing options there I think).

Hero - another tweak could be that if you do try the "if you don't then gain a curse thing" you could put that curse on top of your deck. Sea Hag is a brutal attack right? But *fake surprise* then that leaves you capable of engineering a one turn hero swoop with the right combo (heh, heh, heh).... Hmmm, then again, King's Court -> Hero would just be a guaranteed prize.

Copper Vein - that clears the main ambiguity up for sure. Did you mean for it to gain you two coppers as it does? Does the second one go to the discard pile?
« Last Edit: December 19, 2011, 03:48:12 pm by Octo »
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Epoch

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #9 on: December 19, 2011, 06:24:51 pm »
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5x Message in a Bottle seems like it's fairly obviously broken once it's in play, right?  Just keep playing the same hand turn after turn, like it was a five card deck that you can still freely gain green cards with?  Not hard to see how that's ugly.

So, how easy is it to get 5x Message in a Bottle?  Probably hard enough that you don't want to do it... unless maybe there's +buy on the board, in which case it might be unacceptably easy.  I'd have to playtest it to be sure, but there are danger signs in my mind posted around MiaB.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #10 on: December 20, 2011, 10:16:09 am »
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5x Message in a Bottle seems like it's fairly obviously broken once it's in play, right?  Just keep playing the same hand turn after turn, like it was a five card deck that you can still freely gain green cards with?  Not hard to see how that's ugly.

So, how easy is it to get 5x Message in a Bottle?  Probably hard enough that you don't want to do it... unless maybe there's +buy on the board, in which case it might be unacceptably easy.  I'd have to playtest it to be sure, but there are danger signs in my mind posted around MiaB.

Open Talisman, Woodcutter. Turn 3, play Woodcutter, Talisman, Copper, Copper. Buy 2 MiaB, gain 2 more. Turn 4, buy MiaB. There's your 5, in 4 turns.

Turn 6, play MiaB, buy Silver with Talisman, gain another Silver. Within a few more turns you should have 5 MiaB in play; and Silver, Silver, Woodcutter, Copper, Copper as your draw pile; everything else in discard. Purchase a Province each turn.

I'm not sure how fast that comes out to. It would have to be tested, and of course my turn 3 and 4 was perfect shuffling luck. I'm not sure if that's even the thing to shoot for. If you could just get a Gold in there, you could be purchasing Province + Estate every turn instead.
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Epoch

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #11 on: December 20, 2011, 12:52:53 pm »
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Yeah, it's a lot like the Bishop/Chapel combination that gets you a 5 card deck that purchases and trashes for VP a Province every turn, except that:

1.  It's not giving your opponent free trashes.
2.  It's not giving up 1 VP per Province.
3.  It actually works with Colonies just as well (probably better than) Provinces.
4.  But it probably takes longer to set up.

Bishop/Chapel is probably dominant on 90% of the boards that it appears on, and is a 2 card combo.  It feels like MiaB/any way to get multiple MiaBs quickly is likely to be similarly dominant, and much more prevalent.

EDIT:  Though it is more fragile than Bishop/Chapel, in that any of the Thief-alikes, Council Room, Governor, Tribute, Rabble, etc. would force a reshuffle and put your chaff deck back into play.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2011, 01:13:26 pm by Epoch »
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #12 on: December 20, 2011, 01:40:02 pm »
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Yeah, it's a lot like the Bishop/Chapel combination that gets you a 5 card deck that purchases and trashes for VP a Province every turn, except that:

1.  It's not giving your opponent free trashes.
2.  It's not giving up 1 VP per Province.
3.  It actually works with Colonies just as well (probably better than) Provinces.
4.  But it probably takes longer to set up.

Bishop/Chapel is probably dominant on 90% of the boards that it appears on, and is a 2 card combo.  It feels like MiaB/any way to get multiple MiaBs quickly is likely to be similarly dominant, and much more prevalent.

EDIT:  Though it is more fragile than Bishop/Chapel, in that any of the Thief-alikes, Council Room, Governor, Tribute, Rabble, etc. would force a reshuffle and put your chaff deck back into play.

I did this for the first time yesterday:

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111219-145301-50aff1c4.html
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lympi

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #13 on: December 20, 2011, 06:24:30 pm »
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GendoIkari & Epoch, thanks for the thoughts.

With perfect shuffle luck and opening $5/$2 with with Festival/Message in a Bottle (Festival for the +1 Buy and +Actions to get MiaBs in play faster) I was able to get five MiaBs in play in 9 turns.

At this point I it seems appropriate to tack on my usual disclaimer: I am not great at Dominion.

An earlier version of MiaB didn't have a "you may" clause before "put one of your cards from play on the bottom of your deck." I added the "you may" clause to beef it up a little, but in retrospect maybe I should have kept it out. I just dug the old version out of my Time Machine backups and reworded it a little:



Without the ability to selectively put cards on the bottom of your deck, having five MiaBs in play becomes a bit of a liability unless you have a huge card draw, which you're probably not going to have if you're spending all your money on MiaBs.

Another nerf would be to bump up to $3 thus making it slightly slower to amass a pile of MiaBs or being able to open with it on $5/$2. (And in the process transforming it from an anti-Pearl Diver into an anti-Scheme.)

Perhaps I should submit the fixed non-"you may" version to the Puzzles and Challenges forum and see what people come up with for fast five card decks.
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chwhite

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #14 on: December 22, 2011, 01:08:25 am »
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"You may discard MitB at the start of any Clean-up.  If you do, you may choose a card you have in play and put it on top of your deck."

How is this not simply a strictly better Scheme?
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Deadlock39

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #15 on: December 22, 2011, 01:22:21 am »
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Probably because it does not have +1 Action/+1 Card?

chwhite

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #16 on: December 22, 2011, 01:34:23 am »
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Probably because it does not have +1 Action/+1 Card?

Ah, doh, of course.  The ability to work on Treasures too is a decent boost, though.
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Deadlock39

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #17 on: December 22, 2011, 10:48:59 am »
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Treasures is a bit of added utility, but that ability on it's own is an Herbalist without the +$1/+1 buy. 

I think the bottom deck ability may be stronger than anticipated.  It takes all your good cards and moves them ahead of the shuffle, which will make them appear much more often.

lympi

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #18 on: December 22, 2011, 11:50:49 am »
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Treasures is a bit of added utility, but that ability on it's own is an Herbalist without the +$1/+1 buy. 

I think the bottom deck ability may be stronger than anticipated.  It takes all your good cards and moves them ahead of the shuffle, which will make them appear much more often.

None of the math-type folks on this board corrected my line where I said Message in a Bottle allows you to play your good cards 20% more frequently, so I assume that math is correct. Or at least in the ballpark. Also, it's really ~20% of your cards ~20% more frequently, so I don't think the effect is that strong. Unless there's something huge I'm missing.

Regarding Endowment … I think chapel is the most obvious area that needs checking - if you CAN boil down to four Endowments and Chapel, then you can just sit there until you feel someone is getting near, then trash all four in one go for four provinces.

Octo— I just realized I never followed up on the Endowment/Chapel situation.

After running my advanced in-house simulator (i.e. me sitting at my desk) it turns out the Chapel + 4 Endowment deck is indeed brutal. Opening 5/2 with Vault + Chapel and perfect shuffle luck gets you there in 10 turns. (Which also gets you to just the right number of VP chips to trash for four Provinces as well, weird.)

Point is, you're totally right, some balancing is in order. I like your Duchy recommendation, although I would like to see if I could make the grinding VP tokens into cards thing work. It might be an unsalvageable idea though. I would not be surprised if there's a very good reason Donald hasn't produced any cards with "on trash" effects.
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rinkworks

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #19 on: December 22, 2011, 12:25:49 pm »
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Treasures is a bit of added utility, but that ability on it's own is an Herbalist without the +$1/+1 buy. 

I think the bottom deck ability may be stronger than anticipated.  It takes all your good cards and moves them ahead of the shuffle, which will make them appear much more often.

None of the math-type folks on this board corrected my line where I said Message in a Bottle allows you to play your good cards 20% more frequently, so I assume that math is correct. Or at least in the ballpark. Also, it's really ~20% of your cards ~20% more frequently, so I don't think the effect is that strong. Unless there's something huge I'm missing.

There are people here that are better at the math side than I am, but the increase in frequency sounds significant but modest to me.  A lot depends on what the cards are, though, namely whether or not they draw cards.  If you do manage to draw the last five cards of your deck as your hand, then everything depends on whether or not playing those five cards will trigger a reshuffle.  If you do, then those cards will all miss out on the next run through the deck.  This won't be a significant penalty, because you got to play them twice on the previous shuffle, but you aren't playing them more frequently overall.  (When they miss the shuffle like that, perhaps you can think of it as moving the key cards to the top of the next shuffle rather than the end of the current one.)  However, if you can avoid triggering a reshuffle, you got a free-and-clear extra use out of them, which is a big deal.

All that assumes you can draw to the end of your deck without going over, though.  More likely you will draw the last few cards of your deck and still need to draw more to complete your hand.  Then those cards miss the shuffle outright.  Again, still a good thing to do but not earthshattering.
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Deadlock39

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #20 on: December 22, 2011, 02:20:02 pm »
+1

I think it ultimately ends up being more than 20% more often as long as you aren't using drawing cards that prevent you from controlling your reshuffle.  I tried to experiment a bit, but it is pretty rough with playing cards (as I don't have my Dominion cards with me).  Getting two or three of these with big money got me 5 Provinces and a 2 Duchies in about 16 turns.  Once you have a bigger deck (and because counting your draw pile is allowed) you are able to start stacking your deck for a couple turns every shuffle.  I can figure out where my 5 card hands are going to draw and put exactly 8 into them.  When you hit that last hand of your shuffle, you are playing cards you already saw that shuffle, and then get to drop them right "on top" (no draw deck) for your next hand.  If the game is coming down to the end, you could then 'pop' the duration to put them back on top, and pull 3 Provinces in a row.   

Ultimately I don't think it speeds up big money much, but if you had the ability to grab them with extra buys, I think it could be very strong.

Edit: One more run yielded 6 Provinces and 2 Duchies in 16 turns with 3 Bottles (without ever using the top deck ability).  It is a little slow to get started, but once you start controlling every 5 card hand you can buy points every turn without any worry of slowing down.

One side note is that playing this optimally creates a lot of action paralysis, and lots of counting your deck to keep things in line, which isn't the best game mechanic to promote. 

I think the key is you can get to the point where you control cards to the bottom of your deck, and then still draw those within the same shuffle and send them to the bottom again, which gets you 3, or even more plays of the same strong cards.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2011, 02:34:52 pm by Deadlock39 »
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Octo

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #21 on: December 22, 2011, 03:47:03 pm »
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Have you tried Endowment with Remodel on the table? Or Bishop? (Had any thoughts about that rule clarification either?)
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lympi

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #22 on: December 28, 2011, 01:35:36 pm »
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One side note is that playing this (Message in a Bottle) optimally creates a lot of action paralysis, and lots of counting your deck to keep things in line, which isn't the best game mechanic to promote. 

I have several AP-prone players in my game group, which can lead to some unfun situations. None of us are the type that would have come up with putting out five Messages in a Bottle to play the same Province-capable hand over and over, though. This is why we are not good at Dominion.

Deadlock, when you managed to get to 6 Provinces and 2 Duchies in 16 turns was that with the original MiaB or the revised one I posted which removed the "you may" clause? Just trying to get a baseline of just how powerful it is in the right hands.

Have you tried Endowment with Remodel on the table? Or Bishop? (Had any thoughts about that rule clarification either?)

Octo, we have tried Endowment with Remodel… actually I had Remodel in mind specifically when I priced Endowment at $6. I haven't tried it with Bishop, but I think I'm going to have to change Endowment around anyway, since it's definitely overpowered as it is now. When I change I'll keep Bishop in mind, as it definitely could lead to some rule conflicts. Well, really just the one, since Bishop is the only trash-for-VP-token card in the game.

(I can't believe I thought Potion Market was going to be the most debated of the cards I posted.)
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Deadlock39

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #23 on: December 28, 2011, 05:58:32 pm »
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I actually totally missed the removal of "you may", so I was definitely testing with it.  I think that may actually remove it's ability to do anything crazy.  That version probably just needs play testing to find out if people like it because I was really just trying to test for broken situations. 

I did more testing with the old version to try out the strategy of just buying 5 MiBs and 3 Silvers and stacking a hand of SSSCC for playing every turn.  I think this ends up even stronger than the other things I had tried out.  I just played though two attempts, but with only 8 cards to buy, you have everything you need after turn 8 as long as you play it smart and don't have terrible shuffle luck.  I was able to get all 5 MiBs out within a couple more turns, picking up Duchies or Estates along the way just waiting to get the the bottom of the deck.  I think both times I completed the combo on turn 11 having picked up 2 Estates and a Duchy the first try, and 2 Duchies and 1 Estate the second.  at that point, going into turn 12 I had a deck that would buy a Province (or whatever it wanted) every turn until the game ends.  It isn't really much faster than something like Double JoaT, so it might be okay, but it certainly has a "broken" feel to it when you can stack your deck and have $8 every turn.

I think you probably have something that works with the removal of the "you may".  If you can't choose the number of cards you put down, you can't control exactly which cards go into your hand.  It may actually be possible to still pull something similar off by moving your in play MiB to the bottom with another MiB to control how many cards you return, but that is going to be more complicated and probably take longer to pull off. (Long enough that it is not a strong strategy.)  It could unfortunately make it a card that isn't worth getting since if you end up with a hand with too much crap you may have to return some of it to your deck which is not what you want to do.  At that point you end up delaying your newly purchased cards and putting bad cards back into your deck.  I guess you could always discard it to gain the optional top deck ability and the not top deck a card, but that seems like a pretty big waste.

Octo

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Re: Dominion: Tributary - seven fan cards.
« Reply #24 on: December 29, 2011, 06:04:46 am »
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Hmm, yeah it does have that broken feel to it, but given the time to construct it sounds like it's not so different from the decks like bishop, GGG, province stuff. So maybe it's not all that bad.

Regarding endowment - you could put the trashing ability on the card itself for one thing. That would negate pretty much all the remodel combo stuff ("When you play this card you may trash it. If you do..."). Like that though, you have to basically assume the card is a province, so it might need a price tweak. Sure, Feast is cheaper than the $5 it gets, but it doesn't do anything in the meantime. If you went like that then Endowment is a spammable monument that transforms into a province. Hmm. Harem is 6. Is that a useful comparison to work? (Is this better or worse than harem?) Not being self-sufficient though is quite a nice touch, so maybe self-trashing is a bit pants.
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