The main thing you're not getting is that I don't write to be pedantically correct; I write to be approximately right and ruthlessly effective.
This works pretty well when playing Dominion (even though you can do much better). It's actually destructive when talking about Dominion. You aren't playing Dominion when you post on these forums, you're talking about Dominion.
While I could have made any of the stale statements you proposed, they are entirely comprised of uninspiring dross that accomplishes nothing.
It's incredibly easy to blurt out this forum's favorite cliché, append a creamed serving of stock phrases topped with an edge case or two and have the community nod its bored head in soporific agreement.
Consider how difficult it is in comparison to state something that is almost board-invariant (and thus actually useful to know!), non-trivial, largely unknown, helpful to a wide range of players and written in such a way that it takes people by surprise, makes them incredulous, maybe even balk at the idea, but still inspires eagerness to try it out?
It's precisely this latter objective that my posts are designed to fulfill. If they strike you as simplistic that's only because you overlook these inner workings. I challenge you to try out this "SCSN language" for yourself. I'll predict in advance that in stead of coming up with posts that are
extraordinarily useful [...] because the position is clear and gives a strong starting point for thinking about the decision and testing things out[,]
you'll fall prey to caricatural hyperbole.
You can call my statements stale and you can find the discussion that happens a lot around here boring, but at least it's correct and productive, unlike most "SCSN language". Maybe people like MQ feel comfortable challenging you, and I'm starting to build up the courage after several months, but these aren't the kind of people who are going to benefit from your writing. These are the kind of people who don't need your advice because they can look at it and tell that it's not to be taken seriously. So in the best case it's "not actively harmful".
But this thread proves that when you say something with such certainty, people will follow you. If you say something that's wrong, it's actively harmful. Even if what you're saying is right, it can decrease the tendency of others to think about boards for themselves, which is so easily remedied by you just giving reasons for what you're saying! For every person you help, you're actively hurting at least 55 other people! (see what I did there?)
If you find this boring, well I suggest you deal with it and stop writing things that are actively harmful. It's so easy to type these things because they're short, and it's so easy to think that they're universally true and just apply them to your game no matter what, and even in some cases people may be helped by it, and some people will press the +1 button. But that doesn't make you right.
In the end I don't mind people hating my writing, but there's no point in denying its effectiveness.
I'm denying its effectiveness. If you just take the time to actually say something that's correct and constructive, you could do so much better.
In the past year, I've gotten much better at Dominion. The main improvements I've made in my game have been looking at my decisions -- those "univeral truths" I thought I knew about Dominion, and questioning them all. Trying to see if I could do better. And I have over 10 iso levels worth of improvement to show for it.
You've yourself experienced more than once the sudden urge to play a certain board in response to something I wrote. And it's exactly the invocation of this sudden desire to play, the inspiration to experiment, the willingness to be surprised or the drive to prove someone wrong that constitute the highest achievement a simple strategy post can possibly attain.
The quoted post by SCSN has made me a better Urchin/Mercenary player. Prior to reading it, I would almost always get one Mercenary. I tried out his advice [...]
Few things delight me more than reading this!
This is a testament to LF's ability to see through what you say and get to what you mean. Do you have any idea how difficult you make that?
I guess it doesn't matter, you're going to keep being yourself. All I can do is continue to disagree with you when you say things I think are wrong. I just really wish you would be more constructive and open-minded instead of dismissive, and I find it irritating that you claim that your dismissive tone is supposed to generate discussion. You're taking credit away from the people who are actually generating discussion.