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[GendoIkari]

So someone said in another thread that "4 Provinces in 14 turns isn't as fast as it once was." This got me thinking...

Games like Magic sometimes suffer from "power creep," where to keep new cards interesting, they have to make new cards more powerful (with obvious exceptions like Black Lotus). But whereas a 6/6 creature may have been once considered huge, today that might not be so impressive.

Anyway, Dominion balances things much better than that. No card is strictly better than any other card (not even Noble Brigand ). But, some cards are still considered more powerful than others. And along the same lines, I would guess that this means that some sets are more powerful than others. So, if Dominion were a CCG, where you had to buy your own sets with which to build your own decks, which sets would you get first because they have the more powerful cards?

Another way to phrase it; say you were playing something along the lines of each player has their own personal Kingdom they buy cards from; a Kingdom that's composed of 10 random cards from the set that they brought with them. Which set to you bring to the match?

My first instinct would be to say that Prosperity is the most powerful. Simply because it often gets much higher scores than the other sets; and much more money to spend per turn. But on the other hand, the base set has Chapel.

[Forge!!!]

Prosperity
Seaside
Cornucopia
Hinterlands
Base
Alchemy
Intrigue

This is based off of a solid 5 seconds of thought.

[toaster]

Actually, once the Dominion card rank lists are fully out, we could probably throw together a formula to do this sort of analysis in a rough way.  Alchemy would be a bit of an outlier though, as most of its cards all fall in the same list....and Prosperity has a similar issue with the high value cards.  Still, it'd be interesting to see if those lists suggest anything about the relative power level of various sets.

[Tables]

Actually, once the Dominion card rank lists are fully out, we could probably throw together a formula to do this sort of analysis in a rough way.  Alchemy would be a bit of an outlier though, as most of its cards all fall in the same list....and Prosperity has a similar issue with the high value cards.  Still, it'd be interesting to see if those lists suggest anything about the relative power level of various sets.

I was actually intending to do this, fairly soon in fact. It shouldn't be too hard to whip something up, although you have surmised some of the problems we might see (Prosperity actually doesn't have THAT many cards in the high value only list - 9/25 means it still has 16 comparable cards...)

[chwhite]

Prosperity is I think the only choice for #1.  You really have to give the good cards more weight than the bad cards in an analysis of this type, and Prosperity is the obvious choice for biggest and baddest expansion.  KC, Goons, Grand Market, Mountebank, Peddler, Hoard are all among the game's absolute killer cards, and even most of the weaker Prosperity options can be pretty good- only Counting House and Talisman are bottom-tier IMO, even add Contraband in and Prosperity is very light on the bad cards.

My #2 vote is Cornucopia.  Yes, Cornucopia above Seaside, by a wide margin in fact.  What Cornucopia has going for it is not just a high proportion of elite cards, but a total lack of bottom-tier options- every card here is pulling its weight, leading to what might even be a higher "batting average" than Prosperity.  Hamlet, Menagerie, Tournament, Remake, and Hunting Party are all uber-elite at their price point, and Young Witch is almost as good- fully half the set is power cards with a capital P.

#3 is Seaside, which IIRC Theory once called the only expansion that was actually power-creepy.  It's a heck of a lot better than the first two, but I think there's more space above it than below it now.  Fishing Village, Ambassador, Sea Hag, Wharf and Tactican are the only cards I'd call truly top-tier here, and there are more bad cards (PS, Treasure Map, Explorer, Smugglers).  But there are also a bunch of near-great cards that put its average well above what came before, like Caravan, Lighthouse, Warehouse, Salvager, and Ghost Ship.

#4 is I guess Hinterlands, edging out Alchemy by a nose.  Hinterlands is somewhat hard to figure, since there are very few true must-buys (JoaT and IGG are probably the best of the bunch) and more than a few ultra-niche bad cards (Duchess, Cache, Mandarin, Develop, Noble Brigand).  But, the meat of each set tends to be its $5s, and most of the $5s Hinterlands has are pulling their weight- Margrave, Embassy, Stables especially.  Add in a couple more strong options at each end (Border Village, Tunnel, and sadly Fool's Gold probably belongs here too) and the average is pretty strong.

#5 is, as mentioned, Alchemy.  Not a lot of cards, and three of them are pretty bad (Transmute/Herbalist/PStone), but each other card here can frequently dominate boards, since it has to be good enough to justify Potion buys by itself.  Apprentice and Familiar are clearly the best of the bunch, but Scrying Pool and Vineyard probably also deserve to be called elite. 

#6 is Intrigue.  IMO, only three of the cards here would be better than average in Cornucopia- Masq, Torturer, and Minion.  A couple others come close: Nobles and Courtyard.  It's better than the base set, but that's not saying much.

#7 has got to be Base.  When they made the Base set simple, they necessarily made it not very good.  It says a lot that Smithy-BM is strong in base-only environments and is pretty damn bad everywhere else.  Three top-tier cards (Chapel, Lab, Witch), and a huge gulf after that.  The kicker is that base set has more really bad cards than Intrigue, including the worst card in the game.

#8 are the Promos   Governor's good, but there are no must-buy promos, and the other four are mostly lackluster.

...

There was a definite jump in power level from the two base sets to the more complex and powerful expansions, but I don't see a clear pattern since then.

[toaster]

Another way to phrase it; say you were playing something along the lines of each player has their own personal Kingdom they buy cards from; a Kingdom that's composed of 10 random cards from the set that they brought with them. Which set to you bring to the match?

Sorry to nitpick, but it's worth noting that this in some ways is a quite different question...asking which set has the most powerful self-synergy, rather than which set has cards of the highest individual, abstract strength.

[WanderingWinder]

I mostly agree with chwhite.

...but Lab is top tier? (among a couple other disagreements)

[chwhite]

I mostly agree with chwhite.

...but Lab is top tier? (among a couple other disagreements)

Hm, actually I think you're right that Lab isn't quite top-tier, given that I actually put it on par with the decent Hinterlands $5s (Margrave/Embassy/Stables). 

Ah well, it's not like the Base set can fall any lower in these rankings because of that.

[HiveMindEmulator]

...but Lab is top tier?

Depends on how big the "tiers" are. It's in the top 15 $5 cards, but not the top 10.

[chwhite]

...but Lab is top tier?

Depends on how big the "tiers" are. It's in the top 15 $5 cards, but not the top 10.

That's what I'd say, too.

[Qvist]

Actually, once the Dominion card rank lists are fully out, we could probably throw together a formula to do this sort of analysis in a rough way.  Alchemy would be a bit of an outlier though, as most of its cards all fall in the same list....and Prosperity has a similar issue with the high value cards.  Still, it'd be interesting to see if those lists suggest anything about the relative power level of various sets.

I was actually intending to do this, fairly soon in fact. It shouldn't be too hard to whip something up, although you have surmised some of the problems we might see (Prosperity actually doesn't have THAT many cards in the high value only list - 9/25 means it still has 16 comparable cards...)

I definitely did want to do that. But I realised that's hardly possible to rank the sets, because we have no ordered list of all cards.
I started before I found a fitting formula. But I thought a little bit more about it and came up with the following.
Each card gets a percentage value based on how many cards in that list are below this card that are not in the same set.
For example: Militia is #8 out of 43 in the $4 list. But it is the best card of the set (with 10 $4 cards), so it has a value of 26/33 or ~79%
After that I calculate the mean average of all cards of the same set. Alchemy has still a problem with only 2 cards, the rest can't be compared.

This leads to the following ranking:

#1 Cornucopia 64%
#2 Prosperity 61%
#3 Seaside 56%
#4 Intrigue 48%
#5 Hinterlands 44%
#6 Base 41%

The result surprises me. But think about it. There are nearly no bad cards in the set of Cornucopia. Harvest and Fortune Teller are the only ones so far.

[Davio]

What I like most about Magic from what I understand about it are the rock-paper-scissors mind games.
If you know in advance what your opponents deck will be like, I think you can create a decent counter to it.

This brings me to the question: Would any kingdom be so incredibly dominant that there is simply no counter to it?
And what are the rules about 3-piling?

[brokoli]

This leads to the following ranking:

#1 Cornucopia 64%
#2 Prosperity 61%
#3 Seaside 56%
#4 Intrigue 48%
#5 Hinterlands 44%
#6 Base 41%

I'm really not surprised. Harvest and Fortune teller are not so bad. Horn of plenty and Horse traders are excellent when used well. Hamlet, menagerie, Remake, Tournament, Young witch and Hunting party, Fairgrounds, Jester and farming village are all truly powerful.

The surprise for me is to see Hinterlands after Intrigue. I think Hinterlands cards are slightly underrated, especially silk road and spice merchant.

[Qvist]

Hinterlands is still new to all of us. I agree that many cards still are underrated.

[BaruMonkey]

This brings me to the question: Would any kingdom be so incredibly dominant that there is simply no counter to it?
And what are the rules about 3-piling?

Psst -- meet me over in the Variants forum in a few minutes!

[popsofctown]

What I like most about Magic from what I understand about it are the rock-paper-scissors mind games.
If you know in advance what your opponents deck will be like, I think you can create a decent counter to it.

This brings me to the question: Would any kingdom be so incredibly dominant that there is simply no counter to it?
And what are the rules about 3-piling?

I theorize the answer is no.  I played a game with a friend on iso where I would have 5 piles for me, and he would have five piles for him.  We took turns drafting cards for our minikingdom, I picked rather poorly and he ended up with King's Court, Chapel, Bridge, Laboratory, and Possession.  (he didn't buy possession, he just wanted me to not have it).

After I lost the first game he said he didn't think anything I could possibly do could beat him.  It took me several tries, but I eventually came up with a five card set that his handily.

Of course, a ten card kingdom is larger.  Could be different.

[GendoIkari]

What I like most about Magic from what I understand about it are the rock-paper-scissors mind games.
If you know in advance what your opponents deck will be like, I think you can create a decent counter to it.

This brings me to the question: Would any kingdom be so incredibly dominant that there is simply no counter to it?
And what are the rules about 3-piling?

I theorize the answer is no.  I played a game with a friend on iso where I would have 5 piles for me, and he would have five piles for him.  We took turns drafting cards for our minikingdom, I picked rather poorly and he ended up with King's Court, Chapel, Bridge, Laboratory, and Possession.  (he didn't buy possession, he just wanted me to not have it).

After I lost the first game he said he didn't think anything I could possibly do could beat him.  It took me several tries, but I eventually came up with a five card set that his handily.

Of course, a ten card kingdom is larger.  Could be different.

What did you use? Based on threads where people have solitaired there way to buying the ENTIRE supply in like 12 turns, I would think that there would be a Kingdom that simply cannot be beaten... I think we need a puzzle thread for this.

*Edit* Ninja'd; thread in variants forum.

[popsofctown]

Hamlet, Menagerie, Jester, Goons, and a card I can't recall.  Throne Room, perhaps.

The attacking was helpful.  I was winning on both VP chips and green cards.