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Aleimon Thimble

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Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« on: January 08, 2016, 08:23:32 am »
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The base set of Dominion is probably the worst (least good) set out there. Not because there are so many vanilla cards - most of them, like Village, Smithy and Market, can still be interesting because they're the bread and butter of engines. But many cards that aren't vanilla are usually too weak to bother with. Instead of 10 kingdom cards from 25, you're often just playing with 7-ish from 18-ish - you'll probably almost never buy the others.

We can do better! I would like to discuss a couple of 'mods' - fixes for the weakest Base cards so they can be competitive, so that the Base game becomes more fun to play. And while we're at it, we can also nerf the strongest cards. I'll propose some of my ideas first, and then you can all comment what could be done to make it even better! Yay!

I want to try to prevent altering costs, because altering what the card does is probably more interesting, and it's more challenging to try and balance it at the specific price point the cards already have.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not trying to say Donald did a bad job, because he still made the most awesome game in the world. I also don't want to propose that my mod (or any mod) becomes the new standard. I just want to try out a variant that's more balanced, based on today's understanding of Dominion, and see what you guys have to add to this. :)

So the cards that could be nerfed: Chapel, Witch, maybe Throne Room
And the cards that could be buffed: Chancellor, Adventurer, Thief, Feast, Woodcutter, Bureaucrat, Spy, maybe Moat, maybe-maybe Mine (I personally think it's fine but some others think it's weak)

Some ideas:

Chapel: Trash up to 4 cards from your hand. Each other player may gain a Silver.

So Donald has stated before that trashing 3 cards will make it too slow. Instead, you can speed up the respective engine building even further - but make it so that it helps your opponent instead. Now, every time you play the Chapel, your opponent can choose to gain a Silver. This should be enough to make the other trashing cards more competitive against Chapel; going for Moneylender and/or Remodel instead doesn't give your opponent(s) free Silvers. Flavor-wise, there's something about the church giving to the poor, or something.

Witch: +2 Cards. Each other player gains a Curse card. At the end of the game, this is worth -1VP.

The penalty gives you less incentive pursuing a Witch strategy on boards without trashing. It becomes a liability when the Curses are out, because a Moat that's also a Curse is probably not worth having in your deck. Flavor-wise, the Witch is probably cursed herself.

Throne Room: You may choose an Action card in your hand that is not a Throne Room. Play it twice.

Being unable to Throne a Throne resolves some tracking issues and slightly weakens the card. It's also more consistent with cards like Golem. It also gets the 'You may' fix it should have gotten a long time ago  ;)

Chancellor: +$2. Choose one: Put your deck into your discard pile, or trash this and each other player gains a Curse.

Optional one-shot Curser. I feel the set should have another way to give out curses, and giving that option to the weakest card in the base game seems fine. Throning a Chancellor suddenly becomes awesome. Flavor-wise... looking at his ugly face probably curses you, or something?

Adventurer: +1 Action, +1 Buy. Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 2 Treasure cards. Put those Treasure cards in your hand and discard the other revealed cards.

Not the weakest card in base Dominion, but probably the most overpriced one in the entire game. $6 for a Moat that skips over Actions and Treasures, really? I feel it needs the Action AND the Buy to become worth it over Gold often enough.

Thief: The player to your left reveals the top 2 cards of his deck. If he revealed any Treasure cards, he trashes them. You may gain one or both of these cards. He discards the other revealed cards.

Thief is the only card that needs a buff AND a nerf - only buffing it would make it horribly overpowered in multiplayer Dominion. So now it only targets the player to your left, but it can steal 2 cards instead of 1. Should be fine, right? It's still a bit niche though, let's be honest. Any ideas? Flavor-wise: why would a Thief leave any money?

Feast: Trash this card. Gain a card costing up to $5 and a card costing up to $3.

It's a one-shot self-Develop! Being able to get two cards upon trashing one makes you not lose as much momentum. Flavor-wise: if you're in the shop at the feast, you'll probably get talked into buying something small on top of your big purchase.

Woodcutter: +2 Buys, +$2

Adding another buy gives it an edge over other +Buy cards. In strong engines, having only 1 Woodcutter and no other +Buy cards is now enough to buy lots of cool stuff at once, or even triple-Province late game. It also becomes a better Gardens enabler, giving Workshop more rivalry there.

Bureaucrat: Gain a Silver card, putting it on top of your deck. You may trash card from your hand that is not a Treasure. Each other player reveals a Victory card from his hand (or a hand without Victory cards) and puts it on top of his deck.

A bit wordy, but stronger. The wordiness works well flavor-wise. It is now a Jack of All Trades variant, that doesn't draw but attacks instead, and doesn't spy but just topdecks the Silver. It also gives the set an extra trasher; it might need one, now that there is another Curser.

Spy: +1 Action. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Put one of them into your hand, discard one, and put one back. Then, reveal the top card of each other player's deck. Discard it or put it back.)

Spy now provides improved sifting, and it's still effectively a cantrip. The attack remains the same. It might involve a lot of choices - but let's be honest, it kinda always did. Should that be fixed in some way? I'm not quite sure how...

---

So any thoughts about this so far? Should Mine and Moat also be fixed up a bit? If so, how?
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XerxesPraelor

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2016, 08:56:32 am »
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Most of these ideas look good in my opinion, so the ones I'm not commenting on I could test. Here's a few criticisms though.

Witch: If you manage to have more Witches than your opponent before the curses run out, you've already done quite well and the VP negative won't do much at all. If you want it to do anything in a normal game, the VP has to be at least -2.

Throne Room: Being able to throne a throne is really fun and doesn't lead to the tracking complexity that doing the same with King's Court does. Throne Room also doesn't really need to be weakened - it will never create a monotonic strategy since it needs another action, so even if it's a very strong card, it's fine at that strength.

Thief: Only hitting the person to your left weakens Thief a lot and introduces politics. Being able to steal two cards does almost nothing to its strength, as that situation will hardly ever come up. If you want to buff it, make it optional to trash treasures revealed. (so that Thief doesn't just help your opponent trash their coppers away)
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Drab Emordnilap

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2016, 09:26:06 am »
+3

I could sit here and argue with exactly how powerful or not powerful each of these changes makes these cards, but there's one common theme that pervades them, and it goes directly against the purpose of a "base set" -- all of these changes make the cards more complicated.

You have to remember, Dominion is a complicated game already. Sure, there's more complicated games that exist, but for the average person, just getting the rules right is complication enough. At least starting out, minimizing complexity where possible is really important, even more so than ensuring every card is as "balanced" as possible. And hey, dominion already has this neat self balancing feature where, for the most part, all the players have equal access to any given card that might be "too good" in any given set. And I'll players have equal opportunity to recognize when those cards that are usually "too bad" are actually useful.

Really, the main thing, though, is if dominion were printed with the base at where all the cards were this complex, it wouldn't exist today. Power level has to be secondary to that. They can't all be the best card ever.
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Aleimon Thimble

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #3 on: January 08, 2016, 09:39:19 am »
+2

I could sit here and argue with exactly how powerful or not powerful each of these changes makes these cards, but there's one common theme that pervades them, and it goes directly against the purpose of a "base set" -- all of these changes make the cards more complicated.

You have to remember, Dominion is a complicated game already. Sure, there's more complicated games that exist, but for the average person, just getting the rules right is complication enough. At least starting out, minimizing complexity where possible is really important, even more so than ensuring every card is as "balanced" as possible. And hey, dominion already has this neat self balancing feature where, for the most part, all the players have equal access to any given card that might be "too good" in any given set. And I'll players have equal opportunity to recognize when those cards that are usually "too bad" are actually useful.

Really, the main thing, though, is if dominion were printed with the base at where all the cards were this complex, it wouldn't exist today. Power level has to be secondary to that. They can't all be the best card ever.

I was afraid I would get reactions like this, which is why I added the disclaimer. I'm not trying to say this is how the base game should have been printed. I'm saying how we can make the base game more fun for intermediate / advanced players. I posted this in the Variants/Fan Cards forum for a reason.

Also, if you really wanna argue about this... The weakness of many non-vanilla cards almost killed Dominion's PR already, with the whole 'Silver test' thing going on in the early days. I wouldn't say that making the game slightly more complicated would have been worse than that. But I'd like to discuss that further elsewhere, if you want to, because it's off topic here.

Most of these ideas look good in my opinion, so the ones I'm not commenting on I could test. Here's a few criticisms though.

Witch: If you manage to have more Witches than your opponent before the curses run out, you've already done quite well and the VP negative won't do much at all. If you want it to do anything in a normal game, the VP has to be at least -2.

Throne Room: Being able to throne a throne is really fun and doesn't lead to the tracking complexity that doing the same with King's Court does. Throne Room also doesn't really need to be weakened - it will never create a monotonic strategy since it needs another action, so even if it's a very strong card, it's fine at that strength.

Thief: Only hitting the person to your left weakens Thief a lot and introduces politics. Being able to steal two cards does almost nothing to its strength, as that situation will hardly ever come up. If you want to buff it, make it optional to trash treasures revealed. (so that Thief doesn't just help your opponent trash their coppers away)

I think I agree with you on Witch, -1VP is probably not enough to balance it. I could live with Throne Room in its original form as well, because it's a pretty cool card.

Thief is more difficult. Making trashing treasures optional is probably not enough to buff it - it would only make it more similar to Noble Brigand, which is still not exactly a power card. Also, I kinda want to prevent it from becoming TOO similar to Noble Brigand. I guess the politics thing is an issue. How about turning over 3 cards instead of 2?
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tristan

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2016, 10:16:00 am »
0

Why do you think that Witch needs balancing? Trashing and junking are supposed to be powerful and the game is intentionally designed such that the decks in which you can skip either of them and do well are rare. While Witch is a strong Curser it is not as powerful as e.g. Mountebank.

About Throne Room, the card is not too powerful so it doesn't need balancing. I also wouldn't wanna miss the good ol' TR-TR-Smithy.

Chancellor is a narrow card, i.e. the circumstances in which you want him are rare, but it is fine. A terminal Silver that can be trashed to curse is probably too strong.

About Adventurer, like Chancellor it is a narrow but balanced card. It cannot cost less and if you add some boni they have to be tiny boni. The extra buy is probably fine but make the card non-terminal definitely is not. Your Adventurer is always a non-terminal Silver and if it hits a Copper and a Silver it is better than Gold (due to the extra buy).

Feast is fine as it is.

I like the new Woodcutter.

Bureucrat is fine and does not require fixing.

I like the new Spy.
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enfynet

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2016, 11:03:06 am »
+1

If you want Chapel to give to the poor, you should let other players gain a copper into their hand.
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Accatitippi

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2016, 12:03:19 pm »
0

I like your Feast and Woodcutter. I have modded my Adventurer to give one Action long ago, and never looked back. +Buy might be overkill.

Some of the changes I feel are unnecessary, or a bad trade for the added complexity:
Witch, since it will be worth it anyway, and it's fine, really.
Spy gets a lot more complexity.
Bureaucrat is fine as is, I think.
Throne room is fine.
Chapel is crazy good, but I like its simplicity. Also, Chapel games become a lot less interesting if you're passively gaining buy power while you trash down.

And then there's those I think are broken:
Thief is unfair. I would also go in the direction of making trashing optional, and/or revealing three cards sounds promising.
Chancellor: what if I don't want to discard my deck nor trash my Chancellor? I think it needs a buff, but I'm not sure I like the concept of this one.

I also considered cheapening Spy before, but never actually tried it. Simply swapping the order of the effects would also go a long way, even though it would be weird compared with other cards.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2016, 12:09:16 pm »
+2

I was afraid I would get reactions like this, which is why I added the disclaimer. I'm not trying to say this is how the base game should have been printed. I'm saying how we can make the base game more fun for intermediate / advanced players. I posted this in the Variants/Fan Cards forum for a reason.

Also, if you really wanna argue about this... The weakness of many non-vanilla cards almost killed Dominion's PR already, with the whole 'Silver test' thing going on in the early days. I wouldn't say that making the game slightly more complicated would have been worse than that. But I'd like to discuss that further elsewhere, if you want to, because it's off topic here.

Man, don't go all AdamH on us. It's fine to clarify that you didn't mean for these changes to be for novice players, but if Drab wants to talk about how they're not good for the actual Base set, this is the natural place to talk about that. That's just the way it is. I agree with his points 100%, but I also understand that it's outside the scope of what you're trying to accomplish here and I will happily critique your changes (in a future post).

Why do you think that Witch needs balancing? Trashing and junking are supposed to be powerful and the game is intentionally designed such that the decks in which you can skip either of them and do well are rare.

This is straight-up false. Donald has said (if not here, then while playtesting e.g. Amulet) that he would like junkers and trashers to be weaker across the board. They continue to be made strong so that when Witch and NewCurser are out, NewCurser doesn't always look awful next to Witch. Likewise for trashers. And it's fine that they're as strong as they are.
« Last Edit: January 08, 2016, 04:05:54 pm by LastFootnote »
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LastFootnote

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #8 on: January 08, 2016, 12:43:13 pm »
+1

So. I agree with your premise that the Dominion base set is the weakest set and could use improvement. That's pretty much where our agreement ends, unfortunately. I've talked about this before on boardgamegeek, but—in my eyes—the base set has three big issues.

• There aren't enough cheap Kingdom cards you can load up on. The #1 complaint that people have about the base set is that Big Money is too dominant. I believe the biggest reason for this is that too often your only reasonable purchase at $3-$4 is Silver.
• There are too many $4 cards and not enough $5 cards.
• There aren't enough ways to trash Curses. One of the reasons Witch is so strong is that the base set doesn't have enough counters for it. There's Chapel and...that's it, really. Remodel can be OK, but only if there's a $2 card you want, and you only want so many Cellars and Moats.

Your new Bureaucrat can trash Curses (although Bureaucrat is fine; I buy it frequently), so that addresses #3. Your changes do nothing to address #1 or #2.

Chapel: Trash up to 4 cards from your hand. Each other player may gain a Silver.

So Donald has stated before that trashing 3 cards will make it too slow. Instead, you can speed up the respective engine building even further - but make it so that it helps your opponent instead. Now, every time you play the Chapel, your opponent can choose to gain a Silver. This should be enough to make the other trashing cards more competitive against Chapel; going for Moneylender and/or Remodel instead doesn't give your opponent(s) free Silvers. Flavor-wise, there's something about the church giving to the poor, or something.

What Donald said is that a Chapel that trashes 3 cards is way weaker. I believe that, but I don't think it follows that that would be a problem. Probably it's still a good card. Giving Silver to your opponents is a cool idea, but I'm not convinced Chapel needs fixing at all.

Witch: +2 Cards. Each other player gains a Curse card. At the end of the game, this is worth -1VP.

The penalty gives you less incentive pursuing a Witch strategy on boards without trashing. It becomes a liability when the Curses are out, because a Moat that's also a Curse is probably not worth having in your deck. Flavor-wise, the Witch is probably cursed herself.

Likewise, I don't think Witch itself needs fixing. As I stated earlier, it would be good to have another way to deal with Curses in the set.

Throne Room: You may choose an Action card in your hand that is not a Throne Room. Play it twice.

Being unable to Throne a Throne resolves some tracking issues and slightly weakens the card. It's also more consistent with cards like Golem. It also gets the 'You may' fix it should have gotten a long time ago  ;)

Obviously the "you may" is an improvement. Throne Room isn't too strong, though. Its weakness is that it's unreliable; you have to match it up with other Action cards. Without that weakness, it would cost $5 (and it does: Royal Carriage).

Chancellor: +$2. Choose one: Put your deck into your discard pile, or trash this and each other player gains a Curse.

Optional one-shot Curser. I feel the set should have another way to give out curses, and giving that option to the weakest card in the base game seems fine. Throning a Chancellor suddenly becomes awesome. Flavor-wise... looking at his ugly face probably curses you, or something?

There is an Intrigue outtake called Poison:

Poison: Action, $3
+2 Cards
Each other player gains a Curse. Trash this card.

And well, I think it's an outtake for a reason. A cheap one-shot Curse-giver seems very prone to rush strategies, much more so than Ill-Gotten Gains. Everybody buys them out, then you can start playing the actual game with your now horribly sloggy decks. The deck-discarding doesn't save it—the one-shot Curse-giving just completely dwarfs it.

Adventurer: +1 Action, +1 Buy. Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 2 Treasure cards. Put those Treasure cards in your hand and discard the other revealed cards.

Not the weakest card in base Dominion, but probably the most overpriced one in the entire game. $6 for a Moat that skips over Actions and Treasures, really? I feel it needs the Action AND the Buy to become worth it over Gold often enough.

I think Adventurer could cost $5. I think your version isn't an interesting decision; I bet you almost always want it over Gold. I don't think there's a good $6 version of the concept, although if it doesn't have +1 Action you at least have to budget for that.

Thief: The player to your left reveals the top 2 cards of his deck. If he revealed any Treasure cards, he trashes them. You may gain one or both of these cards. He discards the other revealed cards.

Thief is the only card that needs a buff AND a nerf - only buffing it would make it horribly overpowered in multiplayer Dominion. So now it only targets the player to your left, but it can steal 2 cards instead of 1. Should be fine, right? It's still a bit niche though, let's be honest. Any ideas? Flavor-wise: why would a Thief leave any money?

This doesn't help at all. Anytime you don't want Thief (which is usually), you don't want this either. It's basically just Thief, only more so. It clears out their Coppers faster, and steals Treasures to a crippling degree in the few games where you can't work around that. It's just more swingy.

I disagree with XerxesPraelor that hitting the player to your left introduces politics, but it does introduce more whining about seating order.

Feast: Trash this card. Gain a card costing up to $5 and a card costing up to $3.

It's a one-shot self-Develop! Being able to get two cards upon trashing one makes you not lose as much momentum. Flavor-wise: if you're in the shop at the feast, you'll probably get talked into buying something small on top of your big purchase.

It's definitely an improvement! Assuming you're not changing cards' costs or replacing cards wholesale (which you aren't), this seems like a good direction.

Woodcutter: +2 Buys, +$2

Adding another buy gives it an edge over other +Buy cards. In strong engines, having only 1 Woodcutter and no other +Buy cards is now enough to buy lots of cool stuff at once, or even triple-Province late game. It also becomes a better Gardens enabler, giving Workshop more rivalry there.

I don't think this change is enough to make Woodcutter viable. It's academically interesting, being one of the few cards that gives +2 Buys, but that's about it. I agree that it's better for Gardens, but I doubt you're choosing it over any other source of +Buy for an engine.

Bureaucrat: Gain a Silver card, putting it on top of your deck. You may trash card from your hand that is not a Treasure. Each other player reveals a Victory card from his hand (or a hand without Victory cards) and puts it on top of his deck.

A bit wordy, but stronger. The wordiness works well flavor-wise. It is now a Jack of All Trades variant, that doesn't draw but attacks instead, and doesn't spy but just topdecks the Silver. It also gives the set an extra trasher; it might need one, now that there is another Curser.

Bureaucrat is narrow, but I don't think it wants this change. For one thing, I think it's likely too strong. But in general, I buy Bureaucrat in any game where I'm not gunning for Provinces, and very occasionally when I am. I think it's fine as-is.

Spy: +1 Action. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Put one of them into your hand, discard one, and put one back. Then, reveal the top card of each other player's deck. Discard it or put it back.)

Spy now provides improved sifting, and it's still effectively a cantrip. The attack remains the same. It might involve a lot of choices - but let's be honest, it kinda always did. Should that be fixed in some way? I'm not quite sure how...

The biggest issue with Spy is that it's so slow to resolve, and this does nothing to fix that. I strongly believe that any change should address that issue.

So any thoughts about this so far? Should Mine and Moat also be fixed up a bit? If so, how?

Mine and Moat are fine.
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Aleimon Thimble

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #9 on: January 08, 2016, 03:06:59 pm »
+1

Before going into the more detailed post by LastFootnote, I'll say that I agree with you all that Throne Room really doesn't need fixing, on second thought.

So. I agree with your premise that the Dominion base set is the weakest set and could use improvement. That's pretty much where our agreement ends, unfortunately. I've talked about this before on boardgamegeek, but—in my eyes—the base set has three big issues.

• There aren't enough cheap Kingdom cards you can load up on. The #1 complaint that people have about the base set is that Big Money is too dominant. I believe the biggest reason for this is that too often your only reasonable purchase at $3-$4 is Silver.
• There are too many $4 cards and not enough $5 cards.
• There aren't enough ways to trash Curses. One of the reasons Witch is so strong is that the base set doesn't have enough counters for it. There's Chapel and...that's it, really. Remodel can be OK, but only if there's a $2 card you want, and you only want so many Cellars and Moats.

Your new Bureaucrat can trash Curses (although Bureaucrat is fine; I buy it frequently), so that addresses #3. Your changes do nothing to address #1 or #2.

So what you're really saying is this: if you're fixing the set anyway, then it doesn't make any sense to rule out fixing the costs as well. I think that makes sense and my statement that leaving the costs of cards untouched was a bit premature. I don't think there are not enough $5 cards (there's quite a lot of them and it would kinda suck for half of the cards to cost $5 - you need cheap components as well), but I do agree that the amount of $4 cards may be a bit too high. So a couple of $4 cards should be restyled into $2 or $3 cards for Balanced Base Dominion.

Quote
What Donald said is that a Chapel that trashes 3 cards is way weaker. I believe that, but I don't think it follows that that would be a problem. Probably it's still a good card. Giving Silver to your opponents is a cool idea, but I'm not convinced Chapel needs fixing at all.

I do think Chapel needs some kind of fixing, otherwise Moneylender and Mine are automatically empty spaces on the board when Chapel is there, and Remodel is only used to get rid of the Chapel and for turning Gold into Province. Chapel is just so much stronger than the other trashers that I think it's out of balance. Maybe a Chapel that trashes just 3 cards is fine after all, but I'm not the one who playtested it.. Or maybe Mine and Moneylender need a small boost after all. (Although it's difficult to give Moneylender a small boost without turning it into Spice Merchant)

Quote
Likewise, I don't think Witch itself needs fixing. As I stated earlier, it would be good to have another way to deal with Curses in the set.

Plausible. But you don't like the Bureaucrat I proposed. (I personally don't think it's too strong, considering Jack.) What do you propose?

Quote
There is an Intrigue outtake called Poison:

Poison: Action, $3
+2 Cards
Each other player gains a Curse. Trash this card.

And well, I think it's an outtake for a reason. A cheap one-shot Curse-giver seems very prone to rush strategies, much more so than Ill-Gotten Gains. Everybody buys them out, then you can start playing the actual game with your now horribly sloggy decks. The deck-discarding doesn't save it—the one-shot Curse-giving just completely dwarfs it.

I did not know that, thanks for clarifying. So this is not the correct way to buff Chancellor. I do still think it needs a significant buff.

Quote
I think Adventurer could cost $5. I think your version isn't an interesting decision; I bet you almost always want it over Gold. I don't think there's a good $6 version of the concept, although if it doesn't have +1 Action you at least have to budget for that.

Yeah, maybe the fix for Adventurer is just to lower the cost. And maybe +1 Action too? Although it would be really similar to Laboratory then...

Quote
This doesn't help at all. Anytime you don't want Thief (which is usually), you don't want this either. It's basically just Thief, only more so. It clears out their Coppers faster, and steals Treasures to a crippling degree in the few games where you can't work around that. It's just more swingy.

What I dislike most about Thief is the huge difference between its strength in two-player and four-player games. Any fix needs to work around that at the very least. Maybe it can show the top 3 cards of your opponent's deck in a two-player game, the top 2 cards in a three-player game, and only the top card in a four-player game. And the trashing could be optional. But Thief would become even more wordy than it already is.

Quote
I don't think this change is enough to make Woodcutter viable. It's academically interesting, being one of the few cards that gives +2 Buys, but that's about it. I agree that it's better for Gardens, but I doubt you're choosing it over any other source of +Buy for an engine.

That may be true, but any other change would either make it too similar to Festival, too similar to Market, or deviate too far from its vanilla nature. It's difficult to fix this one too..

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The biggest issue with Spy is that it's so slow to resolve, and this does nothing to fix that. I strongly believe that any change should address that issue.

A single Spy is not that slow to resolve, but the thing is that when Spy it's good, you often play many of them in a row. Maybe make it cheaper, terminal, and add some other boost to it... but if it were terminal, the synergy with Thief would be killed, and we're trying to buff Spy and Thief here...

--

Some difficult things here. I'll think about more fixes this weekend. In the meantime, feel free to propose stuff. :)
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[...] The God of heaven has given you Dominion [...] (Daniel 2:37)

Roadrunner7671

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #10 on: January 08, 2016, 03:12:56 pm »
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Throne Room is balanced. There is no difference between Throne Room on Village then Throne Room on Smithy compare to Throne Room-Throne Room-Village Smithy.

I guess the OP didn't want Throne Room to be used as a village?
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Oh God someone delete this before Roadrunner sees it.

XerxesPraelor

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #11 on: January 08, 2016, 03:19:57 pm »
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I think Witch (and Mountebank) maybe could be fixed. They don't desperately need fixing - the game is still great - but it would be nice to have a more even spread of power. The fact that junkers are really powerful doesn't have to stay. (although you would want to weaken them all simultaeneously for comparison purposes)

Possible Witch change:
+2 Cards
You may discard a treasure. If you do, each other player gains a curse.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #12 on: January 08, 2016, 03:37:28 pm »
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When Donald talks about what he would do to nerf junkers, usually it's to simply reduce the number of Curses in the pile. But he can't really do that at this point; it's just Dominion Time Machine talk.
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tristan

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Re: Variant: Balanced base Dominion
« Reply #13 on: January 10, 2016, 05:33:15 am »
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Why do you think that Witch needs balancing? Trashing and junking are supposed to be powerful and the game is intentionally designed such that the decks in which you can skip either of them and do well are rare.

This is straight-up false. Donald has said (if not here, then while playtesting e.g. Amulet) that he would like junkers and trashers to be weaker across the board.
So then the game is unintentionally designed such that junking and trashing are very good. But a game exist and persists independent of the (after)thoughts and intentions of the designer and the strength of trashing and junking are a key feature of Dominion.
As you pointed out, if you mess with it you gotta mess with basically all junkers and trashers which would lead to a total mess.
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