At this point you should just check a dictionary. You're being intentionally obtuse.
How is a dictionary going to educate me about what kind of strategic implications in Dominion the difference between not doing anything in order to prepare for a very specific situation and doing something in order to prepare for a very specific situation has?
It might educate you on the meaning of words.
Which are being discussed because they are relevant. Doesn't explain why you brought up fighting games.
You said that the word "combo" refers explicitly to a combination of cards. However, it clearly does not explicitly contain the word "card" anywhere in the word "combo", and I brought up fighting games as an example to demonstrate that it doesn't even implicitly refer to a combination of cards.
Context is key. We're talking about Dominion. In Dominion, "combo" refers explicitly to cards.
I defer to Donald X. on this:
Third, Belcher is 100% full-on flat-out a combo deck. The combo is Belcher and cards that produce mana without being lands. The deck isn't about getting two cards into play and then scoring off of their interaction; it doesn't have to be.
Moreover, this makes me realize that even if you are correct about the meaning of "combo deck" in MtG, it doesn't really apply to Dominion simply because of the sheer scope. The combo seems to be Belcher + X, where X is special but there are still many options to fill that role. Moreover, due to the nature of deck construction, you have access to most of those options when you don't in Dominion.
Okay, let's use Donald's definition for combo then. Guys, I found this cool new combo! Province+$8. When you have $8, you can buy a Province. The combo is $8 and a Province.
Belcher is exactly like that. Except instead of gaining a Province, you kill your opponent.
Donald has addressed this. I don't understand your rhetoric though. I assume that you're being sarcastic in calling "Province + $8" a combo, which is ridiculous, but then you say it applies to your own top example so... OK.
Thank-you. Now we're getting somewhere.
The introduction implies that the definition that the author proposes is not the traditional one. He makes that explicit later on:
Since almost none of the single-card combos are legal what is one to do? Well for one thing we can approach combo the way it has traditionally been conceived: setting up a combination of multiple pieces to win the game.
So the traditional definition is exactly the definition that everyone else here has been using. No doubt a large portion of the MtG community still uses the traditional definition as well (as evidenced by previously provided links). You can decry those other sources as non-competitive, newbies, whatever, but it doesn't change the fact that they are a significant portion of the MtG community. So your argument that we should use the same definition as used in MtG doesn't mean much, when that community has a few differing definitions themselves.
It's not that he's proposing a new definition to include more decks under the name "combo"; it's that he's proposing to new definition that actually includes the decks that people already perceive to be combo.
After all combo comes from "combination" so we expect a combo deck to be one that tries to set up a certain combination of cards that then has a powerful effect on the game. And while that definition is correct for some decks we refer to under the combo moniker a lot of them actually do something rather different.
It has been common for people to define combo in some way, and then proceed to talk about combos that don't fall under that definition (like that Wikipedia article still does).
OK then. It doesn't change the fact that "combo deck" was traditionally defined that way, and in
Dominion people use it in that traditional way.
This is a key difference from Dominion. The Magic player is concerned with how the game plays out, not as much on deck construction. MtG has thousands upon thousands of cards, and since there isn't a kingdom of just 10 cards, you can't really predict the specific cards in their deck. So the approach to strategy is about learning high level approaches, "what they're trying to do", rather than how to respond to super-specific cards or card combos.
But Dominion is a deck-building game. You need to focus on the deck construction here. There is a small set of cards in each game. You can improve your game by considering specific cards and card combos.
You can actually predict the specific cards in your opponent's deck in Magic, especially the Legacy format which this article is talking about, because the deckbuilding aspect of Magic consists of going on the Internet and copying the exact deck from someone who placed high in a big tournament. Sometimes they might have one or two surprising cards, but generally, after you've seen their first turn, you can have an extremely good idea what the exact 60 cards in their deck are, and usually, it's the maximum 4 allowed copies of each of 12 different cards. Even when the opponent has something other than the most common cards for their type of deck, the cards that change are support cards, not the core of the deck. That's not very different from the 10 different cards in Dominion, and it is a huge mistake to believe that you can improve your game by considering specific cards and card combos rather than what you're trying to do in Dominion.
You don't have the same set of cards in your deck. Maybe you can predict the rest of their deck after one turn, but by then they may have already won. That's a huge difference.
Kotter considers three categories of the Combo Deck archetype. First, the one-card combo.
One-card decks are in a way the holy grail of combo deckbuilding. They are decks that win as soon as they manage to resolve (or activate) their single key card.
All well and good for Magic, but is this applicable to Dominion? Not really, IMO. There is no single card in Dominion that just wins you the game when you play it. The closest thing you've brought up is Bishop in a golden deck, and you usually need trashing support for it to work so it doesn't really function as a one-card combo. You've argued this lightly, but I'm sure you know deep down that trying to reach Golden Deck status with only Bishops is a painful path.
This is not really applicable to Dominion. In Magic, a combo needs to actually win the game immediately, because otherwise you're going to lose against the aggro decks that beat you down in like 4 turns. In Dominion, it doesn't need to win immediately, because a lot of the time you're still faster than big money.
Totally. That's why the definition that might work best for Magic doesn't necessarily translate to Dominion. Exactly the point I was making.
Trying to reach Golden Deck status with only Bishops under the right circumstances is a far less painful path than trying to do so with Chapel and the wrong circumstances. Like I said, I have done so with Apprentice as the only trashing, and Apprentice is hardly any better at helping you get super thin than Bishop itself. I also won that game. I'm also pretty sure that I have done it with just Bishop, but that game I don't remember as vividly so I can't be 100% sure it actually happened. I have certainly done Bishop golden decks every now and then (probably less than 10 games total), and I don't think any super strong trashing was in any of those games. Sometimes something like Throne Room helped make the Bishop faster at getting rid of my cards though, I think. I can honestly say that based on the experiences I have had with Bishop golden decks, I believe that it is not the case that strong trashing is necessary for the Bishop golden deck.
OK. And in my experience, and the commonly reported experiences if most other players, strong trashing
is a factor. If we're just comparing anecdotes, you're not on the common side of experience there.
Well, I guess there's Rebuild. Do you consider Rebuild as a one-card combo deck?
No, it's a rush.
So Kotter's definitions don't fit Dominion so well after all.
Second, Kotter mentions the traditional definition with a combo of 2+ pieces. I've already addressed this above. It's a good definition, it's one that everybody uses.
It's not a good definition because it is completely irrelevant from a strategic point of view how many differently named cards your deck needs to do what it does, in both Magic and Dominion, and the definition doesn't include all the decks that people intuitively feel are combo decks.
It's useful for discussion. For newer players, considering specific card combos is a great starting place as they improve their game. It's
maybe less useful in Magic because of the plethora of options, but Dominion is still limited enough that it doesn't hurt. Even if it is irrelevant (and you are the only one who seems to feel that way), it's not
harmful. You can continue using "combo deck" as you will.
Context is key.
It's odd that you talk about what is "intuitive" when you continue to use language that is counterintuitive. Even the author of the article says that it's not intuitive.
Kotter's third category is the engine combo:
Engine Combo. These decks are what totally demolish the intuitive definition of a combo deck. Instead of trying to set up a particular combination of cards they try to achieve a "critical mass" of interchangeable pieces that all perform one or both of two critical functions: drawing cards or producing mana. What they aim to do is to accumulate the resources to fuel one big turn of constant resource exchange cards into mana into cards into mana and so on.
I'm not sure what the Dominion analogue for this would be, because games of Dominion don't end the same way as games of Magic. As far as "interchangeable pieces" go, the best I can come up with is how engines in Dominion seek trashing, +cards, +buy, etc. and can get them from a variety of sources. But are you proposing that we fold the Engine Deck archetype into the Combo Deck archetype?
The Dominion analogue for this would be Madman megaturns. Except with tons of different kinds of Madmen. As it turns out, the most prominent example of a Madman megaturn in Dominion is Hermit/Market Square, which is most certainly a combo by any imaginable definition (except for the one you found at TappedOut).
Doesn't seem the same, since there is only one Madman card. That's a key card, not interchangeable.
Overall, the article you've linked has done a fantastic job at convincing me that it's far more intuitive and far more strategically useful to use the traditional definition of "combo deck" in Dominion.
Well, have fun and don't complain to me when you lose games against players who focus more on the overall strategy than you do.
The fact that I'm against your unintuitive personal definition of terms already used in particular ways by the community says nothing about my focus in strategy. I have no objection against focusing on overall strategy. I'm just against your poor use of language.
Sure, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't call Watchtower+Goons a combo. Even Carsten Kotter makes a distinction between "combo" and "combo deck":
After all combo comes from "combination" so we expect a combo deck to be one that tries to set up a certain combination of cards that then has a powerful effect on the game.
That's not what that means. It just means that since the word "combo" is etymologically related to the word "combination", you would expect "combo" to contain of combinations of different cards.
No, it means that "combo" is about a combination of cards in the traditional definition, so "combo deck" is expected to be a deck that revolves around a card combination. This is basic English.
but that doesn't change that "combo" also legitimately refers to a small set of cards with strong synergy.
Fine, but you shouldn't use the word to legitimately refer to a small set of cards with strong synergy.
You're saying that we shouldn't use words to mean what they mean. How can anybody think that this is a sensible position to take?
(Edit to fix quoting)
