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[Donald X.]

Your punishment today: a preview. See it's all about your own perspective on it.

Nocturne has Hexes. Hexes are another 12-card deck of landscape-style instructions. These ones are bad though. You get an effect like "each other player receives the next Hex," and then you turn over just one Hex, just one okay, and they all get that Hex. Of course sometimes you Hex yourself instead.



Some examples. Greed puts a Copper on your deck; War trashes something that wasn't great but probably wasn't worthless; and Envy makes you Envious. Okay so what's that then. Envious makes your Silvers and Golds suck for one turn (well one Buy phase, because you can play Treasures ahead of your Buy phase with e.g. Storyteller, and not necessarily just one, because you can get another Buy phase with e.g. Villa - this game is full of edge cases). Envious is a State, a way of tracking special information about players. It sits in front of you and then it doesn't. It's too hard to remember without the card there to remind you. So there's a card, hooray.



Werewolf is an Action-Night card. During the day he's just a Smithy, but at Night, he shows his vicious side. In your Action phase you can play Werewolf and draw 3 cards; in your Night phase you can play Werewolf and Hex everyone. Okay? It doesn't feel tricky to me but I am making sure here. As with Boons, a word on the card needs to tell you to shuffle up the Hexes, and that word is Doom. That makes Werewolf an Action - Night - Attack - Doom card. The Courtiers all like Dame Josephine, but they like Werewolves too.



Skulk costs $4, is all upside, and comes with a Gold, wait what? Somehow, having a Skulk in your deck weighs down the Gold sufficiently to make this all okay.



Cursed Village Hexes you when you gain it. Maybe you will get lucky there and just have to discard some cards or something. But probably it will hurt; that's the way it goes when your village is cursed. Once you have it it's a Village with "draw to 6" instead of +1 Card; that's pretty spiffy, but it has some quirks to learn about the hard way.

I only showed off three hexes, but the online version... you're way ahead of me. Stef has been getting the cards up fast; they will probably be playable online within half an hour.

[Orange]

Werewolf as Action - Night is cool.  Seems like it may be a strong 5-cost card.

[SevenSpirits]

What's the intended way to track multiple players being envious? I'm sort of confused about the idea of giving a state represented by a physical card to several people. Or does only one opponent end up envious?

[Orange]

Cursed Village has amazing art.

[Donald X.]

What's the intended way to track multiple players being envious? I'm sort of confused about the idea of giving a state represented by a physical card to several people. Or does only one opponent end up envious?

There are 6 copies of Envious. They have Deluded on the back.

[Beyond Awesome]

Cursed Village has amazing art.

My thoughts exactly

[dz]

please tell me you named 5 other hexes after the 7 deadly sins (there's already greed and envy)

[Minotaur]

The Cursed Village stood strong against the Militia, but no one there has dogs so I'm not going...

[Donald X.]

please tell me you named 5 other hexes after the 7 deadly sins (there's already greed and envy)

The names tried to fit with the abilities, rather than vice-versa. So no.

They're up online already.

[Minotaur]

please tell me you named 5 other hexes after the 7 deadly sins (there's already greed and envy)

The names tried to fit with the abilities, rather than vice-versa. So no.

RBCI will fix this.

[Orange]

After one play, I think the Hexes are more bad than the Boons are good.

[Ethan]

Other hexes:
Plague: Gain a curse to your hand.
Locusts: Trash the top card of your deck. If it's a Copper or Estate, get a Curse. Otherwise , gain a cheaper card that shares a type with it.
Bad omens: Put your deck into your discard pile. Look through it and put 2 Coppers from it onto your deck (or reveal you can't).
Haunting: If you have at least 4 cards in hand, put one of them onto your deck.
Poverty: Discard down to 3 cards in hand.
Misery: If it's your first Misery this game, take Miserable. Otherwise, flip it over to Twice Miserable.(Miserable: -2vps, Twice Miserable: -4vps )
Famine: Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Discard the Actions. Shuffle the rest into your deck.
Fear: If you have at least 5 cards in hand, discard an Action or Treasure (or reveal you can't).
Delusion: If you don't have Deluded or Envious, take Deluded.(Deluded:At the start of your Buy phase,return this and you can't buy actions this turn)

[BBL]

After one play, I think the Hexes are more bad than the Boons are good.

In fact, they are pretty brutal. Since they are random and vary wildly in their effect, there is no defense strategy that works for all of them (except for stuff like Lighthouse or Champion). Some of them even counter defenses actively, like War vs Watchtower. Werewolve is also very strong, as its draw helps you to play even more werewolves during night. Skulk enables early purchase of werewolves by its Gold, so both in combination are tough to crack as well.

Brace yourself for long and wonky games when they are in the kingdom.

[Jimmmmm]

Other hexes:

Misery: If it's your first Misery this game, take Miserable. Otherwise, flip it over to Twice Miserable.(Miserable: -2vps)

Is Twice Miserable -4 VP?

Also why are we using spoiler tags? We're all here for previews.

[Ethan]

Is Twice Miserable -4 VP?

yes, tested it just now

Also why are we using spoiler tags? We're all here for previews.

well, just to follow Gazbag in yesterday's preview, maybe he want to keep some mystica.

[Violet CLM]

I'm realizing that the -$1 and -1 Card tokens from Adventurers are States under a different name. It's certainly more practical to have their effects printed on the items in front of you, rather than on the cards that dispense them.

[Minotaur]

Envious makes your Silvers and Golds suck for one turn (well one Buy phase, because you can play Treasures ahead of your Buy phase with e.g. Storyteller, and not necessarily just one, because you can get another Buy phase with e.g. Villa - this game is full of edge cases).

I can accept that Envious doesn't trigger until your Buy phase, but once it triggers, isn't it persistent for "this turn", and your turn doesn't end just because you go to an Action phase?  Does Envious really lose track of what turn it is if you jump to another Action phase?  Or is there a time machine where you go back to the time in the turn to when you hadn't triggered Envious yet?  And Envious keeps track of all of this Dr. Who stuff but I still can't Summon a Nomad Camp?

[Jack Rudd]

Fortresses protect you against War, and Faithful Hounds protect you against Fear and Poverty.

[LaLight]

Fortresses protect you against War, and Faithful Hounds protect you against Fear and Poverty.

Faithful Hounds are also good with War

[markus]

Envious makes your Silvers and Golds suck for one turn (well one Buy phase, because you can play Treasures ahead of your Buy phase with e.g. Storyteller, and not necessarily just one, because you can get another Buy phase with e.g. Villa - this game is full of edge cases).

I can accept that Envious doesn't trigger until your Buy phase, but once it triggers, isn't it persistent for "this turn", and your turn doesn't end just because you go to an Action phase?  Does Envious really lose track of what turn it is if you jump to another Action phase?  Or is there a time machine where you go back to the time in the turn to when you hadn't triggered Envious yet?  And Envious keeps track of all of this Dr. Who stuff but I still can't Summon a Nomad Camp?

With Villa there can be 2 Buy phases in which you're Envious and not just the usual 1.

[Donald X.]

Envious makes your Silvers and Golds suck for one turn (well one Buy phase, because you can play Treasures ahead of your Buy phase with e.g. Storyteller, and not necessarily just one, because you can get another Buy phase with e.g. Villa - this game is full of edge cases).

I can accept that Envious doesn't trigger until your Buy phase, but once it triggers, isn't it persistent for "this turn", and your turn doesn't end just because you go to an Action phase?  Does Envious really lose track of what turn it is if you jump to another Action phase?  Or is there a time machine where you go back to the time in the turn to when you hadn't triggered Envious yet?  And Envious keeps track of all of this Dr. Who stuff but I still can't Summon a Nomad Camp?

Once it triggers, it is in fact persistent for "this turn," and normally that will only include the Buy phase it triggered in, but it can include multiple Buy phases (and multiple Action phases, though it's less likely to matter there but can).

Envious makes your Silvers and Golds suck for one turn (this is inaccurate in some ways and would require way too lengthy of an explanation of edge cases to want to go into, and it turns out the ones I mentioned were already too much).

[Kirian]

After one play, I think the Hexes are more bad than the Boons are good.

After two plays, I think this is a significant understatement.

I kinda like the Boons, they were random but not usually exceptionally powerful.  The Hexes are mostly weaker versions of other attacks, but not always.  Skulk, because it comes with a Gold, is just killer--you often will want to buy it just for the $4 Gold, Hexes are a bonus.

As an opponent said when his Province was hit by Locusts: Saboteur rides again!

[Bowi]

Werewolf might be my favorite card so far. Not only does it make for some interesting decisions, but it also works well for both money and engine.

Money: Smithy variant that can't be drawn dead, so you can grab a few more than usual.

Engine: The power of this card in engines is obvious. It's extra sweet to be able to do something with your excess draw cards on turns where you've either already drawn the deck or have enough for your buy.

Obviously most boards are engine boards. I just like to see money get thrown a bone from time to time.

[Emeric]

In a two players game, if I launch my werewolf during the night against my opponent who play a lighthouse turn before, do we need to reveal the following hex or not ?

[Donald X.]

In a two players game, if I launch my werewolf during the night against my opponent who play a lighthouse turn before, do we need to reveal the following hex or not ?

Technically yes, you turn it over even though it doesn't do anything.

[Awaclus]

Skulk, because it comes with a Gold, is just killer--you often will want to buy it just for the $4 Gold, Hexes are a bonus.

It isn't a $4 Gold. It also gives you a terminal stop card that doesn't give you any money.

[Awaclus]

I'm disappointed that Locusts doesn't just discard a Gardens though.

[J Reggie]

So this is it, the card we've all been waiting for: the draw-to-x village!

Also, there's the village blacksmith who turns into a werewolf at night. I guess it's always the full moon in Dominion land.

[Donald X.]

So this is it, the card we've all been waiting for: the draw-to-x village!

Also, there's the village blacksmith who turns into a werewolf at night. I guess it's always the full moon in Dominion land.

Turns are a month long! Village, smithy, village, smithy...

[NoMoreFun]

If you Inherit a Werewolf (cost reducer required), it has 5 types. Courtier can run out of options!

[Minotaur]

Envious makes your Silvers and Golds suck for one turn (well one Buy phase, because you can play Treasures ahead of your Buy phase with e.g. Storyteller, and not necessarily just one, because you can get another Buy phase with e.g. Villa - this game is full of edge cases).

I can accept that Envious doesn't trigger until your Buy phase, but once it triggers, isn't it persistent for "this turn", and your turn doesn't end just because you go to an Action phase?  Does Envious really lose track of what turn it is if you jump to another Action phase?  Or is there a time machine where you go back to the time in the turn to when you hadn't triggered Envious yet?  And Envious keeps track of all of this Dr. Who stuff but I still can't Summon a Nomad Camp?

Once it triggers, it is in fact persistent for "this turn," and normally that will only include the Buy phase it triggered in, but it can include multiple Buy phases (and multiple Action phases, though it's less likely to matter there but can).

Envious makes your Silvers and Golds suck for one turn (this is inaccurate in some ways and would require way too lengthy of an explanation of edge cases to want to go into, and it turns out the ones I mentioned were already too much).

I think I misunderstood your first quote.  You're saying it DOES affect two buy phases in this case.  Storyteller pre-emptively avoids the treasure-sucking, but Villa happens "in the same turn after Envious triggers", so treasures still suck, further Storytellers have sucky treasures, and Return To Buy Phase still has sucky treasures.

I figured Villa should not avoid Envious, but I originally thought you were saying the opposite by mentioning it alongside Storyteller on a list of edge cases.  Well, they're two weird cases, but the results are opposite.  gotcha 100%.

[werothegreat]

But you could buy Cursed Village and a Villa, taking Envious in the meantime, and only have it affect your second Buy phase.

[ThetaSigma12]

Why does the Werewolf art show a buff black guy instead of an actual werewolf? I know he's supposed to be the smithy, but it justs looks weird.

[Donald X.]

Why does the Werewolf art show a buff black guy instead of an actual werewolf? I know he's supposed to be the smithy, but it justs looks weird.

That's what werewolves look like during the day - just regular people.

I specifically asked for a daytime, not-in-wolf-form werewolf in the artist notes. I still like that.

[Orange]

Why does the Werewolf art show a buff black guy instead of an actual werewolf? I know he's supposed to be the smithy, but it justs looks weird.

That's what werewolves look like during the day - just regular people.

I specifically asked for a daytime, not-in-wolf-form werewolf in the artist notes. I still like that.

Envious makes your Silvers and Golds suck for one turn (well one Buy phase, because you can play Treasures ahead of your Buy phase with e.g. Storyteller, and not necessarily just one, because you can get another Buy phase with e.g. Villa - this game is full of edge cases).

I can accept that Envious doesn't trigger until your Buy phase, but once it triggers, isn't it persistent for "this turn", and your turn doesn't end just because you go to an Action phase?  Does Envious really lose track of what turn it is if you jump to another Action phase?  Or is there a time machine where you go back to the time in the turn to when you hadn't triggered Envious yet?  And Envious keeps track of all of this Dr. Who stuff but I still can't Summon a Nomad Camp?

With Villa there can be 2 Buy phases in which you're Envious and not just the usual 1.

I smell another grammar discussion coming!

[crj]

Other hexes:
Bad omens: Put your deck into your discard pile. Look through it and put 2 Coppers from it onto your deck (or reveal you can't).

Hmm. That's slightly ambiguous. Is "it" your discard pile or the deck you just put into your discard pile?

My misgivings about the amount of luck represented by Boons is somewhat amplified by Hexes. On what percentage of boards is the person who wins the one who Hexes everyone with Locusts?

[markusin]

The biggest thing I noticed with these Doom cards is that their attacks tend to stack. King's Court on Skulk launched a slew of attacks your opponent may not be prepared form. Heck, Fear can prevent your opponent from completing that three-pile ending they were planning.

[markus]

My misgivings about the amount of luck represented by Boons is somewhat amplified by Hexes. On what percentage of boards is the person who wins the one who Hexes everyone with Locusts?

Because it is strong or because it is weak?

[trivialknot]

What is going on in the Envy art?

[Co0kieL0rd]

Why does the Werewolf art show a buff black guy instead of an actual werewolf? I know he's supposed to be the smithy, but it justs looks weird.

The online implementation could at least show some fancy, hearthstone-esque animation showing his transformation if you play him in your night phase.

[Asper]

In moments like this, I really wish Donald would look at fan card threads once in a while.

[Limetime]

I feel like skulk is a good opening.

[pst]

Fortresses protect you against War, and Faithful Hounds protect you against Fear and Poverty.

I'm not sure how a dog helps with pove... Oh, you are talking about Dominion! I thought it made so much sense anyway.

[ThetaSigma12]

I'm not sure how a dog helps with pove...

Fun fact: In Nicaragua, you can sell stray dogs to the circus to feed the lions.

[Trogdor the Burninator]

Not sure if this has already been touched on, but how do cards like Trader and Watchtower function with the Hexes (and Boons) that gain you cards?
If I was to gain a Copper from a Hex could I reveal my Watchtower to trash [the gained Copper] or would that not work since Hexes (and Boons) aren’t  cards in the normal sense?
Love the sneak peeks by the way.

[LaLight]

Not sure if this has already been touched on, but how do cards like Trader and Watchtower function with the Hexes (and Boons) that gain you cards?
If I was to gain a Copper from a Hex could I reveal my Watchtower to trash it or would that not work since Hexes (and Boons) aren’t  cards in the normal sense?
Love the sneak peeks by the way.

Hexes and Boons may not be cards but cards you gain are cards so reactions work as usual

[TonyStark]

I just like to see money get thrown a bone from time to time.

Is that a Werewolf joke?

Fun fact: In Nicaragua, you can sell stray dogs to the circus to feed the lions.

That wasn't fun at all.

[McGarnacle]

Pros- Lots of cool new card types, and the art is pretty great, especially Cursed Village
Cons- How come Werewolf doesn't care about silver?

[Asper]

Pros- Lots of cool new card types, and the art is pretty great, especially Cursed Village
Cons- How come Werewolf doesn't care about silver?

*chokes*

[ThetaSigma12]

Pros- Lots of cool new card types, and the art is pretty great, especially Cursed Village
Cons- How come Werewolf doesn't care about silver?

*chokes*

Your Werewolf will always be the official unofficial real Werewolf.

EDIT: Which makes my version of your official unofficial real werewolf the unofficial alternate official unofficial real werewolf.

[Deadlock39]

Pros- Lots of cool new card types, and the art is pretty great, especially Cursed Village
Cons- How come Werewolf doesn't care about silver?

Because Silver unfortunately only comes in coin form in the dominion world, and not in the bullet or dagger form.

[crj]

Cons- How come Werewolf doesn't care about silver?

So long as Vampire cares about Bridge, Ferry, Haunted Mirror and Spice Merchant we're still good.

[JThorne]

Shouldn't there be 13 hexes? Missed the flavor boat on that one.

I'm a bit conflicted. These seem extremely "swingy" since they can range from completely irrelevant to absolutely crushing depending on the kingdom. I predict there will be players in my group that will want to ban them entirely, claiming that they just make the outcome of the whole game random.

Which is sad, because there's an element of this that really badly punishes misplays. Some of the obvious defenses against hexes only defend you against some hexes. Players who purchase specific cards as hex defense could very easily be junking their own deck. Buying Hound when there's no self-discard would be bad. Buying Watchtower to defend against junkers in a positive draw engine could frequently be a dead card. Buying virtual money instead of Silver/Gold to defend against Envy could give you terminal trouble. And unlike most cursers, Hexes aren't just going to run the curse pile down to zero in nothing flat, so it dramatically changes the math on the typical slog three-pile ending.

And yeah, Lighthouse and Champion nullify them all, but on the way to Champion, you have, appropriately, the one person who WANTS to go to War. War will find the Warrior. Hopefully you have enough decoy Treasure Hunter Silvers, otherwise, no Champion for you. Yeah, you have to get unlucky, but who hasn't lost a Warrior to lucky Warrior?

[Minotaur]

Pros- Lots of cool new card types, and the art is pretty great, especially Cursed Village
Cons- How come Werewolf doesn't care about silver?

*chokes*

Your Werewolf will always be the official unofficial real Werewolf.

Great, that means that mine's unofficial-unofficial...



I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be an "until you reveal one..." clause that somehow didn't make the big block of size-8 font.  But it has Silver bane, w00t!

[Minotaur]

Oh, and this card is probably garbage if you don't have Smithy Attack cards on the board, but if you do, it's cool times...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YRPTn8p7ZBM/U6ni5zdBOqI/AAAAAAAAAUA/pykgtbXXJyg/s1600/full-moon.jpg

Werewolf probably should've given +3 cards and been a split pile with Full Moon, but this was before Split Piles were a thing, and...  whatever, they can't all be the best fan card.

[Simon (DK)]

Just to be sure: What happens the 3rd time you get Misery?
You already have Twice Miserable and you have to "flip it over to Twice Miserable".
I suppose "it" refers to Miserable, and since you don't have Miserable you can't flip it over, so nothing happens?

[Asper]

What is going on in the Envy art?

It's an amphibian man enviously staring at his fellow amphibian men flying free while he's encased in a bottle. Something everybody can relate to.

Pros- Lots of cool new card types, and the art is pretty great, especially Cursed Village
Cons- How come Werewolf doesn't care about silver?

*chokes*

Your Werewolf will always be the official unofficial real Werewolf.

Awwooooooooof!

Edit: Removed fan card image.

[ObtusePunubiris]

Other hexes:
Bad omens: Put your deck into your discard pile. Look through it and put 2 Coppers from it onto your deck (or reveal you can't).

Hmm. That's slightly ambiguous. Is "it" your discard pile or the deck you just put into your discard pile?
 Locusts?

Did you really just use the "A" word; after what we went through yesterday? 

I think it's pretty clear.  If you follow the instructions in order, then there is no deck to which "it" may refer.

[Asper]

Edit: Removed fan card discussion post.

[LastFootnote]

In moments like this, I really wish Donald would look at fan card threads once in a while.

Do not imagine that Donald X. didn't think of having a Silver interaction in Werewolf.

[SuperHans]

In moments like this, I really wish Donald would look at fan card threads once in a while.

Do not imagine that Donald X. didn't think of having a Silver interaction in Werewolf.

Agreed. Sometimes it just doesn't work out. I'm sure we'll see something in the outtakes. I was really hoping we would get a day/night card and werewolf is perfect for that.

[Robz888]

I really like the Werewolf art (for the official card). That dude's chill right now, but you know he's gonna start some trouble when night falls.

Actually, all the art for this batch of promos is pretty great.

[SuperHans]

What is going on in the Envy art?

Asking the important questions. Seriously, I don't understand what I'm seeing.

[Asper]

In moments like this, I really wish Donald would look at fan card threads once in a while.

Do not imagine that Donald X. didn't think of having a Silver interaction in Werewolf.

This is not about Werewolf. It's about the fact that fan cards have become incredibly good here on fds (not all, obviously). People exchange ideas with each other, inspire each other, learn the pitfalls others already fell into. I know for a fact that my cards, including my personal favs like Road, Werewolf, Necromancer and Sunken City, would suck a lot more if I didn't have the whole fan card sub forum to give me feedback and inspire me. By refusing to even so much as look at fan card threads, Donald X strips himself of the synergy effect we fan card designers enjoy.

[werothegreat]

In moments like this, I really wish Donald would look at fan card threads once in a while.

Do not imagine that Donald X. didn't think of having a Silver interaction in Werewolf.

This is not about Werewolf. It's about the fact that fan cards have become incredibly good here on fds (not all, obviously). People exchange ideas with each other, inspire each other, learn the pitfalls others already fell into. I know for a fact that my cards, including my personal favs like Road, Werewolf, Necromancer and Sunken City, would suck a lot more if I didn't have the whole fan card sub forum to give me feedback and inspire me. By refusing to even so much as look at fan card threads, Donald X strips himself of the synergy effect we fan card designers enjoy.

Uhhhhhh Donald has a whole bunch of playtesters, including LastFootnote, who has a bit of experience with fan card making

Also there's the whole idea/copyright thing - content creators should not look at fan content, because then "who came up with the content" comes into question, and it's just a mess.

[Cuzz]

I really like the Werewolf art (for the official card). That dude's chill right now, but you know he's gonna start some trouble when night falls.

Actually, all the art for this batch of promos is pretty great.

Yeah this art is my favorite so far, and I think the cards are as well.

[FemurLemur]

If there was ever any doubt that theme doesn't matter much in Dominion: Rats actually mitigate your Plagues 


I love how brutal the Hexes are! The fact that you can't rely on any one defense means strategies around this mechanic are going to be a lot trickier. Perhaps Jack of All Trades can be of service, though I heard he's at risk for being drafted in the next War (and starving of a Famine- though aren't we all)

Either way, it's a true testament to the strength of Dominion that all of these years later, some cards can be released that make Moat a bit less meh without being designed for that purpose. At least I assume they weren't designed for it. I just hope Doom-Attacks don't become the next Mountebank.

I also like that there are only 12 of them because it means that- if Donald X ever wanted it- releasing more Doom cards in later expansions would be more feasible than releasing more Looters (Need to make more Doom cards? Just need to include the 12 Hexes again! Need to make more Looters? Ok, let's clear out enough space for 50 extra cards. Seriously, landscape cards really pack in the value- tell a friend to come on down to Dominion Adventures today!) That said, if we aren't ever getting more Potion cost cards despite only needing like 20 Potions, you could argue more Doom and Fates are probably out of the question as well.

[FemurLemur]

I'm realizing that the -$1 and -1 Card tokens from Adventurers are States under a different name. It's certainly more practical to have their effects printed on the items in front of you, rather than on the cards that dispense them.

Agreed. My wife and I were discussing this yesterday. I've never been a fan of any tokens other than Coin, VP, & Debt. Or playmats. I just like Dominion being primarily card-centric.

Journey Token would work well as a State. Although, putting the +1 Action, +1 Card, etc. tokens on supply piles would get pretty brutal in a 6 player game if those tokens were instead State cards. I hope you have a big table so you can lay them next to the piles! But there would be something kinda pleasing about putting a -1 Card State card on your deck instead of a token. The downside being that "Every other player puts their -1 Card State Card" is really clunky wording.

Or would the wording technically have been "Every other player takes -1 Card if they do not already have -1 Card"? I guess instead of calling it "-1 Card", it would've had a thematic name like the other States anyway.

[blaisepascal]

I'm realizing that the -$1 and -1 Card tokens from Adventurers are States under a different name. It's certainly more practical to have their effects printed on the items in front of you, rather than on the cards that dispense them.

Agreed. My wife and I were discussing this yesterday. I've never been a fan of any tokens other than Coin, VP, & Debt. Or playmats. I just like Dominion being primarily card-centric.

So basically, not a fan of the Adventures tokens?

Adventures and Empires both had tokens, but so far I've not seen anything token-like in Nocturn. Is Nocturn a pure card (& card-shaped thing) expansion? That might help mitigate my storage problems...

[Asper]

In moments like this, I really wish Donald would look at fan card threads once in a while.

Do not imagine that Donald X. didn't think of having a Silver interaction in Werewolf.

This is not about Werewolf. It's about the fact that fan cards have become incredibly good here on fds (not all, obviously). People exchange ideas with each other, inspire each other, learn the pitfalls others already fell into. I know for a fact that my cards, including my personal favs like Road, Werewolf, Necromancer and Sunken City, would suck a lot more if I didn't have the whole fan card sub forum to give me feedback and inspire me. By refusing to even so much as look at fan card threads, Donald X strips himself of the synergy effect we fan card designers enjoy.

Uhhhhhh Donald has a whole bunch of playtesters, including LastFootnote, who has a bit of experience with fan card making

Also there's the whole idea/copyright thing - content creators should not look at fan content, because then "who came up with the content" comes into question, and it's just a mess.

Okay, a challenge: Look through the fan card threads here and tell me there's not a single fan card that you feel you'd rather have had in the game than one specific official card. I doubt you'll be able to do that.

And it's not like I wasn't willing to freely give away any and all of my cards and many people here feel the same. Somehow, games like Smallworld have produced fan generated content en masse without any problem, so this legal reservation seems not at all convincing to me, especially if the ideas in question are offered for free.

[SuperHans]

In moments like this, I really wish Donald would look at fan card threads once in a while.

Do not imagine that Donald X. didn't think of having a Silver interaction in Werewolf.

This is not about Werewolf. It's about the fact that fan cards have become incredibly good here on fds (not all, obviously). People exchange ideas with each other, inspire each other, learn the pitfalls others already fell into. I know for a fact that my cards, including my personal favs like Road, Werewolf, Necromancer and Sunken City, would suck a lot more if I didn't have the whole fan card sub forum to give me feedback and inspire me. By refusing to even so much as look at fan card threads, Donald X strips himself of the synergy effect we fan card designers enjoy.

Uhhhhhh Donald has a whole bunch of playtesters, including LastFootnote, who has a bit of experience with fan card making

Also there's the whole idea/copyright thing - content creators should not look at fan content, because then "who came up with the content" comes into question, and it's just a mess.

Okay, a challenge: Look through the fan card threads here and tell me there's not a single fan card that you feel you'd rather have had in the game than one specific official card. I doubt you'll be able to do that.

And it's not like I wasn't willing to freely give away any and all of my cards and many people here feel the same. Somehow, games like Smallworld have produced fan generated content en masse without any problem, so this legal reservation seems not at all convincing to me, especially if the ideas in question are offered for free.

No one is stopping anyone from playing with any of the fan cards, including your fan cards. We all know where to find them.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Hey Asper and other people literally posting fan cards in here, many people on these forums enjoy Preview threads when new expansions come out, so maybe try not to make them suck for the person who brings them to us.

[FemurLemur]

Also, there's the village blacksmith who turns into a werewolf at night.

Yeahhhh, I would not advise visiting the Nocturne Villages if you don't know where you're going. One of them is quite #Blessed, but I hear the other two are Cursed or Haunted with all kinds of spirits, Werewolves, a Fool who's Gold you may or may not have stolen once or twice in the past- oh! and have I mentioned the Devil worshipers yet??

Seaside does have that one bizarre village that doesn't call itself a village/town (freaks), and depending on your feelings towards Dominion-Land's Immigration policy, you may not like Hinterland's village, but otherwise I think you'd be better off taking your chances with any other village. I hear Prosperity's has a very low unemployment rate, and if you travel to the heart of the Empire, you can buy an entire City Quarter on Credit with 0% interest, and the debt cancels out when you're dead! They won't even reposes your Estates or anything!! (good to know that Dominion Bankers are not immune to decisions that inevitably lead to housing crises and recessions).

[Chappy7]

Wow.  Werewolf looks awesome! The art and the card itself.  And man, that Cursed village art is a thing of beauty. 

Skulk is gonna make some exciting openings.  You can do skulk and maybe start an encampment thing early! ( I guess wedding already enables that)

I too am confused by the Envy art....but whatever.

So pumped for new cards! This is so exciting.

[FemurLemur]

I'm realizing that the -$1 and -1 Card tokens from Adventurers are States under a different name. It's certainly more practical to have their effects printed on the items in front of you, rather than on the cards that dispense them.

Agreed. My wife and I were discussing this yesterday. I've never been a fan of any tokens other than Coin, VP, & Debt. Or playmats. I just like Dominion being primarily card-centric.

So basically, not a fan of the Adventures tokens?

Yup! Also Embargo Tokens. I just don't like the components. The actual mechanics are really fun. We don't even use the playmats irl. I don't want to have to dig through my boxes/storage solution for a piece of cardboard every time one specific card comes out on the table. I mean, Donald X made the right call from a design perspective on the playmats for user friendliness reasons- no doubt about it. They just aren't for me. And I wish the Adventures tokens had a more card-centric way of doing things. But that's just because I'm a card junky. Every non-card thing included gets in the way of my irrational need to own many, many different pretty cards.

The reason I'm ok with the 3 main metal tokens is because they have an additive quality to them that makes them more convenient than cards. For instance, if you're gonna design a mechanic around VP's that don't clog your deck, you have three options as far as I can tell: have players write down the running tally on a piece of paper (Let's call this the Milton Bradley method- which is the worst possible method), have a ton of extra cards that say "+1VP" on them that people set aside when gained, or have them be tokens. With cards, I have to pick up the stack and flip through to count how many I have. With tokens I can just glance down at them. So those make sense. Adventures Tokens though, don't save me time, just physical table space. Taking an Adventures token probably takes just as long as taking a State. So yeah, States are cool. End of rant 

[Asper]

Hey Asper and other people literally posting fan cards in here, many people on these forums enjoy Preview threads when new expansions come out, so maybe try not to make them suck for the person who brings them to us.

You're right, it has no place here and was uncalled for to post it. I'll edit it out. Either way, I said what I felt I had to say. The offer stands.

[werothegreat]

Hey Asper and other people literally posting fan cards in here, many people on these forums enjoy Preview threads when new expansions come out, so maybe try not to make them suck for the person who brings them to us.

You're right, it has no place here and was uncalled for to post it. I'll edit it out. Either way, I said what I felt I had to say. The offer stands.

Re:offer: maybe Donald wants to make up his own cards rather than outsourcing that? He's Artisan-al like that.

[filovirus]

What is going on in the Envy art?

The only thing I can think of is that he is "green with envy".

[FemurLemur]

Okay, a challenge: Look through the fan card threads here and tell me there's not a single fan card that you feel you'd rather have had in the game than one specific official card. I doubt you'll be able to do that.

And it's not like I wasn't willing to freely give away any and all of my cards and many people here feel the same. Somehow, games like Smallworld have produced fan generated content en masse without any problem, so this legal reservation seems not at all convincing to me, especially if the ideas in question are offered for free.

I'll admit, having your Edicts officially implemented in the game would be really cool. But, in general, if you only get 1 expansion every year-ish (which as far as I know is by no means a guaranteed thing), do you really want it to be composed of stuff you could've already owned if you visited a local print shop?

Smallworld has different publishers who may be willing to take different levels of legal risk. Perhaps Dominion's various publishers aren't. Maybe if Donald X tried really hard then he could convince them, but is that really worth the extra work when he could just focus on making his own cards and not have to consult legal counsel? Also, we aren't qualified to speak to how many problems the Smallworld publishers/designers ran into along the way. If I were organizing a fan expansion for my game, you can bet there'd be an NDA in place, including a clause that says they cannot talk about the NDA.

Maybe you would be willing to sign a very broad agreement, but that doesn't mean it would be so easy to get everyone else to go for it. But all of this is kinda moot anyway, because it's not like he doesn't at least hear about concepts through the grapevine. I'm sure "An Action-Attack that gives out Debt" has either made it back to him via playtesters, or came into his head during development. The more likely assumption isn't that he isn't aware of the concept, it's that he tried it and didn't like it enough to include it over something else or is saving it for later.

[trivialknot]

So looking at the hexes, we have:

4 muckers (Greed, Famine, Bad Omens, Haunting)
3 hand size attacks (Fear, Poverty, Haunting)
3 junkers (Greed, Plague, Locusts)
2 trashers (War, Locusts)
2 payload reducers (Envy, Delusion)
3 VP reducers (Misery, Plague, Locusts)

It occurs to me that the older categorization scheme for attacks needs an update.

[Awaclus]

What's so confusing about the Envy art? It's a fish-like creature inside a bottle being envious of the fish-like creatures that aren't inside a bottle. Exactly what the creature is is not the point, you don't have to focus on that.

[Asper]

Okay, a challenge: Look through the fan card threads here and tell me there's not a single fan card that you feel you'd rather have had in the game than one specific official card. I doubt you'll be able to do that.

And it's not like I wasn't willing to freely give away any and all of my cards and many people here feel the same. Somehow, games like Smallworld have produced fan generated content en masse without any problem, so this legal reservation seems not at all convincing to me, especially if the ideas in question are offered for free.

I'll admit, having your Edicts officially implemented in the game would be really cool. But, in general, if you only get 1 expansion every year-ish (which as far as I know is by no means a guaranteed thing), do you really want it to be composed of stuff you could've already owned if you visited a local print shop?

Smallworld has different publishers who may be willing to take different levels of legal risk. Perhaps Dominion's various publishers aren't. Maybe if Donald X tried really hard then he could convince them, but is that really worth the extra work when he could just focus on making his own cards and not have to consult legal counsel? Also, we aren't qualified to speak to how many problems the Smallworld publishers/designers ran into along the way. If I were organizing a fan expansion for my game, you can bet there'd be an NDA in place, including a clause that says they cannot talk about the NDA.

Maybe you would be willing to sign a very broad agreement, but that doesn't mean it would be so easy to get everyone else to go for it. But all of this is kinda moot anyway, because it's not like he doesn't at least hear about concepts through the grapevine. I'm sure "An Action-Attack that gives out Debt" has either made it back to him via playtesters, or came into his head during development. The more likely assumption isn't that he isn't aware of the concept, it's that he tried it and didn't like it enough to include it over something else or is saving it for later.

I'm okay with all you say here except that I don't know what the debt attack references. But yes, I see why you can't just compare publishers, especially as RGG is basically a single person.

Hey Asper and other people literally posting fan cards in here, many people on these forums enjoy Preview threads when new expansions come out, so maybe try not to make them suck for the person who brings them to us.

You're right, it has no place here and was uncalled for to post it. I'll edit it out. Either way, I said what I felt I had to say. The offer stands.

Re:offer: maybe Donald wants to make up his own cards rather than outsourcing that? He's Artisan-al like that.

I know he does and I'm not saying he should outsource it. I just say that drawing from a big pool of experience provides you with more than drawing from a small pool. I won't say any more about this. If anybody wants to discuss this topic, maybe somewhere else.

[Asper]

What's so confusing about the Envy art? It's a fish-like creature inside a bottle being envious of the fish-like creatures that aren't inside a bottle. Exactly what the creature is is not the point, you don't have to focus on that.

Maybe it's a Kappa. I'd love to have Kappas in Dominion.
Edit: On second thought, while the one in the foreground kind of looks the part, the others don't. No idea.

[Hockey Mask]

What's so confusing about the Envy art? It's a fish-like creature inside a bottle being envious of the fish-like creatures that aren't inside a bottle. Exactly what the creature is is not the point, you don't have to focus on that.

Actually that helped me quite a bit. I couldn't tell it was a bottle. I thought it was maybe a helmet blowing by in the wind.

Envy art < Harem art

[luser]

got my opponent i am sorry worthy moment.
we both open salvager/silver.
opponent on turn 3 buys cursed village, gets war which trashes his salvager before he could play it once.

[trivialknot]

I thought that what DXV has said about fan cards is, creating cards isn't the hard part, creating cards is the fun part.  Testing cards is the hard part.

What's so confusing about the Envy art? It's a fish-like creature inside a bottle being envious of the fish-like creatures that aren't inside a bottle. Exactly what the creature is is not the point, you don't have to focus on that.

After staring at it for a while I see it.  But there are a couple things that are weird.  First, the biggest fish on the left doesn't really look like a fish, it looks like someone's arm is reaching out from the ocean and they painted a little fish face on it.  Also, I don't understand how the fish can possibly get trapped in the bottle, or why the bottle is tied with string.  I wonder if it's supposed to be a plastic bag, which seems anachronistic.  I don't dislike the art, it's just confusing at first glance.

[GendoIkari]

I'd been wondering if there would be an Action-Night card. Queue hundreds of questions about if it uses an action if you play it during your action phase, or if it counts as an action in play if you play it during your Night phase (nothing we know of cares about that), etc., despite the fact that the rules framework of the game makes it so that all these things should be clear to anyone playing Nocturne.

[Awaclus]

First, the biggest fish on the left doesn't really look like a fish, it looks like someone's arm is reaching out from the ocean and they painted a little fish face on it.  Also, I don't understand how the fish can possibly get trapped in the bottle, or why the bottle is tied with string.

The fish can possibly get trapped in the bottle because the art is supposed to convey an emotion, not document an event.

[LastFootnote]

First, the biggest fish on the left doesn't really look like a fish, it looks like someone's arm is reaching out from the ocean and they painted a little fish face on it.  Also, I don't understand how the fish can possibly get trapped in the bottle, or why the bottle is tied with string.

The fish can possibly get trapped in the bottle because the art is supposed to convey an emotion, not document an event.

Yeah, Donald asked for surreal art for the Hexes. Some ended up more surreal than others. I love the Bad Omens art, though.

And thanks for describing the Envy art, Awaclus. I have to admit I didn't see the bottle myself. I mean I saw the top, but assumed it was some weird thing floating in the air, having not seen the glass.

I think it would be conveyed even better if the fish-man were working a tedious office job while inside the bottle. 

[allanfieldhouse]

Man, Cursed Village looks awesome. It seems like we've been getting a lot of "half an engine in a box" cards recently. Lost City, City Quarter, and Cursed Village are all cards that can single-handedly give you all your draw and actions. Interestingly, they all have on-buy penalties (if you consider CQ's high debt cost a penalty).

[FemurLemur]

Okay, a challenge: Look through the fan card threads here and tell me there's not a single fan card that you feel you'd rather have had in the game than one specific official card. I doubt you'll be able to do that.

And it's not like I wasn't willing to freely give away any and all of my cards and many people here feel the same. Somehow, games like Smallworld have produced fan generated content en masse without any problem, so this legal reservation seems not at all convincing to me, especially if the ideas in question are offered for free.

I'll admit, having your Edicts officially implemented in the game would be really cool. But, in general, if you only get 1 expansion every year-ish (which as far as I know is by no means a guaranteed thing), do you really want it to be composed of stuff you could've already owned if you visited a local print shop?

Smallworld has different publishers who may be willing to take different levels of legal risk. Perhaps Dominion's various publishers aren't. Maybe if Donald X tried really hard then he could convince them, but is that really worth the extra work when he could just focus on making his own cards and not have to consult legal counsel? Also, we aren't qualified to speak to how many problems the Smallworld publishers/designers ran into along the way. If I were organizing a fan expansion for my game, you can bet there'd be an NDA in place, including a clause that says they cannot talk about the NDA.

Maybe you would be willing to sign a very broad agreement, but that doesn't mean it would be so easy to get everyone else to go for it. But all of this is kinda moot anyway, because it's not like he doesn't at least hear about concepts through the grapevine. I'm sure "An Action-Attack that gives out Debt" has either made it back to him via playtesters, or came into his head during development. The more likely assumption isn't that he isn't aware of the concept, it's that he tried it and didn't like it enough to include it over something else or is saving it for later.

I'm okay with all you say here except that I don't know what the debt attack references. But yes, I see why you can't just compare publishers, especially as RGG is basically a single person.

Sorry, the debt attack isn't referencing anything you've said here, it's just an example of a concept that I've seen made into a fan card but not an official one. Basically what I'm saying there is: for almost any fan card concept, I'm sure Donald X has thought of it or has had it proposed to him. So he doesn't really need to look at fan cards for ideas.

But yeah, I'll drop it now so as not to derail things too far 

[Kirian]

Skulk, because it comes with a Gold, is just killer--you often will want to buy it just for the $4 Gold, Hexes are a bonus.

It isn't a $4 Gold. It also gives you a terminal stop card that doesn't give you any money.

People open Sea Hag and it (1) doesn't even offer a +Buy and (2) stops working after 10 total plays.  If you weren't planning on many other stop cards, Skulk is significantly better.

[FemurLemur]

I think it would be conveyed even better if the fish-man were working a tedious office job while inside the bottle. 

Tedious office jobs aren't always horrible. Sometimes while trapped in your bottle you can check out Dominion Expansion Previews and post to the forums.

[GendoIkari]

Can we stop and appreciate the mind-blowingness of a card that looks like something you actually would want, but also comes with a Gold?

[trivialknot]

As I was with boons, I'm initially skeptical of hexes as a concept.  They introduce a big luck factor, and a fairly obvious one.  There are a lot of non-obvious luck factors in dominion, particularly shuffle skips (which newbies are mostly unaware of) and turn spikiness, but whenever you draw a hex, the luck is staring you in the face.

I thought DXV put stock into the Richard Garfield philosophy of luck vs skill.  Richard Garfield seems to think it is best that a game starts out with a greater luck factor, and that the luck factor should decrease over time as the fanbase becomes more serious and competitive.

I wonder if there was a deliberate decision to introduce more luck, or if hexes just seemed like an idea worth doing regardless of what they did to the luck factor.  Or maybe it turns out that hexes don't introduce all that much luck, and it only appears that way because the luck is more obvious than it is for other mechanics.

[LastFootnote]

People open Sea Hag and it (1) doesn't even offer a +Buy and (2) stops working after 10 total plays.  If you weren't planning on many other stop cards, Skulk is significantly better.

I think it's fair to note that Sea Hag's attack is probably about twice as harsh as getting a Hex. It's like, uh, Plague and Haunting rolled into one. And it's an attack you want to do super early, and it's reliable at doing it.

But yes, possibly Skulk is the stronger card overall. (I have no idea.)

[allanfieldhouse]

I think it's fair to note that Sea Hag's attack is probably about twice as harsh as getting a Hex.
...
But yes, possibly Skulk is the stronger card overall. (I have no idea.)

Oh man, tell that to 2012-2014 dominion players and watch them freak out. A $4 attack that might be stronger than Sea Hag?!?

Edit: In before Awaclus quotes me -- I'm not talking about a group of two thousand dominion players...

[dghunter79]

What's so confusing about the Envy art? It's a fish-like creature inside a bottle being envious of the fish-like creatures that aren't inside a bottle. Exactly what the creature is is not the point, you don't have to focus on that.

NO WAY.  The other fish envy the bottle.

[Witherweaver]

What's so confusing about the Envy art? It's a fish-like creature inside a bottle being envious of the fish-like creatures that aren't inside a bottle. Exactly what the creature is is not the point, you don't have to focus on that.

NO WAY.  The other fish envy the bottle.

Plot twist: they both envy the other.

[Gherald]

People open Sea Hag and it (1) doesn't even offer a +Buy and (2) stops working after 10 total plays.  If you weren't planning on many other stop cards, Skulk is significantly better.

I think it's fair to note that Sea Hag's attack is probably about twice as harsh as getting a Hex. It's like, uh, Plague and Haunting rolled into one. And it's an attack you want to do super early, and it's reliable at doing it.

But yes, possibly Skulk is the stronger card overall. (I have no idea.)

For me, Marauder is the comparison that came to mind..It's 1 cycle faster, and it likes TfB more (since you get to keep or TfB the gold), and of course the buy is always nice to have around.

I don't quite know how to compare the effect of being ruined to being hexed. Depends on how much trashing there is, of course -- with no trashing, junk really hurts. With average trashing maybe they're about the same overall, but hexes are really random so I'm no good at estimating their effects yet.

[NZacharias]

I like the idea behind all the cards. But hex's seem extremly controlling and can force really slog decks if there are more than one hex cards. However the only reason that there is more than one hex card is because the game is trying to put as many nocturne cards in there as possible. Only time will tell how controlling and random these will be in actual games. Most of them are weak attacks anyways. Also boons are only reliable with druid, otherwise you're playing off of luck, which is despised in a higher level environment.

[SuperHans]

I like the idea behind all the cards. But hex's seem extremly controlling and can force really slog decks if there are more than one hex cards. However the only reason that there is more than one hex card is because the game is trying to put as many nocturne cards in there as possible. Only time will tell how controlling and random these will be in actual games. Most of them are weak attacks anyways. Also boons are only reliable with druid, otherwise you're playing off of luck, which is despised in a higher level environment.

As someone who doesn't have dominion online, I am interested to hear from those that do what their experience has been so far with the hexes. How swingy are they? Are they still fun to play with despite the added luck involved?

[Awaclus]

I like the idea behind all the cards. But hex's seem extremly controlling and can force really slog decks if there are more than one hex cards. However the only reason that there is more than one hex card is because the game is trying to put as many nocturne cards in there as possible. Only time will tell how controlling and random these will be in actual games. Most of them are weak attacks anyways. Also boons are only reliable with druid, otherwise you're playing off of luck, which is despised in a higher level environment.

As someone who doesn't have dominion online, I am interested to hear from those that do what their experience has been so far with the hexes. How swingy are they? Are they still fun to play with despite the added luck involved?

You don't need to "have" Dominion Online, just go on the website and play.

[Jeebus]

I'm realizing that the -$1 and -1 Card tokens from Adventurers are States under a different name. It's certainly more practical to have their effects printed on the items in front of you, rather than on the cards that dispense them.

This makes me think about Possession. Given that there's no new Possession errata, the Possessor doesn't receive Boons or Hexes or take States that the Possessed would.

[Jeebus]

Yeah, the Hexes seem maybe even more swingy than the Boons. War and Locusts, while being swingy themselves, could be brutal. But Envious and Deluded can often effectively strip you of a turn, which is devastating. The other 8 are not that bad.

[markusin]

Can we stop and appreciate the mind-blowingness of a card that looks like something you actually would want, but also comes with a Gold?

It's kinda like Marauder, except you get the Gold sooner and you can spend the Gold without having to keep playing Skulk. And it gives +Buy.

Or it's an admission that Gold is overcosted at $6.

[SuperHans]

I like the idea behind all the cards. But hex's seem extremly controlling and can force really slog decks if there are more than one hex cards. However the only reason that there is more than one hex card is because the game is trying to put as many nocturne cards in there as possible. Only time will tell how controlling and random these will be in actual games. Most of them are weak attacks anyways. Also boons are only reliable with druid, otherwise you're playing off of luck, which is despised in a higher level environment.

As someone who doesn't have dominion online, I am interested to hear from those that do what their experience has been so far with the hexes. How swingy are they? Are they still fun to play with despite the added luck involved?

You don't need to "have" Dominion Online, just go on the website and play.

TIL.

[markusin]

You know, there is all this talk of Boons being weakish and/or random, but I am quite fond of Idol. I guess because Idol can give out curses, making the game lean towards a slog anyway, and Idol itself is a treasure that cannot be drawn dead.

Cursed Village is situationally very strong as an effect, but Lost City is like always strong.

[The_Tricksta]

Envy truly has a masterpiece as its artwork, as we seem to have gathered here, pondering about what we're seeing here.

I'm more wondering how the fish got in the bottle.

Did someone bother to bottle the fish up and release it into the ocean? Did a sadistic fish mother decide to put one of her eggs into a bottle and then this guy grew up in there somehow?

Are these anthropomorphic fish sentient? Do they have a civilization that could rival our own? Are we going to see more of this little guy's story?

There are so many things this picture makes me reflect upon. But in the end this fish is going to realize that they're going to be forever stuck within the confines of their prison unable to live the life of their brethren.

[King Leon]

So, Locusts can be very brutal, but at least they trash Curses, Hovels and Poor Houses. Trashing Overgrown Estate or Fortress is very funny, so is remodeling a Necropolis to a Peddler. Sometimes even downgrading Province to a Duchy may be useful, if that gives you one dead card less in you next hand.

[tim17]

I think the envy art would make more sense if the envious fish was watching the other fish play dominion nocturne.

[markusin]

I think the envy art would make more sense if the envious fish was watching the other fish play playtest dominion nocturne.

FTFY

[Donald X.]

This is not about Werewolf. It's about the fact that fan cards have become incredibly good here on fds (not all, obviously). People exchange ideas with each other, inspire each other, learn the pitfalls others already fell into. I know for a fact that my cards, including my personal favs like Road, Werewolf, Necromancer and Sunken City, would suck a lot more if I didn't have the whole fan card sub forum to give me feedback and inspire me. By refusing to even so much as look at fan card threads, Donald X strips himself of the synergy effect we fan card designers enjoy.

It does not seem possible that you spend as much time on your cards as I spend on mine, and lots of people comment on my cards. Whatever their flaws, they are not lacking in input of time or feedback.

Years ago, I made a Netrunner expansion. A large one, a standalone. I tried to fix the problems I felt Netrunner had - mainly too many vanilla cards, but also how tracing and viruses worked. And I made new mechanics. I polished it up, made some decks, had some fun. Then one day FFG decided to revive Netrunner. And they had made a game of mine, Infiltration, and were trying to get me to make Star Wars Dominion. And, this is relevant though you know it, I'm the guy who made Dominion. I'm that guy. I have like proven experience designing cards, and also I was someone they wanted to get on the good side of.

I told them, hey I made a bunch of Netrunner cards. They were not interested in seeing them. They were making their own cards.

Welcome to the club! I do not want to see your fan cards. I'm making my own cards.

[Donald X.]

What is going on in the Envy art?

Asking the important questions. Seriously, I don't understand what I'm seeing.

I think that's fish in a bottle, envious of the other fish?

The artists were told they could make the Hexes surreal, though only a few did. And I remembered how great the art on Ill-Gotten Gains was, and we asked Jason Slavin, who hadn't worked for us in some years, to do some pieces. And I mean they're great; Envy is a little confusing but it's a cool image. Bad Omens is him too.

[Donald X.]

Yup! Also Embargo Tokens. I just don't like the components. The actual mechanics are really fun. We don't even use the playmats irl. I don't want to have to dig through my boxes/storage solution for a piece of cardboard every time one specific card comes out on the table. I mean, Donald X made the right call from a design perspective on the playmats for user friendliness reasons- no doubt about it. They just aren't for me. And I wish the Adventures tokens had a more card-centric way of doing things. But that's just because I'm a card junky. Every non-card thing included gets in the way of my irrational need to own many, many different pretty cards.

The reason I'm ok with the 3 main metal tokens is because they have an additive quality to them that makes them more convenient than cards. For instance, if you're gonna design a mechanic around VP's that don't clog your deck, you have three options as far as I can tell: have players write down the running tally on a piece of paper (Let's call this the Milton Bradley method- which is the worst possible method), have a ton of extra cards that say "+1VP" on them that people set aside when gained, or have them be tokens. With cards, I have to pick up the stack and flip through to count how many I have. With tokens I can just glance down at them. So those make sense. Adventures Tokens though, don't save me time, just physical table space. Taking an Adventures token probably takes just as long as taking a State. So yeah, States are cool. End of rant 

I am sympathetic to this viewpoint. I like Adventures a lot, but do think it's a bummer that you have to get out a thing of chits to play with it. I do not mind the coins and VP, though I wouldn't have made Seaside without having more uses for the tokens in it (the prototype had not had tokens - Embargo itself went on the pile, treasures went on the mat for Pirate Ship).

I made it a point to not use tokens in Nocturne, since the last two sets had them. It's a thing though that they open up design space for simple cards; if you want to make more simple cards, you really want them.

[Awaclus]

The artists were told they could make the Hexes surreal, though only a few did. And I remembered how great the art on Ill-Gotten Gains was, and we asked Jason Slavin, who hadn't worked for us in some years, to do some pieces. And I mean they're great; Envy is a little confusing but it's a cool image. Bad Omens is him too.

I found his portfolio on Google and he has some super kickass art there.

[Donald X.]

Maybe you would be willing to sign a very broad agreement, but that doesn't mean it would be so easy to get everyone else to go for it. But all of this is kinda moot anyway, because it's not like he doesn't at least hear about concepts through the grapevine. I'm sure "An Action-Attack that gives out Debt" has either made it back to him via playtesters, or came into his head during development. The more likely assumption isn't that he isn't aware of the concept, it's that he tried it and didn't like it enough to include it over something else or is saving it for later.

I try not to hear about things through the grapevine!

It was obvious that you could try to give out debt with an attack. You want it to be like Swamp Hag, because otherwise, you could lock players out, and if you tone it down enough that you aren't doing that, it looks like Bridge Troll giving out the -$1 token, which we already have; the big difference is it's cumulative with Bridge Troll, which isn't great. And well I did do Tax. It's kind of a dud though I enjoy the set-up, the set-up is what kept it alive.

[JThorne]

...and were trying to get me to make Star Wars Dominion.

Special kudos for not doing that.

[pacatak]

Actually, i would have loved star wars dominion

[Witherweaver]

Actually, i would have loved star wars dominion

Good news!

[Donald X.]

I thought that what DXV has said about fan cards is, creating cards isn't the hard part, creating cards is the fun part.  Testing cards is the hard part.

I don't want to stress "hard" too much, but yes, making cards is especially fun, and not what most of the job is; you make them, and then you play them, which is good times even sometimes when they're broken, and then you tweak them repeatedly and argue over wordings and so on, a process that varies with the cards but time-wise utterly dwarfs the making-stuff-up part. The bad parts of the work are far removed from the good parts; things like proofreading everything repeatedly and still missing that the moon isn't on the States and Greed has the wrong artist credit (it's actually Claus Stephan), or telling fans that you don't want to see their cards.

[Donald X.]

Skulk, because it comes with a Gold, is just killer--you often will want to buy it just for the $4 Gold, Hexes are a bonus.

It isn't a $4 Gold. It also gives you a terminal stop card that doesn't give you any money.

People open Sea Hag and it (1) doesn't even offer a +Buy and (2) stops working after 10 total plays.  If you weren't planning on many other stop cards, Skulk is significantly better.

The way I look at Skulk, sans interactions which make a big difference, is: one of the hexes is Poverty, discard down to 3 cards in hand. If Skulk always did that, then a hand with Skulk plus Gold is like a hand with Militia plus Copper, with +1 Buy. If Militia gave +1 Buy and came with a Copper, would it look too strong at $4?

[Donald X.]

I wonder if there was a deliberate decision to introduce more luck, or if hexes just seemed like an idea worth doing regardless of what they did to the luck factor.  Or maybe it turns out that hexes don't introduce all that much luck, and it only appears that way because the luck is more obvious than it is for other mechanics.

I wasn't trying to introduce more luck, but I was trying to introduce more fun. The set is trying extra to appeal to players who are in it for good times.

I have been worried about boons/hexes every step of the way; would people actually like "now do one of 12 random things." The big thing always was, that everyone always liked them.

I am not sure that hexes are the most luck-based attacks. The most popular attack is I think Jester; sometimes it Curses them, sometimes it misses, sometimes it gains you a Lab.

[Ankenaut]

In moments like this, I really wish Donald would look at fan card threads once in a while.

Do not imagine that Donald X. didn't think of having a Silver interaction in Werewolf.

This is not about Werewolf. It's about the fact that fan cards have become incredibly good here on fds (not all, obviously). People exchange ideas with each other, inspire each other, learn the pitfalls others already fell into. I know for a fact that my cards, including my personal favs like Road, Werewolf, Necromancer and Sunken City, would suck a lot more if I didn't have the whole fan card sub forum to give me feedback and inspire me. By refusing to even so much as look at fan card threads, Donald X strips himself of the synergy effect we fan card designers enjoy.

Most of the fun with fan cards comes in thinking them up and talking about them. My play group will humor me and play with mine sometimes, but they have zero interest in other people's fan cards. If Donald ever stopped working on Dominion, I'd be all for someone else taking over and continuing to roll out content if we were pretty sure it was of similar pace and quality. If Dominion were to churn out cards at MtG pace or we were just getting a bunch of variants of existing mechanics, I'd probably stop buying them.

[blaisepascal]

Yup! Also Embargo Tokens. I just don't like the components. The actual mechanics are really fun. We don't even use the playmats irl. I don't want to have to dig through my boxes/storage solution for a piece of cardboard every time one specific card comes out on the table. I mean, Donald X made the right call from a design perspective on the playmats for user friendliness reasons- no doubt about it. They just aren't for me. And I wish the Adventures tokens had a more card-centric way of doing things. But that's just because I'm a card junky. Every non-card thing included gets in the way of my irrational need to own many, many different pretty cards.

The reason I'm ok with the 3 main metal tokens is because they have an additive quality to them that makes them more convenient than cards. For instance, if you're gonna design a mechanic around VP's that don't clog your deck, you have three options as far as I can tell: have players write down the running tally on a piece of paper (Let's call this the Milton Bradley method- which is the worst possible method), have a ton of extra cards that say "+1VP" on them that people set aside when gained, or have them be tokens. With cards, I have to pick up the stack and flip through to count how many I have. With tokens I can just glance down at them. So those make sense. Adventures Tokens though, don't save me time, just physical table space. Taking an Adventures token probably takes just as long as taking a State. So yeah, States are cool. End of rant 

I am sympathetic to this viewpoint. I like Adventures a lot, but do think it's a bummer that you have to get out a thing of chits to play with it. I do not mind the coins and VP, though I wouldn't have made Seaside without having more uses for the tokens in it (the prototype had not had tokens - Embargo itself went on the pile, treasures went on the mat for Pirate Ship).

I made it a point to not use tokens in Nocturne, since the last two sets had them. It's a thing though that they open up design space for simple cards; if you want to make more simple cards, you really want them.

I have two sets of 6 token storage bins: one set for all the metal tokens (1VP,2VP,5VP,Debt,Coin,Embargo), one set for the Adventures cardboard tokens (divided by color). The nice thing about the metal tokens is that they are generally useful among multiple sets, and multiple cards -- Embargo being the exception. The Adventures tokens are only useful with Adventures, and even then usually only a couple of tokens per player. Empires is the last expansion, and it introduced Debt; I can see future expansions having more debt cards. It's harder to see a reuse of the Adventures tokens. Unfortunately, the token bins are the hardest thing to integrate into my Dominion storage solution.

I'm sure the nice metal tokens are expensive, and that is a factor in play when deciding to make an expansion with them. I wouldn't mind seeing an expansion with more cards which use the metal tokens. I'm just not sure if the Adventures tokens are worth it.

[Eran of Arcadia]

My play group will humor me and play with mine sometimes

But that's in the base set . . .

[Ankenaut]

Yup! Also Embargo Tokens. I just don't like the components. The actual mechanics are really fun. We don't even use the playmats irl. I don't want to have to dig through my boxes/storage solution for a piece of cardboard every time one specific card comes out on the table. I mean, Donald X made the right call from a design perspective on the playmats for user friendliness reasons- no doubt about it. They just aren't for me. And I wish the Adventures tokens had a more card-centric way of doing things. But that's just because I'm a card junky. Every non-card thing included gets in the way of my irrational need to own many, many different pretty cards.

The reason I'm ok with the 3 main metal tokens is because they have an additive quality to them that makes them more convenient than cards. For instance, if you're gonna design a mechanic around VP's that don't clog your deck, you have three options as far as I can tell: have players write down the running tally on a piece of paper (Let's call this the Milton Bradley method- which is the worst possible method), have a ton of extra cards that say "+1VP" on them that people set aside when gained, or have them be tokens. With cards, I have to pick up the stack and flip through to count how many I have. With tokens I can just glance down at them. So those make sense. Adventures Tokens though, don't save me time, just physical table space. Taking an Adventures token probably takes just as long as taking a State. So yeah, States are cool. End of rant 

I am sympathetic to this viewpoint. I like Adventures a lot, but do think it's a bummer that you have to get out a thing of chits to play with it. I do not mind the coins and VP, though I wouldn't have made Seaside without having more uses for the tokens in it (the prototype had not had tokens - Embargo itself went on the pile, treasures went on the mat for Pirate Ship).

I made it a point to not use tokens in Nocturne, since the last two sets had them. It's a thing though that they open up design space for simple cards; if you want to make more simple cards, you really want them.

I have two sets of 6 token storage bins: one set for all the metal tokens (1VP,2VP,5VP,Debt,Coin,Embargo), one set for the Adventures cardboard tokens (divided by color). The nice thing about the metal tokens is that they are generally useful among multiple sets, and multiple cards -- Embargo being the exception. The Adventures tokens are only useful with Adventures, and even then usually only a couple of tokens per player. Empires is the last expansion, and it introduced Debt; I can see future expansions having more debt cards. It's harder to see a reuse of the Adventures tokens. Unfortunately, the token bins are the hardest thing to integrate into my Dominion storage solution.

I'm sure the nice metal tokens are expensive, and that is a factor in play when deciding to make an expansion with them. I wouldn't mind seeing an expansion with more cards which use the metal tokens. I'm just not sure if the Adventures tokens are worth it.

I like the Adventures tokens, but it sounds like we need to someone to design some token-replacements out of those transparent playing cards. You could just drop them on the pile and still see the card underneath, but they'd only take up the space of a card and you could store them in a nice neat little stack.

[Jacob marley]

With the caveat that I have only played a very few games with Hexes, I have to say that they are the first mechanic introduced in Nocturne that I'm not liking at first glance.  The few games I have played seem extra swingy and sloggy (in an unfun manner).  In one, with Werewolf and Skulk, we each got 2 Skulks, and my opponent was able to hit 5/8 at will but I couldn't get above 4 to save my life, so while I was getting totally destroyed by hexes, he was skating to an easy blowout.  This out of nearly identical openings.

I know that more time is needed, but for now, I'm just not thrilled about the hexes.

[blaisepascal]

I like the Adventures tokens, but it sounds like we need to someone to design some token-replacements out of those transparent playing cards. You could just drop them on the pile and still see the card underneath, but they'd only take up the space of a card and you could store them in a nice neat little stack.

Oooh, I like that idea. You'd have to arrange it so that none of the appropriate icons overlapped when stacked. Perhaps a row of icons per color, and one icon type per column... Let me think on it some.

[Asper]

This is not about Werewolf. It's about the fact that fan cards have become incredibly good here on fds (not all, obviously). People exchange ideas with each other, inspire each other, learn the pitfalls others already fell into. I know for a fact that my cards, including my personal favs like Road, Werewolf, Necromancer and Sunken City, would suck a lot more if I didn't have the whole fan card sub forum to give me feedback and inspire me. By refusing to even so much as look at fan card threads, Donald X strips himself of the synergy effect we fan card designers enjoy.

It does not seem possible that you spend as much time on your cards as I spend on mine, and lots of people comment on my cards. Whatever their flaws, they are not lacking in input of time or feedback.

Years ago, I made a Netrunner expansion. A large one, a standalone. I tried to fix the problems I felt Netrunner had - mainly too many vanilla cards, but also how tracing and viruses worked. And I made new mechanics. I polished it up, made some decks, had some fun. Then one day FFG decided to revive Netrunner. And they had made a game of mine, Infiltration, and were trying to get me to make Star Wars Dominion. And, this is relevant though you know it, I'm the guy who made Dominion. I'm that guy. I have like proven experience designing cards, and also I was someone they wanted to get on the good side of.

I told them, hey I made a bunch of Netrunner cards. They were not interested in seeing them. They were making their own cards.

Welcome to the club! I do not want to see your fan cards. I'm making my own cards.

I assumed you would say this and to be honest, I mostly brought it up because I would have regretted not doing so. The rest is your decision and I admit I understand your sentiment. It's your game and your cards, just like other people (including me) have their things that they want to do themselves. Thanks for sharing the Netrunner story. It puts things into perspective. That concludes this topic for me. Thanks for answering the way you did.

[Witherweaver]

I like the Adventures tokens, but it sounds like we need to someone to design some token-replacements out of those transparent playing cards. You could just drop them on the pile and still see the card underneath, but they'd only take up the space of a card and you could store them in a nice neat little stack.

Oooh, I like that idea. You'd have to arrange it so that none of the appropriate icons overlapped when stacked. Perhaps a row of icons per color, and one icon type per column... Let me think on it some.

I think it would be better to just have a colored card with text/icon that can go under the pile.  It can be the same width (or maybe slightly wider) but only has to be about half the height.  Maybe you might find it annoying to keep moving under piles, but I don't think it would be too bad.  Multiple 'tokens' can just stagger so all can be seen.

[Asper]

After further examination, the thing in the bottle has arms. It sits there grumpily, having its arms crossed. I first thought it was its chin, but it's not. So yeah, definitely an amphibian.

[SuperHans]

After further examination, the thing in the bottle has arms. It sits there grumpily, having its arms crossed. I first thought it was its chin, but it's not. So yeah, definitely an amphibian.

Aha. I see it now. I actually like it, but it is a bit strange.

[4est]

A lot of people in this thread have noted the random/swingy nature of the Hexes, and that they seem "more bad" than the Boons are good.  I agree that the randomness can make them a bit annoying to defend against or plan around, however, I do have to commend Donald X. on designing the Doom cards (that we've seen so far) carefully so that excessive Hexing is usually tricky to pull off:

With two of the Doom cards, players themselves control when or if they get Hexed (Cursed Village and Leprechaun).  Skulk Hexes other players but it’s a terminal stop card that gains another stop card, so playing several in succession is very difficult.  It is possible for Werewolf to hand out Hexes quite rapidly, but it’s dual nature frequently tempts players to use it as a Smithy instead, especially if it's the only draw on the board.  Unlike something like Cultist which can very quickly ruin other players’ decks, I don’t think we’ve seen any overly oppressive Doom cards.

While there certainly is potential of unfortunately swingy moments with Hexes, I don’t think any of them will be overbearing.  I’ve been impressed with how intuitive the Nocturne mechanics introduced so far are, and I think Hexes will actually be kind of fun and interesting most of the time—more fun than Ruins anyway. 

P.S. I just played a game where my opponent bought a Cursed Village after drawing their deck, only to have Locusts immediately trash it.  Obviously, that doesn’t happen every time, but hey that sure did give us a laugh.   

[Tozar]

I Princed a Skulk today.  It was pretty sweet to hit with that Hex every turn.

[SCSN]

I am not sure that hexes are the most luck-based attacks.

There once was a card in Intrigue
Whose presence ignited a krieg
Where a card bought to play
Would be swindled away
And replaced by a useless misbreed.

[Jeebus]

First game with Hexing (Skulk).

I drew Locusts and hit my opponent's Royal Blacksmith. There was no replacement. The debt was not even paid off yet. That is way swingier than Swindler.

Fortunately it's only one of the 12 Hexes. Wait a minute... that makes Hexing more swingy, not less. 

[LastFootnote]

First game with Hexing (Skulk).

I drew Locusts and hit my opponent's Royal Blacksmith. There was no replacement. The debt was not even paid off yet. That is way swingier than Swindler.

Fortunately it's only one of the 12 Hexes. Wait a minute... that makes Hexing more swingy, not less. 

If only there had been a Ruins they could have gained!

[ThetaSigma12]

Locusts is definitely the biggest offender for swingness. It's realllly bad. I appreciate Donald trying to make "trash the top card of your deck" work, but this is kinda a proof that it really doesn't.

[Jacob marley]

Just played an BV/Werewolf deck.  My opponent ragequit.  I continued against the Rat, got 8 werewolves and was routinely hitting him with 5 hexes per turn.  (I also played pathfinder on BV, so was overdrawing even with less than half my werewolves as action.)

[Jacob marley]

Locusts is definitely the biggest offender for swingness. It's realllly bad. I appreciate Donald trying to make "trash the top card of your deck" work, but this is kinda a proof that it really doesn't.

Yeah, I don't get locust.  After Donald admits that Sab was bad and gets rid of it, he goes and brings it back in a form that you don't even have to buy in order to use.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Locusts is definitely the biggest offender for swingness. It's realllly bad. I appreciate Donald trying to make "trash the top card of your deck" work, but this is kinda a proof that it really doesn't.

Yeah, I don't get locust.  After Donald admits that Sab was bad and gets rid of it, he goes and brings it back in a form that you don't even have to buy in order to use.

I thought the main problem with Saboteur was that it sucked the most for the person who bought it.

[Jacob marley]

It also sucked because it was so swingy, hitting one persons Provence and another persons copper.

[ThetaSigma12]

It also sucked because it was so swingy, hitting one persons Provence and another persons copper.

...how were you guys playing Saboteur?

[hypercube]

I played a few games with Cursed Village and Skulk today where I was able to consistently play 3-4 Skulks per turn. I might rather have had 4 Monuments but unlike all the other $4 attacks it continues to hurt with repeated plays and doesn't stop when the curses run out.

Overall I don't know if I'm going to come around to the swinginess of the Hexes, especially since it seems that you could get a major benefit by tracking the deck for Leprechaun and Cursed Village. I have a hard enough time tracking my own deck, y'know?

[Jack Rudd]

Locusts is definitely the biggest offender for swingness. It's realllly bad. I appreciate Donald trying to make "trash the top card of your deck" work, but this is kinda a proof that it really doesn't.

Yeah, I don't get locust.  After Donald admits that Sab was bad and gets rid of it, he goes and brings it back in a form that you don't even have to buy in order to use.

I thought the main problem with Saboteur was that it sucked the most for the person who bought it.

Saboteur was terribroken. When it was good, it was very very good, and when it was bad, it was horrid.

[Donald X.]

Saboteur had multiple problems, only one of which was some people not liking Knight-family attacks. Some people do and still I go light on them.

[Asper]

Locusts is definitely the biggest offender for swingness. It's realllly bad. I appreciate Donald trying to make "trash the top card of your deck" work, but this is kinda a proof that it really doesn't.

Yeah, I don't get locust.  After Donald admits that Sab was bad and gets rid of it, he goes and brings it back in a form that you don't even have to buy in order to use.

I thought the main problem with Saboteur was that it sucked the most for the person who bought it.

Saboteur was terribroken. When it was good, it was very very good, and when it was bad, it was horrid.

It always was good at sabotaging SOMEONE's deck, though.

[Hockey Mask]

Let's bow our heads in memory of Saboteur.

[crj]

Yeah, Donald asked for surreal art for the Hexes. Some ended up more surreal than others.

We've had the Puerto Rico and Carcassonne homages in Dominion already; maybe it was Dixit's turn?

[Cave-o-sapien]

Yeah, Donald asked for surreal art for the Hexes. Some ended up more surreal than others.

We've had the Puerto Rico and Carcassonne homages in Dominion already; maybe it was Dixit's turn?

That's perfect. It is totally a Dixit card.

[Asper]

It also sucked because it was so swingy, hitting one persons Provence and another persons copper.

...how were you guys playing Saboteur?

They weren't...?

[Eran of Arcadia]

Yeah, Donald asked for surreal art for the Hexes. Some ended up more surreal than others.

We've had the Puerto Rico and Carcassonne homages in Dominion already; maybe it was Dixit's turn?

That's perfect. It is totally a Dixit card.

Glad I'm not the only one who thought that.

[Chappy7]

The artwork on Haunting is incredible.  Super creepy.

[SuperHans]

Played a game with Leprechaun, Werewolf, and Pooka with no other trashers. My first hex trashed his cursed gold after he already used it on his opening. That was rough.

Pooka is fantastic. Without any other trashers, the cursed gold becomes so tempting to use each time it comes into the hand and so frustrating that I couldn't trash it with Pooka. Cool relationship between the cards.

Leprechaun seemed difficult to activate. I ended up avoiding him altogether because by the time I was finally able to lay seven down consistently the game was over. This seems like it will be fairly situational. Hard to say at this point whether hexing yourself is worth the gold. Looking forward to the analytics on that one.

Werewolf was great. I love this card. It led to some tough choices between attacking my opponent and drawing more cards. Paired with village, the smithy effect seemed like the better option than attacking my opponent.

[Kirian]

Skulk, because it comes with a Gold, is just killer--you often will want to buy it just for the $4 Gold, Hexes are a bonus.

It isn't a $4 Gold. It also gives you a terminal stop card that doesn't give you any money.

People open Sea Hag and it (1) doesn't even offer a +Buy and (2) stops working after 10 total plays.  If you weren't planning on many other stop cards, Skulk is significantly better.

The way I look at Skulk, sans interactions which make a big difference, is: one of the hexes is Poverty, discard down to 3 cards in hand. If Skulk always did that, then a hand with Skulk plus Gold is like a hand with Militia plus Copper, with +1 Buy. If Militia gave +1 Buy and came with a Copper, would it look too strong at $4?

While I take your point, I think looking at Skulk sans interactions misses a lot in terms of deciding power.  Skulk, alone, once per shuffle, obviously isn't that great.  Getting it once per turn is OK.  But when you're able to play multiple Skulks in one turn, the attacks often stack.  KC-Militia attacks you once; KC-Sea Hag hits you with three Curses... unless the Curses run out.  KC-Skulk attacks you three times, in varying ways that can stack.

Haunting, Greed, and Envy: You now have a Copper and a topdeck for your next turn, and I hope you topdecked that Gold before you knew it would become a Copper.

Bad Omens, Poverty, and Delusion: Your deck has two Coppers on top, you have three cards in hand, and you can't buy Action cards.

But hey, I could be wrong!  We all thought Jack would be terrible and it's a top $4.  Maybe in games that aren't Nocturne-heavy, Skulk will suck.

[werothegreat]

The artwork on Haunting is incredible.  Super creepy.

A pity we didn't get something similar for Ghost, instead of glow-y Cher.

[Chappy7]

The artwork on Haunting is incredible.  Super creepy.

A pity we didn't get something similar for Ghost, instead of glow-y Cher.

Yeah, I guess she is more of the friendly ghost type.  Not one you call the ghostbusters for.

On that note, I actually think lots of the boons and hexes look really nice.  Well done artists

[Gherald]

Maybe in games that aren't Nocturne-heavy, Skulk will suck.

That's interesting since my first hypothesis would be that it's more relevant in games where there are few other Nocturne cards. But who knows.

--
Someone asked me in a game today "What's your opinion on boons and hexes?" and I said, "Just that keeping track of the decks is annoying work"

They responded "Exactly. I think it's the worst thing to happen to Dominion ever. Roll a die, see what you get!"

That has a fair amount of truth to it. Eventually we'll be better at keeping track of them and knowing what's left, but do we want to be? Is it fun?

It's fun in a novel, "Yay, new expansion!" way. It's even fun in a "Okay we've played a lot of regular Dominion today, let's spice things up with some random boons and hexes!" sort of way.

But is it something we want to play all the time? Repeated games of? Pseudo-competitively? I think not. What we've seen of Nocturne so far will probably make it one of the least-liked expansions, out of all of them. It's not bad, it's okay -- it's just not rising to any level of greatness. I'd rather play with Alchemy than Nocturne, mmk?

Of course that's faint criticism, we're talking about the 11th expansion to an already amazingly replayable game. But for a bottom line: Would I buy Nocturne? From what I see here so far..no. I'd rather use that same money to buy the base game and gift it to a random acquaintance, than have Nocturne be a thing.

[Accatitippi]

Yesterday I played a goons-werewolf game.
At some point I got up to speed and could attack with two ww every turn.
My first three double-ww turns:
Goons-poverty-haunting (duh)
Goons-bad omens-famine (chancellor is back, in attack form)
Goons-envy-delusion (opponent has no silver nor gold)

Remind me how hexes are supposed to hurt my opponent?

[Asper]

I'd rather play with Alchemy than Nocturne, mmk?

Dude, I'm with you on the skepticism on the random nature of Boons and Hexes, but Alchemy? Even if you decided to only ever play without Boons and Hexes (although I think Druid can't count because it's not random in-game), you'll have more cards left than Alchemy has in total. Are you telling me that Pooka, Faithful Hound, Sheperd and Cemetary are bad cards? Worse than Transmute or more annoying than Possession?

[Cave-o-sapien]

Maybe in games that aren't Nocturne-heavy, Skulk will suck.

That's interesting since my first hypothesis would be that it's more relevant in games where there are few other Nocturne cards. But who knows.

--
Someone asked me in a game today "What's your opinion on boons and hexes?" and I said, "Just that keeping track of the decks is annoying work"

They responded "Exactly. I think it's the worst thing to happen to Dominion ever. Roll a die, see what you get!"

That was me. Obviously it's way too early to draw any conclusions (and this bit of hyperbole was likely induced by Hex fatigue), but  my initial impression isn't very favorable after several games.

I'm also worried about having to track them to stay competitive.

[Asper]

I'm also worried about having to track them to stay competitive.

I really hope having to track them will never be important enough to force me to actually do it... I guess I might just shuffle the pile every time it's used in my real-life group, or at least after every turn or something.

[SevenSpirits]

I suspect playing online, where the representation of boons and hexes is so transient and hard to follow, is making them seem worse than they would when you can see the pile in front of you.

Perhaps interface improvements online can also help to make tracking them less annoying.

[Donald X.]

The way I look at Skulk, sans interactions which make a big difference, is: one of the hexes is Poverty, discard down to 3 cards in hand. If Skulk always did that, then a hand with Skulk plus Gold is like a hand with Militia plus Copper, with +1 Buy. If Militia gave +1 Buy and came with a Copper, would it look too strong at $4?

While I take your point, I think looking at Skulk sans interactions misses a lot in terms of deciding power.

Possibly I could have phrased that better. I meant: "The way I look at Skulk, sans interactions (which make a big difference), is..."

I was talking about Remodels and so on though, not stacking Hexes. Stacking hexes is an issue, but the full set of hexes addresses it a bunch of ways. When you hex someone multiple times in a turn, you tend to undo some of the damage, and whiff more.

[Co0kieL0rd]

I played several games with Werewolf yesterday and boy, can it be brutal. In an engine you mostly draw with it but of there's other draw, you might be able to play multiple Werewolf in your Night phase every turn. In a kingdom with no villages or trashing, the Werewolf split becomes as crucial as with Minion or Cultist. This is due to the facts that you can get away with gaining all the Werewolves you can get and, I think, it's the only attack in the game that both can easily be stacked and stays potent for the entire game. This can lead to slogs start similar to Cultist-BM games but due to Envy and all those handsize and topdeck attacks either stagnate or, whoever has more Werewolves just wins. But it's going to be a long and painful game for both players until the end.
With that said, if you stack Doom attacks every turn, it becomes unimportant which Hexes you get hit with. You just deal with the fact that your deck is bad and your turns are bad.
I still like Werewolf. I liked Cultist too when I first got Dark Ages. But most Cultist games are boring because Cultist-BM crushes most other decks. This should happen less with Werewolf since the draw can't be chained and it's got no payload option, like Minion. But when Werewolf is the powerhouse on the board, the game might be awful from start to finish. I just hope it's not going to be that case often.

[Asper]

I played several games with Werewolf yesterday and boy, can it be brutal. In an engine you mostly draw with it but of there's other draw, you might be able to play multiple Werewolf in your Night phase every turn. In a kingdom with no villages or trashing, the Werewolf split becomes as crucial as with Minion or Cultist. This is due to the facts that you can get away with gaining all the Werewolves you can get and, I think, it's the only attack in the game that both can easily be stacked and stays potent for the entire game. This can lead to slogs start similar to Cultist-BM games but due to Envy and all those handsize and topdeck attacks either stagnate or, whoever has more Werewolves just wins. But it's going to be a long and painful game for both players until the end.
With that said, if you stack Doom attacks every turn, it becomes unimportant which Hexes you get hit with. You just deal with the fact that your deck is bad and your turns are bad.
I still like Werewolf. I liked Cultist too when I first got Dark Ages. But most Cultist games are boring because Cultist-BM crushes most other decks. This should happen less with Werewolf since the draw can't be chained and it's got no payload option, like Minion. But when Werewolf is the powerhouse on the board, the game might be awful from start to finish. I just hope it's not going to be that case often.

Well, it has a very strong self-synergy. I haven't played with Werewolf itself, but with a related card, and a card that's either a Smithy or something you can play without actions is bound to boost itself. I wonder how Werewolf/BM fares. Maybe this Werewolf actually likes Silvers.

[Asper]

I suspect playing online, where the representation of boons and hexes is so transient and hard to follow, is making them seem worse than they would when you can see the pile in front of you.

Perhaps interface improvements online can also help to make tracking them less annoying.

That was my feeling exactly. My first game with Boons had both Druid and Fool. I had no idea what was going on, and not being able to quickly see the Druid Boons certainly didn't help. It's probably going to be far easier in real life.

[Donald X.]

They responded "Exactly. I think it's the worst thing to happen to Dominion ever. Roll a die, see what you get!"

Well I'm hoping I haven't killed Dominion. It's out of my hands now; the cards are printed.

From the beginning I worried that there would be people who didn't like the Boons. I imagined people being all, "when is my strategy to do one of twelve random things? Never, that's right." What kept the Boons going was that actual people always liked them. The playtesters liked them; the strangers who came through to play at my table liked them. I only have so much data, but it was relentlessly positive. When it was time to post the previews for Boons/Hexes, I worried that the people in the forums would hate them. But if I set up a release event in a game store, everyone who tries the set will like them. I'm not worried at all there. I've had the experience.

One thing about this expansion was, I wanted to make sure the game still had stuff to offer to the masses of Dominion players, the regular players, that don't go online to find out how bad Silver is or whatever. The bulk of the people who play Dominion. Empires was heavily skewed towards expert players. So Nocturne is trying to have more things for casual players. If somehow that works out perfectly, and the casual players find out (somehow) and buy up the set, and at the same time the experts pass on it, well I make out there. At the same time, I've played tons of Dominion, and know a thing or two, and I had lots of fun playing Nocturne, and ditto for my playtesters. It did not seem lacking in joy for serious players. And playtesting lasted many moons; we did not just tire of it.

But I mean, I can't decide how people feel. I don't know how representative my samples are. Good luck, Donald X.!

[werothegreat]

Maybe in games that aren't Nocturne-heavy, Skulk will suck.

That's interesting since my first hypothesis would be that it's more relevant in games where there are few other Nocturne cards. But who knows.

--
Someone asked me in a game today "What's your opinion on boons and hexes?" and I said, "Just that keeping track of the decks is annoying work"

They responded "Exactly. I think it's the worst thing to happen to Dominion ever. Roll a die, see what you get!"

That has a fair amount of truth to it. Eventually we'll be better at keeping track of them and knowing what's left, but do we want to be? Is it fun?

It's fun in a novel, "Yay, new expansion!" way. It's even fun in a "Okay we've played a lot of regular Dominion today, let's spice things up with some random boons and hexes!" sort of way.

But is it something we want to play all the time? Repeated games of? Pseudo-competitively? I think not. What we've seen of Nocturne so far will probably make it one of the least-liked expansions, out of all of them. It's not bad, it's okay -- it's just not rising to any level of greatness. I'd rather play with Alchemy than Nocturne, mmk?

Of course that's faint criticism, we're talking about the 11th expansion to an already amazingly replayable game. But for a bottom line: Would I buy Nocturne? From what I see here so far..no. I'd rather use that same money to buy the base game and gift it to a random acquaintance, than have Nocturne be a thing.

Dude, I'm buying this set for Ghost and Leprechaun alone.

[SCSN]

But is it something we want to play all the time? Repeated games of? Pseudo-competitively? I think not. What we've seen of Nocturne so far will probably make it one of the least-liked expansions, out of all of them. It's not bad, it's okay -- it's just not rising to any level of greatness. I'd rather play with Alchemy than Nocturne, mmk?

I don't get this criticism at all. Hexes are at worst a Cursing or Saboteur-like effect, which are/were regular features of Dominion. Why does the fact that Hex is often less bad than the worst case suddenly make it an unattractive concept?

Personally I'm very excited about Nocturne; it looks more interesting to me than Adventures (but not Empires). I too would rather play with Alchemy in the end, but that's because currently my favorite expansions are, in this order: Dark Ages, Alchemy, Empires, Nocturne.

[BBL]

For what it is worth: Nocturne is my favorite expansion so far. I like how it adds many small decisions in the lower cost spectrum, creating plenty of space for creativity. Heirlooms are just splendid. Night Cards shake up the game in a very simple and elegant manner which one would not expect to be possible in the ELVENTH expansion. Both theme and art are spot on.

Boon effects are trivial enough to not seriously thwart anyone's strategy. In addition, Druid and Pixie offer phantastic solutions to minimize randomness further.

Hexes really are a mixed bag, I could have lived without them. Creating a stackeable blend of the least desired effects of Dominion is not necessarily a recipe for popularity. But Attacks in general rarely get much love. The way the mechanic is set up really does its best to mitigate the effects, as Donald pointed out already. And from a gameplay perspective it makes the game definitely more interesting. It changes the focus from strategy to tactics: You need to make the best of your deck as is, rather than following the plan that you laid out, when you looked at the kingdom. I can see how it feels annoying for players who love the strategic part of Dominion, but skill in any game involves strategy AND tactics. A good deal of Dominion's fun is the joy of overcoming its inherent randomness to the point where there is no randomness left anymore. Hexes make it harder to reach that point, but, as with shuffling, it is a question of probability and how you mitigate risks of failure.

And as always: You can ban the cards you do not like. I have good hopes that ShuffleIT eventually will offer this feature for ranked games to.

[Asper]

While I fully embrace the thought to offer something for the "mass" of players (they deserve fun games, too), I worry that the most casual bits are also so much at once that it might scare casual players away. For instance, Fool feels like the most casual card in the set to me, due to its "uncontrollable" nature, but it also has all those components: A State that gets passed around and does something every turn, the Boon stack, a non-supply card, and a Heirloom (which is probably the most simple part). The other Fate and Doom cards don't go as far, but they still come with a stack of cards and additional components.

On the other hand, people also kind of love components. More stuff = more value. And then Nocturne has a kick-ass popular theme. I bet there'll be lots of casual players buying the game just because it has vampires and stuff. So it's probably going to be alright.

[Gherald]

But is it something we want to play all the time? Repeated games of? Pseudo-competitively? I think not. What we've seen of Nocturne so far will probably make it one of the least-liked expansions, out of all of them. It's not bad, it's okay -- it's just not rising to any level of greatness. I'd rather play with Alchemy than Nocturne, mmk?

I don't get this criticism at all. Hexes are at worst a Cursing or Saboteur-like effect, which are/were regular features of Dominion. Why does the fact that Hex is often less bad than the worst case suddenly make it an unattractive concept?

It's not a matter of which one is worse, it's a matter of which can be predited. Cursing is predictable, hexing isn't. I know what happens if I choose to play my Witch as my last action vs. something else. I don't know what's going to happen when making a decision to hex or not to hex with my Skulk or Werewolf. Maybe my hex will trash your only Warrior and win the game, or maybe it will let your Menagerie proc and actually help you get off a great turn. Who the hell knows?

You can try to track the Boon and Hex decks if you want to play optimally. I'd rather just not play with Nocturne at all, there are plenty of more enjoyable expansions. Pretty much all the others, as far as I'm concerned.

[ObtusePunubiris]

If I may be so bold as to speak for the casuals...Don't worry, we're gonna be fine.

And I'm not buying it just because it has vampires either.

I'm getting it for the werewolves. Ah-ooooo-oo-oo-ooooooo!

[Lotoreo]

How should we handle Bad Omen, if we do only have one copper in our discard? I just saw in the online implementation, that the one copper is put on top of deck. In an offline game, I would argue that, and demand that I just reveal that I can not put two copper on top of my deck.

[Jack Rudd]

How should we handle Bad Omen, if we do only have one copper in our discard? I just saw in the online implementation, that the one copper is put on top of deck. In an offline game, I would argue that, and demand that I just reveal that I can not put two copper on top of my deck.

Standard Dominion rules apply: when ordered to do something that you can't do in full, do as much of it as you can. The same reason that Mountebank still gives out Coppers when the Curses have run out.

[Jeebus]

Yesterday I played a goons-werewolf game.
At some point I got up to speed and could attack with two ww every turn.
My first three double-ww turns:
Goons-poverty-haunting (duh)
Goons-bad omens-famine (chancellor is back, in attack form)
Goons-envy-delusion (opponent has no silver nor gold)

Remind me how hexes are supposed to hurt my opponent?

That is some incredible bad luck on your part. But as I said, the Hexes are pretty swingy.

[SuperHans]

Yesterday I played a goons-werewolf game.
At some point I got up to speed and could attack with two ww every turn.
My first three double-ww turns:
Goons-poverty-haunting (duh)
Goons-bad omens-famine (chancellor is back, in attack form)
Goons-envy-delusion (opponent has no silver nor gold)

Remind me how hexes are supposed to hurt my opponent?

That is some incredible bad luck on your part. But as I said, the Hexes are pretty swingy.

Hey, at least the hexes are going to provide a lot of semi-interesting or interesting moments to post in the threads. We've had them for less than two days and I've already read about some really unlucky moments.

In all, I really do not mind the hexes. In a competitive format, maybe those cards get removed. There are a lot of other cards to play with in Dominion, including this set (seriously, some really great new cards and we've only seen a little over half). But playing casually, I've already had a lot of great moments with them where my opponent and I just laugh on the chat about what happened.

[LastFootnote]

But is it something we want to play all the time? Repeated games of? Pseudo-competitively? I think not. What we've seen of Nocturne so far will probably make it one of the least-liked expansions, out of all of them. It's not bad, it's okay -- it's just not rising to any level of greatness. I'd rather play with Alchemy than Nocturne, mmk?

I don't get this criticism at all. Hexes are at worst a Cursing or Saboteur-like effect, which are/were regular features of Dominion. Why does the fact that Hex is often less bad than the worst case suddenly make it an unattractive concept?

It's not a matter of which one is worse, it's a matter of which can be predited. Cursing is predictable, hexing isn't. I know what happens if I choose to play my Witch as my last action vs. something else. I don't know what's going to happen when making a decision to hex or not to hex with my Skulk or Werewolf. Maybe my hex will trash your only Warrior and win the game, or maybe it will let your Menagerie proc and actually help you get off a great turn. Who the hell knows?

To be fair, your example of Cursing is cherry-picked. If I play Militia, it also might not hurt my opponent at all. Knights are even more likely to whiff, and likewise spies.

[trivialknot]

I was puzzled by what looked like a deliberate introduction of more chance, but I'm optimistic about it.

Earlier I mentioned Richard Garfield's talk on luck vs skill.  His main point in that talk is that luck and skill aren't mutually exclusive, and you can design a game that has more luck and more skill.  It's fairly clear that hexes and boons introduce more luck into the game.  But arguably they also introduce more skill.  Right now, none of us really know what to do with them.  How much value do we place on them?  How good is it to stack them?  What are the best ways to defend against hexes?  And because of the random noise, it might take us a while to figure it out.

[crj]

I don't get this criticism at all. Hexes are at worst a Cursing or Saboteur-like effect, which are/were regular features of Dominion. Why does the fact that Hex is often less bad than the worst case suddenly make it an unattractive concept?

Suppose there is some card, Meanie, in the kingdom that's an indescribably horrible attack. The way Dominion is set up, all players can acquire Meanies and play them. The game might turn into a slog, but at least it's bad for everyone.

Similarly if there is some card, Feeble Poke, in the kingdom that's the most insipid attack ever, that doesn't matter because it's equally useless for everyone.

The issue with Hexes is that it can be a Meanie when I play it, then a Feeble Poke when you do. By sheer luck. That's swingy.

[crj]

Yesterday, when previews #4 were new and fresh, I was paying close attention to the card names.

One day later, every time I glance at "Skulk", I'm reading "Skunk". )-8

[Awaclus]

From the games I have played, it looks like the luck factor introduced by Boons and Hexes is negligible next to all the luck that already existed in Dominion to begin with.

[Cave-o-sapien]

.
The issue with Hexes is that it can be a Meanie when I play it, then a Feeble Poke when you do. By sheer luck. That's swingy.

For me it's the multiplicative swingy-ness that makes it hard to evaluate. The probability of getting Locusts, for example, combined with the probability that Locusts hits a good card makes it quite swingy.

We already have cards like this. The Page line is a pretty good comparable: shuffle luck could mean I get my Warrior before you, and further luck could mean my Warrior trashes your Warrior.

The Page line is strong enough that it gets played quite often (and people do complain about it being swingy). Will Hexes be strong enough that we are still talking about them being swingy six months from now? Hard to say.

[crj]

One thing that intrigues me: Heirlooms might reduce swinginess by mitigating the 5/2 split. Hexes might increase swinginess. What will be the net effect on swinginess if you play with both?

Personally, I wouldn't want Dominion turning into a luck-free game, but do feel it could do with a little less.

[tastor]

From the games I have played, it looks like the luck factor introduced by Boons and Hexes is negligible next to all the luck that already existed in Dominion to begin with.

This is exactly my feeling on the matter. Even from the base set you already had the experience of "I play Witch and my opponent Moats, my opponent plays Witch when I don't have my Moat. I dead draw a Village and Witch with my Witch, my opponent plays Village and two Witches." I don't see Hexes being significantly different in that regard, except that the overt randomness makes it seem worse when it doesn't work out.

I also think implementation is a huge factor: e.g. you're often buying Blessed Village for a village anyway so paying an extra $1 for a random bonus doesn't rankle you, you might be buying Skulk because it's the only +buy and, hey, free Gold! etc.

[Cave-o-sapien]

I also think implementation is a huge factor: e.g. you're often buying Blessed Village for a village anyway so paying an extra $1 for a random bonus doesn't rankle you, you might be buying Skulk because it's the only +buy and, hey, free Gold! etc.

The implied cost of $1 for a Boon here makes sense, but I don't know if it translates to Hexes -- at least not in the case of Skulk.

What would be the appropriate cost for this card?

Lumberjack
+1 Buy
When you gain this, gain a Gold

[Kirian]

.
The issue with Hexes is that it can be a Meanie when I play it, then a Feeble Poke when you do. By sheer luck. That's swingy.

For me it's the multiplicative swingy-ness that makes it hard to evaluate. The probability of getting Locusts, for example, combined with the probability that Locusts hits a good card makes it quite swingy.

I hit an opponent's Vampire with Locusts.  There were no other Night, Attack, or Doom cards in the tableau.  He didn't even get a mediocre Silver as a replacement.

[LastFootnote]

.
The issue with Hexes is that it can be a Meanie when I play it, then a Feeble Poke when you do. By sheer luck. That's swingy.

For me it's the multiplicative swingy-ness that makes it hard to evaluate. The probability of getting Locusts, for example, combined with the probability that Locusts hits a good card makes it quite swingy.

I hit an opponent's Vampire with Locusts.  There were no other Night, Attack, or Doom cards in the tableau.  He didn't even get a mediocre Silver as a replacement.

We've finally discovered a Vampire's greatest weakness!

[FemurLemur]

I am sympathetic to this viewpoint. I like Adventures a lot, but do think it's a bummer that you have to get out a thing of chits to play with it

For sure, but oh well, what can ya do. Adventures itself is awesome. It's kinda crazy- the 2015-2017 expansions make the 2009-2013 expansions look anemic by comparison, and Adventures was of course the beginning of all that. Just so many new ideas being put into each expansion. And normally I feel like games lose their way when they try to do so much, but Dominion has made it work. So kudos for that. Sounds like some people are apprehensive about some elements of Nocturne, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic about it!

Glad to hear we have a token-less expansion coming in a couple weeks!

And well I did do Tax. It's kind of a dud though I enjoy the set-up, the set-up is what kept it alive.

That set-up is a lot of fun! It seems like the concept of Tax's on-Buy is stubborn. No matter how I go through the thought experiment of how to make Tax less of a dud, it seems like it either wants to be too good or stay a dud. But y'know, when one Event is a partial dud, it's not so disappointing. It wasn't taking up much space.

Well I'm hoping I haven't killed Dominion

There's gonna be, what, 15 Doom 'n Boons (I know- Doom 'n Fate- but it doesn't rhyme)? And only like 5 of them are Attacks (one of which is just a Curser). Even if they were the worst thing ever, I think Nocturne will be great. And even if Nocturne were a dud, it's not like Alchemy killed Dominion. Heck, a lot of us even use Alchemy just as much as our other cards 

Different players want different things. A lot of people used to say that Seaside and Prosperity were the best expansions. I personally ranked them on the lower end. My "desert island" expansion is Hinterlands. Some might say Empires. I'm sure some will eventually say Nocturne. We all differ. But I'm sure your sample size has been fine, given that it has led to so many great expansions in the past. Hope you don't stress too much leading up to release!

[FemurLemur]

I drew Locusts and hit my opponent's Royal Blacksmith. There was no replacement. The debt was not even paid off yet. That is way swingier than Swindler.

I don't see this as a flaw with the Hexes. Your opponent knows Locusts is 1 of 12 possible attacks. They should not have bought Royal Blacksmith. Some might say that there were low odds of the Locusts hitting the Royal Blacksmith, and this is perhaps true, but if that is the justification you're going to give yourself, you can't then throw a fit when it happens and fault the card. You knew the risk you were taking when you bought that Royal Blacksmith, and you took it anyway in hopes of higher reward. Don't commit the Gambler's Fallacy. Low odds are not zero odds.

It's like complaining about your Terminals colliding. If you're mad that your Turn 3 seems to sometimes be two Smithies, and sometimes just one, maybe you should stop buying two Smithies on the opening. It's not that Smithy is a "swingy" card. It's buyer's remorse.

I'm not yet convinced there's a problem with Hexes. As LastFootnote pointed out, many of them have anti-synergy such that playing multiple in a turn can be counterproductive. I especially feel like I'm missing something with Locusts, given how many complaints there have been. I get to pick (albeit with some restrictions) which card I replace my trashed card with, right? So what's the problem? Try to build your decks so that they can handle swapping out one of your $5 with a $4 if need be- even if such a plan is less optimal than what you would normally build. Either that or just accept the risk of Locusts. That's your call. The worst scenario I can imagine where something happens at no fault of your own is a Kingdom with no alt-VPs, and having your Province swarmed and replaced with a Duchy. And while that does suck, it's also not anywhere near as earth-shattering as I think some are making it out to be. Sometimes your opponent Minions your Province-buying hand, and sometimes they Minion a hand you weren't excited about anyway. Sometimes Sea Hag discards your Gold, and sometimes it discards your Estate. Attacks aren't meant to make you happy. Welcome to Dominion.

None of this is to say that there's definitely not a problem with Locusts. Just that I am currently unconvinced that you have no way to respond to/prepare for Locusts.

[FemurLemur]

Yesterday, when previews #4 were new and fresh, I was paying close attention to the card names.

One day later, every time I glance at "Skulk", I'm reading "Skunk". )-8

From the moment I first saw it revealed, I kept reading it as "Shulk", like the character from Xenoblade and Super Smash Bros.

[JW]

The implied cost of $1 for a Boon here makes sense, but I don't know if it translates to Hexes -- at least not in the case of Skulk.

What would be the appropriate cost for this card?

Lumberjack
+1 Buy
When you gain this, gain a Gold

No less than $3. Note that Blessed Village's Boon is on-gain, while Skulk requires an action to Hex an opponent. But the cost of this card is not that informative about the value of an action that hexes. No matter how bad a card comes with the Gold, a $2 cost would enable Gold to be picked up too cheaply for decks that can easily trash the junk card it comes with.

[tastor]

The implied cost of $1 for a Boon here makes sense, but I don't know if it translates to Hexes -- at least not in the case of Skulk.

What would be the appropriate cost for this card?

Lumberjack
+1 Buy
When you gain this, gain a Gold

No less than $3. No matter how bad a card comes with the Gold, a $2 cost would enable Gold to be picked up too cheaply for decks that can easily trash the junk card it comes with.

Also, more importantly, the "implied cost of $1" is for a single Boon when you gain Blessed Village.

I'm not sure how I'd rate those individual abilities but then again I think that's always a fallacy in Dominion because context matters. Secret Chamber was such a poor card that it got cut from Dominion, yet you add +2 cards and take away the reaction and you have a $5 so powerful it had to come with a penalty, which would make the implied cost of +2 cards north of $3.

[pacovf]

It's like complaining about your Terminals colliding. If you're mad that your Turn 3 seems to sometimes be two Smithies, and sometimes just one, maybe you should stop buying two Smithies on the opening. It's not that Smithy is a "swingy" card. It's buyer's remorse.

The probability of those two terminals colliding on T3 or T4 is about 30%. The probability of getting hexed and losing your Royal Blacksmith, assuming you have, say, 20 cards in your deck, is about 0.5%. Surely there is a bit of a difference?

Not arguing for or against Hexes here, just saying that avoiding to buy Royal Blacksmith because Hexes kinda sounds like a losing move. Even assuming you only buy cards that won't be replaced by locusts, we are still looking at, what, 5% chance to lose one everytime you are hexed.

[Awaclus]

From the games I have played, it looks like the luck factor introduced by Boons and Hexes is negligible next to all the luck that already existed in Dominion to begin with.

And then my opponent's War trashed my Ghost...

[LastFootnote]

From the games I have played, it looks like the luck factor introduced by Boons and Hexes is negligible next to all the luck that already existed in Dominion to begin with.

And then my opponent's War trashed my Ghost...

Arguably that’s a problem with Ghost’s cost. All the Spirits could have cost more, and Exorcist could have been adjusted accordingly, but then Will-o’-Wisps couldn’t draw Imps.

[FemurLemur]

It's like complaining about your Terminals colliding. If you're mad that your Turn 3 seems to sometimes be two Smithies, and sometimes just one, maybe you should stop buying two Smithies on the opening. It's not that Smithy is a "swingy" card. It's buyer's remorse.

The probability of those two terminals colliding on T3 or T4 is about 30%. The probability of getting hexed and losing your Royal Blacksmith, assuming you have, say, 20 cards in your deck, is about 0.5%. Surely there is a bit of a difference?

Well, yes and no. {No} because your example there uses an Apples to Oranges comparison, because you're comparing a 12 card deck to a 20 card deck, implying we're talking about different Turns as well. {Yes} because I do still agree with your overall conclusion that there's a significant difference in probability even on Turn 3, as the Royal Blacksmith would have to be your topdeck, your opponent would've had to have drawn their Doom-Attack, and the top Hex would have to be Locusts.

Really they're only alike in the sense that, you don't necessarily have to complain about terminal Smithies. Just don't open with two Smithies. You aren't helpless. You have some decisions to make.

just saying that avoiding to buy Royal Blacksmith because Hexes kinda sounds like a losing move.

Well, I'd agree with that, but I'm also not operating under the premise that having my Royal Blacksmith eaten by Locusts is devastating like I think OP is. If I were, then I'd probably avoid the Royal Blacksmith, because it would not be a reliable strategy.

[crj]

I drew Locusts and hit my opponent's Royal Blacksmith. There was no replacement. The debt was not even paid off yet. That is way swingier than Swindler.

I don't see this as a flaw with the Hexes. Your opponent knows Locusts is 1 of 12 possible attacks. They should not have bought Royal Blacksmith.

If their Royal Blacksmith is one of 17 cards in their deck, then being hexed has only a 1 in 200 chance of trashing their Royal Blacksmith.

Avoiding an otherwise good strategy because of a 1 in 200 risk is not winning play.

And then, if you're hit by that 1 in 200 risk, you've been fantastically, exasperatingly, unlucky.

Suppose we added a Landmark, Lightning Bolt: "At the end of the game, shuffle together all the basic Treasures and this. The person with the most VP draws a card. If it's Lightning Bolt, they receive -1,000,000VP." Would you focus on not getting the most VP in case that happened? If you scored most VP and got struck by Lightning, would you give a stoic shrug and congratulate the winner? Or would you decide Lightning Bolt wasn't fun and decline to play using it?

Of course, Hexes aren't Lightning Bolt. They have the potential to be a lot of fun. But the worry of the potential no-fun downside still there.

Given two of the people I play with regularly veto Saboteur, I'm a bit concerned I'll have to house-rule Locusts away in order to get a game.

[Cave-o-sapien]

It's like complaining about your Terminals colliding. If you're mad that your Turn 3 seems to sometimes be two Smithies, and sometimes just one, maybe you should stop buying two Smithies on the opening. It's not that Smithy is a "swingy" card. It's buyer's remorse.

The probability of those two terminals colliding on T3 or T4 is about 30%. The probability of getting hexed and losing your Royal Blacksmith, assuming you have, say, 20 cards in your deck, is about 0.5%. Surely there is a bit of a difference?

Not arguing for or against Hexes here, just saying that avoiding to buy Royal Blacksmith because Hexes kinda sounds like a losing move.

By this logic, you wouldn't buy a Mountebank if Swindler was out, because it could get turned into a Duchy.

[crj]

Incidentally, I've only just noticed: Locusts are beneficial if they hit a Curse, trashing it and giving you nothing in return, aren't they?

[LastFootnote]

Incidentally, I've only just noticed: Locusts are beneficial if they hit a Curse, trashing it and giving you nothing in return, aren't they?

Yep!

[JW]

And then my opponent's War trashed my Ghost...

Arguably that’s a problem with Ghost’s cost. All the Spirits could have cost more, and Exorcist could have been adjusted accordingly, but then Will-o’-Wisps couldn’t draw Imps.

Presumably a way around this (if costs of the spirits were increased) would be to have worded Will-o’-Wisps as "Reveal the top card of your deck. If it is a Spirit or costs 2 coins or less, put it into your hand." This would mean that Will-o’-Wisps could also draw Ghosts. An increase in cost would also have made the spirits combo better with trash for benefit cards, protected Ghost against War, and improved what you can gain when Locusted. It might have been too much of a buff in addition to being slightly wordier.

[Awaclus]

From the games I have played, it looks like the luck factor introduced by Boons and Hexes is negligible next to all the luck that already existed in Dominion to begin with.

And then my opponent's War trashed my Ghost...

Arguably that’s a problem with Ghost’s cost. All the Spirits could have cost more, and Exorcist could have been adjusted accordingly, but then Will-o’-Wisps couldn’t draw Imps.

Well, really it's just a problem with trashing attacks being able to hit difficult-to-acquire cards. It also happens with Swindler and Mercenary, Swindler and Travellers, etc.

[TheSeal]

Add me to the list of those who find Hexes more bad than Boons are good. Misery can be brutal and it's completely out of your control. Unless something like Lighthouse is in the game, it's purely random. I think that's what bothers me most about Hexes. It's random bad stuff that cannot be well controlled and therefore is not distributed remotely evenly across the players.

Back to Misery there is no way to remove it. If you are in a game with a lot of cards that draw Hexes, you're going to get it. It seems the only defense is to make sure you buy as many Hex drawing cards as your opponent which  sucks if that's not a strategy you would prefer. It reminds me of a knight battle. You have to buy knights because your opponent is snapping them up. The difference is once all the knights have trashed each other you can get about the business of the game. With Hexes it never ends.

Alright one of you strategy wonks, please tell me where I'm wrong and how to protect. against Hexes more generally.

[AJD]

I mean, in a sense, the way to remove Misery is "play Monument twice".

[ThetaSigma12]

I mean, in a sense, the way to remove Misery is "play Monument twice".

This. Misery often seems more brutal than it actually is. It's no worse than losing the Curse split 6-4 with no trashing, or your opponent getting 2 more tokens than you. Even then, what percentage of games do you win by only 2 or fewer points? I generally win my games by at least a 5 or 6 point margin.

2 VP is very marginal. When your opponent gets a Harem, you don't think, man, what a lead.

[Awaclus]

Add me to the list of those who find Hexes more bad than Boons are good. Misery can be brutal and it's completely out of your control. Unless something like Lighthouse is in the game, it's purely random. I think that's what bothers me most about Hexes. It's random bad stuff that cannot be well controlled and therefore is not distributed remotely evenly across the players.

Back to Misery there is no way to remove it. If you are in a game with a lot of cards that draw Hexes, you're going to get it. It seems the only defense is to make sure you buy as many Hex drawing cards as your opponent which  sucks if that's not a strategy you would prefer. It reminds me of a knight battle. You have to buy knights because your opponent is snapping them up. The difference is once all the knights have trashed each other you can get about the business of the game. With Hexes it never ends.

Alright one of you strategy wonks, please tell me where I'm wrong and how to protect. against Hexes more generally.

Well, Misery is exactly as brutal as your opponent discarding an Action card to Arena. It's just a point swing, it doesn't matter whether you're losing points or your opponent is gaining them.

[Cave-o-sapien]

I mean, in a sense, the way to remove Misery is "play Monument twice".

This. Misery often seems more brutal than it actually is. It's no worse than losing the Curse split 6-4 with no trashing, or your opponent getting 2 more tokens than you. Even then, what percentage of games do you win by only 2 or fewer points? I generally win my games by at least a 5 or 6 point margin.

2 VP is very marginal. When your opponent gets a Harem, you don't think, man, what a lead.

Crucially, Misery isn’t clogging your deck. It’s probably often more benign than a Ruins.

[markusin]

Misery is just there to remind you maybe have to worry about Hexes this game. By itself, Misery is tolerable, but it comes in games that also have War, Locusts, Bad Omens, and the like. It's part of the "death by a thousand cuts" threat pushed by Hexes.

Thinking about it some more, Misery is unlikely to hurt too bad because most cards that feature Hexes help explosive engine strategies. Werewolf is draw, Vampire is a gainer and trasher, Cursed Village is a pretty (very?) good village, Skulk has +buy. In such games, there are definitely worse Hexes. Really, Leprechaun is the odd one that might find itself in games where one province a turn is the best you can hope for, and there Misery can hurt.

[TheSeal]

In all the cases mentioned, I have some way to respond. I can buy a Harem. I can take advantage of the Arena. I can increase by draw to compensate for the extra curses or ruins in my hand. I have nothing with in my control to directly compensate for Misery.

In a game I just played, I had a one Province lead. I had more than enough money to buy the last Province. My opponent played a Vampire which gave me Envious. He bought a Duchy on that turn and I couldn't buy any points on mine. My opponent was able to buy the last Province on his next turn.  That win did not come through smart play on my opponent's part or an error on mine. It was just dumb luck. I'd been leading throughout the game the my opponent was not far behind. I new I had more money and more draw than my opponent. Based on that, I bought that second to the last Province rather than a Duchy as I would when I'm not sure if I could buy the last one on my next turn.

Maybe with more play they'll grow on my but right now I feel like Hexes just introduce too much luck into the game.

[Gherald]

But is it something we want to play all the time? Repeated games of? Pseudo-competitively? I think not. What we've seen of Nocturne so far will probably make it one of the least-liked expansions, out of all of them. It's not bad, it's okay -- it's just not rising to any level of greatness. I'd rather play with Alchemy than Nocturne, mmk?

I don't get this criticism at all. Hexes are at worst a Cursing or Saboteur-like effect, which are/were regular features of Dominion. Why does the fact that Hex is often less bad than the worst case suddenly make it an unattractive concept?

It's not a matter of which one is worse, it's a matter of which can be predited. Cursing is predictable, hexing isn't. I know what happens if I choose to play my Witch as my last action vs. something else. I don't know what's going to happen when making a decision to hex or not to hex with my Skulk or Werewolf. Maybe my hex will trash your only Warrior and win the game, or maybe it will let your Menagerie proc and actually help you get off a great turn. Who the hell knows?

To be fair, your example of Cursing is cherry-picked. If I play Militia, it also might not hurt my opponent at all. Knights are even more likely to whiff, and likewise spies.

That was SCSN's example, but it applies just as well to Militia. I know within about 5 seconds of looking at the initial board whether I want to buy 0, 1, or possibly more than one Militia that game. I can foresee under what circumstances playing one can be good for me, or not good for me.

Whereas I have no idea (or at least very little patience for tracking) whether choosing to proc a hexer like Skulk or Werewolf is going to be worth it, vs other things I could choose to do with my action/draw economy.

(I do think Hexes and Boons are probably more fun with physical cards than they are online...but there are other opportunity costs to having a physical 11th expansion. This one doesn't pass muster with what we've previewed so far. Which is fine, there are 10 others worth having.)

[tastor]

In all the cases mentioned, I have some way to respond. I can buy a Harem. I can take advantage of the Arena. I can increase by draw to compensate for the extra curses or ruins in my hand. I have nothing with in my control to directly compensate for Misery.

In a game I just played, I had a one Province lead. I had more than enough money to buy the last Province. My opponent played a Vampire which gave me Envious. He bought a Duchy on that turn and I couldn't buy any points on mine. My opponent was able to buy the last Province on his next turn.  That win did not come through smart play on my opponent's part or an error on mine. It was just dumb luck. I'd been leading throughout the game the my opponent was not far behind. I new I had more money and more draw than my opponent. Based on that, I bought that second to the last Province rather than a Duchy as I would when I'm not sure if I could buy the last one on my next turn.

Maybe with more play they'll grow on my but right now I feel like Hexes just introduce too much luck into the game.

I mean, that is unlucky and I feel for you, but it sounds like you were tied before you bought that second to last (your fourth) Province, so it could have just as easily meant that you drew 3 or 4 Provinces on that last turn and been in the exact same situation where your opponent bought a Duchy and then a Province to win. Which would also be super unlucky but not out of the scope of the game as it stands.

[Cave-o-sapien]

That was SCSN's example, but it applies just as well to Militia. I know within about 5 seconds of looking at the initial board whether I want to buy 0, 1, or possibly more than one Militia that game. I can foresee under what circumstances playing one can be good for me, or not good for me.

Whereas I have no idea (or at least very little patience for tracking) whether choosing to proc a hexer like Skulk or Werewolf is going to be worth it, vs other things I could choose to do with my action/draw economy.

And of course, the complement to this: how to respond to an opponent investing in Doom cards.

[LostPhoenix]

After further examination, the thing in the bottle has arms. It sits there grumpily, having its arms crossed. I first thought it was its chin, but it's not. So yeah, definitely an amphibian.

Aha. I see it now. I actually like it, but it is a bit strange.

It looks like some kind of Dino-Murloc-Frog thing to me. Probably one of my favourite art pieces in all of Dominion.

[Jeebus]

I drew Locusts and hit my opponent's Royal Blacksmith. There was no replacement. The debt was not even paid off yet. That is way swingier than Swindler.

I don't see this as a flaw with the Hexes. Your opponent knows Locusts is 1 of 12 possible attacks. They should not have bought Royal Blacksmith.

I stopped reading there.

[Kirian]

In all the cases mentioned, I have some way to respond. I can buy a Harem. I can take advantage of the Arena. I can increase by draw to compensate for the extra curses or ruins in my hand. I have nothing with in my control to directly compensate for Misery.

In a game I just played, I had a one Province lead. I had more than enough money to buy the last Province. My opponent played a Vampire which gave me Envious. He bought a Duchy on that turn and I couldn't buy any points on mine. My opponent was able to buy the last Province on his next turn.  That win did not come through smart play on my opponent's part or an error on mine. It was just dumb luck. I'd been leading throughout the game the my opponent was not far behind. I new I had more money and more draw than my opponent. Based on that, I bought that second to the last Province rather than a Duchy as I would when I'm not sure if I could buy the last one on my next turn.

Maybe with more play they'll grow on my but right now I feel like Hexes just introduce too much luck into the game.

I mean, that is unlucky and I feel for you, but it sounds like you were tied before you bought that second to last (your fourth) Province, so it could have just as easily meant that you drew 3 or 4 Provinces on that last turn and been in the exact same situation where your opponent bought a Duchy and then a Province to win. Which would also be super unlucky but not out of the scope of the game as it stands.

The thing is, almost any other Hex wouldn't have caused the loss.  Poverty possibly--they said more than enough to buy Province, so maybe they were holding GGS and other crap.  Plague if both players really were tied and they broke PPR, but context suggests they had a 7- or 8-point lead after buying the PP. Even Locusts hitting a Province would have been fine.

Maybe that's the thing that is everyone's sticking point.  It's highly random and swingy.  Note that no other attack in the game can cause what happened here; the closest thing is Legionary, which (assuming they held GGSXX) might force a Duchy buy.  Only Envy can possibly give -$10 or higher to your opponent's next turn.

[Donald X.]

Maybe that's the thing that is everyone's sticking point.  It's highly random and swingy.  Note that no other attack in the game can cause what happened here; the closest thing is Legionary, which (assuming they held GGSXX) might force a Duchy buy.  Only Envy can possibly give -$10 or higher to your opponent's next turn.

Militia for example can do that. You were going to draw your deck and do whatever amount of stuff, but with only 3 cards in hand, drew to 3 stops.

[GendoIkari]

I'm not sure I really get the idea that boons and hexes are more swingy than a lot of other existing cards. Perhaps the randomness is a little more in-your-face obvious. But there's plenty of cards that have something of a "random" effect when you play them:

Playing Smithy as your first/last action: gives anywhere from + to +. Like Harvest but way swingier.

Swindler is obvious, and people have complained about the swingyness before.

Black Market - maybe buy a great card, maybe get no good options.

Golem - Play 2 cards, but you don't know which 2.

Tournament - Maybe a Ruined Village, maybe a Peddler.

Gold - While not swingy when you play it, just as random in terms of when you draw it. Maybe it gets you a Province, maybe you already had more than without it.

Militia - Maybe your opponent discards 2 Estates and does care, maybe you just turned an amazing turn into a do-nothing turn. More obvious with Minion.

So yeah, I can see that the "take 1 of 12 random effects" feels more random. Maybe because there's more options, but I think people would complains just as much if it were 2 boons in the pile instead of 12. But aside from the fact that there has always been a huge amount of luck in Dominion, the answer to all of these cards has always been the same... play them often and expect the averages to work out to the way they should. In other words, play enough Werewolves consistently enough, and your opponent will usually be hurt the amount you expect him to be.

[Cave-o-sapien]

In other words, play enough Werewolves consistently enough, and your opponent will usually be hurt the amount you expect him to be.

And how much is that?

[gloures]

In all the cases mentioned, I have some way to respond. I can buy a Harem. I can take advantage of the Arena. I can increase by draw to compensate for the extra curses or ruins in my hand. I have nothing with in my control to directly compensate for Misery.

In a game I just played, I had a one Province lead. I had more than enough money to buy the last Province. My opponent played a Vampire which gave me Envious. He bought a Duchy on that turn and I couldn't buy any points on mine. My opponent was able to buy the last Province on his next turn.  That win did not come through smart play on my opponent's part or an error on mine. It was just dumb luck. I'd been leading throughout the game the my opponent was not far behind. I new I had more money and more draw than my opponent. Based on that, I bought that second to the last Province rather than a Duchy as I would when I'm not sure if I could buy the last one on my next turn.

Maybe with more play they'll grow on my but right now I feel like Hexes just introduce too much luck into the game.

This is also not much different than when you build that awesome sturdy engine only to lose to a much worse deck due to a very unlikely dud in a crucial moment. And I can assure you I have both won and lost a great number of games that way. 


In all I have been tending to compare hexes to Swindler, it can range from game winning to just do nothing. And while Swindler is certainly not a card that receives a lot of love around here, we have certainly managed to learned not to mind it much, I think... So I guess hexes should be fine as well 

[Asper]

In other words, play enough Werewolves consistently enough, and your opponent will usually be hurt the amount you expect him to be.

And how much is that?

More than you think 

[Violet CLM]

I'm not sure I really get the idea that boons and hexes are more swingy than a lot of other existing cards. Perhaps the randomness is a little more in-your-face obvious. But there's plenty of cards that have something of a "random" effect when you play them:

The difference, as I see it, is that normal cards have random effects based on the contents of your deck, which you have intentionally crafted over the course of the game, but you have no control over what appears in the Boon deck. Sometimes you're just going to get a Silver whether you like it or not.

[GendoIkari]

I'm not sure I really get the idea that boons and hexes are more swingy than a lot of other existing cards. Perhaps the randomness is a little more in-your-face obvious. But there's plenty of cards that have something of a "random" effect when you play them:

The difference, as I see it, is that normal cards have random effects based on the contents of your deck, which you have intentionally crafted over the course of the game, but you have no control over what appears in the Boon deck. Sometimes you're just going to get a Silver whether you like it or not.

That's a fair point.

[Witherweaver]

In other words, play enough Werewolves consistently enough, and your opponent will usually be hurt the amount you expect him to be.

And how much is that?

More than you think 

90-93%

[Awaclus]

In other words, play enough Werewolves consistently enough, and your opponent will usually be hurt the amount you expect him to be.

And how much is that?

More than you think 

90-93%

What does it mean to be 90-93% hurt?

[LastFootnote]

In other words, play enough Werewolves consistently enough, and your opponent will usually be hurt the amount you expect him to be.

And how much is that?

More than you think 

90-93%

What does it mean to be 90-93% hurt?

I don’t know, but it sounds pretty brutal.

[Jeebus]

I'm not sure I really get the idea that boons and hexes are more swingy than a lot of other existing cards. Perhaps the randomness is a little more in-your-face obvious. But there's plenty of cards that have something of a "random" effect when you play them:

Playing Smithy as your first/last action: gives anywhere from + to +. Like Harvest but way swingier.

Swindler is obvious, and people have complained about the swingyness before.

Black Market - maybe buy a great card, maybe get no good options.

Golem - Play 2 cards, but you don't know which 2.

Tournament - Maybe a Ruined Village, maybe a Peddler.

Gold - While not swingy when you play it, just as random in terms of when you draw it. Maybe it gets you a Province, maybe you already had more than without it.

Militia - Maybe your opponent discards 2 Estates and does care, maybe you just turned an amazing turn into a do-nothing turn. More obvious with Minion.

So yeah, I can see that the "take 1 of 12 random effects" feels more random. Maybe because there's more options, but I think people would complains just as much if it were 2 boons in the pile instead of 12. But aside from the fact that there has always been a huge amount of luck in Dominion, the answer to all of these cards has always been the same... play them often and expect the averages to work out to the way they should. In other words, play enough Werewolves consistently enough, and your opponent will usually be hurt the amount you expect him to be.

Black Market is actually my most hated card and I view it as way too swingy. Tournament is also up there, and so is Swindler. So comparing Boons to these cards is actually not helping your point. I disagree about the others. You often know what's left in your deck when you play Smithy, but the main point is that it's the deck you crafted. Golem likewise will hit the Actions you put in it. Of course it could hit two terminals when you're hoping for +Action, but that's the same as starting your turn with two Smithies and no Villages, the inherent luck of Dominion, and again connected to how you composed your deck. Gold and Militia: You're just talking about shuffle luck really, which is inherent to Dominion. Your ultimate point seems to be kind of, Dominion already has a big element of luck, so a card that introduces more luck makes no difference.

[Minotaur]

That makes Werewolf an Action - Night - Attack - Doom card. The Courtiers all like Dame Josephine, but they like Werewolves too.

[Commodore Chuckles]

I'm not sure I really get the idea that boons and hexes are more swingy than a lot of other existing cards. Perhaps the randomness is a little more in-your-face obvious. But there's plenty of cards that have something of a "random" effect when you play them:

The difference, as I see it, is that normal cards have random effects based on the contents of your deck, which you have intentionally crafted over the course of the game, but you have no control over what appears in the Boon deck. Sometimes you're just going to get a Silver whether you like it or not.

That's a fair point.

I think this, in a nutshell, is why Hexes have been getting a lot of hate. "You make your own shuffle luck" no longer applies now. There are ways to strategically deal with other attacks when you at least know the type of attack you'll be hit by them. With junking attacks you can get more trashers or sifters. With trashing attacks you can buffer your deck with cheap junk. With handsize attacks you can get draw-up-to-x or build an engine that can draw itself even with a reduced handsize.

How do you prepare for a Hex, though? You can't, really. It's just a random annoyance that you have to swallow. Personally, I'm not at the point where I absolutely hate Doom cards, but it's definitely not my favorite mechanic.

[Asper]

In other words, play enough Werewolves consistently enough, and your opponent will usually be hurt the amount you expect him to be.

And how much is that?

More than you think 

90-93%

What does it mean to be 90-93% hurt?

I don’t know, but it sounds pretty brutal.

But not as brutal as one might assume.

[trivialknot]

I'm not sure about hexes, but in general, the strategy for dealing with random chance, is to always play your best, even when you're far ahead or far behind.  When you're ahead you want to be able to overcome any bad luck, and when you're behind you want to make sure that if you get lucky you can turn it into victory.

[Minotaur]

In other words, play enough Werewolves consistently enough, and your opponent will usually be hurt the amount you expect him to be.

And how much is that?

More than you think 

90-93%

What does it mean to be 90-93% hurt?

I don’t know, but it sounds pretty brutal.

But not as brutal as one might assume.

I'm pretty heckin wrecked overall, but my left foot's never been better.

[Asper]

If I had to sort Nocturne mechanics from favourite to least favourite, I'd certainly put Heirlooms best, the sub-theme of unique cards second, night somewhere in the midlle, and Boons/Hexes lowest. I can't really decide which is better or worse. They are the same thing, just that one is "good random thing" and the other is "bad random thing". I can just say that having Gold in hand and then being randomly hit by Envy has this minion-esque "Great, now my hand's worthless" feeling. It's not great.

[Gubump]

I personally find the Boons to be a lot less swingy than the Hexes.

[GendoIkari]

In other words, play enough Werewolves consistently enough, and your opponent will usually be hurt the amount you expect him to be.

And how much is that?

More than you think 

90-93%

What does it mean to be 90-93% hurt?

I don’t know, but it sounds pretty brutal.

But not as brutal as one might assume.

More brutal when compared to less brutal attacks.

[FemurLemur]

I drew Locusts and hit my opponent's Royal Blacksmith. There was no replacement. The debt was not even paid off yet. That is way swingier than Swindler.

I don't see this as a flaw with the Hexes. Your opponent knows Locusts is 1 of 12 possible attacks. They should not have bought Royal Blacksmith.

If their Royal Blacksmith is one of 17 cards in their deck, then being hexed has only a 1 in 200 chance of trashing their Royal Blacksmith.

Avoiding an otherwise good strategy because of a 1 in 200 risk is not winning play.

That's not my recommendation. Don't "avoid an otherwise good strategy", replace it with a better strategy. One not susceptible to that 1 in 200 risk. We could talk all day about "otherwise good strategies", but the point is that, it wasn't a good strategy if there was another one available which wouldn't have gotten ruined by Locusts.

If you want to argue that there isn't always a strategy available that isn't susceptible, that's fine. But please don't misrepresent my point. But I'm not suggesting that you play a sub-optimal strategy to save yourself from a 1 in 200 chance of disaster.

Edit: I shouldn't assume you intended to misrepresent me

[FemurLemur]

I drew Locusts and hit my opponent's Royal Blacksmith. There was no replacement. The debt was not even paid off yet. That is way swingier than Swindler.

I don't see this as a flaw with the Hexes. Your opponent knows Locusts is 1 of 12 possible attacks. They should not have bought Royal Blacksmith.

I stopped reading there.

Why even reply then?

"Lol I don't even read opposing viewpoints. Isn't my ignorance cute you guys?"

[Donald X.]

Black Market is actually my most hated card and I view it as way too swingy. Tournament is also up there, and so is Swindler. So comparing Boons to these cards is actually not helping your point. I disagree about the others. You often know what's left in your deck when you play Smithy, but the main point is that it's the deck you crafted. Golem likewise will hit the Actions you put in it. Of course it could hit two terminals when you're hoping for +Action, but that's the same as starting your turn with two Smithies and no Villages, the inherent luck of Dominion, and again connected to how you composed your deck. Gold and Militia: You're just talking about shuffle luck really, which is inherent to Dominion. Your ultimate point seems to be kind of, Dominion already has a big element of luck, so a card that introduces more luck makes no difference.

As I endlessly enjoy pointing out, actual data shows that Black Market is one of the cards that most means that we expect the better player to win in games using it, while Smithy is at the other end of the spectrum, making our knowledge of player skill especially less useful for predicting the winner. Tournament is firmly on the "good for the better player" side, though not way at the top like Black Market; Swindler is in fact swingy.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2798.msg47781#msg47781

It is not even clear if adding "receive a Boon" to a card would reduce our ability to predict the winner (based on player skill) for games using it, vs. if it didn't have that text (and ignoring how much the card favored the better player to begin with). It should make the card more random, but ability to evaluate cards is significant. Maybe the good players have a better grip on how much of a benefit "receive a Boon" is, on when to do the optional things, on how the board is affected.

But perception is everything. If people don't like Black Market because they think it means the impact of skill is reduced, then they don't like Black Market, and them being wrong there doesn't matter. If you think Militia is fine but Skulk is too random, well, I don't know if Skulk would be above or below Militia on that chart, I don't have the data and it isn't obvious to me, but it doesn't matter in terms of you liking the cards. If you hate Skulk that's that, you hate it.

[Gherald]

Agreed with DX that Black Market is an amazing card for skilled players. I smile every time I see it in the kingdom.

Many things about Dominion are random, beginning the first shuffling of 3 estates and 7 treasures into your starting deck. So when you evaluate a card with instructions and play that add additional randomness (which practically all cards do to varying degrees), you should also evaluate how many interesting and skillful decisions it adds to the game. Black Market pretty much does that in spades and better than any other single card. It's amazing to play with.

It is not even clear if adding "receive a Boon" to a card would reduce our ability to predict the winner (based on player skill) for games using it, vs. if it didn't have that text (and ignoring how much the card favored the better player to begin with). It should make the card more random, but ability to evaluate cards is significant. Maybe the good players have a better grip on how much of a benefit "receive a Boon" is, on when to do the optional things, on how the board is affected.

This is completely on point; I've certainly gotten a lot better at evaluating boons in just the past few days, and this isn't surprising to me.

The real question has always been: are boons fun to evaluate and keep track of? Overall I don't think so, partly due to the online interface not being so great. So far my verdict is "Meh. I can do without these."

But perception is everything. If people don't like Black Market because they think it means the impact of skill is reduced, then they don't like Black Market, and them being wrong there doesn't matter. If you think Militia is fine but Skulk is too random, well, I don't know if Skulk would be above or below Militia on that chart, I don't have the data and it isn't obvious to me, but it doesn't matter in terms of you liking the cards. If you hate Skulk that's that, you hate it.

Hexes are another matter, I very much dislike them. They are swingy in the way that Swindler is swingy -- maybe even more so -- but what makes them worse is they are much harder to counter than Swindler.

When Swindler is on the board without Fairgrounds and Farmland, it's easy to counter. You evaluate how many Swindlers you want based on your action/draw economy (opening double Swindler is often a good play), and you buy a lot of high-cost and especially $6 and $8 cost cards as soon as possible, instead of investing in too many things that will become Duchies. You also want to turn your opponent's Silvers into extra Swindlers if they have enough terminals that you'll make them collide...a surprising number of otherwise decent players miss this and give their opponents a new Silver.

But hexes? Hexes are a nasty roulette. There's varying ways to counter each one, but how do you know which ones are going to hit you? You'd like to be prepared for a plethora of low-probability events, but doing so is expensive and slows you down. The simplest strategy seems to be to try to Hex your opponent a little bit more than they hex you, similar to "winning the curse split". Except it's all a much more random crapshoot.

[Donald X.]

Hexes are another matter, I very much dislike them.

These forums are there for you, even if you just want to use them to repeat over and over how much you hate these cards. They won't be breaking into your house and forcing themselves into your games; maybe next expansion.

[Gherald]

That’s not really fair. Sorry to be criticizing your work, but I think I've done so constructively -- not repetitiously. I thought the comparison/contrast to how Swindler plays was pretty useful.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Hexes are another matter, I very much dislike them.

These forums are there for you, even if you just want to use them to repeat over and over how much you hate these cards. They won't be breaking into your house and forcing themselves into your games; maybe next expansion.

Yikes. Not a great look.

[LastFootnote]

That’s not really fair. Sorry to be criticizing your work, but I think I've done so constructively -- not repetitiously.

I completely understand your point about being able to play around and counter most attacks, and I agree with it. I also find that that makes for good gameplay. But having some attacks that aren't like that doesn't magically make the attacks that are disappear. It doesn't even make them that much less common; the set has Idol and Raider as more "traditional" attacks.

I can think of Hexes like Treasure Map. If my opponent connects Treasure Maps on turn 5, man there was no way I could prepare for that either. There are an endless number of things in Dominion that I can't play around. Even some attacks are that way in some games. If I have no trashing or sifting available, how do I play around my opponent's Witch? That's right, I play my own Witches as much as possible and try to win the split. Likewise with Militia and no good way to counter it, etc.

It's easy to think of Hexes as this strictly-bad-for-the-game element. But the thing is, it's been an immensely popular mechanic with basically everybody I playtested with. In my usual group, for example, it took a long time for them to come around to Boons (partly because early on the Boon deck wasn't nearly as good), but they liked Hexes immediately. There's just something about flipping over that Hex card and seeing what you get. And—although this doesn't apply to most of the folks I play with—some people love "take that" elements, and Hexes are a grab bag of endless variety for them. It is a shame that the full Boon/Hex experience doesn't translate as cleanly to an online implementation.

Yikes. Not a great look.

Jesus, have some empathy.

[Gherald]

I take your point about a T5 treasure map, a fine analogy in some ways. But I like Treasure Map, because I feel like that has more agency. Deciding to go for Treasure Map is a risk, one which seldom pays off without good enablers (warehouse, haven, topdeckers, whatever) -- and using those enablers to proc it is a skill.

Hexing people and being hexed throughout the game doesn't have any of that agency or skill for me. It's just a flood of random stuff to deal with -- which takes away rather than adds to everything else I like about Dominion.

[Donald X.]

Hexes are another matter, I very much dislike them.

These forums are there for you, even if you just want to use them to repeat over and over how much you hate these cards. They won't be breaking into your house and forcing themselves into your games; maybe next expansion.

Yikes. Not a great look.

I'm there for you for however you want to look at me, even if it's "he's that awful guy." I mean I helplessly look at people through whatever tinted glasses too. When you say you don't like hexes, I think, bummer, I hope most people like them. When you say, "Yikes. Not a great look," I think, phew, there's someone I don't care about pleasing. How's that look for ya.

[Jeebus]

As I endlessly enjoy pointing out, actual data shows that Black Market is one of the cards that most means that we expect the better player to win in games using it, while Smithy is at the other end of the spectrum, making our knowledge of player skill especially less useful for predicting the winner.

Yes, I've heard that before, but now I think I can give a clear response. I will assume that it's true. And it makes sense, because Black Market gives you many options to choose from, 3 each time you play it (well, on average less than 3, since you can't always afford all 3). So it's comparable to the "+" tokens from Adventures: many options that will reward the player who chooses wisely. But the thing is, can't it also be the case that Black Market introduces a lot of randomness into the game? If both players are reasonably good (which is the case when I play online), the question is much less who will make the better choice, as it is, who will get the opportunity. The opportunity to get that sorely needed village or trasher or junker (especially if it's early in the game of course). So I stand by my assertion.

[Gherald]

the question is much less who will make the better choice, as it is, who will get the opportunity.

Who will get the opportunity is the question you (Jeebus) most notice, but it is not as important as making many good choices -- not only which and when and whether to buy, but also how to play the cards as they come up and combine them with the rest of the kingdom into a winning deck that responds well to what your opponent is doing (and the cards they got) . There are enormously enjoyable decisions and complexities here that you are flat-out ignoring when you assess the card, so your assessment is very much lacking. You can stand by your assertion as you like, but it's very simplistic and wrong.

[Awaclus]

Yes, I've heard that before, but now I think I can give a clear response. I will assume that it's true. And it makes sense, because Black Market gives you many options to choose from, 3 each time you play it (well, on average less than 3, since you can't always afford all 3). So it's comparable to the "+" tokens from Adventures: many options that will reward the player who chooses wisely. But the thing is, can't it also be the case that Black Market introduces a lot of randomness into the game? If both players are reasonably good (which is the case when I play online), the question is much less who will make the better choice, as it is, who will get the opportunity. The opportunity to get that sorely needed village or trasher or junker (especially if it's early in the game of course). So I stand by my assertion.

I don't think Black Market is a high skill card because it gives you three options to choose from. It's almost always obvious which one of the three is the best for your deck. Rather, it's a high skill card because of the randomness — you have to be able to judge how likely things are, how bad is it if they don't go the way you'd like, how to prepare for it in advance, and how to deal with it after the fact when things didn't go the way you would have liked. The same is true for Hexes, you need those same skills in order to perform well in games with Dooms.

Black Market has the extra skill intensive qualities of being asymmetrical and doing a different thing every time you play it, too, which are also present in Hexes to a smaller degree.

[Gherald]

The same is true for Hexes, you need those same skills in order to perform well in games with Dooms.

Out of what you posted this is the comparison I don't agree with, because Hexes include so many low-probability random events that you lack agency in being able to prepare and respond to.

If your opponent bought the only Goons or the only curser from the Black Market, that's a persistent effect on how the next 10+ turns of the game will play out, and something you can work to adapt and counter in a many different potential ways, some of which you may find in future black market diving of your own. Lots of cool decision-making to be had.

Locusts or War ate something crucial and hard to replace? Probably time to just resign rather than hope the same happens to your opponent.

[Jeebus]

how to prepare for it in advance

I don't want to debate it further, but I just want to say that at least that claim can't be true. How can you prepare in advance for a possible Attack card from your opponent (which you can never get a copy of) out of the 60 cards in the BM deck? Those probabilities are way worse than for Hexes.

[Jeebus]

The same is true for Hexes, you need those same skills in order to perform well in games with Dooms.

Out of what you posted this is the comparison I don't agree with, because Hexes include so many low-probability random events that you lack agency in being able to prepare and respond to.

That's the thing exactly. The same thing is true for the BM deck, only even more so.
(You can't (usually) work to counter a curser if you don't get a curser or a trasher.)

[Gherald]

The same is true for Hexes, you need those same skills in order to perform well in games with Dooms.

Out of what you posted this is the comparison I don't agree with, because Hexes include so many low-probability random events that you lack agency in being able to prepare and respond to.

That's the thing exactly. The same thing is true for the BM deck, only even more so.
(You can't (usually) work to counter a curser if you don't get a curser or a trasher.)

Well if you don't get them then perhaps you can't, but you don't know that immediately. You have many chances and much more agency in for example playing BM more often yourself. With Hexes, if you get one of those low-probability events, it can literally decide the game right then and there barring an extraordinary split in your own and your opponent's shuffle luck. So it's not the same at all, and much less of an immediate concern in Black Market games.

[GendoIkari]

The turn 5 treasure map example makes me realize that there's also something here where attacks just feel different than non-attacks, but in a very artificial way. If you think of the object of Dominion to be to build a great deck that does the things you want it to do, then yes, attacks are fundamentally different than other things your opponent does.

But if you think of Dominion in terms of the actual object, to end the game with more points than your opponent, then there's no fundamental difference between your deck getting worse through bad luck, and an opponent's deck getting better through good luck. Both will hurt your chances of winning in a similar way. The Lucky Chancellor is a good example of this as well, though obviously much less likely than a quick lucky Treasure Map. If your opponent gets all the right draws at all the right times, then he's going to beat you in the same way he will if you get attacked in all the wrong ways at all the wrong times.

I think a lot of the perceived difference is just about feelings. One of the reasons Saboteur was unpopular... people don't want their decks to be trashed. People feel like they are getting hurt by an attack card being played; even though they are being hurt just as much by an opponent buying a Province before you when you're at the greening stage.

[Donald X.]

That’s not really fair. Sorry to be criticizing your work, but I think I've done so constructively -- not repetitiously. I thought the comparison/contrast to how Swindler plays was pretty useful.

I don't mind you criticizing the cards; this is like the perfect place on the internet to do that and everything. You replied to my post that was replying to Jeebus about perceived swinginess in e.g. Black Market, and well I have no points to argue with you, so I'm not trying; I don't like to try to convince people that they're wrong not to like something I made; that is not what I am here for. The Swindler bit did not break new ground for me; I don't want to go through and compare attacks and what happens in each situation, as if to argue that therefore such and such conclusion about hexes; it's not what I want to do with my time, and I have already pointed out that the result is moot, that perception is what matters. For you I already failed the perception test, and if you're wrong about how swingy hexes are or what have you, it just doesn't change anything.

So. Okay, you replied to me and said stuff about the hexes; I acknowledge that post, I didn't just not see it. I do not have a conversation I am looking for there. Tell it to someone else and I won't feel the need to reply and say that.

[Gherald]

Ah. Well though I was replying to you good sir, expanding on the Swindler comparison was more me thinking out loud in response to you mentioning it and other cards' swinginess, and for the benefit of anyone else interested in the comparison of how to handle the attack (vs. how to handle Doom cards). I didn't expect to be breaking any new ground for you -- far from it, I'd be a bit disappointed if anything I said was news to you.

[Cave-o-sapien]

The turn 5 treasure map example makes me realize that there's also something here where attacks just feel different than non-attacks, but in a very artificial way. If you think of the object of Dominion to be to build a great deck that does the things you want it to do, then yes, attacks are fundamentally different than other things your opponent does.

But if you think of Dominion in terms of the actual object, to end the game with more points than your opponent, then there's no fundamental difference between your deck getting worse through bad luck, and an opponent's deck getting better through good luck. Both will hurt your chances of winning in a similar way. The Lucky Chancellor is a good example of this as well, though obviously much less likely than a quick lucky Treasure Map. If your opponent gets all the right draws at all the right times, then he's going to beat you in the same way he will if you get attacked in all the wrong ways at all the wrong times.

I think a lot of the perceived difference is just about feelings. One of the reasons Saboteur was unpopular... people don't want their decks to be trashed. People feel like they are getting hurt by an attack card being played; even though they are being hurt just as much by an opponent buying a Province before you when you're at the greening stage.

Very keen observation; I think you’re 100% right.

[Donald X.]

Yes, I've heard that before, but now I think I can give a clear response. I will assume that it's true. And it makes sense, because Black Market gives you many options to choose from, 3 each time you play it (well, on average less than 3, since you can't always afford all 3). So it's comparable to the "+" tokens from Adventures: many options that will reward the player who chooses wisely. But the thing is, can't it also be the case that Black Market introduces a lot of randomness into the game?

What rrenaud measured was very direct and clear: how much does the presence of a card in a kingdom influence our ability to predict the winner based on estimates of player skill.

The intention was to consider how luck-based cards were, but of course it helplessly includes other things. Maybe a card favors the better player because bad players don't know to buy it. Maybe the strategy around a card is intricate and favors the better player while the card itself does random things.

We could subtract the bad players by redoing the math using only games between two good players. I'm interested in seeing the results but not in doing the work. It seems really unlikely to be different for Black Market though.

We can't subtract strategy from what the card does. All I can say is that, if the card being in a game favors the better player, it's reducing luck overall, even if individual plays of it are random.

[Awaclus]

how to prepare for it in advance

I don't want to debate it further, but I just want to say that at least that claim can't be true. How can you prepare in advance for a possible Attack card from your opponent (which you can never get a copy of) out of the 60 cards in the BM deck? Those probabilities are way worse than for Hexes.

By not building a deck that concedes against any junking attack, for example. The reason why you won't prepare against Enchantress is not that you can't, it's that you realize the odds of your opponent getting it are not that great so it's not worth it. Of course, as GendoIkari pointed out, there's nothing special about Attack cards in particular — you also have to prepare for your opponent getting a +buy in a game where that matters, etc.

[Asper]

I think it's very much as Donald said: The question isn't which card is luck-dependent or not, it's how much people perceive it to be, or actually not even that, but how much people like a card. People like Jester but are scared of Lookout. They are slightly annoyed by the -1 Card token, but they hate to have to discard to Minion, even though it's hardly worse, and the cycling probably benefits them. It's not important whether they are objectively wrong. From a game designers perspective, you don't want people to dislike stuff, not even for wrong reasons. You try to estimate perception as much as you can with playtesting, but there's always a chance that you may not get representative results. Sadly, you can always find out people like it less than you thought, but the opposite might happen less often. Which makes sense, as you wouldn't put something out if it's not popular when testing it. One thing we know however is that attacks have a bad stand. I don't mind you getting free chocolate nearly as much as me losing my chocolate. Sure, from a game perspective it's the same, but real life isn't a zero sum game and so we don't perceive it the same emotionally. I think that's the reason why the randomness of Boons hasn't dominated this discussion, but Hexes have.

[Jeebus]

I drew Locusts and hit my opponent's Royal Blacksmith. There was no replacement. The debt was not even paid off yet. That is way swingier than Swindler.

I don't see this as a flaw with the Hexes. Your opponent knows Locusts is 1 of 12 possible attacks. They should not have bought Royal Blacksmith.

I stopped reading there.

Why even reply then?

"Lol I don't even read opposing viewpoints. Isn't my ignorance cute you guys?"

Let me help you by rephrasing my post in a less snarky way with the same meaning:

As others have already pointed out, you just can't forego getting a strong card on the off-chance that it gets trashed. That's just a way to lose more games. Since your premise is so obviously flawed, there's no reason for me to address the rest of your post.

[gloures]

About the thing rrenaud measured, while I find that statistics incredibly interesting, I would make two considerations when interpreting it:

First is the skill difference already mentioned, I find no surprise at all that Goons is first there, because if one player can't properly build an engine and the other can, the second one should have an almost 100% win rate against the first, and a lot of games of Dominion (specially online) are played with two players on opposite sides of that skill threshold. If you take only games with people on the same side of side threshold (but with still a difference in skill) I believe the difference of expected win rate with Goons, against expected win rate without Goons should be much lower. Other cards like Chapel and Donate also should have similar behavior. (even though turn 5 Chapel Syndrome and an exacerbated player 1 advantage with Donate are totally a thing).

The second point, which I will illustrate with completely arbitrary percentages is as follows: Suppose 10% of Dominion games you have the luck factor being considerably favored towards you, 10% of games towards your opponent and 80% of games the luck factors somewhat evens out between the two players. Now suppose I play against Dan with a card like Village, for example, I might win maybe 50% of the games where luck favored me, 25% of games where luck evens out, and 1% of games where luck favored Dan, now if that card was Black Market or Tournament, I would suppose these percentages might look a lot more like this: I could win maybe 90% of games luck favored me, 10% of games with even luck and 0% of games where Dan got lucky.

So overall Dan should win more often against me in games where there are BM/Tournament than in games with Village, but I would still say that BM/Tournament are swingier cards, because they tend to make getting lucky matter more, it's just that they being somewhat hard cards to play properly leads to the better player winning more often on the vast majority of games where the luck factor just isn't that big.


Sorry for the made up percentages, they're just a means to express my idea, I have absolutely no idea if they would be even close to correct.

[Tozar]

Sorry for the made up percentages, they're just a means to express my idea, I have absolutely no idea if they would be even close to correct.

Shoot, I make up percentages to express ideas about 47% of the time.

[dedicateddan]

Hexes are cool. I like the idea of drawing a penalty from a fixed deck.

There are 12 hexes total. You can figure out which ones are left based on which ones have come out already.

I had a game recently where I needed an additional point to win and had to figure out if it was better to play Werewolf for cards or try to get a point off of a Hex.

There are a lot of things I don't fully understand about hexes. How many times do you cycle through the Hex deck in a typical game? How much additional alt-VP do they add to engines. Does the threat of War and Locusts change the way you build? I'm sure the community will figure all of this out with time, but for now there's a lot of ground to explore with hexes.

[Cave-o-sapien]

I had a game recently where I needed an additional point to win and had to figure out if it was better to play Werewolf for cards or try to get a point off of a Hex.

Ah, cool! I was just imagining this exact scenario in thinking about which hexes are a priority to track.

[Gherald]

I think it's very much as Donald said: The question isn't which card is luck-dependent or not, it's how much people perceive it to be, or actually not even that, but how much people like a card. People like Jester but are scared of Lookout. They are slightly annoyed by the -1 Card token, but they hate to have to discard to Minion, even though it's hardly worse, and the cycling probably benefits them. It's not important whether they are objectively wrong. From a game designers perspective, you don't want people to dislike stuff, not even for wrong reasons. You try to estimate perception as much as you can with playtesting, but there's always a chance that you may not get representative results. Sadly, you can always find out people like it less than you thought, but the opposite might happen less often. Which makes sense, as you wouldn't put something out if it's not popular when testing it. One thing we know however is that attacks have a bad stand. I don't mind you getting free chocolate nearly as much as me losing my chocolate. Sure, from a game perspective it's the same, but real life isn't a zero sum game and so we don't perceive it the same emotionally. I think that's the reason why the randomness of Boons hasn't dominated this discussion, but Hexes have.

So there's been a lot of talk here about perception here, and I get that its a super important consideration -- especially when it comes to getting people to like and enjoy playing a game or particular elements of that game. I get that perception is why people didn't like Saboteur, or don't like Minion, and (I'm assuming) is related to why some number don't like Hexes.

But perception has nothing to do with why I don't like hexes, so I just want to be clear about how I evaluate them and why. It's subjective to the things I value, but it's not about how I "perceive them emotionally" or anything like that.

You raise boons as a comparison -- boons are more straightforward to deal with. Once you're used to quickly evaluating whether you should discard that treasure for that $4 card or discard 3 for a gold, etc, their randomness becomes less annoying, more tractable. It's a problem that can be played around in the way shuffle luck is played around. Just some random powerups inserted here and there. We get it.

Hexes are not so innocuous. They interfere with what you're trying to do in quite random ways, ways that are very difficult to foresee or ameliorate without slowing down other parts of your deck economy. Very, very often (not always, depends on the board) all you can do is hope the really unfortunate combinations don't happen to you, and try to play Doom cards more often than your opponent so that those same really unfortunate things are more likely to happen to them than to you.

It's a spigot of destructive randomness that is a much less tractable problem than Swindler or Saboteur was. When I see/saw those on the boards, I know what's coming and how to deal with it.

Now either you value having this destructive randomness as an addition to your games, or you don't. I don't; it goes against and takes away from my enjoyment of everything else I like and value about Dominion.

[Asper]

I just realized that Locusts don't give you a Curse when they trash a Curse. That's... double-random?

[silverspawn]

I just realized that Locusts don't give you a Curse when they trash a Curse. That's... double-random?

Yeah that's super weird.

[Asper]

Hexes are not so innocuous. They interfere with what you're trying to do in quite random ways, ways that are very difficult to foresee or ameliorate without slowing down other parts of your deck economy. Very, very often (not always, depends on the board) all you can do is hope the really unfortunate combinations don't happen to you, and try to play Doom cards more often than your opponent so that those same really unfortunate things are more likely to happen to them than to you.

Hum. I see the point you make there. Few of the Boons are so useful to a strategy that I really need to be the one who gets them (in fact, I think only Will 'o Wisp comes closes to being strategy-relevant, and you won't ever have enough of them to be as important either way). However, making sure you're not hit by Locusts, War or Envy/Deluded is something that can be very important. So you blast out Doom cards as much as you can to raise your chances. And of course you might still fail. I still feel Werewolf is the only one that makes this come up as extremely, though. Well, for now.

[Jeebus]

They are slightly annoyed by the -1 Card token, but they hate to have to discard to Minion, even though it's hardly worse, and the cycling probably benefits them.

Not sure this goes against your wider point, but surely the randomness of a Minion attack is nothing like the -1 Card token. Yes, the effect on your hand is the same. But with Minion you can skip some of your good cards for the shuffle, or skip a hand that would have stalled you. This is the main random element, which is not present at all with the -1 Card token. (Not that I mind Minion that much.)

[Asper]

They are slightly annoyed by the -1 Card token, but they hate to have to discard to Minion, even though it's hardly worse, and the cycling probably benefits them.

Not sure this goes against your wider point, but surely the randomness of a Minion attack is nothing like the -1 Card token. Yes, the effect on your hand is the same. But with Minion you can skip some of your good cards for the shuffle, or skip a hand that would have stalled you. This is the main random element, which is not present at all with the -1 Card token. (Not that I mind Minion that much.)

My point was that Minion is annoying because you already thought about what you had in hand and made plans, and now that's all for nothing. But you have a point that it's more random than the -1 card token.

[SuperHans]

I always preface this by saying I'm low on the totem pole for skilled players, but I seem to be having a somewhat different (perhaps more positive) experience with the Doom cards than others.

For at least the cards shown, hexing often seems cleverly mitigated. Leprechaun hexes yourself and can be avoided. Cursed Village also hexes yourself and only when gained. Werewolf hexing cannot be throned (based on the cards we know). Also, a lot of times the draw was the better option. Vampire cannot be throned and it alternates with Bats making it hard to send out a barrage of hexes.

Skulk, however, can quickly become degenerate in some kingdoms because it can be throned. Then again, a lot of kingdoms with throne variants can become degenerate with good attacks. At least it is terminal.

Overall, hexes aren't offensive to me. For the most part, I've enjoyed the kingdoms with them (Werewolf is great). It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the cards turn out, but it seems that intentional efforts were made with the doom cards shown to reduce how degenerate they can be in most kingdoms (compared with, e.g., Cultist, Mountebank, Swindler).

Only time will tell.

[Awaclus]

Throneability isn't a great way to judge a card's strength because most of the time there are no throne variants. Werewolf is definitely a stronger Hexer than Skulk because it's non-terminal.

[SuperHans]

Throneability isn't a great way to judge a card's strength because most of the time there are no throne variants. Werewolf is definitely a stronger Hexer than Skulk because it's non-terminal.

Completely agreed. I brought up throneability mostly in connection with how degenerate can the card be at it's worst.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Is Werewolf the star of the set so far?

[LastFootnote]

It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the cards turn out, but it seems that intentional efforts were made with the doom cards shown to reduce how degenerate they can be in most kingdoms (compared with, e.g., Cultist, Mountebank, Swindler).

I'd say this is true. There's a reason Vampires can't gain Vampires, even though that would have been very thematic.

[FemurLemur]

I drew Locusts and hit my opponent's Royal Blacksmith. There was no replacement. The debt was not even paid off yet. That is way swingier than Swindler.

I don't see this as a flaw with the Hexes. Your opponent knows Locusts is 1 of 12 possible attacks. They should not have bought Royal Blacksmith.

I stopped reading there.

Why even reply then?

"Lol I don't even read opposing viewpoints. Isn't my ignorance cute you guys?"

Let me help you by rephrasing my

I stopped reading there.



Snark aside, your argument relies upon a strawman of my position which I have already corrected others on. You should have kept reading after all.

As others have already pointed out, you just can't forego getting a strong card on the off-chance that it gets trashed. That's just a way to lose more games.

I've responded to those people. Read those responses instead of assuming that I take the idiot's position.

You're acting like you have no responses to Locusts. I'm saying you have at least two, one of which is to not build a deck with all of your eggs in one basket. The other is to ignore the Locusts. Your problem is that you want to do the latter but then pretend you've done the former. You want to have your cake and eat it too: to buy your Royal Blacksmith, but have zero risk of losing it. Well sorry, that's how a game with Royal Blacksmith may normally work, but perhaps today, there's a Swindler on the table. Complaining about the Swindler won't actually do anything about it. It's still there. Make the best deck you can under the circumstances. Or don't. It's your call. But concluding "I lost my Royal Blacksmith to Swindler one time, therefore Swindler is a problem" is just stupid. You lost the Royal Blacksmith because you bought the Royal Blacksmith, didn't have any sufficiently reliable ways to protect it from the Swindler, and Dominion is a game heavily influenced by shuffle luck. The only reason you're upset now is because you thought low probability = zero probability. A reasonable person would have either looked at the scenario and said "Well, that's frustrating, but those are the dice I chose to roll", OR would say "I could have built a better deck". Those are the only two outcomes.

Either you could have done something differently or you couldn't. If you truly can't build a Royal Blacksmith deck that that was better than a Swindler deck, then you should've built a Swindler deck instead of Royal Blacksmith. Or perhaps your Royal Blacksmith deck is definitely better than any Swindler deck, and you just got bad luck. Welcome to Dominion man, there's shuffle luck here. Like a lot of it. All over the place. I don't know why you're just now realizing this. We could remove all of the Kingdom Cards and play a Dominion variant with only the base cards, and this would still be true. You would still lose some games due to a 1 in 200 fluke where your opponents draw their treasures in the exact order they need, and you draw yours in the worst possible order, even if you both have identical decks. I'm sorry that you seem to think that low probability = zero probability. Or perhaps just that Dominion isn't already chock full of extraordinarily low probability scenarios (it is, btw).

It's possible that Locusts influence the luck way too much, but my original point was that I remain unconvinced. Your one anecdote from one specific game is not enough, given that we don't even know if that person made the most optimal play. Clearly for it to be a serious issue it needs to be low frequency, high severity, and low player agency. You have not yet convinced me that anything other than low frequency is the case. "Royal Blacksmith trashed by Locusts, therefore Locusts are broken" is nowhere near a comprehensive enough argument. Acting standoffish and misrepresenting my argument is even less convincing.

Inb4 somebody strawmans my argument into "Wow, Femur says that you should buy Swindler over Royal Blacksmith"


Edit: Or since we're talking about a card with debt in the cost, substitute "Swindler" with literally any card that has a low probability to mess up your plan. Swindler technically does already in some edge cases (RBs are already empty, or Swindler keeps hitting your RB the turn before you would draw it and gaining you a new one that you won't get until a reshuffle).

[ThetaSigma12]

Wow. FemurLemur says you should buy Swindler over Royal Blacksmith.

[Asper]

Throneability isn't a great way to judge a card's strength because most of the time there are no throne variants. Werewolf is definitely a stronger Hexer than Skulk because it's non-terminal.

Completely agreed. I brought up throneability mostly in connection with how degenerate can the card be at it's worst.

Personally, I hope it doesn't get any worse than it is with Werewolf...

[Jeebus]

You keep saying Swindler, but the topic was Locusts. Swindlering a Royal Blacksmith gets you another one. Not so with Locusts. Other than that, I did read the entire post this time, and I remain as unconvinced as you - unconvinced that getting Royal Blacksmith removed from your deck doesn't falls into all three categories of low frequency, high severity, and low player agency. Swindler is actually way more predictable.

[Cave-o-sapien]

It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the cards turn out, but it seems that intentional efforts were made with the doom cards shown to reduce how degenerate they can be in most kingdoms (compared with, e.g., Cultist, Mountebank, Swindler).

I'd say this is true. There's a reason Vampires can't gain Vampires, even though that would have been very thematic.

I thought it seemed anti-thematic at first, too; but on second thought, I'm good with the thematic fit. One wouldn't expect a newly-turned vampire be nearly as powerful as the alpha Vampire.

On the other hand, I do like that (some) Zombies can make other Zombies.

[markusin]

You keep saying Swindler, but the topic was Locusts. Swindlering a Royal Blacksmith gets you another one. Not so with Locusts. Other than that, I did read the entire post this time, and I remain as unconvinced as you - unconvinced that getting Royal Blacksmith removed from your deck doesn't falls into all three categories of low frequency, high severity, and low player agency. Swindler is actually way more predictable.

Not to mention that Famine, War, and maybe Bad Omens can skip over the Royal Blacksmith just like Swindler would.

[mameluke]

Throneability isn't a great way to judge a card's strength because most of the time there are no throne variants. Werewolf is definitely a stronger Hexer than Skulk because it's non-terminal.

Completely agreed. I brought up throneability mostly in connection with how degenerate can the card be at it's worst.

Personally, I hope it doesn't get any worse than it is with Werewolf...

My first game with Werewolf had Vampire in it, too. My opponent got an early Vampire and kept gaining Werewolves, using one or two for draw and then spent the rest of the turn in the Night phase sending hexes my way. It wasn't much fun.

[Cave-o-sapien]

My first game with Werewolf had Vampire in it, too. My opponent got an early Vampire and kept gaining Werewolves, using one or two for draw and then spent the rest of the turn in the Night phase sending hexes my way. It wasn't much fun.

Small sample size and all that, but a T1/T2 Vampire with other good 5-cards seems really strong (but not uniquely strong among 5-costs). It will be interesting to see where we rank it after a few months of regular play.

[FemurLemur]

You keep saying Swindler, but the topic was Locusts. Swindlering a Royal Blacksmith gets you another one. Not so with Locusts. Other than that, I did read the entire post this time,

Swindler was to get us off of the topic of a theoretical new card and onto one which we are all already familiar with, in order to get you to stop misrepresenting what I had previously said as some kind of one size fits all rule of how to address Locusts.

Are you sure you read it? I could swear I edited the post and addressed the Swindler thing already, like, 3 hours before you posted your response...

As for your main response regarding frequency, severity, and player agency, that's totally fine if you are unconvinced, but you are the one who made a claim (that Locusts was too swingy), so it's not really my job to convince you in this exchange.

[FemurLemur]

You keep saying Swindler, but the topic was Locusts. Swindlering a Royal Blacksmith gets you another one. Not so with Locusts. Other than that, I did read the entire post this time, and I remain as unconvinced as you - unconvinced that getting Royal Blacksmith removed from your deck doesn't falls into all three categories of low frequency, high severity, and low player agency. Swindler is actually way more predictable.

Not to mention that Famine, War, and maybe Bad Omens can skip over the Royal Blacksmith just like Swindler would.

Multiple Swindlers also won't get in each others' ways, whereas multiple Hexes can.

Not that it matters. Because, y'know, I already cautioned against fixating on Swindler itself. I was just talking about any card with low probabilities of messing up your plans.

[markusin]

You keep saying Swindler, but the topic was Locusts. Swindlering a Royal Blacksmith gets you another one. Not so with Locusts. Other than that, I did read the entire post this time, and I remain as unconvinced as you - unconvinced that getting Royal Blacksmith removed from your deck doesn't falls into all three categories of low frequency, high severity, and low player agency. Swindler is actually way more predictable.

Not to mention that Famine, War, and maybe Bad Omens can skip over the Royal Blacksmith just like Swindler would.

Multiple Swindlers also won't get in each others' ways, whereas multiple Hexes can.

Not that it matters. Because, y'know, I already cautioned against fixating on Swindler itself. I was just talking about any card with low probabilities of messing up your plans.

I think in general, early Hexes are especially powerful, because there is only so much you can build by the time you have to suffer against them. Having say Famine or War skip over your opening buy during the second shuffle will suck, but on the other hand the discard attacks will be fairly tame by then.

Edit: well, considering the chance of getting the right Hex to hit the right target, I guess it's similar to Sea Hag hitting the opponent's Sea Hag. We've seen that before, but it's not like that isn't devastating.

[Asper]

So I mentioned this before, but is there any reason why Locusts doesn't give you a Curse when it trashes a Curse? I mean, obviously all games with Hexes have Curses. I'm not sure whether this is an oversight or meant to tie in with the "random" theme of Boons and Hexes. Or was the idea here just, nah, that's not going to happen often enough to be worth the one word?

[LastFootnote]

So I mentioned this before, but is there any reason why Locusts doesn't give you a Curse when it trashes a Curse? I mean, obviously all games with Hexes have Curses. I'm not sure whether this is an oversight or meant to tie in with the "random" theme of Boons and Hexes. Or was the idea here just, nah, that's not going to happen often enough to be worth the one word?

Not going to happen enough to be worth one word. Although maybe in reality it will. Pretty sure that was the thinking, though.

[Donald X.]

So I mentioned this before, but is there any reason why Locusts doesn't give you a Curse when it trashes a Curse? I mean, obviously all games with Hexes have Curses. I'm not sure whether this is an oversight or meant to tie in with the "random" theme of Boons and Hexes. Or was the idea here just, nah, that's not going to happen often enough to be worth the one word?

Many of the things I regret in published Dominion cards involve me adding extra words to try to squeeze out extra play value from something. These days I struggle to not do that. So I do not just add a word for an uncommon situation.

It was no secret that Locusts could trash a Curse. And I have seen it trash Curses. And those were good times, net happiness increased.

[Gherald]

The comparison/contrast with Swindler is again useful. A enjoyable and key aspect of attacks like Swindler is knowing when to spam it and when to not. For example, the common enough situation of a Swindler board with no trashing. Opening one Swindler is generally a no-brainer there, and double Swindler is very often smart, but those Swindlers have an expiration date: once the curse pile is empty, you run the risk of turning your opponent's curses back into coppers. So what do you do? Play Swindler less often, don't buy one to replace those that get turned into Silvers or worse, and hope your opponent is dumb enough to keep spamming the attack. I have won games where the VP difference was the curses I used to have that my opponent turned back into coppers.

In the case of Doom attacks, we've just got a lot of random crap going on all the time. You might devastate your opponent's deck, or you might help him by trashing a curse or activating his menagerie or draw-to-X or whatever. No one has any real clue how things are going to play out, all you can do is try to out-attack your opponent and hope fate is more on your side than theirs.

I don't like this. It's not terrible, it's novel, it's something different, yada yada. But it's not living up to the high standard of what Dominion was before Nocturne.

[Jeebus]

and hope fate is more on your side than theirs.

You mean doom. ...Sorry. :p

[LastFootnote]

The comparison/contrast with Swindler is again useful. A enjoyable and key aspect of attacks like Swindler is knowing when to spam it and when to not. For example, the common enough situation of a Swindler board with no trashing. Opening one Swindler is generally a no-brainer there, and double Swindler is very often smart, but those Swindlers have an expiration date: once the curse pile is empty, you run the risk of turning your opponent's curses back into coppers. So what do you do? Play Swindler less often, don't buy one to replace those that get turned into Silvers or worse, and hope your opponent is dumb enough to keep spamming the attack. I have won games where the VP difference was the curses I used to have that my opponent turned back into coppers.

In the case of Doom attacks, we've just got a lot of random crap going on all the time. You might devastate your opponent's deck, or you might help him by trashing a curse or activating his menagerie or draw-to-X or whatever. No one has any real clue how things are going to play out, all you can do is try to out-attack your opponent and hope fate is more on your side than theirs.

I don't like this. It's not terrible, it's novel, it's something different, yada yada. But it's not living up to the high standard of what Dominion was before Nocturne.

I think I've done so constructively -- not repetitiously.

Are you just feeling like you’re not being heard? Trust me, you are. Your message has been received. Hexes are worse than Swindler’s attack because there’s less strategy around them. Got it.

[mee]

just wondering how that village will play with night cards since you will have a lot of dead cards in hand b4 the night phase
it seems weird that Donald would put in a card that discourages the other cards in the set

[markusin]

just wondering how that village will play with night cards since you will have a lot of dead cards in hand b4 the night phase
it seems weird that Donald would put in a card that discourages the other cards in the set

Rebuild game out in the set that introduced Shelters. I think it's fine if a card isn't as strong overall in games heavy with its own expansion than it is in full random.

Then again, maybe we should not look to Rebuild for examples.

[tastor]

just wondering how that village will play with night cards since you will have a lot of dead cards in hand b4 the night phase
it seems weird that Donald would put in a card that discourages the other cards in the set

Don't think it discourages them so much as they just don't directly combo. But then, neither does big draw which is your usual go to combo with a village. You still get the actions and the first one you play on an ordinary turn will draw 2 cards which isn't anything to sneeze at.

For that matter, though, any village is already redundant with Night cards because you don't need those extra actions in the first place. They are definitely a shift in the usual engine paradigm.

[SuperHans]

just wondering how that village will play with night cards since you will have a lot of dead cards in hand b4 the night phase
it seems weird that Donald would put in a card that discourages the other cards in the set

Not all cards synergize.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Are you just feeling like you’re not being heard? Trust me, you are. Your message has been received. Hexes are worse than Swindler’s attack because there’s less strategy around them. Got it.

It seems like you see someone complaining about something and parroting the same thing over and over.

I see someone trying to understand and articulate what it is they dislike about that thing.

I don't see why the latter is so objectionable. You may disagree with it, but I think it's interesting.

[LastFootnote]

Are you just feeling like you’re not being heard? Trust me, you are. Your message has been received. Hexes are worse than Swindler’s attack because there’s less strategy around them. Got it.

It seems like you see someone complaining about something and parroting the same thing over and over.

I see someone trying to understand and articulate what it is they dislike about that thing.

I don't see why the latter is so objectionable. You may disagree with it, but I think it's interesting.

And I’m just trying to say, “I understand and accept your point.”

[Cave-o-sapien]

Are you just feeling like you’re not being heard? Trust me, you are. Your message has been received. Hexes are worse than Swindler’s attack because there’s less strategy around them. Got it.

It seems like you see someone complaining about something and parroting the same thing over and over.

I see someone trying to understand and articulate what it is they dislike about that thing.

I don't see why the latter is so objectionable. You may disagree with it, but I think it's interesting.

And I’m just trying to say, “I understand and accept your point.”

Fair enough. I think it will be really interesting to see how opinions evolve on these cards over time -- as happens in every set -- but especially in the cases where people have staked out pretty bold positions.

[Asper]

So I mentioned this before, but is there any reason why Locusts doesn't give you a Curse when it trashes a Curse? I mean, obviously all games with Hexes have Curses. I'm not sure whether this is an oversight or meant to tie in with the "random" theme of Boons and Hexes. Or was the idea here just, nah, that's not going to happen often enough to be worth the one word?

Many of the things I regret in published Dominion cards involve me adding extra words to try to squeeze out extra play value from something. These days I struggle to not do that. So I do not just add a word for an uncommon situation.

It was no secret that Locusts could trash a Curse. And I have seen it trash Curses. And those were good times, net happiness increased.

But is word count really that important? I recall you once saying that Native Village was a wall of text, but it was okay because the card was really simple on a conceptual level. I can see why you would want to reduce complexity there, but outside of Shelters or Ruins (which are from another expansion), I'd argue that, conceptionally, replacing any junk with a Curse is at least as simple as replacing two kinds of junk with a Curse and just trashing the other. It's also less random, but I guess your experience was that random doesn't mean bad times.

[LastFootnote]

So I mentioned this before, but is there any reason why Locusts doesn't give you a Curse when it trashes a Curse? I mean, obviously all games with Hexes have Curses. I'm not sure whether this is an oversight or meant to tie in with the "random" theme of Boons and Hexes. Or was the idea here just, nah, that's not going to happen often enough to be worth the one word?

Many of the things I regret in published Dominion cards involve me adding extra words to try to squeeze out extra play value from something. These days I struggle to not do that. So I do not just add a word for an uncommon situation.

It was no secret that Locusts could trash a Curse. And I have seen it trash Curses. And those were good times, net happiness increased.

But is word count really that important? I recall you once saying that Native Village was a wall of text, but it was okay because the card was really simple on a conceptual level. I can see why you would want to reduce complexity there, but outside of Shelters or Ruins (which are from another expansion), I'd argue that, conceptionally, replacing any junk with a Curse is at least as simple as replacing two kinds of junk with a Curse and just trashing the other. It's also less random, but I guess your experience was that random doesn't mean bad times.

It’s still not any kind of junk, though. What about Ruins and Shelters?

[Awaclus]

Why couldn't it be "Trash the top card of your deck. Gain a cheaper card that shares a type with it. If you didn't, gain a Curse."?

[pacovf]

Trash Royal Blacksmith
Get a Curse

[Asper]

It’s still not any kind of junk, though. What about Ruins and Shelters?

Shelters or Ruins (which are from another expansion)

Other expansion. Like Royal Blacksmith.

[Donald X.]

Why couldn't it be "Trash the top card of your deck. Gain a cheaper card that shares a type with it. If you didn't, gain a Curse."?

It was too harsh when hitting e.g. a Village with no cheaper Action.

[Jacob marley]

Trash Royal Blacksmith
Get a Curse

But Curse does not cost less than Royal blacksmith, it just has a different currency.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Trash Royal Blacksmith
Get a Curse

But Curse does not cost less than Royal blacksmith, it just has a different currency.

Not true, by Dominion rules 8D > 0.

[GendoIkari]

Trash Royal Blacksmith
Get a Curse

But Curse does not cost less than Royal blacksmith, it just has a different currency.

Not true, by Dominion rules 8D > 0.

More specifically, ,,0 > 0,,0.

[tastor]

I think he was more specifically responding to Awaculus' theoretical "Gain a cheaper card that shares a type with it. If you didn't, gain a Curse." wording. As in: it would suck to do that with something like Royal Blacksmith.

Under either wording, Curse doesn't fulfill the "shares a type with it" clause anyway, so the point is moot.