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The other thought exercise got me thinking. Let's assume that Dominion is no longer a print game but is instead malleable and updated frequently. What are your nerf and buff proposals? I'm especially interested in buffs people might propose, as most cards that don't see a lot of play typically serve some niche.

[guided]

-Minion's attack is less powerful. Idea 1: Victims can choose to be affected even if they have fewer than 5 cards. Idea 2: The victim has a choice between "discard your hand and draw 4" or "discard down to 3 cards in hand".
-Sea Hag's discard effect is optional.

That's my complete list of nerfs.


Buffs? Iunno, something with Adventurer (maybe even costing it at $5?), and we can buff Pearl Diver by shredding the randomizer card and scattering the pieces to the four winds. I don't think I'd buff any other cards.

Crazy Adventurer idea for leaving it at $6: "If you reveal no treasure other than Copper, +$1."

[Nagetier]

The Sea Hag discard effect is actually a nerf. It prevents multiple stacked curses on the deck. In the endgame, it's a mill, it cycles the opponent's deck when he doesn't want that anymore during VP purchases. Thus, the card has a nonzero use after curses are gone. :-)

Minion in the current form is excellent against people who return N alchemists back to the deck, no other card can do this.

Other ideas --

• Throne Room: change to "may play".
• Masquerade: passing only happens between players with cards.
• Goons: maybe add Outpost-like clause against too many VP from copies of itself?
• Pawn's choices may be done in either order, Trusty Steed's ones must be done in order: Pick one method and do it throughout.
• Black Market: ban altogether :> Or change to "+$2, +Buy. Turn up top 3 cards of BM deck, select one. Add additional kingdom pile with regular initial amount of that card. Remove from supply any other pile set up by this before."

[guided]

The Sea Hag discard effect is actually a nerf.

I know the purpose of the effect, and that purpose remains intact if you further nerf the effect by making it optional. The way it works right now injects a lot of unnecessary variance into the game. For example: We both open Sea Hag. Your Sea Hag discards my Sea Hag. GG. -- The "mill a card" effect in the absence of curses is not significant (apart from increasing variance) and I would not be sad to see it go.

-Yes, Minion's attack is excellent. It's too excellent. Hence the suggestion to nerf it. "This card is the best defense against this other specific card" is not convincing to me. Specific 2-card combos are rare. Not to mention: there are other things you can do to harry an Alchemist deck (e.g. Masquerade, Possession).

-The order of choices on Pawn makes no difference, so there's no actual inconsistency apart from rulebook wording.

-Yeah, Throne Room. The card doesn't need to be buffed, but "may play" is a good rules fix so the card doesn't have mandatory effects based on non-public information.

-Masquerade: that's a fine nerf, though I kind of like the idea that the KC/Masquerade pin exists. It's a fun curiosity. I've still never seen it in the wild (successfully executed with a random Kingdom draw), even in ~1000 2p games since it was publicized, so it's not as if it's ruining the game for me.

-Goons: IMO does not need any kind of nerf. I thought it was too good when Prosperity first came out (I wanted to swap the costs for Goons and Expand), but I've since changed my tune.

[rinkworks]

No doubt the game is better in its published form.  But my experience with the game, much less than all the playtesting done before publication, makes me itch for these changes:

- Either price Adventurer at $5 or give it +1 Action.  As-is, the circumstances where it's preferable to Gold are few and contradictory:  a deck where your average card value is $1.5, which is easiest to achieve with heavy trashing -- but in trim decks, you don't usually need to hunt for treasure!

- Price Hunting Party at $6.  It's an improvement on Laboratory, after all.

- Price Navigator at $3.  Alternately, change the +2 coins to +1 action, though that might make it a bit too Scout-like.  As is, Navigator seems like a cool card that I never get to play with, because it never seems like the best terminal to pick up.

- Allow Thief to choose not to take or trash a revealed treasure.  It would still be a weak attack on most boards, but it would eliminate the risk of aiding your opponent by trashing a Copper.

- Price Counting House at $4.  Why is this $5?

- Price Trading Post at $4.  It's a powerful opener but much less powerful even purchasing it as early as Turn 3.  Making it available to open with only to players with good initial shuffle luck throws too much of the game to chance.  (I don't think any other $5 card depreciates so precipitously after the first reshuffle.)

- Loan.  Instead of the options being "trash the revealed treasure or discard it" it should be "trash the revealed treasure or put it on top of your deck."  Maybe.  When Loan hits a Gold or Platinum, you'd have been better off not playing it at all.  Then again, it's probably okay if the optimal strategy is not to play it at all later in the game.  But it can also hit that first Silver you buy when you play Loan on Turn 3, and that's just unnecessarily brutal.  Maybe Loan could keep the "trash or discard" instructions if it was worth $2 and priced at $4.  Then the risk would be a little more worth taking.

- Pirate Ship.  After reading about Pirate Ship here, I am persuaded that Pirate Ship isn't the dominating force that it always winds up being when I play with it, or against it.  But not being a better player than I am, it just seems horrendously overpowered.  I played a couple of House Rules games with my brother, wherein every time we'd use Pirate Ship for the money, rather than the attack, a coin would be *removed* from the mat at the end of the turn.  This seemed to balance the card perfectly, but I fully concede that it may have only seemed balanced in light of our sub-optimal play.  Still.

[theory]

I am a little apprehensive.  Topics like these never turn out well...

[rinkworks]

Haha.  Yes, you're probably right.  So let me be clear about where I was coming from on my earlier post:  I'm actually more looking for arguments for why the cards I mentioned *should* be the way they are.  I hinted at it in my opening statement, but I suspect the reason I want those tweaks is because I don't know how to best play those cards as printed, and I'd like to learn.

[Blaeu]

I really do not know if this is a nerf or a buff, but I dislike how there are cards that "interact" with other players and are not considered attacks.  Anytime someone plays a card that effects my hand, deck, or even discard pile, I should be able to play a reaction card.  The two cards that come to mind are Masquerade and Tribute.  The first requires me to pass a card, but what if I have five awesome cards?  I would consider that an attack.  You could argue that if you have at least one bad card you can get rid of it, but that doesn't negate the fact I permanently lose a card from my hand with no way to prevent it.

As for Tribute, discarding the top two cards may, or may not suck.  However, before I am forced to do so, it would be nice to have the option to play a reaction card to at least effect which to cards are revealed (if not prevent it all together).  I also dislike that it targets a single player, which is only "okay" because it is NOT an attack.

Possession is another card that should be an attack.

I know Donald wanted to have cards that caused player interaction, but he can still have that with cards that give options like Vault, Bishop and even Tournament.

[guided]

I am a little apprehensive.  Topics like these never turn out well...

Yeah, I already want to put another 20,000 words out there just on the posts that have been made since my last post. I think instead I will save myself the aneurysm

[Personman]

No doubt the game is better in its published form.  But my experience with the game, much less than all the playtesting done before publication, makes me itch for these changes:

Since you asked for arguments, here are some:

- Price Hunting Party at $6.  It's an improvement on Laboratory, after all.

It's not a strict improvement at all, and it's pretty sad at 6. You still buy it, but you don't get to buy very many of them and see it do its thing. Sure, Lab is usually kinda sad in a spread with HP, but that's hardly the only such pair of cards.

- Price Navigator at $3.  Alternately, change the +2 coins to +1 action, though that might make it a bit too Scout-like.  As is, Navigator seems like a cool card that I never get to play with, because it never seems like the best terminal to pick up.

People really underestimate how powerful milling 5 cards is. I think double Navigator would be a very strong opening. Not as strong as double Ambassador though, and subtly powerful in a similar way, so maybe this is a good idea after all.

But Navigator doesn't suck. According to councilroom, I buy it in 30% of games where it shows up, and my Win Rate With is 1.25 -- it's actually my 9th highest WRW, above Princess and Bag of Gold!

- Allow Thief to choose not to take or trash a revealed treasure.  It would still be a weak attack on most boards, but it would eliminate the risk of aiding your opponent by trashing a Copper.

I don't think anything can save Thief in 2p. As it is, it has marginal applications against Chapel decks and as a Swindler replacement, and I don't think there's much point in adding words to it that don't really make it much less bad.

- Price Counting House at $4.  Why is this $5?

Hmm. This is one of my least favorite Dominion cards, so I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it. But you might be right.

...I guess opening with it and drawing it turn 4 is kinda good? But no better than Coppersmith, and, well...

- Price Trading Post at $4.  It's a powerful opener but much less powerful even purchasing it as early as Turn 3.  Making it available to open with only to players with good initial shuffle luck throws too much of the game to chance.  (I don't think any other $5 card depreciates so precipitously after the first reshuffle.)

On this one I think you are just totally wrong. Trading Post would be a first turn must-buy at 4 most of the time. The card is pretty darn good! I agree that it's sad when one player gets 5 and the other doesn't; this is why you should play with 'identical starting hands' checked!

[Nagetier]

[sea hag discard] I know the purpose of the effect, and that purpose remains intact if you further nerf the effect by making it optional.

Ah, if the victim may choose whether to discard instead of the attacker, then it's a sensible idea.

Hmm, same would then apply to the minion attack. With the proposed change, people are guaranteed the opportunity to use their strongest card throughout each shuffle.

[Yariv]

Counting house is much stronger than Coppersmith in general, and early on a main element could be Bank. Bank comes from the same expansion as CH (more likely to come together IRL). CH is quite likely to give you bank on turn 4... opening CH in a spread with bank could be devastating, probably (didn't really check it). If CH was 4$ you would have a good chance to get 2 CH and a bank in your deck by the end of turn 4. You can't do it with coppersmith.

[randomdragoon]

- Pirate Ship.  After reading about Pirate Ship here, I am persuaded that Pirate Ship isn't the dominating force that it always winds up being when I play with it, or against it.  But not being a better player than I am, it just seems horrendously overpowered.  I played a couple of House Rules games with my brother, wherein every time we'd use Pirate Ship for the money, rather than the attack, a coin would be *removed* from the mat at the end of the turn.  This seemed to balance the card perfectly, but I fully concede that it may have only seemed balanced in light of our sub-optimal play.  Still.

I feel like too many people overreact to their opponent's pirate ships. If there is a strong way to fill your deck with non-terminals to block your opponent's pirate ship, go for it, but don't stretch yourself too far in doing so. It's fine to keep buying money if you need it, pirate ship is only probably going to trash a total of 6 money in a single game anyway (most of which will be copper). People rage hard when pirate ship hits their gold, when they forget it trashed 4 of their copper for them.

4p pirate ship can be a different matter however... this one can be quite vulnerable to groupthink. If three players get it, you may actually start to worry you can't keep money in your deck, so you look for a source of action-money ... hey, pirate ship is one of those cards!

You're not alone though. Pirate ship, I think, is the single card with the biggest difference in perceived power level between my irl friends and the folks on isotropic.


EDIT: How's this for a crazy adventuerer buff? "Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal three treasure cards. Put two of them into your hand. Discard the other revealed cards."

[rinkworks]

What seems unbalanced to me about Pirate Ship isn't so much the attack as the incredible wealth you can build with it.  You buy three or four Pirate Ships and trash down a bit, so you're playing them every turn, you can get eight coins quickly and then buy a Province every turn afterwards.

Again, I concede that this is probably only due to my suboptimal play.  I haven't played a Pirate Ship game in a while, since before I started reading this board, and didn't really know how to defend against it.  Shooting for a quicker ending (to prevent an opponent's Pirate Ships from getting to that point) and/or reducing treasure card density both seem like reasonable ways to defend.

[Kuildeous]

you can get eight coins quickly and then buy a Province every turn afterwards.

True, but while that opponent is building up 8 coins, you're hopefully already buying the Provinces.

By itself, consider what it takes for a successful Pirate Ship to get to 8 coins. You have to use it 8 times to cycle through decks, looking for coins. And that's assuming you hit each and every time. As the game progresses, it becomes harder and harder to hit treasure (though not so much in multiplayer).  So, there are at least 7 lost opportunities for using Pirate Ship as coin (I say 7 because the first time it's played only has one viable choice).

By itself, getting a 8-coin Pirate Ship is too slow and cumbersome. Naturally, this changes with King's Court or crazy action chains, but that's true of many cards.

I've learned that 8-coin Pirate Ship is not the way to go in non-Colony games. Once you get up to 3 or 4 coins, you usually have enough in your hand to supplement it. I've seen it get as high as 6once, but even that was unnecessary.

[ycz6]

- Loan.  When Loan hits a Gold or Platinum, you'd have been better off not playing it at all.

False! Loan gives you +$1, remember? People seem to forget stuff like this a lot in these topics.

[WanderingWinder]

- Loan.  When Loan hits a Gold or Platinum, you'd have been better off not playing it at all.

False! Loan gives you +$1, remember? People seem to forget stuff like this a lot in these topics.

In most cases, they're right and you're wrong. Yeah, it's $1, but that $1 usually isn't as big a deal as not being able to play one of your precious few golds or platinums this reshuffle.

[Thisisnotasmile]

+$1 and -1 Platinum this shuffle is better than +1 Platinum this shuffle and your next hand is 5 green cards that your loan would have skipped over for you.

[WanderingWinder]

If it happens to skip those green cards. But on average the skipping of the green cards are not is no net benefit, since you can't rely upon it. See yaron's article

[Thisisnotasmile]

And on the other hand, you can't assume every time you play the loan, you will be discarding a platinum. It all balances out whether you play it or not.

[WanderingWinder]

But the point was that when it hits a gold or platinum, it's (usually) worse than if you hadn't played it.
Overall, in straight-up big money, going for the loan is worse than grabbing a silver. In many other decks, it's better. Another one of the dominion "it depends on the set-up" balance things.

[guided]

Always play Loan if you need the $1. If you don't need the $1, always consider whether you might be better off not playing it.

[Kpratt]

Loan doesn't need a buff. It is an early game card, like chapel. Loan can be devastating in the early game, and once you're hitting your golds, its probably put you pretty far ahead of a non-loaning opponent.

[Fangz]

I'd nerf Chapel, really. It renders all other trashers essentially superfluous. How about making them single use like embargo?

Another thing is to remove the self-gaining power of Grand Market. How about pseudo-reversing the buy condition: only treasures can be used to purchase grand market. i.e. +$ from action cards do not count for it.

[Davio]

Nerf Alchemy altogether, it's so sad they made cards which require Potions. I think these cards would have been perfect with normal costs. This expansion is so crappy, it isn't even funny. Sure it has some good cards (University, Familiar, Golem), no denying that, but the whole Potion deal is awful and the fact there are only 13 cards in the box. Swing and miss imho.

Here is how I rate the Alchemy cards in regular $ (more or less):
Transmute $2
Vineyard   $4
Apothecary $4 - Maybe replace Potions with Estates or something
Scrying Pool $4
University $5
Alchemist - Remove this, it's basically a Laboratory without the Potions
Familiar $5
Philosopher's Stone - Remove this, only useful for online play
Golem $5
Possession - Remove this, it's too annoying, or make it so that it's un-TR-able / un-KC-able, perhaps give the possessed player a bonus like +2$ on his own turn


Many of the Cursers are so strong that they're must buys. Maybe give them all a clause so they only work while the Curses have not run out: Every other player gains a Curse, if at least one player does, do your bonus thing.


Grand Market may not be as strong when the +Buy is removed, but they're already sort of nerfed in no-trash setups.


Tournament brings these problems to the table:
1. They are too cheap for an early Peddler / Treasury
2. The prizes have too big of an impact which makes disregarding Tournament a mistake generally
3. The game is often won by the player who gets the first prize, making catching up almost an impossible task

I think it would be good to make Tournament cost $5 in which case the prizes may or may not be nerfed.


Hunting Party is so good, it might be better as a $6. Not only do you get to play your good terminals more often, you also get to control your shuffle moments better.


Ambassador is somewhat of a must buy and so strong because of the seesaw effect. I'm interested to see how it would work if it would cost $5 and lets you return up to 3 copies to the Supply.


King's Court is a beast and the main cause for lop siding a lot of games. You draw KC with Chapel? Bad luck. I draw it with Mountebank and you have no Curses in hand? You lose. I think the difference between TR and this is bigger than $3, would like to see this costing $8, but this makes it another problematic target for Swindled Provinces.


Chapel Change the 4 trashed cards to 3 and see what happens...