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[BluGolden]

I am new to the forum and hope these have not already been discussed. I really enjoy Dominion, but have been wondering about these two variations to the rules:

1) All Estates must be purchased before a Duchy is purchased, all Duchies must be purchased before a Provence can be purchased, etc. It seems too me that if Victory Points had to be purchased in an ascending order there would be more strategy in when to buy and more of a "cost" paid for their purchase in glutting your deck. So a player may sit out purchasing Estates while other players buy trying to limit them in their hand, but at the risk of getting too far behind in Victory Points. It seems it would keep games closer iin point scoring and add more variety to strategies and combos and deck builds.

2) I know engines are a big part of the game, but it seems to me that a rule that you can not play the same action card to times in a row would be a good limiting mechanism on engines, and make some intuitive sense about an action repeated. So you could play Village, Market, Village, but not Village, Village, Smithie.

Love your thoughts.

[Marcory]

I am new to the forum and hope these have not already been discussed. I really enjoy Dominion, but have been wondering about these two variations to the rules:

1) All Estates must be purchased before a Duchy is purchased, all Duchies must be purchased before a Provence can be purchased, etc. It seems too me that if Victory Points had to be purchased in an ascending order there would be more strategy in when to buy and more of a "cost" paid for their purchase in glutting your deck. So a player may sit out purchasing Estates while other players buy trying to limit them in their hand, but at the risk of getting too far behind in Victory Points. It seems it would keep games closer iin point scoring and add more variety to strategies and combos and deck builds.

2) I know engines are a big part of the game, but it seems to me that a rule that you can not play the same action card to times in a row would be a good limiting mechanism on engines, and make some intuitive sense about an action repeated. So you could play Village, Market, Village, but not Village, Village, Smithie.

Love your thoughts.

First, welcome to the forum!

As to your suggestions: 1) If you start clogging your deck with Estates, it will be significantly harder to get Duchies and almost impossible to buy Provinces. Also, it would greatly change the power level of cards like Remodel that let you gain Provinces without buying them. And it doesn't make the game that interesting for people to be buying Estates all the time.

2) This rule contradicts Cultist, which explicitly encourages you to chain them. And many other non-terminal draw cards, like Laboratory, Hunting Party, Apothecary, Scrying Pool, Familiar, etc designed to be chained. Cards like Fairgrounds encourage variety in a much better way than your rule proposals do.

But that's just my  $.02. In any case, welcome again to the forum!

[BluGolden]

Thanks.

I would rephrase it such that no Duchy can be obtained before all Estates have been obtained. Meaning you can't leapfrog to the next level of Victory card through buying or remodeling, etc. I think the deck clogging of having to buy the Estates to get to higher value cards and so on would add to strategy.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Thanks.

I would rephrase it such that no Duchy can be obtained before all Estates have been obtained. Meaning you can't leapfrog to the next level of Victory card through buying or remodeling, etc. I think the deck clogging of having to buy the Estates to get to higher value cards and so on would add to strategy.

That variant might work as long as there's good trashing on the board, especially if there's also trash for benefit. But if there's no trashing or only weak trashing, you wouldn't be able to buy Provinces. The game would take forever. But with a kingdom designed for it, I'd try it.

[segura]

Sorry but both ideas are utterly horrible. Imposing random restrictions on Action order makes engines less viable and making all Kingdoms into quasi Silk Road Games does not match the spirit of Dominion which is that every Kingdom is different.

If you like non-Province focused games, you can simply use alt VPs like Duke or Shepherd that support Estate and Duchy strategies instead of imposing buying order restrictions that lead to eternal slogs that are anything but „strategic“ and are certainly no fun.

[gambit05]

2) I know engines are a big part of the game, but it seems to me that a rule that you can not play the same action card to times in a row would be a good limiting mechanism on engines, and make some intuitive sense about an action repeated. So you could play Village, Market, Village, but not Village, Village, Smithie.

That is an interesting idea ... for an Attack card, e.g.:

Clone Wars
$6 Action - Attack - Duration

Until your next turn, when any other player plays a copy of an Action card they have in play, they gain a Curse.
At the start of your next turn, gain a Horse and a Wish.

By the way, welcome to the Forums.

[crj]

Surely another big problem with the restriction on gaining Duchies before Estates have run out and Provinces before Duchies have run out is that the game will almost always end on piles before a single Province is gained?

I mean, the odds are at least one other pile would also be empty by then.

[silverspawn]

Yeah, I think the first rule would usually lead to games where it's just never correct to start greening until you risk the game ending next turn. A lot of games are already like that (if both players are good enough) and provinces are way way better than estates.

[LastFootnote]

BluGolden, have you tried either of these variants yourself? It would be trivially easy to do so, and you might learn a few things about Dominion in general, and these variants in particular, in the process.

[Awaclus]

1) Provinces can clutter up your deck a lot, especially if you end up having to buy Duchies towards the end of the game as well. If you're not experiencing this, you might be greening too late, not trashing enough, or otherwise building your deck inefficiently.


2) I assume that your idea is to nerf engines so that it would be less often the case that an engine is obviously the best strategy. It would indeed accomplish that, but the problem is: if that's less often the case, something else has got to be more often the case to make up for it. That something is not the boards where it's non-trivial to decide between an engine and a non-engine strategy (like I believe you're hoping) because with the existing rules, we already have boards where the engine components are technically there but it's just obviously not worth it to build the engine. Therefore, some of the obvious engine boards would become non-trivial, some of the non-trivial boards would become obvious big money boards, and the net result is that you're just trading engine games for big money games. Because of their higher complexity and lower reliance on RNG, engines are some of the most interesting strategies to play in Dominion, and therefore the nerf would only serve to make the game less interesting as a whole.

This specific nerf in particular, I imagine, would not even do all that much to make engines weaker. You would still build the engine, and mostly it would work the same way it usually does, but you would slightly more often get screwed by drawing your cards in the wrong order by random chance. This doesn't make the game more interesting, it just makes it more frustrating.