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[Imrahil3]

Giving Loot-gainers a type would have required either not doing events and traits that give you loot or introducing dual-type landscapes, which we've never seen.

Spoiler…?

[J Reggie]

Giving Loot-gainers a type would have required either not doing events and traits that give you loot or introducing dual-type landscapes, which we've never seen.

Spoiler…?

I have no knowledge of such a thing, but it's a possibility.

[GendoIkari]

I guess since Loot isn't in the supply, there doesn't need to be a special type for cards that refer to them to remind you to get the Loot pile and shuffle it at the beginning of the game? Which is a shame; they could have been called "Ruiners" for maximum confusion.

(More seriously, I am a little confused that there are types that mean you need to prepare the Boons or Hexes during setup, but not one for Loot even though the setup needs appear to be the same.)

Yeah as I recall, the reason Spoils-gainers didn't get a special type was that there was no setup need when playing games with Spoils, but games with Boons required you to shuffle the Boons. Loot definitely seems the same as Boons in that way.

Giving Loot-gainers a type would have required either not doing events and traits that give you loot or introducing dual-type landscapes, which we've never seen.

This makes me curious... the sets that had Doom/Fate/Heirloom/Liaison/Looter didn't also have events. But surely they could have, given that we've seen events in 4 different sets now. Would it have simply not been an option to have an event that gives a favor token, or a blessing?

[GendoIkari]

Giving Loot-gainers a type would have required either not doing events and traits that give you loot or introducing dual-type landscapes, which we've never seen.

Spoiler…?

I have no knowledge of such a thing, but it's a possibility.

Doesn't seem like much of a possibility though... Loot is clearly pretty powerful and not easy to get. Hard to imagine how a Trait could cause an ordinary cheap pile like Village to suddenly give out a Loot without making that card way overpowered. And you can't really go with something like "if you have 3 ___ cards in play, gain a loot", because then it doesn't really work with expensive terminals and such.

[mxdata]

Mining Road + Sack of Loot would be extremely strong - and with two Mining Roads in play (or a Throned Mining Road), you could buy a Sack of Loot, play it immediately, then gain and play a Spoil too!

[mxdata]

So far the Traits we've seen make the cards they're applied to better in some way - giving them extra options or making them easier to get as with Cheap. I wonder if there'll be any Traits that weaken the card they're applied to? I suppose Fawning can kinda do that to Province, depending on which card gets Fawning, but that's very much dependent on what card gets it

[mxdata]

Giving Loot-gainers a type would have required either not doing events and traits that give you loot or introducing dual-type landscapes, which we've never seen.

Spoiler…?

I have no knowledge of such a thing, but it's a possibility.

Doesn't seem like much of a possibility though... Loot is clearly pretty powerful and not easy to get. Hard to imagine how a Trait could cause an ordinary cheap pile like Village to suddenly give out a Loot without making that card way overpowered. And you can't really go with something like "if you have 3 ___ cards in play, gain a loot", because then it doesn't really work with expensive terminals and such.

I suppose something like a Trait (call it "Wealthy") that gives Wealthy Village's on-gain effect to the selected card could work

[Awaclus]

Doesn't seem like much of a possibility though... Loot is clearly pretty powerful and not easy to get. Hard to imagine how a Trait could cause an ordinary cheap pile like Village to suddenly give out a Loot without making that card way overpowered. And you can't really go with something like "if you have 3 ___ cards in play, gain a loot", because then it doesn't really work with expensive terminals and such.

It doesn't have to give it on-play.

[GendoIkari]

Doesn't seem like much of a possibility though... Loot is clearly pretty powerful and not easy to get. Hard to imagine how a Trait could cause an ordinary cheap pile like Village to suddenly give out a Loot without making that card way overpowered. And you can't really go with something like "if you have 3 ___ cards in play, gain a loot", because then it doesn't really work with expensive terminals and such.

It doesn't have to give it on-play.

Not saying it does, but pretty much any effect you can do with it will mean that loot is way easier to get in a game if the trait happens to be on a low-cost card.

[Holger]

For my money Dominion has all the randomness it needs in the shuffle. Cards like Castles and Tournament are my least favourite, introducing unnecessary randomness by giving players different opportunities by (mostly) pure chance. Loot looks to have the same problem, tho hopefully in a less swingy way as the loots are more similar to each other than, say, Princess and Followers.

I think it would have been better to take the most interesting 2 or 3 loots and make each of them a regular treasure.

I suppose it can be game-deciding to get e.g. an early Prize Goat on a board with no other trashing. In rare cases, it's possible to gain a Loot turn 1: e.g. buy Wealthy Village with 3 Coppers and 2 Heirlooms...

I'm surprised that Cheap exists: If most kingdom cards are designed to be as cheap as possible without breaking things, making a card still cheaper unconditionally should be problematic. Especially when it turns a strong $5 card like Witch into a $4...

[GendoIkari]

I'm surprised that Cheap exists: If most kingdom cards are designed to be as cheap as possible without breaking things, making a card still cheaper unconditionally should be problematic. Especially when it turns a strong $5 card like Witch into a $4...

Seems a bit like Chapel... a card far too good for its cost that breaks the normal rules of things. It may be broken if it were automatically in every game, but instead it just means that games that have it play out differently than normal games of Dominion.

[anordinaryman]

Loots look amazing!! On a first glance I'm going to say it's one of best non-Supply piles (imps ties for me). Boons were a great idea, fun little random bonuses to spice up the game. On first glance, it looks like Loot implements this idea even better since they permanently go into your deck, and their effects are always useful (unlike boons, which sometimes can not help you depending on the situation and when you gain them).

Another way of thinking of it -- it's all the fun of prizes but it's way more balanced (the ways of gaining loot seem to beless random than tournament, and the size of the loot pile and relative strength of each means you don't need to resign if your opponent gets a core loot.) Well done, Donald X!

So far the Traits we've seen make the cards they're applied to better in some way - giving them extra options or making them easier to get as with Cheap. I wonder if there'll be any Traits that weaken the card they're applied to? I suppose Fawning can kinda do that to Province, depending on which card gets Fawning, but that's very much dependent on what card gets it

That was my first idea -- some sort of Trait like "Cursed" that gives you a curse when you gain it unless you discard a treasure or something. But then it's possible playtesting ruled negative traits out as not fun... I also thought about "haunted" that would involve top decking something like "When you gain a Haunted Card, put it and a card from your hand on top of your deck" ... I dunno, I guess we shall all find out soon!

[gpope]

I'm surprised that Cheap exists: If most kingdom cards are designed to be as cheap as possible without breaking things, making a card still cheaper unconditionally should be problematic. Especially when it turns a strong $5 card like Witch into a $4...

Seems a bit like Chapel... a card far too good for its cost that breaks the normal rules of things. It may be broken if it were automatically in every game, but instead it just means that games that have it play out differently than normal games of Dominion.

This is why I find Traits so fascinating and exciting, they promise to really push the envelope of Dominion's design philosophy. In terms of mathematical balance you'd expect most Traits to immediately break the game: you're taking a card that was presumably already balanced the way it was and making it stronger. But Dominion's balance doesn't really work like that, there's no expectation that every card is equal to every other card.

That was my first idea -- some sort of Trait like "Cursed" that gives you a curse when you gain it unless you discard a treasure or something. But then it's possible playtesting ruled negative traits out as not fun... I also thought about "haunted" that would involve top decking something like "When you gain a Haunted Card, put it and a card from your hand on top of your deck" ... I dunno, I guess we shall all find out soon!

I suspect negative Traits are probably harder to make interesting since a card that's markedly worse will usually just get ignored altogether. Double-edged Traits might be interesting to see, though.

[trivialknot]

I'm curious about the choice to have 2 copies of each loot, for a total of 30.  There are 30 gold in the supply, and those almost never even come close to running out.  Are the loot gainers strong enough that gaining over 15 loot total is a common thing?

I also had a thought.  Players who hate RNG could play a variant where each gets their own loot pile with identical ordering.

[Awaclus]

I suspect negative Traits are probably harder to make interesting since a card that's markedly worse will usually just get ignored altogether.

Why would that necessarily be the case? A lot of cards serve a specific purpose and you'll be happy to take even a weak card serving that purpose if it's the only one that's available. I agree that there's more wiggle room in the other direction though.

I'm curious about the choice to have 2 copies of each loot, for a total of 30.  There are 30 gold in the supply, and those almost never even come close to running out.  Are the loot gainers strong enough that gaining over 15 loot total is a common thing?

With these preview games and their rigged kingdoms, it does seem like gaining over 15 loot total is far from outrageous in my experience. Presumably it happens less in real games.

[grrgrrgrr]

Cool stuff so far. Sac of Loot definitely seems very strong here, as it is essentially a Treasure Trove that doesn't gain those pesky Coppers.

What really weirds me out is the choice of descriptions for Trait cards. Particularly that the name of the card is always used to refer to the pile (instead of something "this pile"). This in particular leads to a confusing card text for Cheap.

[GendoIkari]

What really weirds me out is the choice of descriptions for Trait cards. Particularly that the name of the card is always used to refer to the pile (instead of something "this pile"). This in particular leads to a confusing card text for Cheap.

It’s already messed me up a couple of posts ago when I went to say “a cheap card” and then realized that that now has a specific rules meaning in Dominion, so I had to change it to “a low-cost card”.

[mxdata]

What really weirds me out is the choice of descriptions for Trait cards. Particularly that the name of the card is always used to refer to the pile (instead of something "this pile"). This in particular leads to a confusing card text for Cheap.

It’s already messed me up a couple of posts ago when I went to say “a cheap card” and then realized that that now has a specific rules meaning in Dominion, so I had to change it to “a low-cost card”.

That's the difference between a cheap card (a card with a low cost) vs a Cheap card (a card that has the Cheap trait)

(And a Cheap card might not be cheap - a Cheap King's Court is still $6 for example!)

Hunh, also I just realized that it would have no effect on cards like Transmute or Overlord whose cost does not include coins

[mxdata]

Pick Axe + Silver is a rather nice combo - convert your Silvers into Loot!

[mxdata]

Inevitably there'll be kingdoms where the only card that gives Loot is Jeweled Egg, and the kingdom has no trashers

[Imrahil3]

Inevitably there'll be kingdoms where the only card that gives Loot is Jeweled Egg, and the kingdom has no trashers

Literally unplayable.

/s

On a serious note, it’s genius design to give +1 Buy there so that it’s never useless.

[GendoIkari]

Inevitably there'll be kingdoms where the only card that gives Loot is Jeweled Egg, and the kingdom has no trashers

More exciting are the games where Cheap is put on a card that has no in its cost.

[Gherald]

After playing a number of games, it seems to me the RNG of Loots is more impactful than that of, say, Hexes and Boons.  I still think they are more like Black Market than Tournament prizes, but they are also even more Hexes/Boon-ish in their RNG.

Maybe they'll be more fun to play with overall (hard to say this early), but my point is the RNG is kind of crazy. I don't even mean who gets access to which ones, that's not even important usually, games don't last that long. The issue is how soon you're able to get them (without sacrificing too much opportunity cost to building the rest of your engine, since they're mostly a Payload) -- as well as which ones you get very early -- a deck can simply spiral very fast and leave the opponent's in the dust.

Obviously there's always been a randomness component to this game--shuffle luck, starting split and heirloom luck, etc, but what I am saying is Loots add on to that.  Maybe you like them maybe you don't, but the people who dislike Hexes/Boons may end up disliking Loots even more than they dislike those, is my take, unless they really happen to enjoy the other (Black Market-esque) things Loots bring to the table even more.

[NoMoreFun]

I've had the opposite experience to GHerald. I haven't really cared which Loot I get - I'm happy with the Gold and everything else is a nice bonus which doesn't really decide the game. I put them in the same category as Boons. Perhaps even less bothersome - Loots are harder to get so e.g. Prize Goat being the only trasher doesn't bother me as much as someone getting an early Flame's Gift. 

Spell Scroll has seemed like the dud but that may be because I end up seeing it with Pickaxe and I've turned it into a Gold most times (which may not have been optimal play). Orb's "March" effect seems quite niche (+$3 and +1 Buy is more powerful than most cards in the buy phase) but I'm sure it comes up, even just to play one of the other Loots.

[faust]

Yeah I think the only Loot card that's potentially problematic in this regard is Prize Goat with no other trashing or maybe Sword with Governor/Council Room.