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[Dekryr]

Edited. Draft 3 is now the opening post.

Edits:
Fixed turn numbers for BM and Smithy-BM.
Hopefully, made silver test concept simpler.
Added a line about trashing to pair actions together
Added section about greening.

I appreciate all the feedback. I am trying to keep this as a beginner guide. I know there's more but I'm trying to sort what is necessary and what is advanced, otherwise it gets very long. Therefore, no specific engine discussion, engine concepts are in the terminal and village sections. I dislike PPR as a beginner concept because IMO it doesn't apply more than it applies, which makes it a bad beginner concept.

Please leave continue to leave feedback. Thanks for the help.

[flies]

Villages
Villages give +2 actions, and then some other + as well (usually +1 card, but not always). There are many different types and some are better than others, but put simply: villages help you play more terminals. 
·   There is a Dominion concept called the Village Idiot. It is a player over-buying villages without good actions to pair with them. Playing villages just to play more villages accomplishes very little. Villages work with terminals. Without terminals, villages are often useless.
·   I recommend you start getting villages if you have or plan on having 3 or more terminals in your deck. If you know you want to buy 3 or more terminals, I would get a village after the 2nd terminal and then try to get villages and terminals to a 1:1 ratio.
·   Village and terminal buying is a delicate balance. Too many terminals cause dead cards, while too many villages leaves you with useless actions. We hate having action cards we can't play, but we also hate having extra actions with no cards to play. (Think about what other card that village could have been. Wasting buys on unnecessary villages also means you wasted a turn. When you only have 16 turns, one bad buy can really hurt.)

A few points.  First is that there is a card called "village", so I'd make it extra clear that the word "village" isn't being used to refer to that particular card but all the cards with the attributes you name. 
I'd say "Without terminals, villages are _basically_ useless" rather than "often", since the reason to have a village is to play multiple terminals in a turn (there may be other reasons, but they are at a higher level).
I also tend to want more villages than terminals, say 5:4 or 4:3.

[zahlman]

I also tend to want more villages than terminals, say 5:4 or 4:3.

As you get more of each, though, you want to progress towards 'terminals = villages + 1', since you're aiming to draw deck and play everything - extra +action is wasted and comes at the opportunity cost of the terminals. Although if you can't get good starting hand sizes, insurance might be a good idea.

Also, generally you can count Duration cards as, like, half a terminal. The goal is basically to play half of them on one turn and the other half on the alternate turn.

[Davio]

The point of the Silver test is that newer players may simply ignore Silver as an option. 

That may be the point to you, but it was not the point to the person who coined the term or the people who then advocated it. Their point was, actions suck, why are you buying actions, this game is stupid.

New players often fail to buy enough money, including Silver, but that has nothing to do with "the Silver Test."

I think every player has a similar learning curve:

Lvl 1: Buy at least one of each action card just to see "what it does".
Lvl 2: Buy a limited number of action cards, but still way too much and have terminal collision each hand
Lvl 3: Action cards didn't help much, switch to just money (with the occasional action card), beat other players stuck at lvl 1 or lvl 2

At this point a lot of players think they have "solved" Dominion and they just stop. As they are already the best players of their limited group, there is no reason for them to evolve or for the group to evolve as a whole. It actually takes some imagination and skill to go to the next level.

Lvl 4: Vary action cards and money cards, know how to build an engine that can beat lvl 3
Lvl 5: Optimize your engine, get the cards 1 or 2 turns sooner than lvl 4 players, also have a better understanding when to keep it simple

[KingsSkort]

I also tend to want more villages than terminals, say 5:4 or 4:3.

As you get more of each, though, you want to progress towards 'terminals = villages + 1', since you're aiming to draw deck and play everything - extra +action is wasted and comes at the opportunity cost of the terminals. Although if you can't get good starting hand sizes, insurance might be a good idea.

Also, generally you can count Duration cards as, like, half a terminal. The goal is basically to play half of them on one turn and the other half on the alternate turn.

Even if you can reliably draw your deck, you usually want spare villages because of the gambler's ruin. Once you hit zero actions, your turn is over, even if you just drew 2 villages with your last action. If you have exactly enough actions to play all your terminals, your engine will fizzle whenever your villages are concentrated near the end of your deck. It's a bigger issue when your actions are primarily being used to support +draw than when they are primarily being used to support nondrawing terminals.

[^_^_^_^]

4. Control what you put into your deck.
·   This topic may not have the greatest title, but it means: pay attention to what you put into your deck. 
·   You are not required to buy a card every turn.
·   You are not required to use all your buys.
·   You are not required to use all your money. Just because a card is more expensive that doesn't it automatically make it better for your deck than a less expensive card.

Take out the "it" here.

[flies]

Even if you can reliably draw your deck, you usually want spare villages because of the gambler's ruin. Once you hit zero actions, your turn is over, even if you just drew 2 villages with your last action. If you have exactly enough actions to play all your terminals, your engine will fizzle whenever your villages are concentrated near the end of your deck. It's a bigger issue when your actions are primarily being used to support +draw then when they are primarily being used to support nondrawing terminals.

right.  extra actions at the end of your turn are useless, but extra villages prevent a hand of 2x smithy + treasure.  Extra villages in general keep you from stalling out.  Excess villages replace themselves whereas excess terminals are dead.  This may be less important in certain circumstances, but as a rule of thumb, I'd say (if you want villages at all) get more villages than terminals.

[Davio]

Even if you can reliably draw your deck, you usually want spare villages because of the gambler's ruin. Once you hit zero actions, your turn is over, even if you just drew 2 villages with your last action. If you have exactly enough actions to play all your terminals, your engine will fizzle whenever your villages are concentrated near the end of your deck. It's a bigger issue when your actions are primarily being used to support +draw then when they are primarily being used to support nondrawing terminals.

right.  extra actions at the end of your turn are useless, but extra villages prevent a hand of 2x smithy + treasure.  Extra villages in general keep you from stalling out.  Excess villages replace themselves whereas excess terminals are dead.  This may be less important in certain circumstances, but as a rule of thumb, I'd say (if you want villages at all) get more villages than terminals.

Well, the key is to balance them well.

You want to have enough to start with Village+drawer in your hand. With your drawer or Village, you'll likely get the chain going by drawing more Villages and drawers. If you have say, 4 Smithies and 4 Villages, adding a 5th Village will not significantly increase the chances of starting with Smithy-Village in hand. I mean, I'm not saying that the Village is a bad buy, but as always you have to weight the bonuses of the Village vs. something like Silver which you might otherwise get.

[SirPeebles]

Even if you can reliably draw your deck, you usually want spare villages because of the gambler's ruin. Once you hit zero actions, your turn is over, even if you just drew 2 villages with your last action. If you have exactly enough actions to play all your terminals, your engine will fizzle whenever your villages are concentrated near the end of your deck. It's a bigger issue when your actions are primarily being used to support +draw then when they are primarily being used to support nondrawing terminals.

right.  extra actions at the end of your turn are useless, but extra villages prevent a hand of 2x smithy + treasure.  Extra villages in general keep you from stalling out.  Excess villages replace themselves whereas excess terminals are dead.  This may be less important in certain circumstances, but as a rule of thumb, I'd say (if you want villages at all) get more villages than terminals.

Well, the key is to balance them well.

You want to have enough to start with Village+drawer in your hand. With your drawer or Village, you'll likely get the chain going by drawing more Villages and drawers. If you have say, 4 Smithies and 4 Villages, adding a 5th Village will not significantly increase the chances of starting with Smithy-Village in hand. I mean, I'm not saying that the Village is a bad buy, but as always you have to weight the bonuses of the Village vs. something like Silver which you might otherwise get.

By the time you have 4 Smithies and 4 Villages, you ought to be thinking about what your engine is going to do.  If you have a $14 worth of treasure and Market floating in your deck, then that Silver might let start double Provincing.  On the other hand, if you already have $20 in your deck the Provinces are drying up, you might prefer the Village to improve your chances even marginally of double Provincing in the following turns.

[Davio]

Well, basically that's what I said: It depends.

My point is that you don't want to autobuy another Village thinking it's going to matter a lot.

[SirPeebles]

Sure, I didn't intend to disagree.  I was just giving an example of how the village vs silver decision might look at you transition from building your engine to greening.  In contrast to the decision at opening or the decision while building and tuning your engine.

[zahlman]

I would say that the most obvious time you'd *over*estimate the number of villages needed for an engine (even understanding "how to build an engine" at a basic level) is with Wharf. There, the Duration effect means that not only are you only playing half your Wharves each turn, but you're starting with extra cards in hand to minimize the risk of failing to find a Village.

(This is not withstanding the issue of evaluating a Village-Wharf engine vs plain Wharf-BM on a given board...)

[Dekryr]

I appreciate all the feedback. The goal of the village section is to help them avoid becoming village idiots, while introducing engine building without actually calling it engine building, and thus avoiding adding a whole new concept. I am looking for a nice simple ratio to give them the engine idea without getting overly complex. I think 1 more village than terminal may be better than the 1:1 ratio, but I don't want them to think that opening with village is a good idea. I'm also trying to control the length of the article. I'll work on it and see what I can do.

Again thanks to all for the feedback and keep it coming.

Village section has been edited.

[Dekryr]

4. Control what you put into your deck.
·   This topic may not have the greatest title, but it means: pay attention to what you put into your deck. 
·   You are not required to buy a card every turn.
·   You are not required to use all your buys.
·   You are not required to use all your money. Just because a card is more expensive that doesn't it automatically make it better for your deck than a less expensive card.

Take out the "it" here.

Done, thanks.

[^_^_^_^]

Villages The term village does  not just specifically refer to the Domion card Village; it is a Dominion term for any card that give +2 actions, and usually some other + as well. These cards usually (but not always) have the word village in

Spelling mistake. Dominion (should probably specify as "the Dominion base card") is what I believe you meant to say.

[Dekryr]

Villages The term village does  not just specifically refer to the Domion card Village; it is a Dominion term for any card that give +2 actions, and usually some other + as well. These cards usually (but not always) have the word village in

Spelling mistake. Dominion (should probably specify as "the Dominion base card") is what I believe you meant to say.

Haha thanks typing a bit fast without spell check on the tablet.

[AdamH]

4. Control what you put into your deck.
·   This topic may not have the greatest title, but it means: pay attention to what you put into your deck.
·   You are not required to buy a card every turn.
·   You are not required to use all your buys.
·   You are not required to use all your money. Just because a card is more expensive that doesn't automatically make it better for your deck than a less expensive card.
·   Think about why you are buying a card and how it will interact with your current deck. Don't buy a card because it looks cool. Buy cards that will help your deck.

I think this section focuses on the buy phase. If you want it to focus on your buys, then maybe a better name for the section would be something like "Use your buys wisely." If you also want to take into account junking attacks, maybe a better name would be "Be aware of what's in your deck" or "Be aware of what you want your deck to look like"

I think a helpful tip here would be to have a plan. A deck without any focus isn't going to be as good as a focused deck, so make sure you don't buy a card that doesn't fit. Perhaps it's too advanced of a topic for a "beginner's" guide, but it that might answer the question of "How do I know which card(s) will help my deck?"

[werothegreat]

The point of the Silver test is that newer players may simply ignore Silver as an option. 

That may be the point to you, but it was not the point to the person who coined the term or the people who then advocated it. Their point was, actions suck, why are you buying actions, this game is stupid.

New players often fail to buy enough money, including Silver, but that has nothing to do with "the Silver Test."

I think every player has a similar learning curve:

Lvl 1: Buy at least one of each action card just to see "what it does".
Lvl 2: Buy a limited number of action cards, but still way too much and have terminal collision each hand
Lvl 3: Action cards didn't help much, switch to just money (with the occasional action card), beat other players stuck at lvl 1 or lvl 2

At this point a lot of players think they have "solved" Dominion and they just stop. As they are already the best players of their limited group, there is no reason for them to evolve or for the group to evolve as a whole. It actually takes some imagination and skill to go to the next level.

Lvl 4: Vary action cards and money cards, know how to build an engine that can beat lvl 3
Lvl 5: Optimize your engine, get the cards 1 or 2 turns sooner than lvl 4 players, also have a better understanding when to keep it simple

About a year ago I played an IRL game with three friends.  Two of them I had played Dominion with several times before, and they were well past the Silver Test mode.  The other friend I had not played Dominion with previously, and he seemed to have just read the Silver Test article.  He insisted on playing Smithy BM, even though my Cutpurses continually crippled his hands, and I eventually won.  Upon losing, he impiled that I had cheated somehow, and that the game was stupid.  He probably would have thought the game was stupider if he had won.