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[rspeer]

I don't mind Saboteur at all. Who cares if I lose a couple of cards -- if my opponent is playing Saboteur, it probably means I'm winning.

I'm going to fly my freak flag and say that I love Possession. Both playing it and defending against it, even though I'm not that good at it yet. You know how Chapel makes the game into a different game from the start? Possession makes it turn into a different game around mid-game.

The card that annoys me the most is, surprisingly, Stash. It's not bad enough to ignore, it's not good enough to be happy about getting one, and it makes an awkward fiddly interface pop up every time I shuffle.


I also don't like the way Followers kicks you while you're down.

[rogerclee]

If you're talking about cards that reduce the board to 1 strategy, don't forget goons, familiar and the most annoying of all... minion.  If course, you can always overlap these cards and the game becomes a bit more interesting... but incredibly brutal.

Swindler is the worst card to have vs weak players imo.  On the other hand, the almost as random saboteur is a card I don't want to see vs good players.

This is true, but

1) While it's obvious to buy Goons when it's available, the way to use the card is not obvious, and "Goons games" have their own strategy to them. As an example, I think I lost a game to you recently when I did not appreciate how to properly build the engine, even though we both bought it. Even deciding when to start buying coppers is a nontrivial problem.

2) Sometimes it's right to ignore Familiar, but mostly I agree. The problem with the card is compounded by the fact that it's severely random, if you don't hit it on turns 3/4 that is the end of the game.

3) I have been thinking recently that Minion is not as dominant as people think. Yes it's very good, but it can be beaten by other engines, and determining which to go for is an interesting problem on some boards.

I didn't mention Swindler because even though it's a very annoying card, it isn't a substitute for an actual strategy, unlike Mountebank, where your strategy is probably just "play Mountebank as many times as possible."

[drg]

Definitely true about goons, there are many ways to use the card, but it is always the dominant card when it is there and there is anyway of playing more than one of them on a turn.  Familiar is only safe to ignore if you can open with a different cursing attack on turn 1 or 2, barring heavy trashing, but you'll still have to get it a few turns later if you open chapel.  Minion dominates province games.  In colony games it needs something that works with it (festival, fishing village or other village and $ action card)  It's attack is seriously annoying though.

[fp]

Cards I dislike for different reasons:

Hamlet-
With all of the options to click through, it makes games take much longer.

Ambassador-
Against a skilled player, you can count on an Ambassador game taking 25+ turns.

Tournament-
This card creates a positive feedback loop to the extreme.

Golem-
Tell you what, I'll go to the bar while you take your turn, when you are done, I'll be too smashed to resume playing.

I still love them! 

[ARTjoMS]

I'm surprised swindler and black market didn't make the list of options.

Added more options, one can change his vote.

[play2draw]

My vote goes to the Black Market. It's just too silly and random to be taken seriously. I've won and lost games simply because of the randomness of the cards drawn and available (e.g. buying the only Mountebank). Maybe as Dominion develops further this effect will be mitigated.

I don't mind possession, but I wish it couldn't be throned/kinged.

[Jack Monkey Squat]

oooh... the thread I wanted to start when this forum was created... there are a LOT of cards I really don't like for a variety of reasons... possession, swindler and saboteur make the list because I feel like I'm entitled to my turns and the cards in my deck... tournament because of the tremendous snowballing advantage it gives the first player that hits the combo... pirate ship because those games tend to take forever, especially when there's no +$ +action kingdom cards... minion because those games take forever as people fish through their decks once the minion "engine" is rolling... king's court because of the massive swings that accompany the actions or lack thereof that it is drawn with...

but there's one card that nobody has mentioned thus far that I really don't like:  chapel, which I hate because much more often than not, it's a required buy... in most games, it takes away any other strategic choice... 13 of the top 27 openings involve chapel, nothing else comes close... it might be a little more interesting if it were a $4 card and someone opening 5/2 had to choose between mountebank or chapel, but as things are, there's no need to choose...

if I had to rank 'em, it's probably possession, tournament, minion, pirate ship and swindler as the top five, but I'm pretty much anti-all of 'em...

[Nimmy]

I hate torturer. When my opponent opens 5/2 and there is a native village/hamlet, I'm ready to quit.
Black Market is either fun or a game-breaker, depending on the cards in it. In a recent game, my opponent bought a ghost ship from the BM (with no attacks on the board) and then a King's Court for the BM. Talk about being lucky...

[Thisisnotasmile]

I hate torturer. When my opponent opens 5/2 and there is a native village/hamlet, I'm ready to quit.
Black Market is either fun or a game-breaker, depending on the cards in it whether or not I draw the good cards from it. In a recent game, my opponent bought a ghost ship from the BM (with no attacks on the board) and then a King's Court for the BM. Talk about being lucky...

Fixed that to say what you meant to say.

[PetterTB]

I don't like alchemist or minion. Alchemist takes forever! Alot of spamming.. Minion as well, in addition to always drawing minion x4 festival or something before enemies minion..

[guided]

I hate playing Alchemist/Herbalist engines on isotropic, but only because it makes you look through the whole massive text list of cards in your play area and click on each Alchemist individually every damn time

[DG]

I find torturers to be an unpleasant card. I don't really like games where both players buy the same villages and torturers but the game slides one way fast. It's not fun, to be honest, unless there are some other cards in the kingdom that give some way to deal with the curses.

Another personal dislike of mine is islands. Typically if both players open silver/island there's one player who sets an estate on the mat and another player with the island stuck in the deck. The unlucky player now has a decelerated deck, low spending, and problems buying terminals that might clash with the island. The lucky player has some acceleration, higher spending, and the deck will probably never draw badly since it has no clashing terminals and one less estate. There's also little chance for the unlucky player to use the island skilfully later; the best play was lost in the draw and can never be repeated. This leads to islands annoying me even more than swindlers and badly drawn chapels since at least you can use those again and again and might be able to turn things round later.

[HLennartz]

Treasure Map for me. The rest of the cards can be frustrating, but I find the swinginess of Treasure Map to be even more frustrating. Tournament can be the same way.

And if I wasn't playing on Isotropic, I would totally hate Fairgrounds, Vineyard, and all those hard-to-count Victory cards.

[hughes]

Treasure Map for me. The rest of the cards can be frustrating, but I find the swinginess of Treasure Map to be even more frustrating. Tournament can be the same way.

And if I wasn't playing on Isotropic, I would totally hate Fairgrounds, Vineyard, and all those hard-to-count Victory cards.

If anyone has a good way to play with philsopher's stone in a RL game let me know.  I've told my friends, "It's not a bad card, but I don't want to play with it because of how much it would slow down a real-time game.

[nemryn]

I hate playing Alchemist/Herbalist engines on isotropic, but only because it makes you look through the whole massive text list of cards in your play area and click on each Alchemist individually every damn time

You'll usually have only one or two Herbalists, so clean them up first, and then the list will collapse down to just the Alchemists. I think that, strictly speaking, this isn't supposed to work, but it does.

[guided]

You'll usually have only one or two Herbalists, so clean them up first, and then the list will collapse down to just the Alchemists. I think that, strictly speaking, this isn't supposed to work, but it does.

No.

Presumably you're using the Herbalist to load your Potion. Then your Potion is no longer and play, and your Alchemists go straight into your discard. I have made this mistake on isotropic before.

[nemryn]

You'll usually have only one or two Herbalists, so clean them up first, and then the list will collapse down to just the Alchemists. I think that, strictly speaking, this isn't supposed to work, but it does.

No.

Presumably you're using the Herbalist to load your Potion. Then your Potion is no longer and play, and your Alchemists go straight into your discard. I have made this mistake on isotropic before.

That's how it's supposed to work, yeah. But I just tried it, and isotropic does indeed give you the option to put Alchemists back after you put Potions back.

Here: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201106/18/game-20110618-172052-36f3b3e7.html

[Lenoxus]

Treasure Map for me. The rest of the cards can be frustrating, but I find the swinginess of Treasure Map to be even more frustrating. Tournament can be the same way.

And if I wasn't playing on Isotropic, I would totally hate Fairgrounds, Vineyard, and all those hard-to-count Victory cards.

If anyone has a good way to play with philsopher's stone in a RL game let me know.  I've told my friends, "It's not a bad card, but I don't want to play with it because of how much it would slow down a real-time game.

Ditto. My sister really likes it, but I just get bugged by all the counting. Which is hypocritical of me because I love taking long turns, but more by doing stuff, y'know. Plus, I dislike the luck-based "decision" of whether or not to play any card-drawers, given that it reduces the Stone's value.

Of course, the card-counting is just the inverse of the problem with cards like Hamlet, which is their taking too long in computer play. Maybe the ideal Dominion program would actually be less "question-asking" and more like playing with real cards, just giving you some relevant numbers throughout (like the current size of your deck) and telling you when you can't do what you just clicked.

[Axe Knight]

Treasure Map for me. The rest of the cards can be frustrating, but I find the swinginess of Treasure Map to be even more frustrating. Tournament can be the same way.

And if I wasn't playing on Isotropic, I would totally hate Fairgrounds, Vineyard, and all those hard-to-count Victory cards.

If anyone has a good way to play with philsopher's stone in a RL game let me know.  I've told my friends, "It's not a bad card, but I don't want to play with it because of how much it would slow down a real-time game.

Ditto. My sister really likes it, but I just get bugged by all the counting. Which is hypocritical of me because I love taking long turns, but more by doing stuff, y'know. Plus, I dislike the luck-based "decision" of whether or not to play any card-drawers, given that it reduces the Stone's value.

Of course, the card-counting is just the inverse of the problem with cards like Hamlet, which is their taking too long in computer play. Maybe the ideal Dominion program would actually be less "question-asking" and more like playing with real cards, just giving you some relevant numbers throughout (like the current size of your deck) and telling you when you can't do what you just clicked.

Philosopher's Stone never particularly bothered me; perhaps I just count quickly.  However, we did once try something when Alchemy first came out.  We got a cardboard box, and made marks on it to line up where the cutoff was.  Keeping the discard pile face up and the deck face down preserved the split.  It sounded like an intriguing alternative when we first mentioned it, but was just way too clumsy in the end.  Constructing it was far more fun than using it.  I personally think Saboteur slows down the game more than PS.

[guided]

That's how it's supposed to work, yeah. But I just tried it, and isotropic does indeed give you the option to put Alchemists back after you put Potions back.

Here: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201106/18/game-20110618-172052-36f3b3e7.html

Well, this is a bug, then. It allows you to achieve an impossible ordering of cards on top of your deck. And if you have 5+ Alchemists but want your Potion in your hand instead of near the top of your deck (which I had a game vs. Tribute recently where I wanted exactly that) you still have to click each one individually.

If Doug introduced a bug that allows you to cheat a little bit to save time... I'd much rather he had just changed the interface to say "hey, do you want to do the obvious thing and put all your Alchemists on your deck right now?" I'm guessing the ordering issue didn't occur to him. I'll geekmail him about it....

[hughes]

Treasure Map for me. The rest of the cards can be frustrating, but I find the swinginess of Treasure Map to be even more frustrating. Tournament can be the same way.

And if I wasn't playing on Isotropic, I would totally hate Fairgrounds, Vineyard, and all those hard-to-count Victory cards.

If anyone has a good way to play with philsopher's stone in a RL game let me know.  I've told my friends, "It's not a bad card, but I don't want to play with it because of how much it would slow down a real-time game.

Ditto. My sister really likes it, but I just get bugged by all the counting. Which is hypocritical of me because I love taking long turns, but more by doing stuff, y'know. Plus, I dislike the luck-based "decision" of whether or not to play any card-drawers, given that it reduces the Stone's value.

Of course, the card-counting is just the inverse of the problem with cards like Hamlet, which is their taking too long in computer play. Maybe the ideal Dominion program would actually be less "question-asking" and more like playing with real cards, just giving you some relevant numbers throughout (like the current size of your deck) and telling you when you can't do what you just clicked.

I was musing on a method involving some counter (probably percentile dice) to count the number of cards you own in total, but when I found that it didn't count the cards of own type (deck or in play or in hand, I don't remember which at the moment) I abandoned the idea and just decided to not play with it until I had a good method.

[Deadlock39]

Philosopher's Stone counts your deck and discard.  I have yet to play with it irl, but my idea was that if anyone wanted to buy it, you would just need to keep a tally of how many total cards were in their deck (adding or subtracting one any time they gained or trashed a card).  Then when they play PS, you just have to take this total number and subtract the number of cards they have in hand and in play.  I don't know how well this would actually work in practice, but I think it could work.

My least favorite card is definitely Saboteur.  As with all of these cards, I think our opinions usually come down to personal experience.

I think my perspective just comes from having bad luck and negative experiences with it (more than the other cards that can cause the same type of experiences).  I know I have lost a few games to players who bought one or two in the game and got lucky destroying my best cards instead of all the silvers I tried to block it with.  I know it is a bad card in this context and it is always frustrating to lose a game you probably statistically should have won. 

I also had a bad experience with it once when I was getting beat pretty handily by an opponent who had successfully built an engine that drew his whole deck each hand.  He ended up buying a Saboteur, and started blowing up my deck as he cruised to victory.  I may have brought this upon myself because I can't remember if I made the first move in buying one in a last ditch effort to get lucky, but still felt like an unnecessary course of action when he had the game in hand.

[guided]

We were worried about Philosopher's Stone slowing down our games when Alchemy first came out, and then when we actually started using it we found it was no problem at all. It takes just a few seconds to count your piles, once on each turn that you play a Stone. Scrying Pool slows the game down much worse than Philosopher's Stone. Hell, boring old base-set Spy is worse at slowing down the game too.

[Fuu]

Goons for sure. It totally changes the dynamic of the game, for the worse I think.

I think Minion takes some of the fun out of the game too, just because it is so easy to spam and is quite annoying. Possession also is quite annoying. These are the three cards I usually reject games for; sometimes Treasure Map too but less often.

[rls22]

Pirate Ship.  Hands down.  Caused by playing an offline game with 4 players, in which I had the last turn.  I had no money after only a few turns, and there weren't any cheap money-giving cards.  Worst game ever.  Now I just have an irrational hatred of that card...

I'll also add that I'm going through a phase right now where I'm just really bored with Ambassador.  I don't hate it, I just feel like Ambassador tennis is really boring, and even the "buy a curse and empty the curse pile on your opponent" thing, is only fun once or twice.