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[werothegreat]

Given the sadness/negativity from iso going away, I figured we could all use a picker-upper - a reminder of why we all love Dominion and continue to play it.  Add your own!

What I love about Dominion is...

...activating more than one Menagerie in a row.

...Haggling, from a Province, a Border Village, and gaining a Duchy from that.

...playing Rebuild, choosing Tunnel, and activating all of them in my deck.

...the first time I managed to pull off a Torturer chain.

...playing Scout to reveal four Nobles.

[Robz888]

Drawing my whole deck with 3 Scrying Pools, then playing Secret Chamber to discard superfluou Scrying Pools, then playing Duchess to reshuffle, putting all the superfluous pools in the draw pile/my next hand.

[werothegreat]

Discarding your opponent's Sea Hag with your own Sea Hag.

[michaeljb]

The experience of reading threads about KC/Goons/Masquerade, Ironworks/Trader, or Talisman/Sir Martin for the first time.

[heron]

Drawing my whole deck with one scrying pool, discarding it all (except a scrying pool) with a secret chamber, repeating the process twice more, and buying all of the remaining provinces.
Some worker's villages were thrown in as well.

[werothegreat]

Buying a single Watchtower, yet managing to counter the first five of my opponent's Mountebank plays.

[dondon151]

Playing high-level opponents on Isotropic.

[Warrior]

Remembering how much better Isotropic was when I play on Goko.

[enfynet]

That I can teach almost anyone to play, and lose to them in the same game, but still enjoy it.

[Robz888]

Realizing that Oracle counters Bureaucrat... after playing with both cards for a year and a half.

[Morgrim7]

Possession.

[elephantdog]

Reading an article on Dominionstrategy.com about a particular combo, playing a game that same day with the combo in question, and watching all the players dash to see who was going to get that combo first.

[brokoli]

... the artwork of the last expansions
... trashing a border village with apprentice
... coppersmith megaturns
... ignoring witch and mountebank and win
... buying inn when everything is in the discard pile
... Rogue + Feodum
... City + Diadem
... all games with menagerie

[tolenmar]

I love (hate) when someone (me) buys a moneylender or two, and never gets a chance to use it, thanks to his opponents discard attacks...

Of course, substitute any other card into that sentence.

As a group, we love Dominion because every game is different.  You don't know which cards are going to be available, so the only advance planning you really get to do is during setup, right before cards get shuffled. And because each game is different, each game 'feels' different.  One day you might have a good set of trashers, the next you'll be action-poor, while the time after that, everyone went big money (whether it was a good idea or not...).  No one is an expert at all of the cards, so each game challenges everyone, and in a different way.

For myself alone, this game appeals to me in the same fashion that Star Fleet Battles does: Lots of tactical play, lots of combinations, and everyone can pick a style of play that best fits them.

There is only one thing I dislike about Dominion: 5 players.  We tried that yesterday, too slow.  Ok, and Swindler, but that maybe because my son seems to have a laser sight for my best cards when he plays that one...

[werothegreat]

Tradering a Feodum.

[Powerman]

KC-Counting House.

[sudgy]

Possession.

This.  And King's Court.

[Kuildeous]

Tradering a Feodum.

The fact that "tradering" is a valid word among this group.

I like Dominion in general just because it is customizable. That makes a big difference for many games out there. The first time I played a game that changed every time you play it, it was when of Catan came out. And even then, I had no idea just how customizable a game could be. Changing the map is a dawdle compared to changing up the rules or how components interacted with each other. Shortly after learning of Mayfair's name, we discovered Cosmic Encounter. We had no idea that there were other versions of this and that we could have been playing customizable games long before Settlers came out.

Nowadays, it seems to be the norm for a game to mix things up. Power Grid has different maps and even different factories now. Puerto Rico added new buildings to use in place of the old. Alhambra and Carcassonne have numerous expansions that you can mix and match. And many games are designed from the very beginning to offer variety to players. Dominion tackled that concept and did it well. Sometimes you get trivial combinations, like Workshop and Ironworks, but it is rare that you generate a game that isn't interesting and different from the past 20 games you played.

Kudos to Dominion for playing off of gamer momentum. When the game hits the table, you simply cannot just play one.

[Jacob marley]

... 4 player witch game in which I ignore witch and win!
... same game, played the hand:  chapel, curse, curse, curse, curse

[AdamH]

Megaturns.

Scooping up the stack of Provinces and putting it all in my discard (and it's not even cheating!)

Counting up the unique cards I've played this turn, then slapping down 5 Horns on the table.

[werothegreat]

Making an Unstoppable Alchemist Stack.

[Cuzz]

Turning Fairgrounds into Colonies with Black Market.

Playing 4+ Goons in one turn.

Apprentice/Rats/Market Square.

The first time you pull off a pin or a golden deck.

[Fragasnap]

...connecting with friends in an easy to play game that is varied and mechanically sound.

[GiB]

...after a Rats/Vineyard strategy, spending the last 10 turns buying Curses.

[shark_bait]

Activating 4 Treasure Maps in the same turn, with half the Curses from Sea Hag in my deck and absolutely no trashing.

[Jacob marley]

Making an Unstoppable Alchemist Stack.

What he said 

[WanderingWinder]

Making an Unstoppable Alchemist Stack.

Playing against someone who makes Unstoppable Alchemist Stacks.

[Morgrim7]

Making an Unstoppable Alchemist Stack.

Playing against someone who makes Unstoppable Alchemist Stacks.

Nah, turns take eight years.

[Destierro]

Activating 4 Treasure Maps in the same turn, with half the Curses from Sea Hag in my deck and absolutely no trashing.

I call shenanigans! Unless of course you can produce a log, that I would love to see

On topic, playing activated menageries. I love that moment when you have 9 unique cards in hand.

[shark_bait]

Activating 4 Treasure Maps in the same turn, with half the Curses from Sea Hag in my deck and absolutely no trashing.

I call shenanigans! Unless of course you can produce a log, that I would love to see

On topic, playing activated menageries. I love that moment when you have 9 unique cards in hand.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=5921.msg153418#msg153418

Alright, so there was some trashing, but Salvager sucks at trashing curses and I never used it.

[Awaclus]

Activating 4 Treasure Maps in the same turn, with half the Curses from Sea Hag in my deck and absolutely no trashing.

I call shenanigans! Unless of course you can produce a log, that I would love to see

On topic, playing activated menageries. I love that moment when you have 9 unique cards in hand.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=5921.msg153418#msg153418

Alright, so there was some trashing, but Salvager sucks at trashing curses and I never used it.

But that's only two activated Treasure Maps. The other two were just trashed.

[chwhite]

Opening Loan/Potion on a board where the only Potion card is Transmute, and winning.

King's Courting a Coppersmith.

Using Native Village to set up a Horn of Plenty megaturn.

Actually putting Scout to marginally good use in Scrying Pool games (especially those with Vineyard, too).

Menageries, always Menageries.

Vetoing Duke. 

And so, so much more.

[Robz888]

Learning that your Vault combos with your Tunnels... just not as well as it does with your opponent's Tunnels.

[GendoIkari]

Learning that your Vault combos with your Tunnels... just not as well as it does with your opponent's Tunnels.

Surely Vault would combo with your own Tunnels better than your opponent's Tunnels? Both because you have 6 cards to find a Tunnel instead of 5, and because Vault likes Gold?

[zporiri]

I love how "bad cards" can be very good counters against "good cards", like thief vs chapel

[Robz888]

Learning that your Vault combos with your Tunnels... just not as well as it does with your opponent's Tunnels.

Surely Vault would combo with your own Tunnels better than your opponent's Tunnels? Both because you have 6 cards to find a Tunnel instead of 5, and because Vault likes Gold?

Perhaps if Vault is the only Tunnel enabler on the board you do it anyway... but no, in my experience, it does end up helping your opponent an awful lot if he's also going Tunnels.

[chwhite]

I love how "bad cards" can be very good counters against "good cards", like thief vs chapel

Eh, I think this is actually a pretty mediocre example of that phenomenon.  Chapel is at its best when you're building a heavy engine that (often) gets its money from Actions and doesn't need all that many Treasure cards anyway (Vault and Fool's Gold are obvious exceptions, even I acknowledge that Thief can be a good FG counter). 

Counting House vs. Mountebank is my personal favorite example.

[LastFootnote]

Making an Unstoppable Alchemist Stack.

Playing against someone who makes Unstoppable Alchemist Stacks.

Nah, turns take eight years.

Alchemists resolve a lot faster than, say, Scrying Pools or Apothecaries.

[tolenmar]

KC-Council Room, twice in the same hand, getting to spend 20+ coins, and having your opponent miss all of his actions with his hand and extra draws.

That was an awesome game.

[brokoli]

Alchemists resolve a lot faster than, say, Scrying Pools or Apothecaries.

But scrying pool and apothecary are interesting and fun

[eliegel34]

Anything with Scrying Pool or Vineyards. 

Counting House, Warehouse, Worker's Village, Colony.

Building an Engine when it doesn't look like it should work, and being behind the whole game till the last turn.

Opening Loan/Potion on a board where the only Potion card is Transmute, and winning.

Do you have the log for this Transmute/Loan board?  That sounds pretty fun.

[LastFootnote]

Alchemists resolve a lot faster than, say, Scrying Pools or Apothecaries.

But scrying pool and apothecary are interesting and fun

I was responding to Morgrim's assertions that Alchemist stack turns take 8 years. Nothing to do with Alchemists being more or less fun than cards that take longer to resolve.

[KingZog3]

Activating 4 Treasure Maps in the same turn, with half the Curses from Sea Hag in my deck and absolutely no trashing.

You just won the lottery.

I love ending the game with a rush when my opponent forgot that Curses and Ruins count as piles.

I also love the how many setups have totally different strategies, but the win percentage is almost the same for each player. Everyone plays to their strength and still can win games.

[chwhite]

Anything with Scrying Pool or Vineyards. 

Counting House, Warehouse, Worker's Village, Colony.

Building an Engine when it doesn't look like it should work, and being behind the whole game till the last turn.

Opening Loan/Potion on a board where the only Potion card is Transmute, and winning.

Do you have the log for this Transmute/Loan board?  That sounds pretty fun.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120502-193341-e59ced52.html

I know I've pulled it off at least one other time, but can't find the link at the moment.

[Hockey Mask]

A high-octane deck engine that came out of nowhere.  Not my own but my opponent's.  Makes me want to get better. 

[MHofer84]

In a 2-player Colony game, I once pulled off:

Madman
Madman
Madman
King's Court
King's Court
Bridge
Bridge
Bridge
King's Court
Bridge
King's Court
Goons.

So, to recap (or make sense of this mess): Madman x3 gives me 26 cards in hand and 4 actions
Action 1: KC-KC-Bridge-Bridge-Bridge
Action 2: KC-Bridge
Action 3: KC-Goons

By the time the dust settled, I had 16 buys, every card on the board was free, and my buys gave me an additional 16 VP in tokens

[Asper]

Making an Unstoppable Alchemist Stack.

Playing against someone who makes Unstoppable Alchemist Stacks.

Possessing someone who makes Unstoppable Alchemist Stacks.

Actually, i don't care. What i really love are games where everybody goes for a different strategy and it's still an exciting race.

[dondon151]

Outplaying my opponent in the endgame and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

[StrongRhino]

Megaturns. So very satisfying pulling one off.

[sudgy]

Megaturns. So very satisfying pulling one off.

I remember a game that had engine components + KC + Bridge.  I played a Worker's Village (after drawing a bunch of other stuff), and realized I needed to draw a single Bridge...  I did, KC-KC-B-B-B, and bought all the Provinces (and my opponent hadn't heard of the combo and was pretty surprised).

And my first time pulling off Hermit+Market Square was pretty good too.

[awildnoobappeared]

I won't say I "love" this, but it is enlightening to attempt a crazy coin token deck against one of the best players there is, and proceed to get smacked down by Vault-BM.

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130719/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1374233679681.txt

[Eran of Arcadia]

When a game comes down to some marginal thing. I have lost games because I trashed one of my opening estates, or because I won the knights split but my opponent picked up Dame Josephine, or once even because I had failed to notice how many duchies someone else had bought (this was in a 6 player game where 3 of them, including the winner, had never played before.)

But this is the sort of game where even losing can be fun, more fun than some kinds of victories I have had.

[Voltaire]

Islanding a province.

[MarkowKette]

Getting crushed by a strategy that you never thought it could work.

[shMerker]

Islanding a province.

When your opponent has a Saboteur.

[tolenmar]

Watching my opponent self-destruct his deck with Rats.

What? Sometimes I'm easily entertained...

[Awaclus]

Watching my opponent self-destruct his deck with Rats.

What? Sometimes I'm easily entertained...

So pretty much what you love about Dominion is playing against bots?

[Mic Qsenoch]

Watching my opponent self-destruct his deck with Rats.

What? Sometimes I'm easily entertained...

So pretty much what you love about Dominion is playing against bots?

I've self-destructed my deck with Rats (not to mention Ambassador and Chapel). Now I'm worried I'm a bot.

[SCSN]

Which reminds me, when I was still fairly new to Dark Ages, I thought it would be an awesome idea to build a Procession-Rats into Ghost Ship/Mystic engine (yes, Procession was the only trasher). And I sure got a couple of cool turns, after the most impressive of which the decks looked as follows:

SheCantSayNo cards: 8 Rats, 2 Ghost Ship, 2 Mystic, 2 Procession, 3 Copper

karlh cards: 1 Procession, 1 Ghost Ship, 1 Shanty Town, 1 Menagerie, 1 Necropolis, 7 Copper, 4 Silver, 1 Gold, 1 Farmland, 1 Hovel

Just as it dawned on me that perhaps this wasn't the brightest idea ever, my opponent, intimidated by my T9, resigned.

[Witherweaver]

Watching my opponent self-destruct his deck with Rats.

What? Sometimes I'm easily entertained...

So pretty much what you love about Dominion is playing against bots?

I've self-destructed my deck with Rats (not to mention Ambassador and Chapel). Now I'm worried I'm a bot.

I think I'm a bot now
I keep buying Rats and they take over my deck
I think I'm a bot now
I just can't stop myself from buying that Jack

[sudgy]

Which reminds me, when I was still fairly new to Dark Ages, I thought it would be an awesome idea to build a Procession-Rats into Ghost Ship/Mystic engine (yes, Procession was the only trasher). And I sure got a couple of cool turns, after the most impressive of which the decks looked as follows:

SheCantSayNo cards: 8 Rats, 2 Ghost Ship, 2 Mystic, 2 Procession, 3 Copper

karlh cards: 1 Procession, 1 Ghost Ship, 1 Shanty Town, 1 Menagerie, 1 Necropolis, 7 Copper, 4 Silver, 1 Gold, 1 Farmland, 1 Hovel

Just as it dawned on me that perhaps this wasn't the brightest idea ever, my opponent, intimidated by my T9, resigned.

Well, that's one of the cases where my "no resign" philosophy would do me good.

[tolenmar]

No, I said 'sometimes' I'm easily entertained.  And I haven't played the bots with rats yet. 
All of my experiences have been against live players.

I need a more skilled group...

[Wrclass]

My favorite thing about Dominion is how easy it is to make fan cards. No other game that I have played has so many things you can add to it without introducing new mechanics. Fan cards add so much variety to the game and there's practically an endless line of them.

[eHalcyon]

My favorite thing about Dominion is how easy it is to make fan cards. No other game that I have played has so many things you can add to it without introducing new mechanics. Fan cards add so much variety to the game and there's practically an endless line of them.

It's not so easy to make good fan cards though.

[Awaclus]

My favorite thing about Dominion is how easy it is to make fan cards. No other game that I have played has so many things you can add to it without introducing new mechanics. Fan cards add so much variety to the game and there's practically an endless line of them.

It's not so easy to make good fan cards though.

It's easy when you know how.

[Stealth Tomato]

Which reminds me, when I was still fairly new to Dark Ages, I thought it would be an awesome idea to build a Procession-Rats into Ghost Ship/Mystic engine (yes, Procession was the only trasher). And I sure got a couple of cool turns, after the most impressive of which the decks looked as follows:

SheCantSayNo cards: 8 Rats, 2 Ghost Ship, 2 Mystic, 2 Procession, 3 Copper

karlh cards: 1 Procession, 1 Ghost Ship, 1 Shanty Town, 1 Menagerie, 1 Necropolis, 7 Copper, 4 Silver, 1 Gold, 1 Farmland, 1 Hovel

Just as it dawned on me that perhaps this wasn't the brightest idea ever, my opponent, intimidated by my T9, resigned.

This is fantastic. I want to vote it for Greatest Dominion Moment 2013.