Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[popsofctown]

I don't feel I have been overly snippy.  I said I had more respect for some complaints than others, that's a commentary on the complaints, not the person making them.




Let's say you open Platinum/nothing, you drew 5/2.  I would think it's only fair that my hypothetical player 2 gets 5/2 as well. I threw a 10 card kingdom at the wall just now, it gave me Ghost ship as the best 5$ attack.  So my guy gets to open Ghost Ship.  Which actually puts a fancy spin on the "Witch/copper opening" debate thing since he can buy a Halfpenny.  Let's buy him one, it rounds things off a whole lot.

Plat guy has exactly 16$ in his deck now, which will be spread over 3 turns.  So he can get, like, 2 Ghost ships and a silver, one of his hands gets hit by the Ghost ship.
Ghost ship guy has 8$ in his deck.  Man, that's like half as much money.  If ghost ship doesn't miss the reshuffle, he'll take exactly 2 turns for his second run through his deck.  He is likely to split that 5/3 or 4/4.  If it's 4/4, he probably uses a trashed Halfpenny to shore things up and get Ghostship-power5.  But let's go the simpler way and say he gets Ghostship Silver.

So, after four turns of using player two's deck, player two is ready to start a fresh reshuffle, and his deck has 9$ in it, and he has double Ghostship. 
Player 1 does not even have a chance to draw a Ghost ship yet on turn 5, his deck is that bloated.  Player 1's first chance at seeing a Ghost ship comes on his sixth turn, when 3 of his cards might be Ghost ship.  Having an early Platinum only allowed him to catch up on Ghost ships, player 2 got two Ghost ships as well and starts playing a double Ghostship deck a turn and a half faster.  Essentially, Player 1 has gotten an early Platinum, but he has reversed the attacking momentum he'd usually get, player 2's attacks are hitting player 1's purchases earlier.  If the board is tilted Big Money, Player 1 probably still wins. If this is the kind of game where players are going to aim to play Ghost ship every turn though, Player 2 is positioned to do that much better now, and I'm not even convinced player 1 is winning.

That is kinda garbled, I did my best.  Ghost ship is really good yeah, but all boards have a good 5$, it's different every time.  Taking on halfpennies means that you have to play dominion for 5 turns without using your Action resource, instead of playing dominion that way for 2 turns.  That is huge and I think it is important to appreciate.  Al was not only behind on cycling because he bought a bunch of treasure, he was additionally behind because he was not using his Action resource to improve his cycling with Margrave. 

[popsofctown]

Now that I'm looking at that 1.04% figure, it seems cherry-picked. ... it's a whole lot higher if you're playing with people who don't own every expansion.
People who really like Prosperity might even just flip a coin to decide if it's a Colony or Province game.

I... I need a break.

[Warfreak2]

Player 2 isn't in a worse position because his deck contains less money in total, he's in a worse position because his money density is much lower. Especially in a game with handsize attacks, high money density is a really big deal...

It doesn't even matter whether you think Player 2 still has some chance of coming back against a T1 Platinum... this is a game, games are supposed to be fun, playing against (or even with) such a massive pure-luck advantage isn't fun.

[soulnet]

since buying victory cards would increase the chance of breaking the chain.

I think the problem is not the infinite chains, but KC-Outpost and even TR-Outpost being too powerful.

For the chain, you have KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme-Outpost, that gives you infinitely many turns, its not that hard to setup (because the KCs and the Scheme "naturally" stay on top once you draw KC-Scheme) and its not hurt by adding green. Even worse, adding green will only make the game longer because its more difficult for the player with infinite turns to deplete the Provinces or Colonies, and three-piling would take a long time. There are other setups with Scavenger that would also work and give you a Province per turn, but those would not be so problematic, since the game would be over soon.

[sylas]

there ARE other cards in this contest, right?

 

[eHalcyon]

That is kinda garbled, I did my best.  Ghost ship is really good yeah, but all boards have a good 5$, it's different every time.  Taking on halfpennies means that you have to play dominion for 5 turns without using your Action resource, instead of playing dominion that way for 2 turns.  That is huge and I think it is important to appreciate.  Al was not only behind on cycling because he bought a bunch of treasure, he was additionally behind because he was not using his Action resource to improve his cycling with Margrave.

Not every board has a good $5, and most of them don't hold up against Platinum, especially considering the Plat guy can get the $5 cards as well.  Yeah it comes a little later, but that's no big deal.  Consider, why is it so good to get the power $5s and play them early?  To slow your opponent down and to speed yourself up on the way to better cards and eventually VP.  That pretty often involves getting Platinum, which is a very difficult card to pick up the first time.  The Platinum guy gets to skip all that work and just have a Plat.  And having that Plat makes it way easier to get more Plats and other good cards.  He might not get to play Ghost Ship as early, but it doesn't matter -- he's already so far ahead that the opponent is only playing catch-up.

Putting a cap on the number of halfpennies you can use from the trash is a very simple clause, and I don't think it takes away that much elegance.  You could even put it in the setup rule:

On the first turn of each player, trash two Halfpennies.

A negative of this approach is that it doesn't do all the setup at the very start of the game, but the wording is concise and easy to understand.  Interestingly, it reduces first player advantage because subsequent players may be able to use Halfpennies from p1 if p1 leaves them behind.

[popsofctown]

Can we agree to disagree?  I'm pretty sure neither of us have opened Platinum before.  I still don't understand why I am expected to accept your speculation as better than mine.

[eHalcyon]

Can we agree to disagree?  I'm pretty sure neither of us have opened Platinum before.  I still don't understand why I am expected to accept your speculation as better than mine.

Sure.  And man, I don't expect you to just accept the speculation.  It's supposed to be a dialogue.  I think you are misreading me as hostile when I am just commenting.

[popsofctown]

Why isn't Diviner drawing more criticism for being in the top ten?  In hindsight, I think it needs at least +1 coin.  That's sort of the minimum standard for crappy trasher with other effect you are maybe interested in.

And the Curse bonus should be 2 or more VP, 1 to counteract the effect of that curse itself getting considered part of your deck, and 1 to counteract the curses your opponent trashes with Chapel or something.

[popsofctown]

I'm noting some similarity between Benefactor and Talisman. Benefactor at 4$ is pretty much just way better, Duchess is better than Copper.  Some people would consider Talisman among the official failures though.  I'm not sure whether I would.  It's a pretty weak card, it's not Scout, but it's tough to make it work.

Benefactor at 5$ makes the 4-5 leap in amount of benefit, but also makes the 4-5 leap in cost of acquisition.

Initially I had some concerns about Benefactor at 5, I think I posted as such.  I think Benefactor at 5 passes "the Witch test" with flying colors though.  Curses are just inverted Labs, you know, instead of putting a little slip of paper in your deck saying "As you pass this, if you would draw a card, draw 2" you are putting in a little slip of paper saying "as you pass this, if you would draw a card, draw 0".  Benefactor trades a more boundless ability to gain Labs for a restriction on your purchase that turn, if it's a Province buying turn it's no dice.

We shall see, though, it's still pretty strong

[popsofctown]

Area 51, that one seemed alright at first glance, but when I look at it again I think it really needs to be 5$ or it will dominate every single 4$ hand.  Worst case scenario, you cycle it and it replaces itself with a 2$ card.  2, 3, and 4 coin cards are roughly equivalent stuff though.  The greatest possible disappointment is to accidentally buy a 4$ "silver", which is a little worse than Silver because you will draw it 1 turn later.  It's possible that you get a situational 2-4$ card like Coppersmith, but those are roughly equal to the number of instawin ridiculouses like early Hoard or Forge so let's just let those cancel out.

At the low risk of slightly delayed silver, you can get 5$ delayed actions for 4$ with this card.  Furthermore they may be 5$ actions that bring something to the board that is missing, like trashing or attacking (and some 2-4$ cards provide that too).  Jumping the 4-5 gap at the risk of dropping the smaller 4-2 gap is too good a deal to pass up, and I think this card is like, better than Caravan.

I think 2P would be a better cost for Area 51, actually.

[soulnet]

Sorry for being overanxious but, is there a new deadline for posting the results?

[ta56636]

Just a thought; if you really don't want to cap the number of Halfpennies per turn you can swipe, why not have them start out in people's decks rather than as a shared resource? All it would take is changing the type to Treasure-Shelter, and then deciding whether they replace Coppers or other Shelters.

I rather like this idea ... there could even be situations where you don't spend them on turn 1/2 so that the next player can't - e.g. P1 plays 3C rather than 3C+1S and gets a $3 rather than a $4 card...

I don't think the card creator keen on this, but I might use it as the idea for a new card...

[Dominion_Contests]

Sorry for being overanxious but, is there a new deadline for posting the results?

Sorry i thought i allotted ourselves until Saturday night. I will be pushing back the deadline until then (Saturday night).

[soulnet]

Sorry for being overanxious but, is there a new deadline for posting the results?

Sorry i thought i allotted ourselves until Saturday night. I will be pushing back the deadline until then (Saturday night).

Ok, thanks. BTW, will you also be revealing your identity then?

[popsofctown]

what identity? he is dominion contests

[Dominion_Contests]

Sorry for being overanxious but, is there a new deadline for posting the results?

Sorry i thought i allotted ourselves until Saturday night. I will be pushing back the deadline until then (Saturday night).

Ok, thanks. BTW, will you also be revealing your identity then?

what identity? he is dominion contests

Thanks for clarifying that Pops. Sorry we have to push back the results one more night. We want to get in a bit more playtesting.

[Jack Rudd]

Highway-Highway-Band of Outcasts is... interesting.

[popsofctown]

Highway-Highway-Band of Outcasts is... interesting.

Mildly interesting.  If Pearl Diver is on the board, Band of Outcasts becomes a Grand Market with deck manipulation instead of +buy.A little effort for a little reward.  Not much more interesting than official interactions with Highwyay

[soulnet]

I think Band of Outcast is a tweak on Band of Misfits, one of the tweaks being that it gets to play better Actions with cost reduction. The problem is that Band Of Outcast is too easy to spam, so I worry that it may be too powerful (Imagine easier-to-spam Band of Misfits). With one-shots it would be incredible.

[Jack Rudd]

Highway-Highway-Band of Outcasts is... interesting.

Mildly interesting.  If Pearl Diver is on the board, Band of Outcasts becomes a Grand Market with deck manipulation instead of +buy.A little effort for a little reward.  Not much more interesting than official interactions with Highwyay

I was thinking of Highway, Highway, Band of Outcasts, playing and returning a Band of Outcasts, playing and returning a Band of Outcasts... (repeat until you have an arbitrarily large amount of money)

[Dominion_Contests]

Over the next hour I'm going to be putting in the results and updating after each of the 10 final scores are put in.
 Let the drum-roll begin.

[mail-mi]

Crap. I totally forgot that the mystery pile should only have cards costing $4 and up. Oops.

[Dominion_Contests]

Everything is Final Congrats to Archetype, Popsofctown and RobertJ.

[Archetype]

Oh hey, that's awesome! I never would have thought I would actually win! Congrats to pops and RobertJ; I liked your guys' card ideas too.

A few notes on Artisan:

- It should be Action-Attack. I just forgot to put that in when I typed it up.
-Silver is optional. I like it because it adds an element of surprise. But it is swingy, so if you don't like it you can swap it out for a Copper or something.

I'm glad you liked the card and I hope it continues to see play with your group! Thanks for running the contest. Testing these cards out and giving prizes like this is really, really generous of you. Hopefully you continue to stay around the forums!