Jul
8th
2015
Dominions: Harmony and Discord · 9:25pm Jul 8th, 2015
In the technically-this-is-stuff-I-wrote department, every weekday through the 17th you can check out this thread for interesting pony-themed Dominion cards I've made, as well as their criticisms from people who know what they're doing more than I do (or at least have less emotional attachment to those particular card designs!)
Or, if you feel unqualified to view that link because you don't play Dominion, it's never too late to start!
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Violet CLM · 272 views
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oh...
this is a funny coincidence, since f.ds is the only forum I hang out in. I also used to be uh pretty good at the game before I left, and had/have my own expansion. Haven't played a game in roughtly a year though... but I'll have a look at your cards! I'm way too much of a fan to not look at something you've made.
Ooh, Dominion. I'm not sure if I hate that game or not!
Like, a lot of the mechanics are really fun on their own, but as a whole it's missing a certain tightness that brings it all together. Mostly in the way the supply is managed, I guess – most of the cards that are worth getting are worth getting as many copies possible of, which also everyone will want, and then this is also the thing that directly drives the end of game. It probably works better as a directly competitive 1v1 race, but I think it suffers some breaks as casual funtimes for everyone.
Also it's a game that makes my friends incredibly salty when they play it. No, wait, that's every game, I suppose I can't hold that against it in specific.
Anyway, comments on specific cards because I don't feel like making an account:
Chest of Harmony:
As pointed out, this is a Reserve, not a Duration. It's pretty solid by the looks of it, the concept is fun. Actually, the suggestion letting you put the card on top of you deck at any time leads to some fascinating ideas when combined with Reveals – that might overpower it, though, and is possibly another card entirely.
Express Train:
Looks like it could get out of control quickly. At least with Highways/Bridges you need to gain a monopoly and stack them to start getting free cards – you only need one of these in your deck for free provinces, assuming you then start focusing on draw and buy power. Maybe cap it at $1, so you at least need some real source of treasure?
Fruit Bats:
Definitely needs a buff somehow. I like the theory, though.
Harmony Stone:
Good concept, it seems like it would get fiddly though.
Pawn Shop:
Best card art, best card. This seriously seems like it would be a lot of fun. Possibly suffers from the systemic issue of everyone in the game having the same cards, so they'll just move the token around on their own turn before buying anything, but that's a Dominion problem in general.
Smudged Family Tree:
While "concatenate the entire text" is really, really cool, I'd probably treat it as a more versatile but limited Prince: the cards on the mat enter play and function separately, but go back to the mat once they're discarded. It has advantages in that you get two cards at once, of any price, but you have actually draw into a copy and play it. ...hm, I suppose that runs into issues if you want to re-use the cards in the same turn, though. :/
Sonic Rainboom:
Solid. Feels thematically kinda weird for it to be the terminus, though, heh.
Sun & Moon:
yessss
double sided card hype
ignore all haters who suggest using a token, that's silly
The concept space for it a bit weird: intuitively, I'd have given it two separate effects, and let you invoke either one immediately, and then the opposite at the start of your next turn. Having a bunch of moons sitting around forever letting you sift seems fairly good on it's own – being able to swap them all into suns... and then Express Train'ing them all, my god. ow.
Witch Doctor:
Another pretty basic and fun card. Actually, no, having a card that gives out curses and guarantees a way to trash them, and even continues to have a useful effect is amazing for random.
Wrap Up:
Fun concept. Your concerns seem valid, though – I think the +1 action is too important for getting any use out of it, though, so maybe ditch the trashing? Possibly replace it with +1 card since it's pure set-up at that point.
Edit: Oh, right! I forgot. With a name like 'Harmony', I figured there would be more cards that offer a side benefit to the rest of the players. Honestly, I think those are kinda lacking in general, they're fun.
3222085
Would I be correct in guessing you're mostly playing it four-player? In which case, sure, sometimes you need a much faster strategy with three opponents than with only one. There is absolutely a list of piles that will probably get emptied, mostly cantrips costing $2 or $3--Hamlet comes to mind, Market Square and Tunnel with the right conditions, Pawn or Vagrant if you have nothing better to do/need a buffer against attacks, Curse (sometimes) and Ruins (at least from Cultist, maybe not from Death Cart), Gardens, Magpie, Peddler, possibly Rats, both the Iron cards--but that's less common in a more expensive kingdom. Short of, like, City, $5 cards aren't going to run out nearly as frequently, and in 1v1 matches I'd say it's almost always going to be a Province (or Colony) game unless everyone's being attacked constantly or something.
In any case, I'd honestly think there are very few stacks that you'd want all of, because it takes so long to accumulate them. Success rests on being fast, or at least being just that much faster than everyone else, not on having the deck that would win if the game came with fifty provinces and no other end condition.
And if everyone is buying the same cards, yes, that can be a problem sometimes. It could be a problem with the kingdom, or with the players, or both. At the least I find a victory (or defeat) to be much less satisfying if everyone is pursuing the exact same strategy and one person's shuffles happened to be that much better. There's much more satisfaction to buying no Rebuilds at all, for example, while your opponent buys several, and still winning. (Or an extreme case: if everyone starts Pirate Ship-Chapel, the game is going nowhere.)
A few specific responses:
Express Train: AFAIK there's no precedent for any caps other than 0, and I'm not sure I'd want to write rules for a card that caps at $1 or $2 interacting with, say, Highway. Which limit gets applied first? Why? There could certainly be a limit on how many cards can be discarded at once, however.
Sonic Rainboom: The turn you play it is the acceleration. The next turn is the explosion.
Wrap Up: Ditching the trashing invites the possibility of it becoming useless if there are no other trashing cards in the kingdom. Dark Ages does have some cards with when-trashed abilities, but those are almost afterthoughts and the cards are mostly still perfectly functional without them. (You'd almost never want to buy Rats without being able to trash them, tho.) Likewise, Urchin can only get away with its trash-if-you-play-an-Attack bit because Urchin is _itself_ an Attack. (Squire is bad and should feel bad.)
3223288
Yeah, they're all 3-6 player games. Basically all your counterpoints are valid, but most of them go out the window if the people you're playing the game with aren't actually as interested/dedicated to the meta-strategy. I mean, I guess I could say it's mostly that it's not usually a fun game to play with people who are terrible at it – I'm undecided if I can consider that a legitimate game design fault or not.
Wrap Up:
This is true, yeah. I'm not sure how I realized how few of those cards there were. I still think the fact that it starts as a non-terminal Remodel and then has the potentially to get infinitely better, all for only $1 more seems like an issue, but I'm not versed on how pricing breakpoints actually work.
Crystal Castle:
I like this a lot. It's definitely a card you only really need one of, though – I'm not sure that's a problem?
Cottage:
Maybe you should have to discard the victory cards (which might then cut it down to $3?) It seems like a very efficient way to draw and play your entire deck, considering that each successive one on a turn will almost assuredly be more powerful than the last.
Library Tree:
Absolutely fantastic narrative design. I appreciate the card and the way its effect makes you play it, as well as how it exploits the basic design of the game. I'm not practiced in modelling the game enough – is it possible to quickly make a deck slim enough that you can buy one almost immediately, and then use it to continue drawing into the ones you're gaining to get them all in one turn? I suppose even that wouldn't be a problem, though, because at that point they basically become normal dead VP.
Rock Farm:
Pulling a card of any cost from the trash seems... really good. I suppose it is terminal, but it almost seems like it would work fine even without that, considering that it also easily has the potential of being the highest valued VP card.
3224727 I've never played with more than four players and I don't think I'd _want_ to. You are welcome to make any criticisms of such a mode that you like.
I think of it roughly like this:
$1-$3: all pretty much the same, pricing mostly done in terms of is-this-card-better-than-this-other-card? The $2 price point has something of a reputation for really interesting cards that don't need to be expensive, but it's not guaranteed.
$4: A $3 card that you can't buy two of at the start of the game.
$5: A solid card that you can buy when your average card is worth at least $1. Most good cards cost this.
$6-7: Has to be better than Gold at least some of the time, swap between the two numbers based on intuition
$8: Has to be better than Province at least once.
$9+: Good luck!
The obvious answer is always Chapel, so, yes.
Yes and no. Graverobber and Rogue are (the) existing examples of practically getting cards of any cost, since anything that costs less than $3 you're unlikely to want to rescue and anything that costs more than $6 is unlikely to be in the trash in the first place. Granted, they are more expensive. If I understand what you mean by "without that," making it only Victory instead of Action-Victory feels dangerous, like it'd take away a lot of the ease of sabotaging your own Rock Farms by constantly replacing your hand cards with better ones. It plays against itself.
(Exceptions to the >$6 thing do exist, of course... you might well use Remodel or Salvager on a Province to get another Province, or Rebuid or Expand to turn a Province into a Colony. Those are rare (and mostly strictly endgame) enough that I don't view them as major differences, tho.)
3225056
I mean, it's not particularly that I want to play with six people, it's just that I have five friends I want to do something with, and Dominion ostensibly supports that. It's definitely not designed for it, but that's not immediately clear. :/ Anyway, I'd definitely be open for playing some more serious games in the 9-Midnight PST timeslot if you were interested, because
I adore you and desperately want to be your friendI live an empty life and seek to fill it with new unproductive distractionsit seems like it would be fun and provide some new perspective.Rodeo:
Seems good, I have to wonder what kind of support you need to consistently get gold from it and whether that makes it worth it. I suppose it depends a lot on everyone's specific strategy, which makes for a fun card, I think.
Runway:
Good card. Passively affects the value of every other card and mechanic despite not having any specific interactions.
3226555 3225056
Donald X (the dominion designer) said that he designed the game for 3 player and hoped that it would work for 4 and 2, and it did. He does like ~70% (I think) of his playtesting for 3p, and a little bit for 2p and 4p. He also said that there are 'always people who want to play with more people than it's reasonable'. I think the 5+ player opion was added because there was demand for it, but he puts no effort into supporting it.
On f.ds, a lot of players just play 1n1 all the time. If you do that a lot, especially if you do it online, 3+ player games quickly become tedius, partly because they often have less strategical depth, and partly because they make you wait for so long.
About the price points, the most important thing is to never think in terms of powerlevel and always think in terms of how fun each card would be. Chapel is a great example, it doesn't cost 2$ because it's at a certain power level, in fact it would be a must buy in most sets if it cost 4$ - but at 4$ it would be boring, because you can only open chapel/silver, whereas at 2$ it gives you a lot more options. Most players on f.ds also agree that 3$'s are stronger on average than 4$'s. In short, balance is a myth. Chapel is arguably stronger than expand and costs 5$ less.
The other thing that's important is that no card should allowed to be strictly better than another card at the same cost, particulalry a base card - for example you can't have a 3$ with +2$ and +1 Action because that would be strictly better than silver (there are always edge cases, but they're very rare). You also can't have such a card at 4$, because 3$ and 4$ are super close. For 5$, it's important that the card does stuff on its own, and it needs to be able to compeat, because 5$ is the key price point in a lot of games.
I think the summary you posted is fairly accurate, except that the difference between 2$ and 3$ is pretty significant. It's like 6 >> 5 >>>>>>>> 4 >= 3 >>> 2. For 3 and 4, if the cost doesn't change the effect, the question is usually just 'do you want players to have the option to open with two of them'.
3234897 Sure... I think you're coming somewhat more from a direction of "why do these existing cards cost what they do" and I'm more "what should this new card cost," but there's only so much discrepancy. I also place more emphasis on when will people (want to) buy this card... $5 can be an indicator that a card won't be useful right away (e.g. Venture), so it won't be purchasable right away (most of the time). (Playing against someone who opens $2-$5 (or $5-$2) with Count is terrifying, because it can carry your deck for such a long time if you get it right away, and anyone who doesn't is stuck playing catch-up.) That's basically how Weather Factory got priced, for example... there just aren't cards that you'll want to save from the trash early on, so it might as well cost $5 instead, and bump it up to 2VP to make that feel more appropriate.
I'll agree that the difference between $2 and $3 cards' abilities is more extreme than between $3 and $4, but it doesn't exactly need to be... I'd imagine generally $2 cards could cost $3 instead without much difference in gameplay, but they cost less to indicate that they play differently. And to give you something to Remodel your Coppers into, I guess.
And then any time a card's abilities make reference to cost--trash for benefit, most directly--there are all the base cards to consider in extra detail. Remodel at $3 wouldn't let you Remodel Remodel into Gold. Expand at $8 would let you Expand Expand into Colony. Graverobber at $4 wouldn't let you Graverobber Graverobber into Province. Peddler at $6 is that much worse for Salvager or Forge or Butcher. And so on.
3226555 My inner Celestia says I should take you up on that. Perhaps someday if I ever turn on Skype again and manage to extract myself from my late-night pits of self-loathing. Although I don't own any of the expansions on the website, so it'd be a pretty limited experience.
3236452
Convienently I own all the expansions! I mean, if I was going to have chaotic and dumb five player games, they had better at least be a wacky and gimmicky ones. I'm too lazy to make any well configured sets, though, which also compounded the problems.
Sorry to hear about your self-loathings. :sadfluttershy: Do I have to ration some of the Violet CLMpreciations for your use? Did I inadvertedly cause a market crash by consuming them all out of your view?
Alicorn Amulet:
I think you notated ¢ wrong. Seems incredibly effective early game, after which it will rapidly become a liability (unless someone else is throwing curses at you, maybe).
Assertiveness Seminar:
Seems pretty simple and plausibly useful. Not sure I grok the role of the on-play text or why it happens after use?
Hm. Thematically makes me wonder if there's a 'when a player forces you to gain a card, place it on top of their deck instead' effect anywhere. I can't think of it offhand.
Also, I just now noticed you've been going alphabetically.
Battle of the Bands:
Feels a bit random and unreliable for my taste – the discard effect isn't worth it without the buy, but you have to consciously stop pressing your luck in order to get it, despite the odds staying equal.
Dragon:
I like the idea here, there should be significantly more cards with -$, but it seems like it would be one of the most aggressively salt-inducing unfun cards. (Oh man, now I'm waiting for the 'Salt Bar' with an even worse effect)
Inspiration Manifestion:
This token would immediately sit on the curse pile, and get moved back there if anyone tried to mess with it. These are the people I play with. Huh, though, I guess that would technically double their effectiveness. I suppose the ultimate play is hoarding all the curses and then highway/bridge/training the last province with it in hand. Sounds fun.
Also reminds me how many cards benefit from Black Market's pseudo-Buy Phase. I'm curious what non-terminal or treasure you could get the most value out of by picking in the middle of your turn and immediately drawing like twenty of.