What is Dominion?

[Nytmare]

I'm thinking of picking up either Seaside or Hinterlands for Christmas and adding it to the mix. Any recommendations on which?

Of the two, I probably like Hinterlands more.

What I don't like about Seaside are the cards that also have an effect on your next turn.

What we do (and forgive us cause we're all old Magic players) is play the card sideways from your hand, and then untap it at the start of your next turn. That way you can always tell which ones are new and which ones are ready to get discarded.

 

[Grimmjow]

wel i got it. It's fun. Like, a lot of fun!

I just have one question about the game so far, other than that me and my group are enjoying it and figuring it out.

The moat card. If i play that card to stop an attack card from hitting me, do i just show it and put it back in my hand or does it go to the discard pile. We put it in the discard pile last night but i just wanted to be sure.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

You just show your moat and return it to your hand. Apart from its defense value - it can be used more than once until it's your turn again - it's a rather weak card.

 

[Grimmjow]

You just show your moat and return it to your hand. Apart from its defense value - it can be used more than once until it's your turn again - it's a rather weak card.

okay that makes sense then.

I wouldn't call it weak though. With just the core set of cards it blocks thieves, militia, spies, and some others, plus adds two cards to you hand. Id take that one

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I wouldn't call it weak though. With just the core set of cards it blocks thieves, militia, spies, and some others, plus adds two cards to you hand. Id take that one

Oh? The setup of the core set seems to have changed, then. I recall only Militia and Witch as attack cards from our admittedly ancient set.

With "weak" I only ment the constructive function - apart from the defense value.

Anyway, great that you're having fun playing Dominion!

 

[Neonchameleon]

Indeed. We play with base + Intrigue + Prosperity. Some combinations of cards have weird effects, but by and large, I like having more variety and more diversity in terms of which set the cards come from. I'm thinking of picking up either Seaside or Hinterlands for Christmas and adding it to the mix. Any recommendations on which?

How good are you at engines? If Big Money dominates you want Seaside, whereas Hinterlands is interestingly twisted. But take a look at the card sets.

Oh? The setup of the core set seems to have changed, then. I recall only Militia and Witch as attack cards from our admittedly ancient set.

There were others - but only those two really changed the game. Bureaucrat might just be the worst value card in Dominion, Thief is counterproductive in that it often trashes your opponent's coppers, and spy is transparent plus filters everyone's decks slightly - a minor impact. When you've been militiad or witched you know about it so they are much more memorable.

 

[Nytmare]

Bureaucrat might just be the worst value card in Dominion...

Really? It's not one of my top picks, but I've always considered it to be fairly solid. It's like a little tiny Ghost Ship that poops out silvers!

Plus, you'd rank it worse than Chancellor?

 

[innerdude]

Quick question, then back to the thread at hand.

If you fans of the game could pick just one expansion to add to the core set, what would it be, and why?

I'm starting to assume from the discussion up to this point my mild dislike of the game could stem from what a few of you seem to think is a problem inherent in the base set.

That, potentially, being the case... what expansion would be the solution?

Intrigue. Hands down, no questions asked.

Intrigue adds some more cards to the base game, gives you additional point cards to play with more than 4 people, and basically adds interesting player options to nearly every card. Cards are no longer a "This is what you get," but more of a "You can choose this, or this" which makes a HUGE difference for making winning strategies. Intrigue also includes all of the necessary cards to work as a standalone starting point (you can play Intrigue without the base set).

In my experience, Intrigue makes all of the other expansions more playable and dynamic. In fact, I practically refuse to play a Dominion game with the Prosperity expansion if Intrigue isn't also in the mix.

After Intrigue, it's really more about the style of game you're going for. The Cornucopia expansion is a smaller set, but it has some AWESOME cards, including my favorite attack card in the entire game (The Jester). If you can't justify spending $35+ each on both base Dominion and Intrigue, start with Intrigue + Cornucopia.

Lots of people really like the Prosperity expansion, but I've found that although it seems to add lots of new cards and options, it really only adds one basic strategic element, which is the need for more money, though lots of people like it more than I do. This is a great expansion if you like slightly longer, more "high powered" games, though for me Prosperity kind of turns Dominion away from the the things that make it most fun (the balance of action cards and the strategy of card interactions).

I really like the Seaside expansion, which adds expanded options that work really well with base Dominion and Intrigue. It makes acquiring resources easier and lets you set up future actions. I like this more than Prosperity for that reason, because it makes action cards, rather than money cards, more interesting and valuable.

The one expansion to avoid is Alchemy; I've played it a few times and found it extremely underwhelming.

My order of preference would be:

Base Dominion
Intrigue
Cornucopia
Seaside
Prosperity
Hinterlands
Alchemy

 

[Neonchameleon]

Really? It's not one of my top picks, but I've always considered it to be fairly solid. It's like a little tiny Ghost Ship that poops out silvers!

Plus, you'd rank it worse than Chancellor?

I would - for one thing it's more expensive than chancellor. (It is, however, better than Thief - please trash my coppers for me).

Ghost Ship provides card advantage. You play one card to draw two and force your opponent to discard two.

Bureaucrat does not. You pay your action and one card to force your opponent to have a four card hand rather than a five card hand next turn. You are trading card for card but it cost you four cash to buy and used up your action. And Bureaucrats can miss in the midgame.

As for pumping silvers into my deck, I don't want many silvers in there. Silver is a neutral card - in order to buy a province I need an average card value of 1.6. Silver only has a card value of 2.0. I won't say that silver is the worst possible card that actually helps me in the end game (that would be Pearl Diver), but unless you are flooding your deck with them (tradering three Ill Gotten Gains in one game springs to mind) they don't really help you get to the eight mark, merely provide a launch ramp to get the fives and sixes; if you have a silver in hand the average value of your other cards needs to be 1.5 rather than 1.6. The marginal gain of more than your first few silvers is trivial.

This means that going through the deck for the second or third time (i.e. turns 3-6 or for two plays) the bureaucrat noticably improves my deck. But that's two silvers it put in there. After that mor silver doesn't really matter that much. Between turns 7 and 10 or so (or another two plays of the bureaucrat) the odds of hitting a victory card are somewhere around 50% so I've probably missed with the bureaucrat once. I've spent one card and two precious actions to put in two more cards that don't noticeably improve my deck. And that's assuming I don't get bureaucrat with another action card.

I'd rather spend the extra action on just being able to buy better cards. Of course I'd rather have a silver than either bureaucrat or chancellor (or, for that matter, Woodcutter). Chancellor can easily get you to that second or third reshuffle early - as far as I know it's one of the very few ways you can draw a gold on turn 4 (the other being a 5:2 split for Royal Seal) - and if you're getting cloggy at the end it can be what the doctor ordered.

Note that the above doesn't apply in the case of gardens, feodum, or other random low-cost veep strategies like Tunnel discards - but if there is a trash card on the table the Bureaucrat loses what little value it had - with the estates likely to be taken out there's nothing for it to hit and it becomes a seriously nerfed workshop (itself not a very good card) that cost four to buy.

 

[Nytmare]

Ghost Ship provides card advantage. You play one card to draw two and force your opponent to discard two.

Bureaucrat does not. You pay your action and one card to force your opponent to have a four card hand rather than a five card hand next turn. You are trading card for card but it cost you four cash to buy and used up your action. And Bureaucrats can miss in the midgame.

It's (albeit slightly) more than that though, because, if it hits, you're giving them a 4 card hand two turns from now as well, in addition to guaranteeing an untarnished silver + 4 cards in your following hand.

Granted it's situational, but I'd still say it's far from the worst card.