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Secret History Dominion is a deck-builder designed by Donald X. Vaccarino (commonly referred to as Donald X. or DXV) and published by Rio Grande games. If you're in this thread, you probably know what a deck-building game is...but if you don't, the gist is that each player starts every game with a small, identical hand of cards, and builds their deck from a supply as play progresses. These cards range from money (to buy more cards), actions, victory points, and other esoteric types. There are all sorts of products to buy for Dominion. This game has been around for a while and has lots and lots and lots of expansions and other products: Dominion, where it all started (sort of...you may notice the big "Second Edition" banner on this box; I'll address that in the FAQ) BGG Page(Second Edition) Secret History(Second Edition) Intrigue, the 1st expansion. Themed around offering choices between multiple effects. The BGG Page(Second Edition) Secret History(Second Edition) Seaside, the 2nd expansion. Introduced Duration cards which have an effect when played and another effect later on. The second expansion to have received the Second Edition treatment BGG Page (Second Edition) Secret History (Second Edition) Alchemy, the 3rd expansion. Has a unique currency co-existing with normal treasure, and cards with many actions. A small-size expansion. BGG Page Secret History Prosperity, the 4th expansion. Adds higher valued treasure and victory cards, and generally focuses on accumulating and spending wealth BGG Page (Second Edition) Secret History(More Secret History) (Second Edition) Cornucopia, the 5th expansion. Rewards building decks and drawing hands with a wide variety of cards. A small-size expansion. Not sold separately in English any longer; only available bundled with Guilds (see FAQ). BGG Page Secret History Hinterlands, the 6th expansion. Contains many cards that have special effects when purchased and gained, instead of just when played. BGG Page (Second Edition)Secret History (Second Edition) Dark Ages, the 7th expansion. Focuses on trashing (permanently discarding) cards and interacting with said trash pile. Even among the larger expansions, this one is BIG. BGG Page Secret History Guilds, the 8th expansion. The final expansion in the "original vision" for Dominion from Donald X. Introduces coin tokens and special effects from overpaying for cards. A small-size expansion. Not sold separately in English any longer; only available bundled with Cornucopia (see FAQ). BGG Page Secret History Adventures, the 9th expansion. Brings back the popular concept of Duration cards from Seaside, as well as introducing cards that get set aside and called back into play later. Also the debut of Events. These are landscape-oriented, and provide an effect when bought, but do not enter your deck like normal cards. BGG Page Secret History Empires, the 10th expansion. A couple more Duration cards, more Events, and also introduces Landmarks. These are siblings to Events; landscape oriented, never enter your deck. Most of these provide new ways to score victory points or change the overall scoring conditions. Also has some cards that you buy now and pay for later via Debt tokens, and split piles that have two different types of cards in them. BGG Page Secret History Nocturne, the 11th expansion. This one was just announced on August 3rd, 2017; so details are a bit sparse as of yet, but here's it's blurb from BGG: "It has 500 cards, with 33 new Kingdom cards. There are Night cards, which are played after the Buy phase; Heirlooms that replace starting Coppers; Fate and Doom cards that give out Boons and Hexes; and a variety of extra cards that other cards can provide." BGG Page Secret History Renaissance, the 12th expansion. Announced August 4th, 2018. "This is the 12th expansion to Dominion. It has 300 cards, with 25 new Kingdom cards. There are tokens that let you save coins and actions for later, Projects that grant abilities, and Artifacts to fight over." BGG Page Secret History Menagerie, the 13th expansion. Announced January 8th, 2020. "This is the 13th expansion to Dominion. It has 400 cards, with 30 new Kingdom cards. There are Horses that save a draw for later, Exile mats that cards can be sent to and rescued from, and Ways that give Actions another option. Events return." BGG Page Secret History Allies, the 14th expansion. It has 400 cards, with 31 new Kingdom card piles. There are Allies that will do Favors for you, and split piles you can rotate. BGG Page Secret History Plunder, the 15th expansion. It has 500 cards, with 40 new Kingdom cards. It has lots of Treasures and Durations, with cards that give you Loot, and Traits that modify piles. Events return. BGG Page Secret History Base Cards, not a regular expansion. This box contains a new set of all the "base" dominion cards (the basic money and victory cards that will be present in every game, plus Potions from Alchemy and Platinum and Colony from Prosperity). At the time of its original release, the Base Cards box was the only way to get fancy new art on these basic cards, but the aforementioned Second Edition of Dominion made the fancy art the new standard. This is a purely optional 'upgrade' product if you have older sets, or useful for if your basic cards are starting to show wear and tear. Update Packs, not regular expansions. If you already own the first editions of the base game and Intrigue, these packs will get you the new cards needed to make your sets Second Edition compliant. BGG Page Base BGG Page Intrigue BGG Page Seaside BGG Page Prosperity BGG Page Hinterlands Secret History Promo Cards, not regular expansions. Like many modern board games, Dominion has a handful of Promo cards; these are one-offs (mostly stacks of ten, as per usual) that are not gathered into multi-card expansions. Sauna/Avanto is a 5/5 split pile, Summon is an Event. Secret History Blank Cards, not a regular expansion. If you want to make your own custom Dominion cards (either for a fan expansion or to proxy something you don't yet own) you can buy them from BoardGameGeek. Many expansions also include a couple blanks. jivjov fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Dec 27, 2022 |
# ? Jan 1, 2017 00:32 |
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# ? May 21, 2024 18:41 |
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Reserved for FAQ and other stuff. Work in progress FAQ Q. Do I need to buy all of Dominion to enjoy it? A. Not at all! The base game alone will last you a dozen or more plays, all by itself! Buy more expansions only if and when you feel like you need more new cards in your life. Q. What order should I buy these myriad expansions in? A. It is generally accepted to be best to pick up expansions in the order in which they were released. Expansions tend to introduce more complexity as they go along. Intrigue will make sense to a group that only has a few plays in the core game, Adventures or Empires not so much. The one possible exception to this rule would be Alchemy. Alchemy is seen as the black sheep of the Dominion family, and is widely considered to be the least popular expansion. It can be a lot of fun, and it isn't objectively bad, but unless you know for sure that you want to introduce Potions and the like to your games; save it for last. If you'd like the designer's take on this question, Donald gives his shockingly comprehensive answer right over here, up to and including "I like X expansion in particular, what's best after that one?" Q. I can't find Cornucopia or Guilds at my FLGS, what gives? A. Those two small-size expansions are no longer sold individually, and instead come in a large-expansion-sized combo box: BGG Page Q. How do I track down all these Promo cards? A. Most promos are readily available at the BoardGameGeek store. Ebay is also your friend. Q. Do I need to track down all those Promo cards? A. For completion's sake, yes...but otherwise just pick them up as the mood strikes you. Some promos do weird and interesting things (Black Market lets you buy cards that aren't in your current game's supply, Stash has a unique cardback and is placed into your deck wherever you want it every time you shuffle, etc), others are just regular cards that were set aside for promos because a magazine, convention, etc wanted one. Donald X. himself is lukewarm on the whole concept of Promos, holding the opinion that if a card is good enough to be in Dominion at all, it should be included in a normal retail set for people to just buy. Q. What's the deal with those "Secret History" links that are so helpfully listed in the OP? A. Donald X. has extensively discussed the history of Dominion, its development, the theming behind expansions, and detailed design notes on every single card. These are referred to as the Secret Histories. Q. What's with this whole Second Edition thing? A. After the mid-2016 release of Empires, Donald X. decided to revisit the base game and the first expansion and make some modifications. 6 cards from each set were removed (weaker cards, less popular cards) and 7 new and improved ones were added. The base cards in the core game are now themed after the fancy art versions from the Base Cards product. Intrigue used to be a "standalone" expansion (it included the base treasure and victory cards needed to play the game), the Second Edition of Intrigue is no longer standalone. Besides the removed and replaced cards, some general layout and formatting changes were introduced. Things like +1 Action or +2 Cards are now printed in bold, cards with not much text are now printed in a larger font, the pronouns on cards are now "they" rather than "he", etc. Q. Should I hold out for Second Editions of other expansions besides Intrigue? A. No. Donald X. has stated that there are no plans for Second Edition treatments for any of the other released expansions. Future printings of Seaside and beyond will include the minor formatting changes detailed above (bolding, larger type, 'they' pronouns, etc) but no cards will be removed or replaced. The first printing of Empires already has these changes. On a purely pedantic note, reprints of Alchemy and Prosperity will have the fancy art cards for Potion, Platinum, and Colony. 2022 Update: Seaside is getting a Second Edition rerelease as well--9 new cards being added, the official announcement does not mention for sure how cards are being removed. Update pack for Seaside Confirmed, but just like Base and Intrigue, cards with minor errata updates will not be in the update pack, only the brand new cards. 2022 Update 2: Prosperity and Hinterlands are also getting the 2nd Ed. treatment. 9 cards out, 9 cards in, update packs confirmed, again with no minor errata included, just the new cards Q. So just where am I supposed to put all these cards? A. The worst part of owning all of Dominion is figuring out your own answer to this question. The inserts that come in each game box aren't bad...but have zero support for sleeved cards, and keep your entire collection divided between 10-12 different boxes. My current method is an organizer from The Broken Token (2022 Update: direct link removed. Google if you want, but I will not funnel traffic to the sex pest that's still CEO) (They also sell just the wooden insert, if you have your own artist case from Hobby Lobby), combined with plastic dividers from Spielgeek (Do ignore the amateur-hour look of his website, I have trusted this random internet man with my money 4 different times and haven't been disappointed or robbed yet). The finished product looks like this: Note that if you sleeve your cards, like I do, you won't have room for all the tokens and mats and everything in the same box as all your Kingdom cards. Q. Referring to all these rulebooks is unwieldy...is there a better reference for that? A. Check out the Complete Dominion Companion. Its a fan-made document, but has the blessing of DXV and RGG. Has rules text for every card, non-card object, and token in the game; including Donald's Secret Histories. Dominion Online https://dominion.games/ is the home of the current official implementation of online Dominion. It's very much a work in progress. While gameplay is functional, the art design is rather bare, no music or sound effects, etc. Online FAQ posted:Offline Chris is me jivjov fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Dec 29, 2022 |
# ? Jan 1, 2017 00:33 |
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 00:40 |
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Storage recommendations, go
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 01:15 |
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https://youtu.be/weO-3cWqV0A
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 01:20 |
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Dr Tran posted:Storage recommendations, go If you look at my handy dandy FAQ, I just edited in my own personal storage solution
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 01:24 |
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jivjov posted:If you look at my handy dandy FAQ, I just edited in my own personal storage solution Does that hold all the xpacs up through Empires?
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 01:29 |
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http://councilroom.com/player?player=Toshimo Fite me.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 01:31 |
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jivjov posted:If you look at my handy dandy FAQ, I just edited in my own personal storage solution Are they all sleeved as well?
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 01:31 |
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http://dominion.technowall.net/
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 01:32 |
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Toshimo posted:Does that hold all the xpacs up through Empires? Sort of...I have the tokens and mats off in the core game box. Empires + the Second Edition cards took up too much from for it to truly be a one-box-solution any longer...but its still handy Dr Tran posted:Are they all sleeved as well? Yep; Mayday Games penny sleeves. I did a bulk order of something like 90 packs from my secondary FLGS and sleeved EVERYTHING while binge-watching Daredevil. I keep a couple packs of sleeves in my secondary storage box in case any split or rip. jivjov fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Feb 1, 2017 |
# ? Jan 1, 2017 01:35 |
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Isotropic My last game: code:
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 01:42 |
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Anyone try the new client?
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 02:21 |
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Toshimo posted:Isotropic Are you still playing it with the code somehow?
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 02:31 |
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Just got my email to sign up for the new online client. It feels pretty rough..but I haven't actually played a game yet
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 03:36 |
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jivjov posted:The final expansion in the "original vision" for Dominion from Donald X.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 03:54 |
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Pierzak posted:What's with that? Did the game get diluted later just so they could sell more expansions, or what? Is DXV's original vision good, bad, or some nebulous concept he once mentioned offhand in an interview? There's a whole series of "Secret History" articles where DXV talks about his design choices, both for individual expansions/cards and for Dominion as a whole (here's a link to the one about Dominion itself). By the time Guilds came out, DXV had run through all his original ideas. To make a long story short, he came up with a couple hundred card ideas, divided them into various expansion sets and got them made. After that, he said that Dominion expansions would come out less frequently, and basically whenever he had enough good ideas. Hence Adventures and Empires both having pretty big handfuls of new ideas (Events, Landmarks, Tavern mat, travellers, etc) My specific word choice of "original vision" was more of an in-joke with myself, referring to George Lucas' oft repeated mantras of having an "original vision" for Star Wars
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 04:07 |
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 04:50 |
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Does anyone know if Spielgeek will sell dividers for individual sets on request? $108 is a lot to ask for when I only have 4 sets, and the Canuck-buck is low.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 05:47 |
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I love digital Dominion so much that I couldn't stop myself from grabbing all the Dominion expansions if I tried to buy the physical cards and spend all my money. So I'll just have to play the online version instead. Has there been any previews/first impressions of the new client yet?
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 07:15 |
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unpronounceable posted:Does anyone know if Spielgeek will sell dividers for individual sets on request? $108 is a lot to ask for when I only have 4 sets, and the Canuck-buck is low. He's always been really responsive to emails; you might just try shooting him one and asking. Roluth posted:I love digital Dominion so much that I couldn't stop myself from grabbing all the Dominion expansions if I tried to buy the physical cards and spend all my money. So I'll just have to play the online version instead. Has there been any previews/first impressions of the new client yet? It's amateur-hour, the program at the moment. It functions, but that's about it. Everything except the card images is just plain text and symbols; none of the mats or tokens have a visual representation, there's no music or sound effects. It works if you want to play some Dominion...but all the bells and whistles are in development.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 11:52 |
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Yeah, and the interface isn't terribly intuitive. The "end actions/end turns" buttons are hidden under the game log, and undo/resign are in a corner. Also I tried to play four or five times before I found a game where everyone was ready, despite wasting several minutes in each one. Oh, and I haven't got a confirmation email either. Re: dividers, I just made my own from some corrugated plastic and stuck them in the original box. Now I need more space, I'm going to make another for the Alchemy box.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 13:09 |
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I use this page, a laminator and card stock for my dividers.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 17:40 |
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I'm a fan of these myself since they're vertical and have each card FAQ on them. I'm cheap and print them on card stock, cut them out manually, and then sleeve them with penny sleeves so they don't get too bent in the box. New Dominion client seems alright so far, nothing great yet but it looks promising enough, has almost every card through Empires, and plays mostly fine. A bunch of minor issues here and there but I'm sure they'll get sorted out soon enough. Once they do I'll start throwing money at it.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 17:46 |
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I somehow missed the whole 2nd edition thing. I'll be sad to see Feast go; as impractical as it was, Throne Room/Feast will never not be my favorite base game deck. RIP weird dumb card.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 17:48 |
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I use a completely different storage system: a giant 3-ring binder filled with baseball card pages. Each pocket holds a full stack of kingdom cards, which I ordered alphabetically so it's easy to flip through and find what you want. It's big enough to easily add expansions as I acquire them.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 18:14 |
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For us goons in the UK that can't get the same stuff from the US distributors, I got this wooden box for Christmas for my storage solution: http://www.basicallywooden.co.uk/our-collections/card-game-boxes/#tabContent1_stacks_in_23860_page20 It fits about 5 boxes worth of cards if you sleeve, and probably all of the cards if you don't, but would be very heavy if you filled it with every Dominion card. How do people feel about the Empires expansion? I love it, especially the Landmarks, but I found a number of the Kingdom cards have made some people's heads spin, particularly Castles, Enchantress and Villa. Also what's the deal with Catapult and Rocks? They seem totally crap to me, I assume I'm missing something.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 18:33 |
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Castles are, in concept, one of my new favorites...but I've only ever got them on the table once, and they were overloooked in favor of other Kingdom cards. I feel Castles are going to be one of those cards that brings out the indirect player interaction that I love so much in the game; especially with 3-4 players, it will be a delicate dance of when to buy and when to pass: because buying could give your opponents access to the better ones before you can come back to your turn.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 18:38 |
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jivjov posted:Castles are, in concept, one of my new favorites...but I've only ever got them on the table once, and they were overloooked in favor of other Kingdom cards. I feel Castles are going to be one of those cards that brings out the indirect player interaction that I love so much in the game; especially with 3-4 players, it will be a delicate dance of when to buy and when to pass: because buying could give your opponents access to the better ones before you can come back to your turn. Castles are bad because they inversely scale based on player count and are actually super swingy and probably not worth doing in 2-p games a lot.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 18:45 |
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CaptainRightful posted:I use a completely different storage system: a giant 3-ring binder filled with baseball card pages. Each pocket holds a full stack of kingdom cards, which I ordered alphabetically so it's easy to flip through and find what you want. It's big enough to easily add expansions as I acquire them. Does one binder hold all of the expansions with room to grow? Seems like you'd need multiple binders.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 19:32 |
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Lorini posted:Does one binder hold all of the expansions with room to grow? Seems like you'd need multiple binders. For this guy they all fit in this giant one
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 19:42 |
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Bottom Liner posted:For this guy they all fit in this giant one That looks like the same size as mine, although my collection is still far from complete. And this solution wouldn't work for sleevers. How heavy is that wooden box when it's full?
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 19:56 |
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Nowhere near as many expansions as I need to fit . Thanks though.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 19:57 |
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Awww yeah, Dominion thread. A strategy I didn't realize until recently comes with Merchant Guild. Stacking +buy (preferably a cantrip of some sort) with it, and buying low value cards, and ideally stacking Merchant Guilds is a very effective way to rack up coin tokens, which are objectively very powerful due to the way that they allow you to pick up slack in turning marginal hands into a Province round. The really interesting part is that once the deck clicks, you can turn single coin tokens into 3 or 4 coin tokens (given the ability to draw and play multiple Merchant Guilds). The DS wiki strategy article gives a specific simulated game, where the Merchant Guild multiplicative strategy starts very slow, and is then having routine monster turns to eek out a victory. Toshimo posted:Castles are bad because they inversely scale based on player count and are actually super swingy and probably not worth doing in 2-p games a lot. Playing the modified Big Money bot in Dominion.NET indicates that's not the case. Each Castle effect is fairly powerful, especially if you have a number of enabling cards on the board. Altogether a set will net you a decent amount of victory points, too. I would probably avoid in a Colony board, but rushing castles with money and enabling cards mixed in seems to be a good strategy overall.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 21:31 |
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Lorini posted:Does one binder hold all of the expansions with room to grow? Seems like you'd need multiple binders. I fit all but Adventures (hate that set) in mine, it's getting very full and heavy so I think you want two binders at this point.
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# ? Jan 1, 2017 22:34 |
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What do people think about the Second Editions? I used to advise people not to pick up Intrigue as their first expansion because it had some real stinkers in it and Saboteur made for the worst games ever, but the second edition makes the expansion seem pretty good overall now. The multi-type VP cards like Harem and Nobles were always a hit and there aren't really any more aggressively bad cards in the set now. The new Second Edition Base Set cards in particular are all amazing and makes the base game so much better. I am surprised by Diplomat in Intrigue though, they've added all these mostly straightforward cards and then Diplomat just comes across as unnecessarily complicated.
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# ? Jan 2, 2017 00:09 |
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Thought exercise: what would be the most complicated kingdom you can make and what would be your strategy for that game?
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# ? Jan 2, 2017 00:12 |
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H2Omelon posted:What do people think about the Second Editions? I used to advise people not to pick up Intrigue as their first expansion because it had some real stinkers in it and Saboteur made for the worst games ever, but the second edition makes the expansion seem pretty good overall now. The multi-type VP cards like Harem and Nobles were always a hit and there aren't really any more aggressively bad cards in the set now. I like the new cards a lot, and even though I like some of the replaced cards, it's a massive positive shift. The new editions seem to have gotten rid of the clunkers that made some boards not much fun.
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# ? Jan 2, 2017 00:14 |
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I've done well fitting all my dominion cards in a briefcase. Though as the last couple of expansions came out I've had to remove the randomisers and cardboard mats. I think I'm going to have to switch out for something bigger pretty soon.
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# ? Jan 2, 2017 00:59 |
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# ? May 21, 2024 18:41 |
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Bottom Liner posted:For this guy they all fit in this giant one The problem with that method is sleeving and unsleeving all the time is a pain in the rear end.
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# ? Jan 2, 2017 01:07 |