Scott Metzger
United States
Florida
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My wife and I are starting to see a pattern with this game and I'm trying to figure out if it's something we're doing or something inherent in the game. Most of the games that are being won lately in our 4 person group tend to be won by someone with 3-5 action cards and a hand full of treasure. My wife wonders what the point to getting the expansions if we won't use the Kingdom cards any more than we buy the regular 25, and it seems that she's right. Playing with more interaction cards doesn't seem to help much either. The Witch barely changed anything (I didn't by any Witches and still only lost by 1.) The Spy changes little. Militia, not a whole lot. Bureaucrat not much. The Thief is the only card that really makes me want a moat, but I can just buy Thieves to counteract theirs. It just seems like I should buy silvers, then golds, then provinces and skip actions. Somebody have an answer for me?
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Olav Müller
Germany
Düsseldorf
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spmetz wrote: Somebody have an answer for me?
Yes, read some more here in the forums. This has been discussed extensively. Welcome to the second level of Dominion. The third level is not that far ahead.
CU,
Olav
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I agree (although I mainly play 2 player). After the game we always do a debrief to see if our decks were really different, and the person with the most cards almost invariably loses when we play with random card setup, because so many are terminal. The key I have found is to do "semi random". Divide the Kingdom cards into ones that give at least one extra action (or have the ability to do so, like Ironworks) and those that don't. Then deal 5 random ones from each pile. I find it plays much better that way, although turns can take longer as actions chain, but they are normally more satisfying. Make sure you use the Munchkin level of mercilessness when people play their actions though. Quite often they will play them in the wrong order and mess up the chain...much more fun to pounce and laugh and mock than say "oh go on, start again"
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Scott Metzger
United States
Florida
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olav.mueller wrote: Welcome to the second level of Dominion. The third level is not that far ahead.
So what's the third level then?
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Blorb Plorbst
United States
Bloomington
Indiana
I think we're all bozos on this bus.
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I don't think there's a third level in the base set unless there are very specific cards in the tableau.
However, I find that the expansions demand different approaches and make for more interesting decisions.
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I somewhat agree, and I find it more fun this way than buying a witchload of action cards. I think the game is indeed about treasures and you buy actions mostly to get more treasure and to slow down others a bit. That said, I still like trying random strategies and combos each set has to offer, and I enjoy buying different cards each game if the set is the same - I'm still not bored with the first play set. Where I see a lot of people make a bad move (IMO) is underestimating Gold/Silver. I always say, get Gold on the first oppurtunity (work for it), and if you could buy an early Province, even if you have 2 buys get a Gold. I think there are three types of kingdom cards in Dominion:
-if you have 2+ Golds, some actions will enhance your deck even more
-some cards help getting your first Golds faster
-some cards help correcting errors and damage others did
and any combinations of those. You can say there's Conspirator and a few others that don't fit, it can be said they have their own unique type, but still.
tl;dr: Playing action cards are fun but are not the goal of the game.
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Quote: So what's the third level then?
This has been discussed all over the forums for Domninion.
The 'next level' is finding a well-tuned selection of kingdom cards that can beat a 'big money' or 'silver' strategy. This 'big money' is normally taken as a base-line that any other strategy needs to beat to be considered workable.
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Silver Avocado wrote:
This has been discussed all over the forums for Domninion.
The 'next level' is finding a well-tuned selection of kingdom cards that can beat a 'big money' or 'silver' strategy. This 'big money' is normally taken as a base-line that any other strategy needs to beat to be considered workable.
Can you explain what the big money strategy is ? no kingdom cards, only money ?
I want to know if our group are in level 2 or 3 of the game.
We basically buy only 5 or 6 actions cards, try to thin our deck when we can and the rest is gold and silver. Is it the big money strategy ?
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Matt
United States
Avon
Indiana
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Honestly, you've spent more effort in asking what big money is than it would take to search the forums.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dominion+big+money
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Drew Spencer
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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madadvice wrote: Silver Avocado wrote:
This has been discussed all over the forums for Domninion.
The 'next level' is finding a well-tuned selection of kingdom cards that can beat a 'big money' or 'silver' strategy. This 'big money' is normally taken as a base-line that any other strategy needs to beat to be considered workable.
Can you explain what the big money strategy is ? no kingdom cards, only money ? I want to know if our group are in level 2 or 3 of the game. We basically buy only 5 or 6 actions cards, try to thin our deck when we can and the rest is gold and silver. Is it the big money strategy ?
Basically, Dominion players seem to progress their strategies as follows:
(1) Buy lots of neat Actions
(2) Buy very few Actions
(3) Buy Actions that really work to help you win
A higher numbered strategy will tend to beat a lower numbered strategy. When people realize that #2 beats #1, they tend to freak out and think that Dominion is pointless because they're winning their games without buying hardly any Actions. With more experience and a good understanding of exactly how each Action card does and does not get you closer to winning, taking into account the other cards on the board and what your opponents are doing, and timing issues and the other stuff going on in the game, you can beat someone who does #2 most of the time.
For a quick example, let's look at Witch. Beating opponents with Witch on the table will mean you play more Witches than your opponents, preferably a lot more. It's not enough to buy one Witch and hope for the best; you should combine it with something that will make your deck smaller (like Chapel or Moneylender) or something that will let you cycle your deck faster (like Chancellor) or something that will let you give out more Curses in a single turn (like Village + multiple Witches or Throne Room). You'll also want to make sure that your strategy will either get rid of your Witch later (with Remodel or something similar) or keep it useful late in the game when Curses are gone. You'll also want something to thin out the Curses you do end up taking (like Chapel or Remodel) and everything that goes along with making sure that works. It sounds like in your game everyone got one or more Witches and were playing them at roughly the same rate. That means no one player was really getting the benefit of the Witch by clogging the other players' decks with Curses while leaving theirs mostly empty.
The best strategies can't be summed up with "Do this if this, then this if this, etc." They generally will require looking carefully at all 10 Kingdom cards available and then watching what your opponents are doing.
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Gwommy the Purple
United States
Portland
Michigan
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I had an interesting game last week. We had 4 players. My strategy was to buy minimal action cards and lots of gold for provinces. Another player went and bought out all the witches, and had throne rooms and villages. The other two player didn't have much strategy, but they were on the defensive side so they bought out all the moats. The 3rd pile to become empty was the Curses.
The player with the withces won with 3 points (just the estates that he started with). I was able to offset my curses with Provinces, but I still only ended up with 2 points! The other 2 players both had zero points, as they started buying duchy's near the end. =b
But I agree, I do tend to win most games with only 4 or 5 action cards. And then I get to the point where I can buy 4 or 5 provinces in a row, then if the game isn't over by that point, then my luck seems to quickly run out.
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Steven Metzger
United States
Pullman
Washington
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spmetz wrote: My wife and I are starting to see a pattern with this game and I'm trying to figure out if it's something we're doing or something inherent in the game. Most of the games that are being won lately in our 4 person group tend to be won by someone with 3-5 action cards and a hand full of treasure. My wife wonders what the point to getting the expansions if we won't use the Kingdom cards any more than we buy the regular 25, and it seems that she's right. Playing with more interaction cards doesn't seem to help much either. The Witch barely changed anything (I didn't by any Witches and still only lost by 1.) The Spy changes little. Militia, not a whole lot. Bureaucrat not much. The Thief is the only card that really makes me want a moat, but I can just buy Thieves to counteract theirs. It just seems like I should buy silvers, then golds, then provinces and skip actions. Somebody have an answer for me? Hey...a long lost relative?
Keep playing...someone who tries to beat the "big money" strategy, and succeeds, will start turning your play group into ruthless, cunning Dominionators.
Also, this kind of thread appears at least once every three weeks.
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Henrik Johansson
Sweden
Järfälla
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See http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Dominion_FAQ#toc37.
But IMHO there should be 2 bullets, not 1:
*Can I win against medium players if I buy only money? Answer: Yes.
*Is the game broken...?
(Explanation covering experienced players and so on....)
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Yes, as has been said, you are not the first to make this observation. You have discovered a "Modified Big Money" strategy. Big Money is described elsewhere, but here it is again:
> 8 coins buy province
> 6 coins buy Gold
> 3 coins buy Silver
You can add twists to make it more competitive, like
> 5 coins and < 5 provinces left, buy Duchy
> 2 coins and < 3 provinces left, buy Estate
This deck tends to buy 4 provinces in 17 turns, and end the game with about 7 silvers and 6 gold in the deck plus the 4 provinces and your starting cards.
Now, the "Modified" part involves selectively adding other actions to your deck to boost this strategy. The simplest is Single or Double Smithy. Follow the above rules but buy a Smithy on turn 1 or 2(whichever has 4 coins) and then (optionally) another one after you have shuffled your deck 4 times, which is about turn 8 or 9. This deck buys 4 provinces in about 15 turns and is about equal to a canonical Chapel+Money deck, which is: Buy a chapel on turn 1 or 2. Chapel all Coppers and Estates you draw. > 3 left buy silver, > 6 gold, > 8 province.
As people have said already, this is considered _baseline_. These decks are not competitive against other well constructed decks. Notice that everything above assumed there were no attacks in the game.
The main thing to notice here is that an average game of dominion only involves about 15 - 25 turns if you are playing well. Since you of course need to buy some money, 5 - 6 actions is actually a decent number considering your extremely limited number of buys. The only way a game will stretch past 20 turns is if someone is playing "poorly" or there are a LOT of attacks. Most attacks when used properly only slow someone down by one or two turns, but one or two turns is a lot in a 15 turn game. If not used properly or if the game goes longer, they won't even have that much impact, and so it's understandable you'd consider them mostly irrelevant. One or two turns makes a lot less difference in a 30 turn game than a 15 turn game, and if you are only drawing your Witch as often as it comes up naturally, you really aren't playing it more than 4 times in a game. If you start Witch + Cellar or Witch + Chapel you'll play your witch at least 6 times, which is 50% more and therfore 50% more powerful.
The same goes with the other attacks, though some of them have their own little twists. For example, Bureaucrat is more about building a deck that has "endurance" to buy up more Duchy's than your opponent because it has more cards and get's clogged less by the Green cards, plus just a tiny amount of slowdown to your opponent. Many of the attacks are very effective against certain TYPES of decks, but almost not at all effective against other types. Militia is much less good against a Big Draw deck than a standard money deck.
The next stages after Modified Big Money are, roughly:
1) Tighten it up. Realize that your games are probably going longer than they should, and if you speed your games up to 15-18 turns, 5-6 actions is quite a few actions, and what you choose and when has a BIG impact on your deck.
2) Recognize different deck types and mechanics. Roughly speaking there are 5 basic mechanics: Thinning, Chaining, Drawing, Attacks, Buys and Gains. Evaluate the board for these mechanics and recognize good combinations. Chaining and Drawing give fast cycling decks that can play attacks more often, as does Thinning in a different fashion. Buys can help you build your deck faster, but only if you can afford a good card with that second buy; best when there are good inexpensive cards that have strong chemistry with each other.
3) Figure out how to mess with specific deck types with specific attack types. Drawing decks do fine against Militia, because they have an effective hand size of 10-15 cards by the time they are done chaining actions. Discarding two cards is no big deal. Bureaucrat is a good card to get a jump start on silver, and slow down decks that are trying to thin by getting cards out of their hand. An extra silver is sort of an extra turn early game, and a big deal in a 15 turn game.
So, your observation is accurate. 5-6 actions is a good number to have in a 25 card deck, which is a 15 turn game. That's one action per 5 cards, which is about right. There are other deck types that work well with more actions, but you have to understand how specific actions work with specific other actions, or how certain mechanics play with other mechanics. Village and Throne Room are powerful if used correctly, and a total waste of space if used incorrectly. In a 15 turn game you have to put cards together with strong chemistry, and use things like big draw or thinning mechanics to get that chemistry to trigger, otherwise you are just wasting 2 valuable turns out of the 15 that you have.
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Jake Waltier
United States
Seattle
Washington
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I won a game yesterday with 1 Gold in my deck by the end, and no other treasure. It really depends on what action cards are available that game. Learning how to adjust from one game to the next is what gives the game its depth.
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Freelance Police
United States
Palo Alto
California
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spmetz wrote: My wife wonders what the point to getting the expansions if we won't use the Kingdom cards any more than we buy the regular 25, and it seems that she's right.
Skip to the Alchemist expansion, then 
SCRYING POOL. Action - Attack card. Cost: 2
+1 Action
Each player (including you) must reveal the top card from your deck.
You decide whether they must discard it or return it to the top of their deck.
Then you keep revealing cards from your deck until you reveal a card that is not an Action card. Take all the revealed cards into your hand.
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