Cory Duplantis
United States
Mississippi
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Hey,
I haven't opened up my Dominion yet, but what exactly are the placeholder cards for? Are they just for organization purposes?
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Mark McEvoy
Canada
Mountain
Ontario
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There have been many threads about this already.
Officially, they're to be used to mark the bottom of the supply piles. Though nobody really does this.
What a lot of people DO, however, is use the 25 Kingdom card placeholders to shuffle and deal ten to determine a random set of kingdom cards in play for that game.
The other placeholders (Copper/Silver/Gold, Estate/Dutcy/Province, Curse, Trash) are effectively pointless.
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Timothy Hunt
United States
St Louis
Missouri
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thatmarkguy wrote:
Officially, they're to be used to mark the bottom of the supply piles. Though nobody really does this.
Speak for yourself.
There are some of us who do use them that way, to make it very clear when piles are exhausted.
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Kevin Bourrillion
United States
Mountain View
CA
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Timotheous wrote: There are some of us who do use them that way, to make it very clear when piles are exhausted.
And there are those of us who can't for the life of us figure out how seeing one remaining copy of a Cellar helps us to know that there are no Cellars left.
I was down with the idea of the placeholder cards used in this way, until I got my copy and discovered that the cards look 100% exactly like their real counterparts.
I noticed some people at bgg.con would use the placeholder cards upside-down, but that doesn't really make that much sense either as you could have used *any* cards for this purpose, not cards whose underside happens to match the cards stacked above it... it makes no sense.
Now if I was the kind of gamer who kept a sheet of plexiglass sitting around, then I can see maybe laying out all the placeholder cards and then setting the glass down over. That might look pretty cool -- though it would be a big pain to deal with between games so I probably wouldn't actually do it.
Summary: what Mark said. The placeholders for the 25 kingdom cards are there so you can shuffle them to pick random kingdom cards. They have no other useful purpose and the other placeholder cards have no discernible purpose at all.
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Bwian, just
United States
Longmont
Colorado
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kevinb9n wrote: Timotheous wrote: There are some of us who do use them that way, to make it very clear when piles are exhausted. And there are those of us who can't for the life of us figure out how seeing one remaining copy of a Cellar helps us to know that there are no Cellars left.
I put them sideways (twisted 90 degrees). It takes up a tiny bit more table space, but makes it very obvious that the pile is out.
Still, I would have prefered 11 identical copies of each card. That way if a small mammal got ahold of 1 card I could still use the other 10.
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Michael Denman
United States
Katy
Texas
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If you're going to use them as placeholders, does it take a rocket scientist to see the easiest way to do it? Lay out 10 of them face down. Put the action cards on top. It's real obvious when a pile is gone. It doesn't matter even a little bit which placeholder cards are used for this.
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Bwian, just
United States
Longmont
Colorado
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Trump wrote: Lay out 10 of them face down. Put the action cards on top. It's real obvious when a pile is gone. It doesn't matter even a little bit which placeholder cards are used for this.
That would work; I prefer the 90 degree solution because players and bystanders can't forget what that stack contained, but that's a minor benefit.
The real point is that neither method requires dedicated placeholder cards with different backs. And neither does shuffling 25 cards to choose a kingdom. Confusing choice by the publisher, IMHO.
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Burt Hunt
United States
Culver City
California
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It's real obvious when the stack is depleted when there are no cards left in the stack.
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Mik Svellov
Denmark
Copenhagen N
EU
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thatmarkguy wrote: Officially, they're to be used to mark the bottom of the supply piles. Though nobody really does this.
I am pretty sure all playtesters thought they added to the playability of the game. We tend to sort the Kingdom cards into rows of costs, which means that some games may only have a single stack of cards in a row, others two, three, four or five. Since the configuration changes from game to game, can it be easy to forget how many stacks have become depleted without a placeholder card.
My original prototype used two ways to distinquish the Placeholder cards from the rest: they are in card sleeves with a different back, and they have a sticker on the front stating: "Game End: 3 Empty Stacks" + "Game Ends Immediately" (for the Provinces).
I have done the same with my new set.
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Jesse McGatha
United States
Sammamish
Washington
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kevinb9n wrote: Timotheous wrote: There are some of us who do use them that way, to make it very clear when piles are exhausted. And there are those of us who can't for the life of us figure out how seeing one remaining copy of a Cellar helps us to know that there are no Cellars left. I was down with the idea of the placeholder cards used in this way, until I got my copy and discovered that the cards look 100% exactly like their real counterparts. I noticed some people at bgg.con would use the placeholder cards upside-down, but that doesn't really make that much sense either as you could have used *any* cards for this purpose, not cards whose underside happens to match the cards stacked above it... it makes no sense.
Well, the placeholder cards do have a slightly different back (blue border), so I typically use them upside down also.
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Galen
United States
Austin
Texas
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Maybe it's just me but when I can no longer see a stack of cards I know there are no more.
Count me as someone who thinks the placeholder cards are silly.
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