Naye745 | Posted 9/17/2011 12:54:30 AM | message detail | quote
for someone who is acquiring the sets (of the actual cards), what's the best order to get them in? i figure base then intrigue is the smart way to go, but after that what's the most worthwhile in terms of value for how much you get and value for quality of play? (if you know about the actual sets)
It's sort of hard to say. You have to start with base or intrigue since they're the only "base" games, and these are probably the most "essential" sets - although in my opinion, the base set is both the most boring and the worst competitively compared to other sets. Intrigue's a little bit better overall, its cards are mostly based on base set concepts but with more decision-making added in, but its strategies are a bit more specific whereas base's cards are very general, which is what makes it the best set to start out with probably. They're both good though. My only problem with base is that it's a better set when mixed with others than it is entirely on its own, compared to the other sets, but that's probably all the more reason you should start with it. Start with the game at its most basic and build up.
After that I guess it depends on whether you want the small or big expansions first, depending on what your budget is.
For small sets, Alchemy's probably the least "essential" set, given that all of its cards are kind of weird and it's playing with sort of a bizarre ruleset of its own, with the potion and all that. That said, it's a pretty fun set, it's just bizarre and better handled by experienced Dominion players. Cornucopia is the less weird of the two smaller sets, and most of its cards are quite good and integrate nicely with any set, which Alchemy does more questionably.
As for the bigger sets, both Seaside and Prosperity introduce quite a bit to the game. Seaside is a bit hit or miss in my opinion, it has some really good cards and some really bad cards (Explorer, Pearl Diver), and the duration cards are really neat and add a new dimension to the game, but in real life play they can be a bit confusing and bog down the game a little bit, so there is that to consider.
Prosperity adds Platinum and Colony to the mix as a new style of play, which is pretty cool, and in general increases the scale of the game, adding a lot of high-cost cards to the mix, as well as most of the game's "special" treasure cards. If expensive power cards are interesting to you Prosperity is a pretty cool set, but I think it's one that may be better bought later, because it offers almost no cheap action cards of its own, and therefore requires the most interaction with other sets.
So I guess there's my answer. Get base, then intrigue, then Seaside and/or Cornucopia, then Prosperity and/or Alchemy. That's not really a strong suggestion on my part though - you probably wouldn't do wrong to buy them in whatever order you like. If you know the cards, or take a look at them (http://dominion.diehrstraits.com/ is a nice site for getting a good overview, and it's what I'm using for artwork), you can make a more informed decision based on what seems interesting to you than I could.