Board 8 > Tom Ranks the Dominion Cards

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to Tom Ranks Dominion Cards. I've got all (I hope?) 145 cards lined up for evaluation.

For those of you not familiar with Dominion yet reading anyway for whatever reason, it's an awesome card game that's pretty hard to describe, but you build your deck over the course of the game from a random sampling of cards. (as well as some basic constants) Since the cards at your disposal change every game, no two games are the same and there are often at least a couple of viable major strategies with which to approach things.

This list is mostly based on personal preference. I'm not smart enough to give you a pure power ranking, nor would I really be interested in that. Rather it's a combination of how often I try to go for them, how much I respect their ability relative to their cost, and just plain how much fun I have when that card is around.

I'm not a great player by any stretch. I played a couple of games with my much smarter friends a few months ago, and got whupped pretty bad. Shortly thereafter, I discovered Isotropic ( http://dominion.isotropic.org/ ) and the Dominion Strategy Blog and Forums ( http://dominionstrategy.com/ ) which got me way into the game. I've played a ton on Isotropic and done some study of the game, which has really ramped up my play, but I'm still an early intermediate player at best, and probably won't get much better. http://councilroom.com/player?player=Tombolo if you are really curious about my STATZ. Love that site.

LET US PROCEED

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##NL
BlAcK TuRtLe would if he played mafia probably

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

145. Chancellor
Set: Dominion
$3 Action- +$2. You may immediately put your deck into your discard pile.
Analysis: http://dominionstrategy.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/guest-article-chancellor/

And here we have a card so crappy I am not sure I have ever actually bought it. Now granted, deck control and awareness is one of my biggest weaknesses as a player. My concept of deck control can basically be boiled down to

Am I greening up my deck yet? ----NO-----> CYCLE THE DECK LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT
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YES
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V
Think about not playing +Cards I don't need....then do it anyway.

With an outlook like that, it's no surprise that I'm not impressed by a card whose main attraction is its deck control. Take that away, and it's literally a Silver with the added bonus of costing an action. The folks over at DS seem to have the same general opinion of it, so at least I am not completely off my nut on this one. Even the article has a tone of "it doesn't suck THAT much guys D:" and those articles always focus more on a card's strengths and potential than anything. The blame thing doesn't even work with KC or Thrones. Not that worthless in the early game or on a midgame lucky turn where you hit $5-7 early and still somehow have a spare action, but beyond that it is highly situational, and not even the fun "you can build a derpy gimmick deck around it with some boards" kinda situational.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

Isotropic has all the expansions and stuff, and it's also endorsed by the game's creator. That said, I've had some issues with the server dropping matches, and it's probably eventually gonna be scrapped for a commercial official dominion player. On the third hand, DEM COUNCIL ROOM STATS

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

Pretty good choice for last considering I forgot the card even existed. Buying it is almost always completely inferior to just buying a silver, the card's function is far too broad to be of any direct use as far as I'm concerned.

also I don't know of any convenient way to find pictures but I might do some poking if THE PEOPLE WANT IT

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

For those who have never played before, here's a link to the Dominion page at the Rio Grande Games website. Near the bottom right of the page is a pdf of the rules, which are a decent length but have an abridged tl;dr version running down a sidebar on the right for people who can't be bothered to read entire paragraphs.

http://www.riograndegames.com/games.html?id=278

If you want the rules for the expansions, poke around their site. There are rules pdfs for those as well.

Lastly, here's a full card list for those who want to see all the cards Tom is talking about.

http://dominion.diehrstraits.com/

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on 4ways: right now they have inherent flaws, but could be easily fixed by implementing approval voting! ~ToadYoshi 1. SoAL 2. MKW/64 3. FE7 4. TF2 5. FFCC

From: Tom Bombadil | #004
On the third hand

What the damn hell Bombadil, how many hands have you got!?

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Christ...

thatsthejoke.jpg

Lastly, here's a full card list for those who want to see all the cards Tom is talking about.

heavens that's handy

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

Chancellor last what? List fails.

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http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh293/zukiraphaera/war-sig-1.png
http://i.imgur.com/FII1z.gif

Only know some basic set cards.

Thief is cool.

For some reason I thought Isotropic was just a website and didn't have a client. Silly me.

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No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck.

Perhaps I should follow Tom's list backwards and see how that helps me on my adventures into this game!

I can totally see myself being the guy at the table trying to convince everyone how the Chancellor 'really isn't that bad...'

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on 4ways: right now they have inherent flaws, but could be easily fixed by implementing approval voting! ~ToadYoshi 1. SoAL 2. MKW/64 3. FE7 4. TF2 5. FFCC

144. Loan
Set: Prosperity

Analysis: http://dominionstrategy.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/prosperity-loan/

Ehhhhh. I like trashing Coppers as much as the next guy, but this is just not very good at it. Chapel's cheaper, and while it's a terminal and doesn't give you +$1, it is a much quicker way to clear things out, not to mention that it works on stuff other than treasures. Like, y'know, the even gummier Curses and Estates.

My main problem is the variability. If you're looking to trash coppers, you need to have another source of income set up, and the vast majority of that time, that source of income is....other treasure. If you hit a Gold instead of that copper, congrats, you've played a copper and discarded a couple of cards. And even if it hits the Copper like you want....it's still much slower than Chapel while providing only a minor benefit. And it costs more.

I suppose it's okay in some situations (Minions, opponents running Pirate Ship or Mountebank) but more than any other trasher, it makes me wish it was just a Chapel instead. It's probably not entirely fair to compare every trasher to Chapel, but that's the problem- other ones have enough appeal to them to avoid the comparison.

It's a card pretty much built to clear out Coppers....but it's not even that good at doing so. It's a card that is going to not do anything half the time except function as.......a Copper. With a mini-chancellor effect. Super.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

143. Cutpurse
Set: Seaside
$4 Action-Attack: +$2. Each other player discards a Copper (or reveals a hand with no Copper)

Analysis: http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/02/16/seaside-cutpurse/

This card is decent for the first few turns where there's still an abundance of Copper and people care about losing it. After that, it's little more than a terminal silver. (and costs $4, even!) Unlike Loan, it doesn't combo all that well with all that much of ANYTHING. Unless your opponent is running Coppersmith (without Counting House for some reason) or some such, it's only good for a quick love tap to the nuts in the early game. It can hurt then, but I am not convinced that the $1 in turn 3/4 and maybe once or twice more later is going to hurt enough to justify gumming up your deck the rest of the game.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

I wanna learn to play where do I go?

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http://img.imgcake.com/dizzyjgifyr.gif
http://youtu.be/Sbb94GkbXKQ

I'd either go look at the pdfs at the link glenn and toad provided or just jump into isotropic and screw around

Once you have the basic concepts it's pretty self-explanatory. All the cards say what they do, and there are only a couple that create snarly situations.

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##NL
BlAcK TuRtLe would if he played mafia probably

I've never used Loan but I sort of fail to see the point. If you want to get rid of Coppers that badly, it's way too inefficient considering the fact that A) it's only good for getting rid of Coppers, B) you only have so much of a chance of hitting a Copper, and C) the card itself is only worth a Copper anyway.

I haven't actually played Seaside yet. I think Cutpurse should cost 3, not 4.

Loan's good for Pure Minion. That's the only scenario I can think of where it would shine.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

The really good Dominion player I play with at our board games club probably plays Minion more than any other card in the game, so I guess there's that.

spoilers

minion is pretty awesome

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

142. Contraband
$5 Treasure: $3. +1 Buy. When you play this, the player to your left names a card. You can’t buy that card this turn.


This is the first instance of a card ranked low not for "it sucks" but rather for "I just don't care for it." I'm not good at mind games, and I tend to shy away from games or mechanics that emphasize them. There's plenty of good with this card- there's almost always at LEAST two good options with two buys and lots of money, even if you can't get your first choice. It becomes a liability in the late game or if you're going for a very specific card for a certain strategy, and it suffers if there aren't any good cheap cards for a double buy, but even with those caveats....gold with a +buy tacked on, for $5. C'mon now.

It's just not my style. I can never think of a good ban (granted, I haven't really had this card played against me since my noob days) and neither do I feel comfortable using it effectively. My tendency is already towards wasting too much time screwing around with cheap cards, and I don't need more excuses to get more of them instead of provinces. And once you hit the late game green rush, it becomes a liability unless you can hit $10 with it and go for double Duchies. It's one of those cards that just makes me go :\ if I see it, but luckily, there are usually better options at $5 anyway.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

Shanty Town for #1

on a best art list

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"In the game of chess you can never let your opponent see your pieces."

dat harem

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

Solid choices for the bottom few! Chancellor isn't worth it at all, Loan sucks, and Cutpurse fails miserably in comparison to a Militia. I can't say that Contraband should be that low, though - it really depends on what cards you have. If there are a lot of viable $5 or $6es, I'd totally go for it.

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It's iubaris, not Lubaris.

I've never used Loan but I sort of fail to see the point.

Most trashing cards take up your action and hurt your buying power (by trashing cards from your hand.) Loan doesn't take up your action and slightly increases your buying power.

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I don't like this duchy. Now, it's an adventurer.

I know Loan doesn't take an action, but it's still too little to be worth it. I mean, you're adding a Copper to your deck for the possibility of throwing out other Copper in your deck. You're rolling the dice on a pretty small reward. Plus, when you get gold or plat later, you could wind up discarding them accidentally.

Yeah, Contraband is where the whole "personal preference" bit comes into play.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

Contraband's funny, I never play it though. I've seen some people try it and it ends up in funny mind games so it's kind of fun to play anyway.

141. Stash
Set: Promo
$5 Treasure: $2. When you shuffle, you may put this anywhere in your deck.


This one's a big pile o' mediocre. It's not completely unviable by any means, but the main point of Stash is to get a bunch together for mega-turn funtimes. Get four of them and you can guarantee a Province once per re-shuffle, but by the time you can get four of them, re-shuffles probably aren't happening super-fast for you unless you have a draw engine to support it. (or CHANCELLORS :OOOO) A draw engine (that can boot from the fifth card of your stash hand) makes it a good bit better, but....think about what else you could do with 4 $5 cards and a deck built around supporting it. And all that's assuming you don't get screwed over by handsize reducers or top of deck stuff or anything of that nature. You need 6 of 'em in a Colony game, which doesn't even really work. >_>

It just doesn't seem worth the commitment level it needs to work properly, unless you have an awesome support board. If you're running Stash, you're running a Stash DECK, and Stash decks....are pretty eh. Or you can just use it as a $5 Silver, I guess, because that's about all it's good for if you're not stacking them for big purchases.

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Tombolo is apparently using windows atm!
Maybe BlAcK TuRtLe is too!

I just played my first game on Isotropic. I bought a Chancellor and won.

Ok fine, I tied, but it said it was a shared victory so we're going with that. Also Chancellor didn't help me very much, I think I used him like once after buying him, but to be fair that's probably due to horrible mismanagement on my part and buying too many cards that didn't give +1 action.

Bump.

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on 4ways: right now they have inherent flaws, but could be easily fixed by implementing approval voting! ~ToadYoshi 1. SoAL 2. MKW/64 3. FE7 4. TF2 5. FFCC

Oh hey, it's the one card that I don't own! Yeah, not very impressed by Stash.

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It's iubaris, not Lubaris.

Contraband can be pretty decent if there are some good $6 buys such as Grand Market or Harems; otherwise, it's pretty awful.

Good choices so far, I'll take a guess and say that Herbalist or Saboteur will be up next.

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http://www.last.fm/user/TehMop
Congrats to BlackTurtle!

Tried to play Duke/Duchy.

Didn't work out too well.

140. Swindler
Set: Intrigue
$3 Action-Attack: +$2. Each other player trashes the top card of his deck and gains a card with the same cost that you choose.


This one's a tricky one to place, and I'm probably undervaluing it quite a bit, but we're out of the sucky cards, so things get tricky from here. Swindler's pretty hit or miss. It's quite nifty for an opener, as turning coppers into curses can really ruin somebody's day, but things get patchier as the game goes on. Sure, an endgame Swindler could wipe out the other guy's Duchy, but you could just as easily hit a Province and end game faster. (which of course is only bad if you're down. >_>) It's good if your opponent is going for something specific (your pure minion deck? it is now a DUKE DECK. problem?) or if there are good bad options on the board, but I feel like this card winds up as terminal silver a lot of the time. If there's only one option at the price range, or there aren't any truly bad ones, you're kinda wasting your action. It's a solid opening, but is kinda asking to get trashed later. On top of that, I find it more annoying than fun. I don't give this card enough respect, but too bad for it.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

Definitely think you underrated that one. Other than turning their coppers into curses (which is super amazing early) you either turn their key cards into something less vital, or turn their good cards into bad ones.

It's not super stellar, but putting it this low seems off imo.

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"In the game of chess you can never let your opponent see your pieces."

I feel like there are at least a couple cards that should rank below Swindler. Wishing Well comes to mind.

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"Coinflip is sacred."

tag

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yE frE me Kweku Ananse Papa
me:http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/1508/masterplumgm3.jpg

I agree that you're probably underrating it. Getting to turn their coppers into curses early and give them Duchies for their $5s in the midgame is pretty significant, I think.

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It's iubaris, not Lubaris.

Oh wow yeah you vastly underrated Swindler in my opinion. I play Swindler quite often when we play Intrigue, replacing coppers for curses makes things difficult for people early on, and it's a way to take a gamble on getting rid of dangerous cards like Minion out of someone's deck as well.

Personal preference clause.

It would be easier to maintain my interest in this game if I didn't time out half my bloody matches

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

139. Apothecary
Set: Alchemy
$2P Action- +1 Card; +1 Action. Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put the revealed Coppers and Potions into your hand. Put the other cards back on top in any order.


Well, it's non-terminal, which is to its credit, but it has two effects, neither of which are that great. If you have enough Coppers or Potions that the first effect is significantly useful, you probably have other problems. (unless you're running coppersmith or alchemists or maybe goons or gardens, I guess?) One or two coppers isn't likely to make a huge difference in your buying power or streamlining, although I guess the Potion can be handy if you're ogling a better potion card. The thing is, either you don't have enough Coppers and Potions to really make it work, or....you have a deckful of Coppers and Potions. >_> Even if there's not much trashing on the board, your deck shouldn't be staying in the "fulla copper" stage for long at all, and that's really when this card is useful.

The rearranging effect isn't BAD per se, but it's situational. If you don't have +Cards in your hand, its applications are very limited, and Navigator does the same thing much better. (admittedly, it's terminal) AND the two applications of the card anti-synergize with each other: if you got three cards out of the first effect, all the second part does is let you know what's next, but if you get nothing, this card is just a crappy non-terminal Navigator.

This is a card that illustrates how two mediocre things is quite frequently less useful in Dominion than 1 great thing. It's rarely a HORRIBLE card, especially since it's still a bit better than a cantrip, but there are very few situations where this card is particularly useful, and most of them are in junk decks. It's reliably mediocre, but unless there's a good potion card, it's probably not worth the effort to run potions for it, much less spend buys on it.

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Currently playing: TEW '10, Pokemon Black, Gemcraft Labyrinth, Sharin no kumi, BlAcK TuRtLe

I would never buy one unless I wanted a lot of cards that need potions, and I've never played in a layout like that. So I've never actually used it!

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It's iubaris, not Lubaris.

I think Apothecary is a fine card if you're playing a potion-heavy alchemy game. I'm a big fan of +card-action cards, though.

But at what point do you need to be playing a potion-heavy game? What potion based cards (other than I guess Alchemist) do you need lots and lots of all the time?

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

Well, Alchemist. But I've seen Alchemist played successfully so many times that I can't count out Apothecary as a pretty decent companion.

A decent companion for one deck. Which doesn't really need it- Alchemist chains should be drawing boodles of cards by themselves and shouldn't often need much help hitting your Potions.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

I should note that I played Swindler today and won :P

it only got played twice- once I cursed his copper in the opening rounds, and the next time I hit that curse again >_>

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

probably update tonight

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

138. Counting House
Set: Prosperity
$5 Action- Look through your discard pile, reveal any number of Copper cards from it, and put them into your hand.


This card would be kinda borked at a lower price, but it's pretty bad at this one. Counting House is one of those cards that only really works if you commit wholesale to building around it...but the reward for doing so isn't often worth the setbacks. This should be run alongside copper-heavy decks, obviously, but...copper-heavy decks are going to have a dickens of a time raising the $5 to get the deck going in the first place, unless you luck out on the opening split. If you can get it started, it's a decent card to play, but you face the obvious problems of all that copper gumming up your non-CH turns and of turns early in each shuffle where it's going to be a next to useless card.

For every "lol I buy province with my 8 copper" turn, you're liable to have a couple of terminal silvers. You could run a draw engine (maybe with stuff like Warehouse to ditch the coppers before picking them back up) to cycle your deck quickly and get those coppers discarded, but if you're running a draw engine that good with spare actions to blow on counting house, there's probably something more efficient to be doing with it. And then you'll have turns with a lot of buying power going to waste, meaning that you should probably supplement with +Buy. Coppersmith is an obvious combo, but both are terminal.

It's not a truly terrible card if you play it well, but so much support is needed (+Cards, +Actions, +Buy, Coppersmith, all hitting at the same time in a deck where you have gone out of your way to pile on extra Copper) that I can't rank it any higher.

That said, I do wonder why I put it below Coppersmith. OH WELL.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)