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I believe he's said he'd rather just remove Alchemy entirely, but that's never going to fly. Might be hard to get the motivation to adjust it slightly when his heart wants to tear it all up.
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Mar 10, 2024 04:55
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for some reason in over 350+ games against hard AI on the app I have never had a kingdom with gardens present. afaict I don’t have a ban set for it or any other cards.  maybe but is the app surreptitiously biased to not include gardens because it makes the AI play wonky?
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Mar 10, 2024 05:15
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panko posted:for some reason in over 350+ games against hard AI on the app I have never had a kingdom with gardens present. afaict I don’t have a ban set for it or any other cards. I’ve had a few games with Gardens, so I think it’s just random chance.
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Mar 10, 2024 05:20
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Has Donald ever gone into what he felt went so badly wrong with Alchemy that he'd rather just scrap it? It feels like there's good opportunity there to just completely rethink the potion fundamentally. Whether that's making the potion card double as a copper or silver, or maybe making Reagents a resource like Coffers that you don't put into your deck. Perhaps even a resource you don't need to buy the cards but to get better effects out of them - although that might be stepping on the toes of the Favour/Allies mechanic. There's room to play around there and, given its size, just replace the whole expansion, keeping only whichever cards are still fun to play.
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Mar 21, 2024 12:59
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Tenebrais posted:Has Donald ever gone into what he felt went so badly wrong with Alchemy that he'd rather just scrap it? People didn't like it and it sold poorly. He could fix it and release something with the same name and the baggage of an expansion with over a decade of people saying "this is the one to skip" or work on something new that will sell.
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Mar 21, 2024 13:08
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Potion is just a bad mechanic. It affects the power level of the cards in that potion cards kind of have to be better or why would you buy a potion. And if they are better then why wouldn’t you always buy a potion. And if everyone buys a potion then we’re just increasing the luck factor of who gets to collide their potion at the right time. Then you have the issue of how many Alchemy cards to put in a set, if you play full random then you will hardly ever get more than 1 and if there is only one either it’s a must buy or it’s a must ignore because of the potion requirement, and if you play with the rule of including extra Alchemy if you ever get one, then hooray your random sets always have the feel of the worst expansion. It was one thing when it was one of the earliest/only expansions and it felt like a real game shakeup, but as 1 of 15 it just gets worse with each new release that are able to mix in their gimmicks better. Although I do have to say there are plenty of other mechanics I consider duds and could easily do away with entirely. Shelters. Exile. Overpay. Horses (these are fine, but really, like half an expansion based on them?).
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Mar 21, 2024 14:01
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Alchemy was part of a later + larger set that got cannibalized and was put together in a hurry because the publisher wanted a small set immediately, probably didn't get much playtesting.
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Mar 21, 2024 14:20
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One thing about DXV is he loves to post, so the odds are that he has talked about any given Dominion subject. And then someone else would have collated them on the wiki. 2012 retrospective posted:The first big thing is that, I knew some people wouldn't appreciate the potion resource concept, so I put the expansion last. Then it was bumped up as the only thing I could get out quickly as a small set. I would put it last. This would simplify all of those threads where people ask what order to buy the expansions. The next big thing is that, I knew some people wouldn't appreciate the potion concept, but did not realize that some people would find the set to be too slow. It has an action-chaining sub-theme, in order to make individual potion-costing cards good in games where there's only one card to buy with potions, and well this leads to longer games. I could potentially have put in two victory cards or treasures or both though, as those are cards you can buy multiples of (another solution to the problem that action-chaining was solving), and tweaked the card mix other ways to reduce either slowness or the perception of slowness. Retrospective 2020 posted:Alchemy is easily the worst. I like Potions fine but a lot of people do not. Possession is super messed-up. Philosopher's Stone is awful. Transmute is a nice premise but as priced is awful. Herbalist is pretty weak. Scrying Pool is nuts and wordier than it had to be, it got the attack grafted on and I'd like it better without it. Some people hate Familiar. Apprentice is great but has a potion clause just to fit in, and I took it from Hinterlands to have another good card, and man, Hinterlands would have loved it. The set isn't all bad; it has a few great cards, and I would even defend Scrying Pool in fixed form (crazy but a fun crazy). But, something has to be last and it's Alchemy. My preferred fix for Alchemy is to do new versions of the best ideas in other sets, and then live with RGG keeping it in print, because what can you do, there will always be people who want it. On the odds of a sequel posted:As I endlessly point out: the important thing to realize is that it isn't "Alchemy II vs. nothing," it's "Alchemy II vs. something else." However much Alchemy II might beat out nothing, it is never beating out something else. There are people who would like more Alchemy; there are more people who would prefer something else. And I'm one of them! I'd prefer something else. So.
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Mar 21, 2024 21:17
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I'd buy a promo that was Apprentice without the potions clause.
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Mar 21, 2024 22:13
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 16:48 |
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 I improved my winrate over last month by a fraction of a percent 
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Apr 1, 2024 05:44
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