Daily Dominion #4

Alchemist, Baron, Colony, Goons, Lookout, Monument, Pearl Diver, Platinum, Potion, Quarry, Upgrade, Warehouse, Woodcutter

Daily Dominion #3

Bishop, Black Market, City, Colony, Conspirator, Coppersmith, Duke, Feast, Loan, Peddler, Platinum, Treasury.

Daily Dominion #2

Apprentice, Conspirator, Counting House, Courtyard, Fairgrounds, Smithy, Thief, Tournament, Upgrade, and Wishing Well

Proposed Dominant Strategy:

Basis:

Daily Dominion #1

Adventurer, Feast, Festival, Fortune Teller, Golem, Hamlet, Potion, Quarry, Remodel, Stash, Torturer. 

Proposed Dominant:

Based on:

PURPOSE of Daily Dominion

This blog's purpose is to investigate the strategy space of Dominion, the card strategy game.

This blog's method is to post "card selections" (the set of 10 kingdom cards, etc) and then discuss what the dominant strategy is. I.e., explicit instructions for the first 5 or so purchases and then the general heuristic from there.

Part of this is to get past playing "just for fun" and not thinking carefully. We've found that thinking carefully at the beginning is key. Midgame decisions (turns 6-10) are often less vital.

It's good to talk about "this is better than that", but we like data. So after discussing opinions (ideas without justification) and theories (ideas with justification, often with some discussion of tradeoffs or, preferably, something mathy), it's best to report a few trials of the game. I recommend at least 3 trials with each strategy. In games without attacks (and even with attacks), a good check is to play it in solitaire and report how many turns it takes to get to 4 provinces. Obviously, the best data is to play strategies against each other.

Each thread will be one game. And in the top post, as time permits, we will indicate what the dominant strategy is or if that strategy has been decided yet. (Think This blog: Dominion is analogous to MCO: Chess ; not exactly, but we'd like to talk about forks, ambiguous decisions, etc).

Nothing here should be given or taken personally. To that end, data (trials, etc) are the key.

Best, Howard and Friends.

Eventually, we are looking for the grand unified dominion theory.