Second Edition - DominionStrategy Wiki (2024)

Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire!
Would not we shatter it to bits - and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

I can't trace exactly how it happened, but over time, I gradually built up an interest in revising the main set and Intrigue. The reasons piled up.

• It would be nice to have the prettier Base Cards in the main set.
• We could have a playmat for the trash.
• I could improve the rulebooks.
• I could improve card wordings.
• Hey I could actually replace some cards with better ones.

We couldn't replace cards without providing them separately. We could do that though, we could provide them separately. A small box with just the new cards. Two mini-expansions (that would go out of print when demand for them fell off).

In June 2015 I decided to go for it. I started thinking about it and talking about it with playtesters; I didn't actually test any new cards until July. Empires was still going on but that was fine, I would test Empires cards and slip in the new main set / Intrigue cards. Later of course it got to be the focus. Initially I was going to replace five cards and add one (there's space due to taking out the randomizer-backed base cards). I eventually came around to replacing six (and adding one) instead.

My goal with the replacements was to increase the number of decks to build, the number of things to do, while keeping things simple. Simplicity is tough with so many expansions but man I am pretty pleased with the complexity level of the new main set cards. The Intrigue cards are more complex but still pretty reasonable. There was the additional goal of just fixing any other problems I could fix, whatever problems there were, but the main goal was to have more things you could do.

Normally these posts just talk about new stuff, but today I also get to talk about the old stuff. Why did I replace cards? Right, to make the sets better. The main set and Intrigue have the most duds - the most cards that experienced players rarely buy, that usually aren't worth considering. Or, in the case of some main set cards, that just didn't add much to the game, didn't give you things to do. Seaside is 3rd but much better by this metric; after Seaside there just aren't many duds to speak of in any one expansion. I have big plans to fix wordings in every pre-Empires set, but only Dominion and Intrigue are getting new cards.

If I redid the main set from scratch, more things would change. For example I might do a draw-first Cellar like Warehouse because that's simpler. There are rules things: for example I might change how Reactions work. But I was just replacing six cards, adding one, and keeping the game compatible with all the expansions.

Actually, there's one rules change: the exact way it tells you to deal with shuffling is different. It now says, when you have to do something with more cards than are left, shuffle your discard pile, put it under your deck, then do the thing (or, put the remaining cards on top of the shuffled cards, same difference). This has no functional difference though (except with the promo Stash, which will get a wording to fix this when reprinted), and was already how some people did it. I changed that (from "do the thing with the remaining cards, then shuffle to get the rest") to clarify tricky situations like, what if I trash Overgrown Estate with Lookout - is the card I draw one of the ones I'm looking at, or what? "Do the thing with the remaining cards" worked a lot better when the thing was always "draw." The rulings haven't changed but now it's easier to see what happens. It's also easier to remember how many cards you have left to draw after playing your Smithy and shuffling (though I personally was already putting the 1-2 cards on the Smithy while shuffling so I'd remember).

In the end it seemed reasonable to also change three cards functionally in a very mild way. Moneylender, Mine, and Throne Room all should say "you may." It keeps you honest. You play Moneylender for some exotic reason (like making Peddler cheaper) but don't want to trash a Copper (that you do have in hand). You can get away with cheating. The card should either make you reveal that you have no Copper, or be optional so that it's legal to not trash the Copper (and being optional is simpler/shorter and so preferred). This essentially never comes up for Moneylender and Mine. It does come up with Throne Room once in a while though. It was a question, should the mini-expansions include these changes. In the end it seemed like, that's such a poor product - buying Moneylender etc. again just for "you may." I didn't want to be selling that to people extra, that didn't seem like an option. The options were not making the changes, or including the changes in the set but not the mini-expansion. I went with the latter and well I hope everyone is okay with that.

A similar thing came up for one Intrigue card, Masquerade. You can potentially lock your opponent out of cards (in a 2-player game) with certain combinations - for example, King's Court, Masquerade, Militia. Every turn you play out the rest of your deck, Militia them, King's Court a Masquerade, and they pass you three cards that you trash, while you don't pass them any. It is not an especially common situation, and most players who don't read up on these things in forums probably don't know about it. Still it has a fix - having Masquerade not include players with no cards in hand - and here was my chance to do it. I went for it. Again this is not part of the mini-expansion.

The plan was to update the base cards in both sets, but Jay started thinking, why not shift Intrigue to a regular expansion? Since Base Cards is a product now, you can just buy Base Cards and whatever expansion; it doesn't have to be Intrigue. People who want 5-6 player support can buy Base Cards; people who don't want it don't have to pay extra to have it included in Intrigue.

So all together the changes are:

• Six cards dropped
• Seven cards added
• Three cards changed very mildly ("you may") / one card changed mildly
• Base cards improved with art / base cards dropped
• Other cards changed to have better phrasings (that are functionally the same).
• Rulebooks improved
• A trash playmat in the main set

The base cards are actually better than the Base Cards product ones (which will be updated to match); they have art but reinstate the big symbol (but smaller). In some cases the art had to be nudged down to fit the symbol nicely. Platinum (in Prosperity) will actually get new art; there was no nice way to put the coin on or above the pyramid.

Card text will change for all sets prior to Empires (which already has these changes, so you can go see how you like them there right now). The different kinds of changes:

• Some wordings are improved to be clearer / simpler.
• We now use "they" instead of "he."
• A bigger font is used on cards that can use it.
• +Cards etc. in the body of the text are in bold.
• Layout will be more consistent and have better text centering etc.

A very small number of other cards may have changes. I don't have a complete list (and won't until all the work is done); the idea is to only do this when the wording gets a lot better and the change almost never comes up. It's not all the stuff I would change if only; it's really confined to nice improvements that only matter in exotic corner cases.

And Possession will change to also give you tokens, but that's already errata to handle Debt tokens. And Pirate Ship will have a wording that makes it clear it doesn't interact with Guilds coin tokens.

• Other Outtakes *

I tried to make a new Saboteur. There were several variations on "each other player trashes their top card, and gains a cheaper card they choose that shares a type with it." That attack preserves the ability to downgrade Provinces, and is much simpler. But it's just so very weak (whether looking at one or two cards). The main good outcome is turning Silver into Copper; that actually hurts. When you hit an Action, it's not meaningless but it just doesn't matter much. And then late in the game nothing matters but Victory cards. Anyway I still gave it a lot of chances in different forms.

I also tried to make a new Spy. Spies are just so weak. I tried it on Harbinger; man, so much text, messing up my classic simple card, and for nothing. I tried a Spy with "+1 Action +, discard 2 cards" as its resources. I also tried combining Saboteur and Spy - the non-trashed cards went back on top. It was even weaker than the other Saboteurs.

A couple similar cards tried to reward you for having more cards in hand than someone else. You play that Lab and then aha, play this and get a bonus. In practice it was too hard to get the bonus. I made the base good and the bonus large and still it was rarely worth getting.

A couple cards tried to be a better Coppersmith. I had a Treasure from Empires that seemed perfect - name a card, worth per copy of it you have in play. If you name Copper, it's the Treasure version of Coppersmith; but if you have a bunch of Villages in play or something, okay, name that. And you never completely whiff, since you can name itself to just get . But uh. It has to cost at least and was just never worth it. It looked classic but that wasn't enough.

In the Artisan slot, I tried a reusable Feast. It was Feast but you could either trash it or discard down to one card. You know, I kind of liked it, but "better Feast" wasn't such a claim to fame, and being strictly better than a dead card might still bug some people, and then I had a better idea.

• And That's That *

There are always people who don't like whatever change; sorry guys. To me this move does not feel risky. The main set and Intrigue are getting better. And if you just want the new cards, they're available separately.

Given that I've posted this, the new main set and Intrigue and the two Update Packs all must be in stores or on their way there. There's no precise schedule for changing the other sets; it will come up as they go out of print. The Big Box will also change, as will the Base Cards product. I don't know the schedules there either. Again other sets won't be getting new cards, just improved wordings and layout.

Seaside: Pearl Diver, Navigator, Pirate Ship, Sea Hag, Embargo, Lookout. The first three are duds; Sea Hag because I don't like having two cheap junking attacks in one set and would rather take out Sea Hag than Ambassador, plus some people don't like that it has no upside, just attack; Embargo is a dud but also I get to not include Embargo tokens; Lookout is fine but a lot of casual players don't like it. With any 2E I would try to make better versions of cards that left that had merit to the premise or flavor, and would try to get more use out of extra components. So here, I'd have maybe 3 cards that used the coin tokens, and a different Pirate Ship. I wanted to do a Seaside 2E; it didn't happen because Jay didn't want to ask Valerie if we could replace Harem and give her a new card in Intrigue 2E, and well Seaside has two cards depicting people, Pearl Diver and Navigator. Plus Jay had boxes of Embargo tokens sitting around. It still might happen someday; the usual problem is, it's competing with all other projects.

Prosperity: Trade Route, Talisman, Contraband, Mountebank, Venture, Royal Seal. Yes I'd keep Counting House as a narrow card that's sometimes fun. Mountebank would go for being strong and making the game less fun, the rest include some nice concepts but want to be better.

Hinterlands: The problem here is that mostly I want to tweak cards but keep them, which results in an update pack we can't really sell. So e.g.: move +Buy from Margrave to Cache; drop the Reactions from Fool's Gold and Trader; make Ill-Gotten Gains a that makes and Curses on-gain. There are still cards to replace too though: Noble Brigand (weak), Mandarin (weak, rare weird issues), Oracle (so slow).

Dark Ages: Rebuild, Cultist, Urchin/Mercenary, Band of Misfits, Storeroom. Rebuild makes games bad when you have a medium amount of enlightenment; Cultist is monolithic; Urchin is not really good times; Band of Misfits might just become the new one but it would make the update pack; Storeroom just to round it out to 6, I personally rarely buy it though someone would miss it.

Alchemy: Ideally this would just go out of print (it's unlikely to). I could rescue the best ideas with new cards in other expansions.

Mixed Box: I don't think there are enough to do this one. Harvest is a dud. I don't enjoy the gameplay of Doctor. I might be able to make a better version of Masterpiece. There are a few more that a lot of people wouldn't miss, that could go if I had to replace more cards.

There aren't going to be enough for the later sets. In Adventures, I regret the giant mess that is Inheritance, and that Warrior can kill Warriors. For Empires, Overlord has Band of Misfits issues, and Encampment has an awkward uh way you deal with it, though people like it. For non-expert players, Nocturne has some serious complexity issues, but I can't just replace 6 cards to fix that; for starters I need to take out Hexes completely. Really it wants to be split into two expansions. For Renaissance I just want the cards to be printed with the right colors. If I were still working on it I might take out Artifacts completely, but I don't regret those cards, it's just that three of them didn't need the Artifacts and could have been simpler.

The promos are not impressive as a group, with some duds and some overpowered cards. They don't even have an expansion though, so they really aren't in line for an update pack.