Let's Play Dominion: An Experiment in Deckbuilding???

Okay then, welcome to ChapelFest 2014.


MY TURN

and i will just, uh, buy a festival.



YOUR TURN

Here's your new hand.


Your deck will be shuffled next hand.

For a new page, here are the cards for purchase, with updated amounts remaining

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Spoiler
Purchasing cost of all cards is displayed in the lower left.
Number in parentheses after the card names is how many cards of that type are available.


Copper (46), Silver (36), and Gold (30) - Gives more purchasing power. Its worth is hard to miss. Displayed right in the middle.


Estate (8), Duchy (8), and Province (8). - The goal of the game is to own huge tracts of land. These are for victory points. They can't be played if in your hand but give you the displayed number of points at the end of the game.


Chapel (9) - Trashed cards are removed from the game entirely. This card can be used to ditch cards you don't actually want in your deck. Can not be used on itself, because it's no longer in your hand once you play it.


Moneylender (10) - Removes one of your Coppers from the game, to essentially turn it into a one time use Gold. You have three additional purchasing power for the turn if you use this card.


Village - (9) - When you play this card, you immediately draw one more card for your hand, and you can play two more action cards this turn.


Smithy (10) - When you play this card, you immedately draw three more cards for your hand this turn.


Festival (7) - Upon playing this card, you can choose to play up to two more action cards this turn. During the buy phase, you can also buy two cards instead of one, and have 2 additional purchasing power to do so with.


Nobles (8) - When you play this card, you can choose to either immediately draw three cards, or play two more actions this turn. Furthermore, it's worth 2 points for having in your deck at the end of the game.


Duke (8) - Worth 0 points on its own at the end of the game, but value goes up by 1 for each Duchy victory card you have in your deck. Otherwise does nothing.


Pawn (9) - Either gain an extra purchasing power, an extra card this turn, an extra action this turn, or the ability to buy an extra card. And choose two of those options.


Scout (10) - Helps clear the less useful cards out of your next hand. You get to immediately play another action card this turn after playing this.


Coppersmith (9) - Essentially turns each Copper in your hand into a Silver for the turn.

I vote Nobles. We've plenty of action cards but no cards for drawing more cards to use those actions on. Since we can only buy one card anyway, we may as well grab some free real estate victory points besides.

I vote Nobles. We've plenty of action cards but no cards for drawing more cards to use those actions on. Since we can only buy one card anyway, we may as well grab some free real estate victory points besides.

That's not a bad idea. I also see it having synergy with other action cards (both to play after cards like Festival and to play more than one at a time if we have them together) so we should prioritize getting more of them for now.

you got it



MY TURN

H'okay first things first



Lemme grab a new card and still not exactly what I want but whatever. It miiiight be a bit premature to grab scoring cards but it's important to look towards the future!!! Nabbin' a Duchy.



And that's my turn.

YOUR TURN
Your deck is shuffled.



also for a new page, your current deck
7 Copper, 2 Silver, 3 Estates, 1 Nobles, 2 Festivals, 1 Pawn, 1 Chapel

So if I understand this correctly, when we draw another card with Pawn, if it is a coin or an action and we have already used Festival (to let us use 2 actions, including Pawn) we can use it before ending our turn, correct?

If that's the case, then we want to use first Festival, then Pawn and have our Pawn dig for another card and nab us another dank Dutch daalder.

If you draw another card with Pawn, if it's a coin it doesn't matter if you have extra actions. It just goes towards your purchasing power for the turn by simply being in your hand. You do need the other available action to use an action card, though.

Always start by playing all Festivals in-hand. I'm reasonably certain there is zero downside to doing so; this turn, it'll net us two actions (one to use on the Pawn) and +2 coin (total of three). The one thing that keeps us from doing is trashing them, but we'd only need to do that if we'd already bought too many, which we can plan against doing.

I propose we use the Pawn (after the Festival, as I've already said) to gain 1 Card and 1 Coin, and save judgement on what to do with our 2 buy and 4 coin until after seeing what the draw is.

Okay it's been a while now. I'm going to suggest that if somebody says something as, like, a proposal, or otherwise implies they'd like other opinions on it, I'll give it 24 hours before I assume that means no objections and just go with it, if that's okay.
Also if your hand has a Village, should I just assume you're going to use it and show the extra card you'd get right away?

Alright, you play the Festival, and then the Pawn for an extra coin and card.

Updated hand.

+3 Coins. +1 Buy. Also an extra action but, y'know, not particularly relevant at the moment.

I'd say either another village, a smithy, or some combination of pawns/chapels. I like village/pawns for their utility but the sheer draw power of the smithy is appealing, and I can see where a second chapel might help us out down the line.

I say Scout, just to help avoid having more estate-clogged turns like this one.

I feel like scout is basically a crappier version of smithy to be honest - at least for now. While it does let us see one extra card, we're planning on trashing all of our estates and so it will quickly become useless (until later when we get more nobles or start picking up provinces/duchies/dukes). Smithy does basically the same thing but it's always useable, plus it helps us go through our deck faster.

That's a good point. Okay, then Smithy.