Donate and Possession

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andwilk

Has anyone ever had the pleasure of playing a game with Donate and Possession in the kingdom and any village?  It essentially boils down to each player trashing their deck down to Village-Village-Possession-Possession-Possession or something similar and consequently staring at each other across the computer screen trying to figure out what to do at this point (an offer draw button was brought up by both of us).

What are people's experiences with this?  Is this, dare I say it, a "broken" combination?  Am I completely missing something?

As a side note, I feel that Donate is bordering on absurdly strong as it is.  Trashing whatever you want out of your deck at any time seems too easy.

JW

Quote from: andwilk on 25 July 2017, 12:27:33 AM
Has anyone ever had the pleasure of playing a game with Donate and Possession in the kingdom and any village?  It essentially boils down to each player trashing their deck down to Village-Village-Possession-Possession-Possession or something similar and consequently staring at each other across the computer screen trying to figure out what to do at this point (an offer draw button was brought up by both of us).

Yes, an "offer draw" button would be a very useful feature.

QuoteWhat are people's experiences with this?  Is this, dare I say it, a "broken" combination?  Am I completely missing something?

Is it as bad as you say. I blame Possession, though, not Donate.

QuoteAs a side note, I feel that Donate is bordering on absurdly strong as it is.  Trashing whatever you want out of your deck at any time seems too easy.

Donate is absurdly strong but still fun.  Possession is a poorly designed card because it encourages you to ruin your own deck. Not fun. And Donate provides the perfect means of ruining your deck.

andwilk

Quote from: JW on 25 July 2017, 01:09:53 AM
Donate is absurdly strong but still fun.  Possession is a poorly designed card because it encourages you to ruin your own deck. Not fun. And Donate provides the perfect means of ruining your deck.

While I agree that Possession encourages some weird deck construction, it was around before Donate was published and not replaced in 2nd edition (to my knowledge).  I feel that an interaction between two cards that causes a stalemate like this should have been caught during playtesting and this is a huge miss.  Individually, each have their own merit and while I understand the general dislike for Possession, I like that it makes you look at the kingdom a little differently.

It's unfortunate because I feel that I have to mark one of these cards as "unfamiliar" so I don't run into this situation again, and I'd rather not do that.

JW

#3
Quote from: andwilk on 25 July 2017, 01:54:06 AM
While I agree that Possession encourages some weird deck construction, it was around before Donate was published and not replaced in 2nd edition (to my knowledge).  I feel that an interaction between two cards that causes a stalemate like this should have been caught during playtesting and this is a huge miss.  Individually, each have their own merit and while I understand the general dislike for Possession, I like that it makes you look at the kingdom a little differently.

It's unfortunate because I feel that I have to mark one of these cards as "unfamiliar" so I don't run into this situation again, and I'd rather not do that.

Possession wasn't replaced in the 2nd edition because Donald X decided that there weren't enough duds to replace cards from the other sets besides Base and Intrigue. And the basic problem of stalemate Possession games existed before Donate whenever you had strong trashing like Chapel, it's just that even Chapel doesn't trash as efficiently as Donate.

Quote from: Donald X. on 03 June 2017, 04:09:14 PM
You don't need Swindler to exist for the game to be Dominion. You don't need whatever card for it to be Dominion. This is a point that may be a lot more visible to me than to other people, given my vantage point; Possession is just like all these other cards that some people hated that weren't published, except that it got published. Not having Possession just doesn't mean much to me; it's like not having that Village that Spied every time you played an attack, or whatever other thing you don't actually have. Possession made it to cardboard, but not because it had some magical amount of deserving to exist that the other cards didn't. The data has piled up since Alchemy came out; I wouldn't make Possession today, but have stopped short of dropping it from Alchemy, because to be friendly we would need to sell the replacement separately for people who already bought Alchemy.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=16338.msg708668#new
Quote from: Donald XNormally 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.

WhiteRabbit1981

There is an official ruling for the possession-stalemate situation. The game continues until one player starves to death, the other player is declared winner.

jeebus

Possession creates enough unfortunate situations, now made more common because of Donate, that I view it as a card that should be banned in tournaments. The only other one is possibly Rebuild - since Donald has said himself he doesn't play with it. (In another category are the replaced cards from the base game and Intrigue.)

AdamH

I think most of the discussion in this thread is pretty off-base, but I don't really see much point in getting into it. On the other hand, as someone who hosts tournaments I feel like I'm somewhat qualified to address this:

Quote from: jeebus on 25 July 2017, 05:09:08 PM
Possession creates enough unfortunate situations, now made more common because of Donate, that I view it as a card that should be banned in tournaments. The only other one is possibly Rebuild - since Donald has said himself he doesn't play with it. (In another category are the replaced cards from the base game and Intrigue.)

There's a list of cards I don't use for my tournaments for various reasons. Some of the reasons are due to IRL constraints that I don't really think people here care about, but some of the reasons have to do a little bit with competitive integrity. I ban the following cards due to a combination of them being unpopular and the idea that they can lead to unfortunate situations, especially in 3P games:

Swindler
Torturer
Ambassador
Possession
Urchin
Cultist
Rebuild
Page
Pirate Ship (3P tournaments only)
Cutpurse (3P tournament only)

Some of these cards I have nothing against, personally, but what I don't want to happen is for someone to leave my tournaments all salty because they lost to some guy who collided Urchins when they didn't, or on some "stupid <card> board where no skill was involved." I don't think that the results of my tournaments are any more "valid" because I don't use these cards, but Dominion's competitive scene is small enough that I think how people feel when they play tournaments is more important than any of that other stuff.

I also allow people to stack their decks at the start of the game, simply because I don't want people mad that they lost to some guy who got a 5/2 on a board where that's really good; I fully realize that this is a relatively small part of the overall variance in Dominion but man does this make people feel better.

I think both online and IRL tournaments would benefit from focusing a bit more on this type of thing for the time being, at least until competitive Dominion becomes big enough that I can quit my day job and just do that for a living. I'm counting down the days.

matchstick2017

One thing that doesnt make sense to me, and probable Donald must have given this explanation somewhere, is that why possession is not an attack card. I wouldnt fret so much if possession is an action-attack card so that i can buy some moat or other attack resistant cards (if they are available). What makes possession painful is that it is just an action card, and there is no other card, period, that can prevent other person to possess you. Whether you have champion, moat, or tons of lighthouses, possession will hit you.

Cave-O-Sapien

Quote from: matchstick2017 on 26 July 2017, 12:23:59 AM
One thing that doesnt make sense to me, and probable Donald must have given this explanation somewhere, is that why possession is not an attack card. I wouldnt fret so much if possession is an action-attack card so that i can buy some moat or other attack resistant cards (if they are available). What makes possession painful is that it is just an action card, and there is no other card, period, that can prevent other person to possess you. Whether you have champion, moat, or tons of lighthouses, possession will hit you.

Not all cards that harm you (whether that harm is real or just perceived) are attacks (for example, Masquerade and Ill-Gotten Gains).

We can argue whether Possession is effectively an Attack or not, but if it were an Attack, I think it would violate the design rule that Attacks must affect all other players (as permitted by supply limitation, hand size etc.).

matchstick2017

Quote from: Cave-O-Sapien on 26 July 2017, 01:30:44 AM
We can argue whether Possession is effectively an Attack or not, but if it were an Attack, I think it would violate the design rule that Attacks must affect all other players (as permitted by supply limitation, hand size etc.).


Excellent point. I have been playing 2p dominion for so long now that I completely forgot the basic rule for an attack card. If its an attack card, it has to be able to affect all other players. Although this not mentioned anywhere, or quoted for that matter, but thats the only reason that seems to make sense to me.

Jacob Marley

Quote from: Cave-O-Sapien on 26 July 2017, 01:30:44 AM


We can argue whether Possession is effectively an Attack or not, but if it were an Attack, I think it would violate the design rule that Attacks must affect all other players (as permitted by supply limitation, hand size etc.).

This hits the nail on the head.  When the card was released, it did not (in theory) act as an attack.  (Combo-ing with Masquerade was an exception.)  It was designed to leave the possessed player with the same deck as before, just in a different order.  With Guilds and Adventures, Possession became a way to damage opponents (spend their coin tokens, move their Adventures tokens, etc.)  Thus it MUST be an attack since it acts as one, but it CANNOT be an attack since it violates the affect every other player requirement for an attack. 

If Dominion only a two player games by the rules, then you just add the attack type to Possession and the problem goes away.  But, Dominion is a 2-6 player game, so Possession is a contradiction that can be resolved only by banning the card. 

For IRL games, this is not an issue, since you can simply chose not to play with Possession, and if you do, that's your choice.  For Online, I feel strongly that Possession should be removed from the game since I cannot simply chose to ban it in rated games. 

I would allow it to be played in user created kingdoms, but never in random kingdoms.

Cave-O-Sapien

Quote from: matchstick2017 on 26 July 2017, 05:58:27 PM
Although this not mentioned anywhere, or quoted for that matter, but thats the only reason that seems to make sense to me.

I found a sourced quote that discusses the lack of directed attacks:

on f.ds:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=80.msg765#msg765

which links to a BGG thread:
https://boardgamegeek.com/article/4819766#4819766