How many cards in my discard deck?

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carfax

I can see how many cards in my deck.  I can see how many cards are in my opponent's deck and discard.  However, I can't see how many cards are in my discard.  Am I missing something?

Ingix

The number of cards in your and your opponents' discard pile is supposed to be not known to you. This is a rule from the IRL game where you are not supposed to look through your discard pile, and counting it might reveal cards in it.

If you think you can see the number of cards in your opponent's discard pile, then you probably mistake somethine else for it. You can see the number of cards in their hand and the number of cards in their deck.

carfax

I can see I've misunderstood about my opponent's decks. 

I didn't realise/remember that there was an IRL rule that you couldn't look through the discard. But it seems strange that you can't count.  The reason I was interested  was that I had the Gardens (or was thinking about getting them) and their VP depends on how many cards you have, so its quite strange to not know.  Likewise the philosopher's stone in  Alchemy who's cash value requires you to know how many cards you have in deck and discard - I'd have thought it is essential to be able to count for that.

santamonica811

carfax,
You are correct in a sense.  In my IRL games, players who can keep decent track of their deck as it's played have a distinct advantage. In Gardens games (total cards), Vineyard (total Action cards), Silk Road (total Victory cards), and maybe others I'm not thinking of.

When you play IRL with friends, of course, you can modify the game however you all want...it's one of the advantages to IRL games, just as you can give out money in Monopoly for landing on Free Parking, even without that being part of the official rules.  But the game of Dominion is definitely designed to give a strategic advantage to players who can keep track of the deck.

It's actually a skill that is not hard to get pretty good at.  When you're playing the computer, just wait until there is a new shuffle, and then try to keep track of your total cards played, the victory cards played, and the action cards played.  We all have a huge advantage in that we can take those extra 5-10 seconds while our opponent is playing her hand to write down the running totals of our own hand.  If you are like me; you will be very weak at this in the beginning, then a bit better, and then a lot better.  I found that, after only a week of practicing, I was able to keep pretty accurate tallies.  And, of course, it will be rare to have a kingdom with Vineyard and Silk Road and Gardens all in the game.  Usually, just one of those cards will randomly appear in a kingdom, which of course means that you only have to keep track of one of those three conditions in your deck. 

SkyHard

Quote from: josh bornstein on 25 May 2020, 06:35:26 AM
to write down the running totals of our own hand.

I thought it was forbidden to use anything but your brain to gain an advantage. Am I mistaken?  :o ::)

santamonica811

Sky,
I think it totally depends on the people you play with.  In my IRL group, we all play using our memories...except for 2 of my friends who have weaker memories, so we let them write down the information.  But my group plays mainly for fun, so we're really relaxed about where we want strict enforcement of the rules and where we don't.  (I can't remember the last time anyone in my group asked for a re-do and someone else objected, for example.)

Very competitive people might have a different reaction, of course.  Water finds its own level, and it's been my experience that it's been pretty easy to find people who share my more-casual and more-relaxed approach to playing.  The "Blacklist" function here is great...you can select-out people who are perfectly polite and friendly--but still do not share your approach to playing the game.  If you use this, and if you also make a point to add as friends the people who play the most enjoyable games with you; you'll end up with a nice-sized group of online players that are simpatico with you.  :-)

I think you will get out of online Dominion what you're willing to put into it, in terms of taking the time to eliminate people you don't enjoy playing with, and identifying people you especially do enjoy playing with.