truffles: I like spectating a lot because I really like engaging with other players and learning all of their cool thoughts and tricks… and then stealing them. Train 256 Macedonian Hoplites. truffles: I agree, playing in league I think, especially when you’re playing against people close to your skill level, so you aren’t dominating or getting destroyed, you get to focus more on building your deck. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Do you have any advice for Dominion players looking to improve? Projects are probably my favorite part of Dominion, if not they’re the Events which you know, Menagerie has. truffles: My second-last question for you is how do you typically approach a kingdom and figure out how to play the board-. Having this in mind allows you to run your deck with more terminals than you would otherwise have, which is a great way to mitigate bad draws and can sometimes even be an outright advantage. truffles: You say you work in information security. nasmith99: Yeah, a lot of the nocturne cards are quite nice. or Best Offer. Do you have a favorite moment of Dominion overall? So, probably you can cut any 10 card kingdom down to 3 to 4 cards and ignore the other 6 or 7 and you’re not going to do much worse than someone playing with all kingdom cards, and you’re definitely going to do much better than someone playing with all 10 kingdom cards who doesn’t get the full benefit of the cards. And sometimes make the worst of all choices, I’ve seen that happen before, where people think for a long time to then come up with something that was probably a lot worse than their initial instinct. I’m not so much, I think it’s quite well-known. My Little Scythe is more than a baby step, but it’s no Giant Leap . Once you figure out what cards you want to obtain, the next step is to look for support cards: for terminals you want villages, for payload you want draw, you get the gist. Combat is also handled by way of choice; no luck or chance is involved. For me at least, there’s been a silver lining to the whole thing. nerdbound: Not really. Did you have an image of the finish from the start of the game? I really like that aspect, just because of the clientele being more academic I suppose. markus: Winning the last match I would say. I have one last question for you, which is: If you had a Dominion catchphrase, what would it be? That’s kind of fun but a completely different game. But you probably weren’t thinking about the card, were you? truffles: That’s a good and wholesome one. Resist the temptation to buy it. catoftheyear: Probably a mix of both. Especially, when people post on Discord, “Game 7 Alert”, it’s really exciting, but I can imagine it being really nerve-wracking for the players because then it becomes “win-it-all”, for all the marbles. As the Kami descend from the heavens to reshape the land in their image, it is up to each player to lead their clan to victory. I think you’re playing RTT next on Saturday, October 31st at 18:30UTC. Lead your mechs to war and your people to victory! Only 8 players remain. We have all sorts of flavors of strategy here, from RTS games featuring giant robots, grand strategy games in the medieval era, pirates, giant lasers, crime bosses, and even a 4X game that can put a Neanderthal in space. One of the top players at the online 2p leaderboard. Like followers makes games really messy. truffles: How would you describe your playstyle? You should watch a lot of high level play and especially watch the chat, where people are disagreeing and such. I had a similar opportunity with Mic. There was the last game of the series against cha-shu, all the points were out of the board pretty much, except one province and two curses were still in the pile; I was 5 points ahead or something, so I donated to trash a curse and next turn bought the last two curses. That can happen, but as long as that doesn’t happen Ways are generally pretty nice to play with. Who do you think will win the Championship, if it’s not you? 3 Stars, 0 product ratings 0. A pole weapon with a curved blade on one end that is so sharp that they say it can sever your soul from your body. The board reminded me of a similar one I saw via Twitter a while ago as a quiz and practiced solving, so I was ready for the trick in the match. I was very nervous in my first league and tournaments as well. truffles: Of Menagerie. BibleThe Bible is a collection of religious texts or scriptures sacred to Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Rastafari and others. RTT: I said a few days before that it’s Way of the Goat. Censorship refers to the suppression of material that may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions. So, if you had to pick someone you think is most likely to win – and you can’t pick yourself – who would it be? If you do not see your Masquerade turn 3, then turn 4 Masquerade will trigger a shuffle and draw exactly one card from the new shuffle. I had a game where I played against aku chi where he invested Magpies and Villas. Or do you mean something else? Or, you know, you don’t have to play it; you can Remodel it or something. The better they are, the stronger the trasher becomes as you can still buy them after playing it and the downside to taking a slow turn is mitigated by a significant degree. Strategy never changes according to mat? Hmmmm. Which, the US has dropped the ball a little bit, to say the least. So there’s a time to buy gold, obviously. That helps to ground you and learn what other people think might be best play so you can make up your mind about what the right answer would have been in that situation. 2019 is almost at an end, so it's time to look back at a great year of strategy, sim, and city-building games. Partly for the benefit of a public inundated with choice in a golden age of gaming, and partly to appease the eldritch god of enumeration that dwells in the caverns beneath head office, we present this list of some of the best war board games of the past decade. You play it and BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM you have a big hand like when you set Tactician last turn, or more cards! Well, what I always keep in mind is, in seeing a board, imagining and predicting what’s going to happen in the game. I don’t like that aspect. During the fast-paced play, your aim is to create a line of five of your chips in a row, column, or diagonally but the challenge is you can only place your chip on a card that matches one you have in your hand; think poker meets Connect Four. nasmith99: Haha, no it’s not anywhere close. Unless the payload cards come with a strong attack like Mountebank, focus foremost on draw and payload second. RTT: Yeah haha, I heard that. Centered around nails and hammers and such. I have two dogs. Yeah, those are a few of my favorite things. I always thought Mastermind was just too cheap and too unreliable because most decks you can’t decide what your opening hand is. is a series of 1/60 scale Gunpla kits created by Bandai. Create new pages for tournaments, players, or teams (if they meet the liquipedia notability guidelines for that game.) I love spectating, and many good players have interesting matches in the Japanese Dominion League these days. It’s one of those wonky cards that I like with Menagerie. Tune into markus vs. pop180 this Saturday, October 31st and 7:00UTC as they battle for a spot in the Semi-finals! truffles: You’re welcome. It was the one was from, despite nasmith99 saying auto_pp, it was actually pop180. Good Subscriber Account active since Free subscriber-exclusive audiobook! Now I enjoy games a lot more that in tournaments I play in and I don’t feel as nervous. Freaky: Oh, this is going to be terrible advice! While this is a great strategy game for beginners—even kids as young as 7 can get the hang of it—it’s a fun brain game for all ages. What advice do you have for players looking to improve? Like with Dominion. I think Mastermind is interesting in a way that because it’s a duration card you kind of get an extra search space because you see 5 cards. Although, I guess you could make the argument that you should pick someone who has already made the top eight since they have one fewer round to go through, but probably still Freaky. I saw a few responses name Gatekeeper, but I feel like no one ever plays Gatekeeper so it’s hard for me to mind it too much. I asked you some questions in our last interview but I have some new questions: Do you have a favorite Dominion player and if so, who is it? MAX HP: 1410 / 1680 Fully uncapped HP at MAX level. JNails: Well, now I’m disappointed I’ve never been in the same league category as him. It also includes new cardboard tokens, 2 new player mats, 6 Automa cards, and a custom plastic insert designed to fit into the expansion box or the original Scythe box. Just because I had one game today in the round of 16 with Transport, I think that’s a very nice event, so I will pick that as a landscape. SSLY: First of all, can you introduce yourself to the world, to the players all over the world? : Style: Specialty This character gains 20% more ATK from weapons of this type in your grid. truffles: Yeah, I think Dan Brooks also plays those boards really well, where it’s a little bit loopy, and a little bit different than what you would see on your regular average kingdom boards. 2 Stars, 0 … I was wondering if you had any impressions on it. But of course, Death Cart is pretty insane with Way of the Horse. It feels like we’ve seen pretty consistent improvement in card quality, which is a good trend to have. Actually, I think it’s one of Mic Qsenoch’s favorite cards, which is a bit mind boggling to me, but I can see the appeal of messiness in type of decks. Even in the short term you’re going to learn. Freaky: Stockpile/Alms is quite explosive for sure. Each player in Scythe can deploy up 4 mechs to assert force over the uncharted lands surrounding the Factory and to protect their workers and territories. Freaky: It might actually be my favourite card-shaped object. nerdbound: Thanks, this has been a lot of fun! I typically do the same thing that [Dan Brooks] does, which is try to find the best thing and go for it. The game is set entirely in and around a castle where both Trish and Dante go to on Mallet Island. With Courtier, you can gain a gold and you gain like 10 horses off the Liveries. truffles: Ya, for sure! Right now in the main Discord, people are fighting for Economists vs. Programmer spots in the Top 8, so I think you just added a point to that team. You don’t know what will happen until you reveal the top of your deck. You could for example trash an Estate and get +1 Card and +1 Action, or trash a Horse and get +1 Buy, a Silver, and a Horse. My favorite is probably Sheepdog. 2 product ratings - Scythe: Realistic Resources. Do you have a favourite overall Dominion moment this year so far? I would suggest looking up the pop180 vs. Titandrake match to see it in action. nasmith99: I did, yes. I enjoy all of the cards. 3. Congratulations! nerdbound: Yeah, I think that’s alright. nasmith99: Yeah, so I grew up in a great Philadelphia area. Tsurugi Kyousuke (剣城(つるぎ) 京介(きょうすけ)) is one of the main protagonists of the Inazuma Eleven GO series. My favorite two cards are Tragic Hero and Capital. truffles: Haha, right, you faced them in the Quarterfinals last year. What this means is that your next hand will contain the bottomdecked terminal and all the other cards topdecked, so adding yet another terminal to your deck has a much lower chance of colliding with your the bottomdecked terminal given the only case this happens is if you draw it as a new card from your discard. I noticed at a glance that the board had Library and Villa, the Combo, and Haggler. He is a forward for Kuro no Kishidan, Raimon, Raimon (Chrono Stone), Chrono Storm and later in Galaxy, a forward for Inazuma Japan, Earth Eleven and captain for Faram Dite. Those actually make them more interesting and tolerable to me. Certainly nerdbound has been really strong, I think he’s also fairly new to Dominion as well. Have you had a favorite moment of dominion overall? truffles: That’s awesome. RTT: Yeah, like 80% of boards have a better trasher anyways. nerdbound: Do you have an example of a thought process? I like the exile mechanic especially and Displace is fun because you don’t really lose the card that you “trash” or exile to it. catoftheyear: I actually watched a lot of them I think, with commentaries as well, which is quite nice. We initially interviewed JNails but unfortunately, the audio was lost. But I’m happy to hear that it isn’t. SSLY: Cool. truffles: Yeah, I think there’s some pretty cool mechanics in there. SSLY: I agree, it being on the board makes the game much crazy. Not the first time you hit six. This interview features catoftheyear who will be playing Quarterfinals against nasmith99: Sunday, November 1st @ 20:00UTC. Menagerie came out this year, what are your impressions on it? truffles: Yeah, that’s what I meant. Do you have a favourite or least favourite card in Dominion? I remember being grouped with him for one of the mix tournaments, maybe Hinterlands, and I was super excited, but also really nervous, to get to play him. Bye! Freaky: Man, I wish I could play like I did a year ago. I really enjoyed the WELP tournament that had 4 landscapes in every tournament as well. I think it’s a lot of fun. And it was like, this would be somehow embarrassing to lose already. truffles: Haha, that’s a good one – “Don’t do stupid stuff”. truffles: I do think it’s kind of interesting though. Like #kingdom-analysis for example is a good channel to talk about general ideas, which I enjoy. Almost every card I dislike is an attack card or a pseudo-attack card like IGG or Possession. Exploding out of the midgame. SSLY: Lastly, you’re going to play with markus in the quarterfinals. catoftheyear: Yeah, probably. My favorite Dominion moment this year, personally, was the Loser’s Bracket finals of Tournament Big Money, another one of the big tournaments this year. Agent Venture Mission One: The Heist — saving the world from our homes . What do you think has contributed most to your improvement since last year or previous years. nerdbound: Where I was thrashed, you know what I mean? Devil May Cry is the first game in the Devil May Cry series, Created and directed by Hideki Kamiya featuring the main playable character, Dante, a son of Sparda, as the main protagonist.. Since he doesn’t really play on ladder and play in League A, there aren’t many opportunities to play against him. nerdbound: Sure. Drawing a hand of 5 treasures is always pretty feels-bad. RTT: Way of the horse is probably my favorite Way. The player that I’ve learned the most from, which I guess I can say is my favorite player, when I was learning to play Dominion would be Dan [Brooks]. But then, I bought all of the Magpies and Villas in one turn and drew him his whole deck, while winning the game on, like, turn 5. nerdbound: Yeah, because it was Menagerie Mix. I don’t really have one particular moment, I more have a collection of fun kingdoms I play, that’s more what I get more joy out of, not one specific moment I can recall. So, I guess Freaky and nasmith, but more or less anyone who makes it to the quarterfinals could win in the end if you’re a bit lucky, or if you play well. JNails: Yeah. Day 1 is a qualification tournament featuring some expansions. Each player represents a faction of Europa, a fictional version of Europe that is trying to rebuild itself after World War I.The factions consist of leaders (and their Loyal Animal Companion), workers, and four giant mechs.. Scrap gives you a choice of bonuses, with more stuff for trashing a more expensive card. I think you’re facing Freaky next, which actually didn’t know during our last interview. SSLY: As a strong player who made it to the top 8, what advice would you give other players who want to be better at Dominion? RTT: Nerdbound. When a player deploys a mech, that player’s mechs … Fortunately I found Caravan Base, a board game cafe in Kichijoji, Tokyo, held a Dominion night every Friday.