Trashdome Finals: Dominion vs. Puzzlestrike

Sure there is a finish line. Puzzle Strike is just as much a race to get your opponent's Gem Pile to 10 before he can get *your* Gem Pile to 10. In the same way that Magic is a race to deal 20 damage first. The difference is quite illusory, based only on the thin theme of playing with Gems.

Stormcow wrote: Sure there is a finish line. Puzzle Strike is just as much a race to get your opponent's Gem Pile to 10 before he can get *your* Gem Pile to 10. In the same way that Magic is a race to deal 20 damage first. The difference is quite illusory, based only on the thin theme of playing with Gems.

By this criteria, every single game with a victory condition is a "race" game, so we might as well just junk the entire category.

I... can't believe I'm doing this


Dominion.

dysjunct wrote:

Stormcow wrote: Sure there is a finish line. Puzzle Strike is just as much a race to get your opponent's Gem Pile to 10 before he can get *your* Gem Pile to 10. In the same way that Magic is a race to deal 20 damage first. The difference is quite illusory, based only on the thin theme of playing with Gems.

By this criteria, every single game with a victory condition is a "race" game, so we might as well just junk the entire category.

The "race" element in both Puzzle Strike & Dominion is the race to build your deck efficiently. I can see how they might be thought of as similar in that aspect. You can write that off as semantics, but if it doesn't apply to Puzzle Strike, I don't think it applies to Dominion either.

So, yeah. Dominion.

After considering the term deck-building a bit more in the mechanics hate thread, I'm going to change my vote once more. Without Dominion there is no Puzzle Strike, but without Magic there is no Dominion. So I'm changing my vote from Rune Age (Wars?) to Magic: The Gathering.

Stormcow wrote: Sure there is a finish line. Puzzle Strike is just as much a race to get your opponent's Gem Pile to 10 before he can get *your* Gem Pile to 10. In the same way that Magic is a race to deal 20 damage first. The difference is quite illusory, based only on the thin theme of playing with Gems.

We could say that's true, but it's not because getting someone's Gem Pile to 10 doesn't necessarily end the game. They still get a turn to play, and if their deck is strong enough they won't have any trouble at all staying alive. To kill someone you have to take a very careful look at what they've bought, what's in their discard, and so on. Or maybe you can just get lucky.

Dominion requires none of these considerations. If you and your opponent are neck-and-neck, and you have the opportunity to buy the last province, you do it. No matter what. It wins you the game guaranteed. In fact, in a 1v1 game, if you have 6 provinces in your deck and you have the opportunity to buy a 7th? You buy it. No matter what. It will almost certainly win you the game because the other guy can't normally come back by buying Duchies and Estates, while buying the remaining Provinces just makes him lose faster.

It's a game based on mostly non-interactive decisions that test your ability to buy a plurality of available victory points before the other players do. Opponents can try to slow you down, but if they themselves do not buy a plurality of victory points, they will never win. Unless somehow 3 stacks are depleted, which almost never happens and was only added as a way to fix incredibly disruptive games that made buying Provinces impossible.

It's a race, plain and simple. :O

clockwirk wrote: The "race" element in both Puzzle Strike & Dominion is the race to build your deck efficiently. I can see how they might be thought of as similar in that aspect. You can write that off as semantics, but if it doesn't apply to Puzzle Strike, I don't think it applies to Dominion either.

What is theme but semantics? Artwork too, but mostly semantics. Instead of calling it a "6-point victory card" we call it a "Province." Instead of calling it "Send 2-8 Points to your opponent and gain 2 money" we call it a "Double Crash Gem." It's already been noted that "One of Each" is a boring name for a puzzle chip, so semantics have already been brought into this argument.

The "race" argument is not semantics, though. It doesn't apply to Puzzle Strike because you are not required to take the same eventual path to victory that your opponent does. Without buying a plurality of victory points you cannot win in Dominion, but in Puzzle Strike you can win games without ever buying that many purples.

If you see your opponent go for hardcore econ by trashing their starting Crash Gem for a 4-Gem, you have to immediately make a decision. Can you possibly catch up to them? Or do you think you can use the available bank and character chips to ensure your opponent's demise before he can translate that 4-Gem into a powerful end-game deck?

If I'm Midori, I just buy a Combine this turn and go into Dragon Form next turn.



I know my opponent will be buying expensive things with his 4-Gem-- which enables me to use Rigorous Training to gain additional purples without having to discard Dragon Form.



Anteing 2's with Dragon Form effectively doubles the number of gems I can send at my opponent, and whether or not I combine them up to 4-- which only takes one combine-- he still can't counter-crash. He's short on his own purples because he trashed one to get his deck moving into econ, so most likely he will die. It's possible he might even die within the next few turns, and I never, ever have to buy a Double Crash or anything remotely econ-related.

It's not a race because winning involves exploiting a weaknesses in the other person's play. You don't have to go for the same finish line that they're going for. If you want you can sit right at the starting line and run your opponent off the road.

Vote: Dominion

dysjunct wrote:

Stormcow wrote: Sure there is a finish line. Puzzle Strike is just as much a race to get your opponent's Gem Pile to 10 before he can get *your* Gem Pile to 10. In the same way that Magic is a race to deal 20 damage first. The difference is quite illusory, based only on the thin theme of playing with Gems.

By this criteria, every single game with a victory condition is a "race" game, so we might as well just junk the entire category.

What criteria do you suggest? I think the most intuitive test is, "can you mess with your opponent's stuff"? And Dominion passes this just as well as Puzzle Strike. In both games you can decrease your opponent's VP as well as increase your own VP. So yeah, in this particular discussion, it's a pointless distinction to make.

FourthDimensional wrote: Dominion requires none of these considerations. If you and your opponent are neck-and-neck, and you have the opportunity to buy the last province, you do it. No matter what.

I mean, maybe I am dumb here, but how often in Puzzle Strike's end game would you not want to play a Crash Gem if you have the opportunity? When would you not counter crash if you had the opportunity? I would guess it comes up just as often as a decision to not buy a Province.

There is this rule in advanced Dominion play that you don't want to buy the penultimate Province in certain situations. It's really well documented. It is *also* about exploiting weaknesses in your opponent's play.

Really what it boils down to is that on a mechanical level Puzzle Strike is just as interactive as Dominion. If you want to talk about card counting and gauging your opponent's next turn and so forth, well, that applies equally to both games.