I’ve never had that experience of Dominion. There are so few currencies to worry about, just VP and money. Every card has a cost on it to buy something with your money. Other than that it’s just the A, B, C from the manual.
I’ve taught it to complete card game newbies and they ‘get’ it long before the end of their first game, and in my experience, universally like it.
I love this game!
I keep looking for nice boards but they’re always super expensive.
Great video here:
I still think Lost Cities (the original card game version) can’t be beaten for perfect gameplay, instant easy teaching to new players, and great theme.
My experience was definitely coloured by playing with people who’d played many times before and are useless at introducing people to games (ie giving advice during the game, etc) but I feel like the theme doesn’t help at all. It gives you no indication as to what cards work together or why.
In contrast, RftG is a pretty beginner-unfriendly game, but that at least colour-codes stuff. I might not know the intricacies of how useful a certain planet or development is, but if it’s blue and I’ve got lots of other blue stuff, it’s probably useful.
I’ve had a similar problem with other deckbuilders as well. Star Realms and Clank didn’t make me as annoyed, but I’m still in no rush to play them again. Paperback (and Hardback) is the only one I’ve liked (excluding stuff like Great Western Trail where the deckbuilding is very basic). I know how useful a certain letter is. I know that drawing more cards or scoring extra points is good.
I’d much rather play it at 3 or 4, myself. I don’t understand what the benefit of playing with two would be especially since the double action rules are, as I understood it, the official two player mode. To me getting to pick two actions would halve the fun of the game, if not more.
I think Container would be reasonably easy to implement over forums, but there are a few challenges as I see it:
The board state would need to be constantly updated and available at a glance. This could technically be handled with spreadsheets, but the market is fluid enough that it needs to be visible at all times.
Auctions pose a challenge. Bidding is blind and simultaneously revealed, but IMO a big part of the fun comes from messing with the $0 card(s) and toying with denominations (i.e. laying down a “fat stack” lined with nothing but $1’s). I suspect that’s just something that would be missing in forum play, as I struggle to think of any way to include it without bogging things down. Furthermore, the bluff cards become a serious honour system issue.
I play Container fairly open. I play the rules to the letter, but that doesn’t keep player turns from becoming highly interactive as players argue over why Player A should actually undercut Player C, etc. This ties back into point #1 with the board state, but having that fluid back-and-forth between players at every step of the game is really a big part of the magic, and it’s another thing I think would just be missing over forum.
Anyway, it’s certainly doable and could probably be done without a tremendous amount of work, but I do think it will be missing that je ne sais quois. Oh, and as for a moderator in the auctions, that should likely just be the active player’s role, since they are not involved with the bid, just the decision to accept or not.
I forgot about that bit (since I’ve never actually played Container).
It’s definitely doable. The gamestate is presented in a visual, component-based format in the physical boardgame, but I don’t actually see a reason you would require a graphical representation of the gamestate to play-by-post.
That said, some people may have a strong preference towards recreating the visual layout of the physical game and that’s perfectly reasonable.
Yeah, I mean so long as folks were ok losing that visual, a simple table would do the job pretty effectively. There isn’t even a lot of information to keep tabs on, it’s more that it’s important to have it all available and up to date at any given moment. Then, just a spot to keep tabs on where players’ boats are and you’re good to go.
[EDIT] I’m getting stuck on money. That’s hidden/obfuscated info… hmmm.
For auctions I’m more than happy to play the honour system.
0,0,1,5=$6
Transactions are public knowledge, right? Which means its trackable information even when hidden. In a play-by-post, there’s no reason to keep trackable information hidden because you can perfectly recall the game (by scrolling) and calculate the amount any player is holding.
EDIT: that said, it may not be in the spirit of the game (but certainly a big advantage for anybody with eidetic memory). So, we could keep it hidden with the knowledge that anyone could audit a player’s cash at the end (by scrolling through the history)
I’d be up for Container. They were talking about it on Board Game Barrage last week and it sounds like the type of game I’ll suck at!
That’s why I’m struggling. In a live game there’s no log, and really only so much data one can retain at a given time. It makes for more of an intuitive process, as rounds go by and the math in your head starts to become more of a vague idea of your opponents’ trajectories. And obviously this explicitly pertains to cash, as non-liquid asset values are always available at a glance. There’s an inherent speculation element there, largely thanks to player memory limitations (kind of cool when you think about it). Playing with open cash would certainly work just fine, but I do wonder how much it would alter the experience, is all. You can math out a game of Chinatown too, but it sucks and will ruin the game for everyone, you know? That’s my fear.
@RossM I think the “basic” rules with the bluff bills are the only way to run that. Your solution is a simple fix and would work, BUT (big but) would also suddenly require cash/bill tracking.
It’s cool until you play a game with somebody with perfect recall 
Let’s not derail the “Nobody does it better…” conversation any more than necessary with all this Container talk. ==> Container #1 - Recruitment, Discussion and Play-by-Post
This is a big tangent, but I have had some really horrible experiences when I tried introducing some people to games by talking about strategy and giving a few specific and useful tips during the game. Sufficiently bad that I no longer offer advice unless someone explicitly asks for it.
So, taking Dominion as an example, I might mention that making a flexible plan based on the market is essential to playing well, but I absolutely would not discuss openings, traps, common mistakes, specific cards, or strategies, unless someone explicitly asked for such information.
I don’t think that makes me useless at introducing games, it’s just that different people have wildly different expectations and requirements, and I think the people who want advice aren’t as likely to take offence as the people who don’t, and can voice their preference easily and clearly.
In general, I don’t mention any strategic or tactical advice unless it’s written in the rulebook.
I generally don’t offer strategy tips, but I’ll let people know options they have and what they mean (like “you could buy X which would let you do Y”) if they seem unsure. Just to try and avoid people having a bad time because of how front-loaded rules explanations are.
In some games with new people I will try and explain some context to actions now. Sometimes it’s listing all the possible actions available and sometimes it’s giving a few words about the consequences to the game state of different actions. Sort of judged on a feeling from around the table rather than a regular habit. I find it can help people make there own strategic choices while illuminating some aspects of the game which can be hard to decipher early in learning and relax some people on to it. There’s inherently a risk of passing on my own assumptions but nothing’s all jam
Talking about Dominion again, I think the game can annoy some players because you start with all the information, and that makes players own their mistakes completely. A lot of games restrict your options based on random options or outcomes, which can make mistakes much more palatable or harder to identify.
For me Dominion is the mechanical skeleton of a game. if someone ever put the rest on (e.g., theme), I’d be able to appreciate it. As it is, I cannot. Other deckbuilders may not do the pure mechanics better (although I’d argue several make the concept more interesting in general via the twists they add, such as making it a core component of a more board-based game like your Tyrants of the Underdark or similar, or Aeon’s End’s not ever shuffling, or Eminent Domain’s combining it with Race for the Galaxy style role following), but they do make it a lot more colorful and entertaining and memorable.