Prize
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Revision as of 18:08, 8 September 2013
Prizes are a card type from Cornucopia. The Prizes are five differently-named unique cards that are not in the supply, but can be gained by playing Tournament. The prizes are:
Contents |
Strengths and weaknesses
Followers is a curser, and is especially strong if there are no other cursers on the board. It becomes much weaker if cursers are on the board or if there is strong trashing available.
Princess can be critical if the kingdom lacks +Buy, and it is good for picking up different engine pieces and/or attempting to quickly end the game on three piles. Its price-reduction ability cannot be Throne Roomed or King's Courted, however. Princess is usually outclassed by Followers and Trusty Steed.
Trusty Steed is a versatile card that offers many choices and can be used as a village. Thus, it is especially strong if your deck has several terminal actions and no villages are in the kingdom. You may still want to pass on the Steed for the strong attack that Followers provides, or if you need the +buy of Princess.
Statistics
According to a Dominion Strategy article by Captain Frisk,[1] the gain rate of each prize based on a weekend's worth of CouncilRoom.com data is:
Trusty Steed – 28%
Followers – 24%
Princess – 23%
Bag of Gold – 22%
Diadem – 13%
The win rate with each prize is as follows, where a win rate of "1" means winning half the time:
Followers – 1.52
Trusty Steed – 1.51
Princess – 1.41
Diadem – 1.38
Bag of Gold - 1.35
Note that the win rates of the prizes are affected by the fact that a gained prize means that player has at least one Province in his or her deck and is likely winning anyway.
Trivia
Secret History
. They need a cost because some cards care about card costs. There are various arguments for why they should have what cost, but I think a crucial one in favor of 
is, that it makes it extra clear that you cannot actually buy them. I also like that you don't think, "oh man the correct play is to Remodel my prize."
The Prizes wanted to be cards that I wasn't "wasting" as Prizes. Cards that I couldn't do normally, because they were too hard to price well, or were too powerful in multiples, or too narrow. You don't always have extra actions for Diadem, but you can just take another Prize instead; it's not a whole unused pile.
The first set of Prizes was less exciting, and people complained and I excitified them. Bag of Gold originally did not give +1 Action. Princess only made VP cards cheaper. Trusty Steed gave you +2 Cards and +
, no choice. Diadem went unchanged, look at that. And in place of Followers I had a VP-Action card. It didn't work out because, you know, you buy VP cards later in the game, for the points they're worth. I just couldn't make a VP prize exciting enough without making it too good. It couldn't be something you built your deck around, because you might not get it and at most got one. Something like Harem or Nobles just wasn't going to look pretty next to the other Prizes, because part of what you "paid for" was the 2 VP. Anyway Followers, who doesn't like Followers.
Diadem started in the large version of Alchemy long ago, as an Action: "+. Return this to your hand." It was a cute combo with Villages, but useless without them. I then tried some "choose one" versions, which solved the problem of it sometimes being dead, but didn't make the actions-to-money part any better. I eventually gave up on it, and well here it is at last.
Followers meanwhile started out as a Goons in Prosperity. I tried a bunch of "choose one" cards in that slot, and then tried this attack-two-ways, profit-the-opposite-ways thing. It was the same except it cost 
and gave you a VP token instead of an Estate. It was too strong. An Estate is obv. a lot worse than a VP token, and being a Prize means it doesn't get to hit you that often or early either.
References
