Tournament
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''[http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/06/07/cornucopia-tournament-prizes/ Original article] by theory.'' | ''[http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/06/07/cornucopia-tournament-prizes/ Original article] by theory.'' | ||
− | Without {{Card|Province|Provinces}}, Tournament is basically one of those nice cheap non-terminals that (usually) can’t hurt your deck. Not quite as delicious as {{Card|Caravan}}, but generally preferable to {{Card|Spy}} or {{Card|Pawn}}. | + | Without {{Card|Province|Provinces}}, Tournament is basically one of those nice cheap non-terminals that (usually) can’t hurt your deck. Not quite as delicious as {{Card|Caravan}}, but generally preferable to {{Card|Spy}} or {{Card|Pawn}}. Lowers the price of {{Card|Peddler}}. |
Of course, it’s actually worse than all of them in the sense that your Tournaments stop drawing in the late game, but hopefully then you have Provinces and can make up for it by getting [[Prizes]] or {{Card|Duchy|Duchies}}. The problem I see is that people tend to forget that the risk of a parried Tournament is only worth however much value you can extract out of Prizes and Duchies. Winning a Tournament doesn’t in and of itself do much for you; in the late game, I’ve seen the Prizes and Duchies all run out, and then your Tournaments are basically just empty cards. So overinvesting in Tournaments is not such a great idea. | Of course, it’s actually worse than all of them in the sense that your Tournaments stop drawing in the late game, but hopefully then you have Provinces and can make up for it by getting [[Prizes]] or {{Card|Duchy|Duchies}}. The problem I see is that people tend to forget that the risk of a parried Tournament is only worth however much value you can extract out of Prizes and Duchies. Winning a Tournament doesn’t in and of itself do much for you; in the late game, I’ve seen the Prizes and Duchies all run out, and then your Tournaments are basically just empty cards. So overinvesting in Tournaments is not such a great idea. | ||
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* Fast-paced games | * Fast-paced games | ||
* {{Card|Colony}} | * {{Card|Colony}} | ||
+ | |||
== Alternate versions == | == Alternate versions == | ||
<gallery> | <gallery> |
Revision as of 13:09, 30 May 2017
Tournament | |
---|---|
Info | |
Cost | |
Type(s) | Action |
Kingdom card? | Yes |
Set | Cornucopia |
Illustrator(s) | Taylor Bennett |
Card text | |
+1 Action Each player may reveal a Province from his hand. If you do, discard it and gain a Prize (from the Prize pile) or a Duchy, putting it on top of your deck. If no-one else does, +1 Card, +. |
Tournament is an Action card from Cornucopia. In the absence of Provinces, it is a cantrip which also gives +; a reasonable -cost card. If other players reveal Provinces, the card becomes weaker, giving only +1 Action; however, if you have a Province, you can gain a Prize, a unique card which cannot be gained any other way!
Contents |
FAQ
Official FAQ
- First you get +1 Action. Then each player, including you, may reveal a Province card from his hand. Then, if you revealed a Province, discard that card, and you gain a Prize of your choice, or a Duchy, putting whatever card you took on top of your deck.
- If there were no cards in your deck, it becomes the only card in your deck.
- There are five Prizes, set out at the start of the game; see Preparation. You can only take a Prize from the Prize pile.
- You can take any Prize from the Prize pile; you do not have to take the top one.
- You can take a Duchy instead, whether or not the Prizes have run out. You can opt to take a Duchy even if the Duchy pile is empty, or a Prize even if no Prizes are left; in these cases you gain nothing.
- After gaining your card or not, if no other player revealed a Province, you draw a card and get +.
- So this card will play out one of four ways:
- if you do not reveal a Province and no-one else does either, you will get +1 Action +1 Card +;
- if you reveal a Province and no one else does, you will gain a Prize or a Duchy and draw it, as well as get +1 Action +;
- if you reveal a Province and so does someone else, you will get +1 Action and gain a Prize or a Duchy, which will be on top of your deck;
- if you do not reveal a Province but someone else does, you will just get +1 Action.
- When you gain a Prize, take whichever remaining Prize you want. You can look through the Prizes that players have not gained yet whenever you want.
Other Rules clarifications
Strategy Article
Original article by theory.
Without Provinces, Tournament is basically one of those nice cheap non-terminals that (usually) can’t hurt your deck. Not quite as delicious as Caravan, but generally preferable to Spy or Pawn. Lowers the price of Peddler.
Of course, it’s actually worse than all of them in the sense that your Tournaments stop drawing in the late game, but hopefully then you have Provinces and can make up for it by getting Prizes or Duchies. The problem I see is that people tend to forget that the risk of a parried Tournament is only worth however much value you can extract out of Prizes and Duchies. Winning a Tournament doesn’t in and of itself do much for you; in the late game, I’ve seen the Prizes and Duchies all run out, and then your Tournaments are basically just empty cards. So overinvesting in Tournaments is not such a great idea.
So how do you get Prizes? First, get a Province, ASAP. Then, draw it with your Tournament, ASAP. Behind this facetious tautology lurks two actual nuggets of advice: first, the fastest way to activate a Tournament may not be to open Tournament. It’s easy to buy a Tournament later on, when you need it; it’s not so easy to vault yourself up to Province so quickly. Cards like Moneylender, Militia, Baron, Smithy can all help you get to prematurely; Tournament does not.
And second, you better have some draw set up, or at least heavy trashing, or else you might get the Province first but the Prizes last. Draw differs from trashing in that heavy trashing tends to lead to Tournament-parrying all around; it is much more likely your opponent also has a Province in his 5-card hand if he has been trashing heavily than if he relies on a draw strategy. With enough draw, you can actually use the same Province multiple times; this ordinarily comes in Tactician games where you can repeatedly fish for Prizes with the same Province and drain them before your opponent has a chance at one.
Incidentally, this also suggests that you should not bother when you are getting swamped with Curses. Passing up Mountebank for the Tournament race is not a good idea; even if you get to the Province, you will never, ever get to draw them together.
You should also keep in mind the dynamic of the game. In Province games, your first Prize isn’t going to come until you’ve probably got one or two Provinces, and your opponent probably has one or two as well. This is the stage of the game where people stop improving their deck and start buying green cards. With rare exceptions, do not view Prizes as components of an upcoming engine, but rather as a final helper along the way as you stagger to the finish line. Many times I have seen a player activate his Tournament with only two Provinces left and take a Prize that does little good for him, only to lose by the Duchies his opponent has taken in lieu of Prizes. Prizes don’t score: green does.
As far as Colony games go, in a fast-paced game I tend to just skip the Provinces and take the brunt of the Prizes. This is especially true if my fast-paced deck is due to factors that do not contribute to Tournaments: Venture/Loan/Bank really isn’t going to benefit much from a Tournament, and nor would it be likely to trigger one any time soon. On the other hand, in slower games, and in mega-draw games, I’m happy to pick up a Province on the way. This is because the dynamic is totally different; in Province games, as mentioned earlier, you’re probably already in green mode by the time you get Prizes. In Colony games, your deck is still improving, which allows for you to build your deck around Diadem, or boost your deck with multiple buys from Princess.
Synergies/Combos
- Big draw or heavy trashing
- Conspirator
- Envoy, but only in an engine
- Militia may make the opponent choose between discarding a Province or another card
- Fairgrounds, Menagerie, Harvest like variety
- Opponents' Rabbles, Fortune Tellers actually help you in the late-game
Antisynergies
Alternate versions
Digital version for Dominion Online
German Version by HiG
German Version by ASS
Trivia
In other languages
- Czech: Turnaj
- Dutch: Toernooi
- Finnish: Turnajaiset
- French: Tournoi
- German: Turnier
- HiG translation error : "You may discard a province from your hand. If ... Every other player may reveal a province from his hand. If ..."
- ASS translation error : "All players may discard a province."
- Italian: Torneo
- Japanese: 馬上槍試合 (pron. bajōyarijiai)
- Polish: Turniej Rycerski (lit. knights' tournament)
- Russian: Турнир (pron. turnir)
- Spanish: Torneo
Secret History
It had a certain charm, but was a dud for some people. The problem was, a lot of the time, it was Smithy. It just didn't play differently enough from Smithy to be interesting. So it left Prosperity and was consigned to the limbo of promising ideas to work on later.
When I started working on Cornucopia, I tried it again, as something that fit the hand theme. The dull part was the card-drawing, so I had to replace that. The version I tried cost , and was, "Each player may reveal a Province card from his hand. If you do, gain a Treasure. If no-one else does, gain an Action card." It's fun to just say "gain an Action card," no qualifiers, but it doesn't work. We played one game with this and Possession. I got six Possessions and lost. Possession was typically not as good as Workshop, as everyone crammed their decks full of VP cards. Another insane thing was using it to gain copies of itself and Golems, then using the Golems to dig it up and do this more. You would have turns where you gained a pile of cards and then played them all. Anyway these games are fun once, but that's that. I killed the card again.
So a while later, I was working on the set, and realized I could push variety by actually adding more cards to the game. I had cards that cared if you had variety, and some cards helped you get that variety, but nothing increased the total amount of variety possible.
The first thing to try was a Black Market variant. Black Market came up a lot as a card that was cool with this expansion. Why not make a new one? And I could fix all of the problems Black Market had. Instead of buying a card in your Action phase, it would gain you a card directly. Instead of having to build a Black Market Deck, it would just come with one pre-built. Then that deck could be new cards, which was nice too, especially for a small expansion, although it could only be five cards, because that's how much space there was.
Tournament's Province-revealing mechanic was perfect for this. And so it came to pass. I made a Black Market variant, that came with the cards you gained from it, that gained you the cards directly, via revealing a Province. There were still some things to work out though.
You got your Prize for revealing Province yourself, so that it wouldn't happen right away, and it went on your deck, so you'd draw it before the game was over. What did you get if they didn't stop you? At first it was a Silver, which was obviously bad. Steve Wampler suggested that it be something involving drawing a card, so that you'd get your Prize that turn if you had Province and no-one else did. I went with Peddler - +1 Action +1 Card +. That had the problem though of, if someone revealed Province, you didn't get +1 Action, and couldn't play another card. You'd have turns where you stared at your hand, deciding whether or not to risk playing Tournament. That was no fun, so, you always get the +1 Action.
Another thing was the booby prize. Originally it was Silver. That was unimpressive, but was there for a bit before turning into Duchy.