User:Ospond

Hi, I'm ospond. I'm relatively active on the Dominion Discord (as of November 2019). In the past, I have played in the Dominion League. Discord is the best way to reach me.

Interview: I was interviewed as one of the quarterfinalists in the 2019 Dominion Online championship. You can find the interview here (text form) or here (audio).

Username origin: My username is randomly generated by one of those fictional-character-name-generator websites.

Favorite cards: Cathedral, Scholar, Fortress, Faithful Hound, Donate, Apprentice, City Quarter, Secret Passage, Counting House, Mission, Capital, Keep, Mountain Pass, Wall, Fountain, Lackeys, Patron, Scepter, Fleet, Capitalism.

In general, I like cards that are conceptually simple, but provide interesting gameplay, yield unexpected combos and deck builds, or warp the game entirely. Such cards might be strong (e.g. Cathedral, Fortress, City Quarter), or they might be usually weak (e.g. Counting House, Capital, Fleet), but the common theme is that the card can be read and understood in seconds, yet it changes how you think about the game, and invites you to build an entirely different kind of deck. Every card above interacts with the board in its own unique way, rather than reducing to a certain category like non-terminal draw, village, or alt-VP.

I usually dislike cards that combine too many unrelated effects or are overly complicated. Squire is a good example: it's +1 coin, +2 actions; or it's +1 coin, +2 buy; or it's a silver gainer; or it's a card that you trash for an attack. Too hard to understand when you first read it, and in most cases the card would play similarly with 1 or 2 fewer effects. Similarly, Fool's Gold just doesn't need that reaction, and Tax just doesn't need to add 1 debt to everything on setup. The worst offenders might be Peasant and Page. So many intermediate cards that you have to understand and build your strategy around, when the only reason you're really buying it is for the effect at the end (or near the end, in the case of Disciple).

Speaking of overcomplicated cards, Apprentice really doesn't need that clause about $P. Although I like the card, it could have been even better.

Favorite deck archetypes: Draw-to-X engines and combo decks.