Dominion Seaside - I was wrong

I spent some time this weekend making a nice set of Chips for Dominion Seaside.

And then spent a couple games exploring just the Seaside action cards.

Okay, I was wrong.  It's actually quite the interesting expansion.  The duration cards add some flavor and uniqueness to the expansion.

The idea of a duration card is that it sticks around for one extra turn.  Most of them are worded something like:

Now and Next Turn: +$2

So you get $2 and $2 next turn.  Now, before someone goes, "that's better than a gold"!  No, no it's not by a long shot.  Why?  Because you want to have critical turns in Dominion.  You are unlikely to ever reach a point when you can draw $8 every turn.  In fact, you'll probably never hit a point you draw $7 every turn (although this stuff is possible with a tiny chapel deck.)

What you'll probably do is end averaging $6 per turn.  But $6 isn't enough to get a Province.  But you're only getting an AVERAGE $6 per turn.  In reality you're probably alternating having a $4 turn followed by a $8 turn.  You want that streak-ness.   And to get it, it's always better to have Gold.  Why?  Because that's going to clump $3 of buying power into a single turn.


So why all this rambling?  Because I'm trying to point out the weakness of duration cards.  Duration cards spread their power over a couple turns.  They help you have a couple *slightly* above average turns instead of an explosive turn followed by a boring turn.  Unfortunately that means you might be reaching $7 two turns in a row instead of $6 one turn and $8 the next.

Even so, the Duration cards are fairly priced.  The Caravan is a Laboratory spread over two turns, and it costs $4 to the Laboratory's $5.  The jump form $4 to $5 is quite large in cost (See the rational for the "Feast" card) so you can see that the Laboratory isn't nearly as powerful when it's spread over two turns.  But then again, the Caravan doesn't cost as much.


And then the obvious glitch, that if you hit a reshuffle with the Caravan in play then it's going to sit out on one cycle of your deck.

Anyway, if you get a chance to try Seaside, I highly recommend it.