C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

I prepared for this year's tournament more meticulously than any before, but got a worse outcome than ever before. Contestants: I hear you, I understand exactly what caused this, I have a plan to fix it, and it will never happen again. Previously, I have never had such space constraints that I would have to make it clear to the programming team that my event needed tables empty for an hour beforehand to set up the tournament. That was my downfall.

The sign-up sheet was almost full. The tournament was scheduled to start at 4PM. I was scheduled to be in the Penguicon Board of Directors meeting from 3 to 4 PM, so I got some minions to set up the tournament. I gave them setup instruction sheets and one pre-assembled material packet per table. Unfortunately, there was a presentation going on in the Private Dining during that hour, so all the tables were full of gamers. My minions are kind-hearted and would never kick gamers out of the only places available to play. Due to space constraints, they would effectively close down the entire game room, end all the games in progress, and kick pretty much everybody out. I was the only one assertive enough to do that, and I was in a meeting.

As a result, setup did not take place, and the tournament started almost an hour late in a huge panicky disorganized rush, while the room was crowded with contestants. A lot of our signed-up players walked out during this time, meaning we had to re-organize the seating chart, and it took even longer. There were some setup errors, so some games had cards in them which I did not intend, resulting in extremely slow and/or swingy games.

How to fix it:

1. A sign on each table at the start of the day, saying "Please be done with games on this table by 3PM, to allow for Dominion tournament setup".
2. Do not accept being scheduled to do something else during setup.

Congratulations to the winner, Mike Riverso! He jotted his contact info and shipping address on Evernote on my phone. As soon as he left, it gave me a "java.io.IO" error and lost his information. I put up a sign in the lobby, and he sent me his info through email, so all's well that ends well. He will receive a copy of the new Dominion expansion, "Guilds", in about a month when it is published.

New things that went well:

Penguicon's new Dominion collection. The convention now owns two copies of every Dominion product, so we had enough cards. With thirty-two players and eight simultaneous games, it was the largest Penguicon Dominion tournament ever, so we needed it!

Using a megaphone. No more shouting myself hoarse.

I ordered plenty of "Estate" "Duchy" and "Province" ribbons to hand them out to each contestant. I have next year's supply already.

Councilroom.com is a fan site for the card game Dominion that analyzes statistics from logs of all games played online at dominion.isotropic.org.

They put out the call for some graphics, and I have begun to submit some! For instance, I made the favicon which you can see in the title bar, depending on which browser you use.

I am sending them a lot of unlockable achievement badges, which they are gradually programming into the system. For instance, if you look at the player page about "theory" (who is one of the best players), you will see which awards he has so far under the "Goals" section. And here is my player page. Hover the mouse over a badge to see what it is for.

Have fun playing around with the interactive graphs.

In other news, Dominion itself is unlocking some achievements, so to speak! It has sold more than a million copies. Congratulations to DXV! (That's Donald X Vaccarino.) A half-size expansion titled "Dominion: Cornucopia" is soon to be released, as well as a large expansion late in 2011, and another promo card to be distributed at game cons. From the promotional text to "Cornucopia":

It adds 13 new Kingdom cards to Dominion, plus 5 unique cards. The central theme is variety; there are cards that reward you for having a variety of cards in your deck, in your hand, and in play, as well cards that help you get that variety.

I guess that prevents me from releasing my Trevor Jagoda Penguicon card, as a Victory card worth 1 VP for every two differently-named cards in your deck at the end of the game. Something like that is bound to be in Cornucopia.

Speculation is rife as to what DXV means by "unique card". He is secretive as usual. Perhaps each game you play with Cornucopia will include only one copy of each Unique! Or, perhaps it introduces variable player powers because each type of Unique would only be purchasable by one player per game. As usual, we'll keep arguing about it until the rulebook is finally released.

In an act of amazing and utter coolness, Rio Grande Games has re-iterated their friendly policy toward fan cards. In so doing, they also asked fan creators help them out, by formulating the name "[My Expansion Name], a Fan Expansion for Dominion" and avoid the formulation "Dominion: [My Expansion Name]" which is reserved for official expansions. This is to prevent confusion. My original three disclaimers still apply as well.

This card can make draw piles as open as the recipe for the OpenSoda that Penguicon serves in the ConSuite. Your deck remains face-up, even after you shuffle it. The only way to get it face-down again is to play another OpenSoda. But you can only use each copy of OpenSoda once, and it will throw itself out of the game. There are only ten copies in the supply.

Sometimes you want to know "Should I play this card which will draw the next card in my deck?" Well, with OpenSoda, you can put your draw pile face-up. Now you're drawing from what used to be on the bottom, and you will always see what's next.

At other times, you have a deck-inspection attack like Pirate Ship, Thief, Swindler, or Saboteur, and you're wondering whether it's worthwhile to play it. If you play OpenSoda against everyone else's decks, you can see if they have some delectable goodies on top, just waiting for your destruction. If someone else does that to you, you can play OpenSoda to put your deck back face down.

I wanted to see if I could design a card that would actually motivate players to buy Curses (a negative one victory point card, which doesn't do anything). Normally no one buys Curses. They exist only to inflict on other people. Kimba's "+1 Buy" lets you buy an extra card on the turn you play it. I'll bet you'll use that Buy to get a Curse card, which only costs zero dollars. This card uses Curses as an incredibly powerful fuel. The question is, can you get rid of them by the end of the game?

Say what you want about Kimba, she did some things that we don't have anymore, in ways that sometimes went unnoticed. This card is useful too-- if you bite the bullet, make the hard choices, and accept the damage of Curses to your deck. I dare you!

They say each good Dominion card tells a little story. The story is about what the card does in the start of the game, what it does in the midgame, and what it does in the endgame. Let's just say the Kimba card had too much of a story on it. I just couldn't fit all the effects I wanted to have. At one point I had Kimba trashing everyone else's Potion cards, because she's a teetotaler. And so on. I was doing too much with one card. So I split some of the effects to their own cards. Like this one:

This card will throw itself out of the game at the absolute last minute. (Perhaps even at one AM on the morning of the convention.) Everybody's holding onto their copies of this, holding out hope, because the earlier you play it, the less it's worth. Finally someone will throw one in the trash to get rid of Gold or Platinum from their opponents. (Canceled plane tickets.) Then all of a sudden everybody is trashing Hhhhhhwil Hhhhhhhwheaton. It's like an extravaganza of Hhwheaton-trashing.

Keep in mind that the trashing effect happens when your card gets trashed for any reason, not just when the card trashes itself. If someone hits your Hhwil with Thief or Saboteur, it attacks everyone other than you even though it's not your turn.

I didn't have the heart to put this person on the card. Suffice it to say that when you take on a job and are never heard from again, it is vitally important that we at least get one message from you, acknowledging that you got our email firing you. Otherwise, no one else is able to do your job, because they don't know what arrangements you might be making behind the scenes.

Last night, playing Dominion with Eric and Rob, I scored 78 points in one turn! To call this a personal best is an understatement. A six-point turn is considered a lot.

( How is it possible? )

It is time-consuming for me to draw women, and I am never satisfied. In the meantime, here are some more men.

The disclaimers still apply.


Every card in this stack is different. You never know what ConSuite is serving right now. But there's always free beer!

Like ConSuite, this card is always a surprisingly good deal for the price. But you have to ask yourself whether it's worth taking that deal to give the next awesome deal to another player. Do they need treasure? Or victory points? And most importantly, did you see the high numbers already come out?

Because some of the cards are Victory, I declare this a Victory Point stack and therefore there are 12 with at least 3 players. In a 2-player game, remove the 5-coin, and the 5/6/7 victory point cards.


I hope you like math. This is the card of squares. Let's say you play one of these in one turn. You have $1 to spend. Two are $4 total, three are $9 total, four are $16 total.

During playtesting we found out this really should be priced at $3, because it's so often worth less than a Silver. So I added victory points. Five of these are worth 25 total victory points at game end. If the other players are foolish enough to let you buy them all, you have a hundred and forty-four points. So they should buy just one which will not do much for them. As a victory card, there are 12 in the supply, but 8 in a 2-player game.


Soon you will see why Sal's "two bottles at a time" power is useful. (Other than buying up the Vineyards and Transmutes.) As soon as I get done drawing it. But after that, no more group portraits!

For more Penguicon cards, continue to part three!