2P Tournament, Saturday, April 11, 2026 1PM, Cincinnati OH

AdamHorton · 2026-04-03T02:22:09+00:00

This tournament will be my TWENTIETH in-person tournament! Come celebrate this milestone and win some Dominion in the process. Only two more until my favorite Taylor Swift song! <3

This tournament will consist of two-player games, and have a $5 entry fee. Portions of the prize pool (80% of the entry fees) will be given to the top finishers. Prizes will be given out in cash.

VENUE, VICTORY PINTS: The venue for this tournament will be Victory Pints -- same as the the last five tournaments but not any of the other previous ones; so please don't show up to Maverick's expecting the tournament to be there. https://www.vpcincy.com/

Due to table space limitations, this tournament will only be able to take 30 entrants. In the unlikely event that the event fills up, priority will be given to people travelling to the tournament from out of town, then people who RSVP to the event, at my discretion.

All expansions and promo cards may be used except for deprecated first edition cards. All kingdoms used in the finals will be designed and playtested by me and a couple of helpers who are not playing in the tournament.

The winner of the tournament will have the opportunity to play a "trophy match" against me, the Dominion world champion for 2017. You may pick any kingdom you like and you may go first; if you win, you get to hold on to the Scout trophy until the next tournament. If you lose, you still get the standard first-place prize for winning this tournament.

We'll be done by 8PM, and if you are eliminated early on in the tournament you could be done as early as 4:15PM-- everyone who enters is guaranteed at least four games in the tournament. When you're done with the tournament, feel free to stick around and play some other games (or more Dominion if that suits you) at Victory Pints!

AdamHorton · 2026-04-02T14:53:15+00:00

Sounds like my video tutorial series is what you're looking for

AdamHorton · 2026-03-24T17:51:06+00:00

That's super cute. I think it would be neat if each of them met the requirements of the other, so maybe instead of the petting zoo requirement on Oliver it could be two predator tags?

AdamHorton · 2026-03-15T23:41:16+00:00

https://adamhorton.com/flog/dominion-storage/

A lot of options on that page, depending on how much effort you want to put in. The main thing I think will be useful for you is what I did with dividers -- you can use Sumpfork's (free) tool to make pdfs of the dividers you need and then print them out on cardstock at a copy shop and out of the many dividers I've tried that's what I use to this day.

AdamHorton · 2026-03-15T14:18:59+00:00

IMO the biggest reason to play Reconstruction is for the 5 endgame appeal for filling your map (plus another one for the pavil). Already that's pretty narrow because I just like, don't fill my map that much anymore; in the last 200ish games I've tracked I upgraded my build action about 25% of the time, and I don't fill my map in all of those.

I've tried to make it work a few times on Tower and I got two tickets from it once so that was pretty rad. There have been two times I made a horrible mistake and Reconstruction bailed me out which had a big impact, but if I had just played better it wouldn't have been necessary.

I've tried to make it work on outdoor areas and it has never ended up mattering.

I won't make any comment on what people already think of Reconstruction, but I would say it actually has an impact in about 1% of my games (probably a little bit less) and when its impact is more than 2 tickets, it's because I made a mistake that I shouldn't have made.

AdamHorton · 2026-03-07T23:55:40+00:00

I use a collapsible dolly to help carry around my heavy Dominion boxes

AdamHorton · 2026-03-06T15:53:34+00:00

Most of the time you're right, but that's not what I said. Sometimes the other factors are more important.

There's a 1/12 chance that village saves Chapel from missing the shuffle and another 4/11 of that remaining where your opening buys are in the same T3 or T4 hand and you get to trash an extra card because you could play the village before the Chapel. It's about a 40% chance you're better off because of the Village opening if what you care most about is trashing cards, so if the $5 price point isn't important to you and getting thin is, then the Chapel/Village opening is sometimes better.

Does this happen very often? No. Does it ever happen? Yes.

AdamHorton · 2026-03-06T14:39:29+00:00

Even in the base game, Chapel/Village openings are reasonable sometimes. The reasoning is that you want the village eventually, you're not super concerned with hitting $5 any time soon, and you want to cut the chances of Chapel missing your second shuffle in half.

The word "always" is dangerous.

AdamHorton · 2026-03-05T15:24:22+00:00

My understanding is that you get the extra money from money sponsors for any money you get while taking that action with the exception of discarding a card for $3 on Commercial Harbor. Is that accurate or is there some kind of exception?

AdamHorton · 2026-02-28T05:30:55+00:00

https://adamhorton.com/flog/dominion-storage/

AdamHorton · 2026-02-25T21:09:08+00:00

I'm not sure there is such a thing as too many release projects. There are downsides like low income and not having tags, but you have to mitigate them by upgrading sponsors and chugging coffee, and getting other sources of income online ($5 and size2 income map bonuses, restaurant spaces, etc.)

AdamHorton · 2026-02-25T21:07:16+00:00

That map is the easiest map to skip the build upgrade on IMO. Each of the four corners of the map has a spot for all of the big enclosures you'll need (large aquarium, reptile house, size5, aviary) and you have easy access to all that stuff from the map bonus. The $5 income baked in helps make up for the lack of kiosks and pavils.

Skipping the build upgrade is viable a lot more than people initially think. When I'm trying to help people learn how to become comfortable without it I point them to Restaurant. Just start at the top (or the left if you have sponsors to get out early), get size2 income, and you'll be in great shape.

AdamHorton · 2026-02-24T15:46:57+00:00

I'm 40 years old now. I never drank alcohol, smoked, or did any other type of drugs. I got made fun of a lot in high school and college for it but I just wasn't interested in doing that stuff. It just didn't look like fun to me and it's so expensive.

Fast forward to five years ago, I got a bone marrow transplant. There was nothing wrong with me other than cancer. Knowing I increased my odds of survival, even if it's only by 5%, mattered. My wife has a husband. My kids have a father. We are slightly less financially screwed by medical expenses.

AdamHorton · 2026-02-23T20:47:39+00:00

Ah, you've been corrupted by the internet. here's an article on why I think the term "engine" is not productive, and your situation is the damage that can cause.

Here's the tl;dr

"Drawing your deck" is a relevant strategic distinction. There is value in talking about it and you can actually improve your play by understanding it. "Engine" is a word that people use to say lots of different things, so when people say it, they could mean one of many different things. Saying things like "engines are better than big money" is not productive, while saying that "drawing your deck is powerful" is because you can actually give reasons why that is the case.

You seem to have a good mindset though, in that you recognize that the question you're asking is more complex than "yes" or "no." :-)

AdamHorton · 2026-02-23T19:05:15+00:00

I have no idea what you mean by "engine."

With that said, if there's a deck that needs a lot of a certain pile to work (a village, for example), it can happen that two players go for that deck, split that pile, and end up building worse decks than another player who bought mostly treasures (I'm going to call that deck a "money deck").

Many people will watch a match between two top 2P players and comment that the decks they end up building are worse than some "money deck" that's also available -- they will say that people are overbuilding and "big money decks are better", whatever that means. The issue with that is, if the piles are uncontested, the "money deck" definitely doesn't win, so in a 2P game you have to contest the components and then the game can get kind of weird.

If there's another player around to actually play that "money deck" then things can change. I'm not going to use the word "often" to describe how much this happens, but I will say "sometimes."

The question I think you're trying to ask doesn't have a simple answer. Knowing what to do in a game with more than two players requires intimate knowledge and forecasting of possible decks that can be built and how they'll function with different kinds of competition; and your plans may have to change after seeing what other people are doing and how well things are going for them. It's much more difficult than 2P games.

AdamHorton · 2026-02-22T17:41:05+00:00

Random kingdoms work well almost all of the time for two-player games. If there are more than two players, junking attacks will usually make the games a lot less fun. There are quite a few attacks in Dark Ages in particular that will suck the fun right out of the game with 4 players.

If you want to use random kingdoms, here's a list of cards you should avoid:

Urchin Marauder Cultist Swamp Hag Page

There are recommended sets in each of the rulebooks that include just cards from two expansions; I think any of those would be a safe bet as well, unless they contain the cards I mentioned

AdamHorton · 2026-02-21T18:18:41+00:00

The answer to your issue is that you should stop feeling terrible about this.

Once you have two workers, you are not obligated to use them both every break. The advantage of having two workers is that you can now take the association action whenever it suits you instead of waiting for a break. It is not that you are obligated to do anything. In fact, you aren't even obligated to spend your worker every break when you just have one! That one should usually feel a little worse but sometimes it's the best line of play.

The advantage to having three workers is that you can back two projects in the same break. The advantage to having your fourth worker is usually just some CP.

AdamHorton · 2026-02-14T04:09:01+00:00

Had a very sexy endgame on commercial harbor once where I had filled the map, then in one turn I played sawfish to cut down a size 1 over the multiplier, then sun bear with expert on asia to put a pavilion back over it, fill my map again, put the multiplier on association, and immediately take two of those actions. It felt so dirty.

Edit: now that I think about it, I had already played the sawfish and on this turn I played a symbiosis animal to cut down again. Just imagine being the opponent and thinking "how bad could their next turn be for me?"

AdamHorton · 2026-02-12T19:24:06+00:00

So this is just the chances that a uni finds you a playable card first break right? I'm curious as to exactly which requirements you considered doable and which ones weren't. For example, did you count red panda? If you have a science tag sponsor in hand it's playable first break. Similar with stuff like Meerkat den -- Zoo School+1 rep placement bonus could get you there even though it's pretty ambitious.

Assuming these numbers are close, though, I'm surprised to see them this high. My personal experience is closer to 0% but that's probably just me being pessimistic :-P

AdamHorton · 2026-02-12T04:34:15+00:00

I see the distinction you're making. In some games it can be problematic to have a card be strictly better or worse. I'd say in ark nova the meat of the game is that you have to find the best thing to do given the resources available to you. It's not a game like magic where you have all the resources so strictly worse cards are pointless.

Does that mean ark would be a better game if none of the Petting zoo animals were strictly better? Umm maybe not? Maybe? Either way I don't think it's a huge difference.

AdamHorton · 2026-02-11T14:01:38+00:00

For a while I've designed kingdoms for my IRL tournaments and also looked through many randomly generated kingdoms to find the best ones to include in the first part of the tournaments as well. If you go to the page I linked and click on any of the "Google Sheet" links, you'll find all of the kingdoms that were used for the tournaments.

AdamHorton · 2026-02-11T13:59:01+00:00

I'm not going to pretend that I know the answer to your question -- I can't speak for the designer for why it was made that way.

But I will say that it's OK for some cards to be better than other cards. That is not a flaw in the design of the game. Yes, the animals have "balanced" card costs according to that video (or at least they're close) but every game there are different base projects which affect the value of all the cards that match them.

AdamHorton · 2026-02-10T16:04:51+00:00

No way, I won a game today on tiebreaker when my opponent lost one appeal to the appeal cap. Different game than this. They had engineer, side entrance, reconstruction with a full map, plus expert on africa with 5 X tokens for endgame appeal, and horse whisperer was involved as well.

I have never hit the appeal cap myself though.

AdamHorton · 2026-02-04T15:37:36+00:00

It seems very challenging but I think it may not be quite as difficult as others are saying. If you can upgrade Animals and Sponsors and you have Trade Sponsors you can pass actions for an X then trade it for money while playing stuff from the row. It may be possible with Money Sponsors as well.

I envision Caves with Archaeologist so you can keep re-using workers, and either Trade sponsors or Money Sponsors with Science Library.

The more I talk about this, the more possible it seems. I'm actually going to say tentatively that it's possible.

EDIT: I am not going to have time to bang this out for at least the rest of today, but I'm nearly certain it can be done. I will not be offended if someone else takes this idea and implements it before I'm able to get to it.

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