Your redesign of Philosopher's Stone is arguably worse than the original. Yes, a theme of Alchemy is chaining Actions, but that's (partially) because Donald didn't want to have potion cards be awful on their own, and so he made sure you always want several of them. For your Philosopher's Stone redesign, the card actually gets WORSE the more you get of them.
Your redesign of Philosopher's Stone is arguably worse than the original. Yes, a theme of Alchemy is chaining Actions, but that's (partially) because Donald didn't want to have potion cards be awful on their own, and so he made sure you always want several of them. For your Philosopher's Stone redesign, the card actually gets WORSE the more you get of them.
I mean, yes more Pstones make each other worse, but I don't see how you wouldn't want several Pstones on boards where you would want them. It's just treasure payload with a fun effect.
After a quick test I'm trying 1 for every 3 action cards though. Why not get crazy.
What if bureacrat just says gain a gold?
Transmute seems fine now. I kind of want it to say "gain a card costing up to 4P", though. It doesn't matter 90% of the time, but on boards where it does, it helps make up for skipping your Potion buy to get a Transmute in the first place.
Transmute seems fine now. I kind of want it to say "gain a card costing up to 4P", though. It doesn't matter 90% of the time, but on boards where it does, it helps make up for skipping your Potion buy to get a Transmute in the first place.
Dude. Those are the boards where Transmute doesn't even need a boost. What makes Transmute bad is that you have to buy a Potion for it and then your Potion is worthless; two buys and a dead card in your deck for one Transmute. If you're using your Potion to buy other cards, Transmute has a way, way lower opportunity cost. Anyway. It doesn't need to gain Potion-cost cards to "make up" for the buy you used. It makes up for it by turning Estates into Gold.
Transmute seems fine now. I kind of want it to say "gain a card costing up to 4P", though. It doesn't matter 90% of the time, but on boards where it does, it helps make up for skipping your Potion buy to get a Transmute in the first place.
Dude. Those are the boards where Transmute doesn't even need a boost. What makes Transmute bad is that you have to buy a Potion for it and then your Potion is worthless; two buys and a dead card in your deck for one Transmute. If you're using your Potion to buy other cards, Transmute has a way, way lower opportunity cost. Anyway. It doesn't need to gain Potion-cost cards to "make up" for the buy you used. It makes up for it by turning Estates into Gold.
Transmute seems fine now. I kind of want it to say "gain a card costing up to 4P", though. It doesn't matter 90% of the time, but on boards where it does, it helps make up for skipping your Potion buy to get a Transmute in the first place.
Dude. Those are the boards where Transmute doesn't even need a boost. What makes Transmute bad is that you have to buy a Potion for it and then your Potion is worthless; two buys and a dead card in your deck for one Transmute. If you're using your Potion to buy other cards, Transmute has a way, way lower opportunity cost. Anyway. It doesn't need to gain Potion-cost cards to "make up" for the buy you used. It makes up for it by turning Estates into Gold.
Transmute totally needs a boost on those boards, though. Skipping a Scrying Pool to get a Transmute early, for example, is basically conceding the Scrying Pool split. There's basically never a time where it's worth it to get a Transmute right now. I probably won't add the 4P bonus, but that's a really big disadvantage for a fairly marginal gain (unless you collide multiple Estates and Transmutes in a row)
The whole nature of Potion cards is that you can only get one per shuffle, so there's no way to make up for this huge loss in momentum.
(https://i.imgur.com/7hLD69O.jpg)
Scrying Pool may have needed a small nerf, but more importantly it needed to not be so fucking slow in multiplayer! Plus it makes everyone stay around and pay attention and eww, it's long and gross. This helps a little bit. LFN had a similar idea but took out the deck inspection altogether, which I didn't really like.
Edit: I didn't mean to make this a terminal, added +Action
I had a different idea for Scrying pool. Replace spy attack with:
"If this is the first Scrying pool you have played this turn, each other player reveals their hand until the end of your clean-up phase."
It is thematic, doesn't stack, and only needs to be Moated once. The attack is weak, but really, you are buying SP for draw, not attack anyway, so a weak attack is fine.
You are right that Scrying Pool does not need the attack. From what Donald said in the secret history of Alchemy, was that the set needed another attack, and spy got tacked onto SP to provide that attack. Thus, I came up with at attack that doesn't stall the game like the spy attack does.
Well, it's not much more of an attack than "each other player shuffles their deck". There might be cases where it gives a disadvantage, but most of the time it's just an arbitrary effect that serves no purpose. That's to say I think Scrying Pool is better off without it.
"Each other player shuffles their deck" would be an interesting mild attack on a card whose non-attack effect is some kind of deck-stacking (e.g. "Draw 2 extra cards during Clean-up, then put two cards from your hand onto your deck in any order.").You are right that Scrying Pool does not need the attack. From what Donald said in the secret history of Alchemy, was that the set needed another attack, and spy got tacked onto SP to provide that attack. Thus, I came up with at attack that doesn't stall the game like the spy attack does.
Well, it's not much more of an attack than "each other player shuffles their deck". There might be cases where it gives a disadvantage, but most of the time it's just an arbitrary effect that serves no purpose. That's to say I think Scrying Pool is better off without it.
I kinda get the urge to design an Alchemy attack now.
"Each other player shuffles their deck" would be an interesting mild attack on a card whose non-attack effect is some kind of deck-stacking (e.g. "Draw 2 extra cards during Clean-up, then put two cards from your hand onto your deck in any order.").
Knowing what's in your opponent's hand makes all the difference in end game tactics
The player -- is hurt more.
If I were to tweak Sentry, I'd probably try a version that only trashed one card. Maybe only discarded one card too, for simplicity. "Look at the top 2 cards of your deck. You may trash one. You may discard one. Put the rest back in any order." Make it less swingy, you know? If the resulting card was too weak, I'd try "Look at the top 3 cards of your deck…"