Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: dominator 123 on January 28, 2018, 08:47:49 am
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Possession Alternative $6P
Action-Duration
At the start of your next turn, +1 Buy.
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While you have a Possession Alternative in play:
When another player gains a non-victory card, you may gain a copy of it.
When another player ends their buy phase, they reveal their hand. Take a coin token per Treasure they revealed and remaining unspent coin.
So Possession has many problems:
1. It is unfun (to watch people use your deck, especially multiple times)
2. It can be swingy
3. Can be political in multiplayer
3. Too many wonky rules interactions, especially in newer sets
Thinking about these problems, I tried to make a card similar to Possession without having the above problems. What Possession does is to take an extra turn out of your opponent's deck. Following that, I tried to simulate that by giving you what you could've gotten out of your opponent's turn.
So I ended up with gaining a copy of whatever your opponent gained. To make the game not a complete deadlock, I disallowed gaining victory cards, as well as wording the bottom part to make it unstackable. To disallow opponents from evading it completely, I added the bottom clause to discourage such behaviour.
I needed it to do something on the next turn to make the card work (like with Swamp Hag, Haunted Woods, Enchantress), so I decided to give +1 buy to go with the extra coins amassed.
This scales in multiplayer, but I think it's better to affect all opponents equally to make it less political.
I haven't tested this and I believe there are ways to improve this, please give suggestions if you have any.
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I think I disagree with the assessment of Possession's problems. Possession is a rule nightmare, but its main problem is that it stacks. The "watch people use your deck" part is great fun.
Your Possession scales really powerfully (what other card is twice as good with three players, thrice as good with four?), and the "antistack" clause doesn't actually work, because the below-the-line effects stack (compare with Highway). You could say "while you have exactly one...."
In addition, you need to specify "when another player gains a nonvictory card during their turn, blah blah". Otherwise two players having Possession Alternative in play will drain any pile.
Also notice that you can still easily circumvent the antideadlock clause by trashing or discarding your treasures. Such an easily circumventable barrier might not be worth the extra complexity.
For me personally, Possession's attractiveness comes from the fun of Possessing people. A number of Smuggler variants can simulate that, and some very interesting ones have been proposed on these boards, but I want to Possess people, so they won't ever do it for me.
My favourite Possession fix is LastFootnote's no-nonsense "once-per-turn, may-not-trash" version:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=9978.msg703107#msg703107
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It's an interesting idea. It motivates your opponent to buy cards only he wants. You could be more heavy handed and force the player to play the treasures at the end of their turn, rather than making Bank and Silver both worth 1 coin token to avoid rules questions. The opponent will still be able to play Counterfeit and choose not to double anything, etc, but you milk more out that way.
Acca is correct that you definitely want this to say "the player to your left".
The price can probably be much lower if you want to keep the non-victory restriction, but it makes sense to use Possession's price as a starting point.
I've posted a modified Possession that takes a different angle, it's still on the front page of Variants if you want to go look at it.
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To be honest, I dislike your "Possession Alternative" more than the normal possession. Reasons...
1. It scales so heavily with the number of players. For example, with two players this card seems pretty weak.
2. It doesn't help you with getting double provinces as much. Sure netting two provinces with possession changes a lot with your left opponent's deck and draw. But I feel your coin token gain idea is weaker and less consistent. But the two province factor is needed since you're pretty much missing out on a province when buying for a possession.
3. It's actually fun and unique to play possession, I would just say let mean cards be mean you don't have to play with it. Also, I would call the take a second turn part being much more mean then using other players decks, sure you could lose a "FIRE" hand and/or get your deck order messed up but that doesn't seem as bad to me most of the time.
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To be honest, I dislike your "Possession Alternative" more than the normal possession. Reasons...
1. It scales so heavily with the number of players. For example, with two players this card seems pretty weak.
2. It doesn't help you with getting double provinces as much. Sure netting two provinces with possession changes a lot with your left opponent's deck and draw. But I feel your coin token gain idea is weaker and less consistent. But the two province factor is needed since you're pretty much missing out on a province when buying for a possession.
3. It's actually fun and unique to play possession, I would just say let mean cards be mean you don't have to play with it. Also, I would call the take a second turn part being much more mean then using other players decks, sure you could lose a "FIRE" hand and/or get your deck order messed up but that doesn't seem as bad to me most of the time.
I like Coppersmith better than Rebuild but Rebuild has the distinct advantage of not being banned out of almost everything.