Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: Kudasai on May 20, 2018, 12:52:38 am
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[CARDS - RANDOM]
(https://i.imgur.com/XobWQSy.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/CvQLnII.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/pQo4SPj.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/1weRWOM.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/72ldKdZ.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/T3nyXB3.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/QZGC8vx.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/lm4PRJF.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/W5HrSj0.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/YgFlryB.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/zmpbrLo.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/LyCotvt.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/lBehCDo.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/Qeowaeg.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/uNvaCA5.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/idcuCwE.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/9DJC1c5.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/z07LTxr.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/VKBtLzT.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/ibIVlnG.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/xYcy4gK.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/XrObEFt.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/xDKt7Ca.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/omTLrfN.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/LOBIWOs.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/IAd2ZdD.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/IA4Ip5M.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/hOmWCYa.jpg)
[CARDS - COMMANDERS]
(https://i.imgur.com/lXWDYoa.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/QLyM6B0.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/ROghhoD.jpg)
[EVENTS]
(https://i.imgur.com/qliaVyz.jpg)
[LANDMARKS]
(https://i.imgur.com/nIgA7Rp.jpg)
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Army looks horribly broken to me. It's not clear what blockade is trying to do, I reread it three times and I'm still not sure how it's supposed to work, it clearly needs a rewording.
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I like how these are trying to do different things. Most of them look like they have good potential.
Army - there are so many anti-synergies to keep in mind, like Goons then a Reserve, that this won't always be an easy card to play, so many new rules to keep in mind. But when you get it going it can be way too strong, so that it's always the optimal strategy in any kingdom. You lessen the need for +Cards, +Actions, and trashing all at once. I feel this would do with capping the number of Actions you can play at once to say 2 or 3?
Commander - definitely too strong; with just one other nonterminal card played, this does the same as lab, but it will do better than one as the turn progresses. And consider how multiples of this played stack up. So raising the cost I don't think would be enough to balance this. It probably needs a way to make it hard to gain as well.
Oh, and while I think of it, this 'breaks' Tactician.
Heir - volatile; it rewards a condition you want to meet even more. +Buy of course works, but +$3 feels too generous.
Royal Decree - with the current cost you can open with it and it be beneficial early on. On buy you can get $4 from other players' Coppers (note how the number of players affects the strength of this) so make this cost $3 <4>, and the rest of the debt can be paid turn 2. The next shuffle will see it at worst a silver with +Buy, not bad, and much more later on. Or if you first buy a Silver then this, and line then up next shuffle, it's $4 +Buy, which is hard to better.
So it does scale better later, like the other 8 debt cards, but the early advantage may make this too strong.
Out of time right now to look at the others in depth, but Moon Shrine and Slumlord do look interesting and balanced.
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Army looks horribly broken to me. It's not clear what blockade is trying to do, I reread it three times and I'm still not sure how it's supposed to work, it clearly needs a rewording.
Here's how I interpret Blockade: At the start of the game, both players secretly name 3 action cards, and their positions in the deck, i.e. "The 10th lab", "The 3rd Baron". When the 10th lab in the pile is gained or the 3rd baron is, the player gets VP equal to what number card it was. So 10 VP for calling that the labs will empty.
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But you always gamble "Scout" and "0", yes?
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Moon Shrine - thinking about it more, it may be that $3 is too cheap. Nonterminal 2 coffers may make it too similar to a Silver+, so could push the cost to at least $4. Or it could be too easy to buy many moon shrines, stockpile VP on the Provinces and use the coffers to buy them up before the opponent does.
Slumlord - maybe you intend for it to work on Treasures and Nights, maybe you don't. The concept is interesting, the theme fits well, and there's not a lot you can do to balance it other than taking the +Card off, should it need it. This is my favourite.
Stadium - another interesting concept, it's nice how it scales as your deck progresses. If there is a problem with it, perhaps it can be too volatile as a cantrip, many of them in play needing only 1 card in your next hand. But there's no +buy, it could be fine.
Lost Temple - it should be distinguished enough from Steward. Its use of buys may or may not be broken; being a Chapel that can later be a cantrip (or Lost City) may be too strong. Certainly one to test with Seaway.
Industrious Village - it requires treasure trashing or several cantrips to be worthwhile (save the only-Village scenario), things that indirectly benefit the standard Village anyway. It might be fun, or it might be uninteresting, I don't really know.
Blockade - going with Theta's interpretation, I guess you use this according to personal taste. It can be nice to get rewarded for kingdom analysing skills, including the speed of the game, but most times the game can be well defined, and then there isn't much VP difference to be had.
Gamble - what Puk said. But trusting that you mean you only want Kingdom cards to be named, it's an infinite source of VP, so when you can know your next hand you almost always do it. (So I'd encourage a flavour change, when the situation calls for it it's always right to gamble? So yeah, and gambling shouldn't give VP anyway.)
Overall, playtesting will tell a lot about whether the cards are balanced. Maybe you've done some, in which case it'll be good to see what you've found.
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Thank you all for the great comments and feedback (especially Aquila). You have already pointed out a few problematic issues. For the sake of being concise, I'll try and reply to all the comments thus far in one post.
Card Explanations/Personal Thoughts:
Army - I'm still inclined to say this card is not broken or overly powered. It can certainly be powerful late game, but it does take a while to get to that point. Sometimes the very cards in your Army can accomplish the same thing played individually and at a faster pace. Army may take center stage in a lot of games, but some cards are just like that (Tournament, Governor, Chapel, etc). Army at least requires the other Kingdom cards to be involved to work.
Commander - Yes, this card does need a price increase (thinking $6 or $7). Unfortunately this card does lead to an issue with Tactician (good catch Aquila!), but I'm torn if that means I should rework the mechanics for one single card interaction. I could roll this back to a version that required a card to give +Actions in order to draw, but the wording gets a bit funky. Also it is worth noting that 3 Commander cards in play equals the draw of 3 Laboratory cards in play; it's only the 4th Commander played that overcomes Lab.
Heir - I view this as a mini-Dominate type. Dominate is certainly strong, but if you can't build for it fast enough, you're probably better off just Province rushing. I think the same applies to Heir. By the time you get 5 or so Heirs and you're consistently hitting $9, your opponent may have 4-5 Provinces. The payoff has to be good enough to warrant the risk of over-building.
Royal Decree - My thinking is that this has to be strong enough early to warrant an early buy. This then entices people to buy Silver and Gold, which leaves them open to being used by their opponents. If Royal Decree is too weak I don't think anyone would ever buy it given the risk. A cool interaction is leaving a Treasure card in your hand when you buy Royal Decree. If you hit another players Royal Decree you get to then play it three times, otherwise not at all. It's power scaling with more players in unfortunate, but other cards like that exist. I did my best to make the on-buy effect powerful enough on a two player game to warrant to risk of buying it.
Moon Shrine - I think this outshines Silver early, but falls off quickly mid to late game. You can surely pick up an early Province with 2-3 extra VP early, but that's not likely later on when $8 is an easy price point to hit. I don't see a mass Moon Shrine deck working.
Slumlord - Yes, the villainous Slumlord can work with Treasure and Night cards, but effectively ends your Action phase. Better than Throne Room early, but probably falls short late game.
Stadium - Out played by Silver early, but amazing late game with a reliable engine. Definitely needs +Buys to shine. Massing Stadiums also doesn't really work since they anti-synergize.
Lost Temple - Another strong trasher that should be priced higher, but I kept artificially low to ensure every player had a shot to open with it (consider Chapel's cost to power level). The Seaway interactions is making me think it should be $5 though.
Industrious Village - You nailed it! Won't always be great, but when it is, it's really great (maybe that's the definition of swingy though). In my opinion that's the fun of Dominion; trying to figure out what card interactions work and when to go for them.
Blockade - You also nailed this one. It basically rewards players who can see how a board will play out and who are willing to risk high card positions. Of coarse you have to be very careful not to gain your own card, because you will not gain VP points. Also, if two or more players pick the same position/pile, that pile is essentially blocked for those players unless someone wants to give their opponent points. There's a lot of subtly here and I recommend a 10x10 grid chart (for most boards) to keep track of gains and where your card/positions are.
Gamble - Kodos to 'Puk' for pointing out a card flaw in hilarious fashion. This needs to be changed to "Name an Action card and amount of 1 or more". It's reliable early, but giving up $2 at that stage is tough. Even late game in a close match, $2 might not be available, especially since you might whiff. Best in decks with variety. Play testing has found this card to be balanced, but fun is another question. Included it for those players who really enjoy card counting (Yuck!).
Thanks again for the comments and insights. I'll update some of these and post version changes in the comments soon.
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Moon Shrine is good but I'd tweak the vanilla stuff: 2 Coin tokens on a non-terminal card is too good for $3 and potentially also too good for $4.
Slumlord is a great Throne Room variant.
Stadium will probably yield most of the time 2. 3/4 is risky unless you play a thin money deck with a high likelihood of Gold/Province in your hand. So this will mostly be a delayed double Peddler, early in the game with some risk that you have no $4 card in your hand. But even then I think this is pretty / too good for a $4.
I like Lost Temple and the thematic hint at Lost City.
Industrious Village could get away with only caring about your Action cards in play. Not for the sake of balancing but simplicity. At the first glance it looks like a reverse Shanty Town. Often the first Shanty Town you play in a turn is the best one and Shanty Town is pretty bad for draw engines whereas with Industrious Village it seems to be the other way around.
About Old Witch, I love the idea of out-of-deck Curses that land in your deck on some condition (and greening is probably one of the best conditions!). But I would hesitate to put this Attack, or Attacks in general, on an cantrip/Oasis.
Even though it is weaker than ordinary Cursers it still a junker, with the junk coming delayed but all at once. And for a cheap price of $3 it might often be best to open Old Witch/Old Witch.
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Thanks for the comments! It's been fun reading people's thoughts on cards I've spent a lot of time on.
Moon Shrine is good but I'd tweak the vanilla stuff: 2 Coin tokens on a non-terminal card is too good for $3 and potentially also too good for $4.
Certainly powerful for it's cost, but mid to late game it usually turns in to +2 Coffers, one other player takes 1VP, which is a bit weak. Of coarse niche scenarios probably exist.
Stadium will probably yield most of the time 2. 3/4 is risky unless you play a thin money deck with a high likelihood of Gold/Province in your hand. So this will mostly be a delayed double Peddler, early in the game with some risk that you have no $4 card in your hand. But even then I think this is pretty / too good for a $4.
Stadium would actually be stronger at $4 since amassing Stadiums would almost guarantee $2 Coin out of it. Cost $3 slows it down and makes you think hard about how many you want. In my test it's about as good as a Silver overall when no +Buys exist.
I like Lost Temple and the thematic hint at Lost City.
Thanks! Also a reference to Chapel.
About Old Witch, I love the idea of out-of-deck Curses that land in your deck on some condition (and greening is probably one of the best conditions!). But I would hesitate to put this Attack, or Attacks in general, on an cantrip/Oasis.
Even though it is weaker than ordinary Cursers it still a junker, with the junk coming delayed but all at once. And for a cheap price of $3 it might often be best to open Old Witch/Old Witch.
Yeah, this is a tough one. If your opponent opens double Old Witch and you don't, they will surely win the Curse split, but what are they giving up? They won't hit $5 until after their second shuffle; you hopefully will have at least once or twice. I think a strong trasher + Silver opening will beat double Old Witch.
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Going to do some basic play testing on some of the more contentious cards (Moon Shrine, Army, Commander) over the next few days and I'll post results.
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Army - Generally, I think you really only need two cards on your Army mat for this to become overpowered. Even two $2 cost cards could very easily be extremely broken for a $5 cost card. I would nerf it by making it so that the second choice removes a card (of your choice) from your Army mat. After all, Armies hardly ever fight with zero casualties, no?
Moon Shrine - Considering that Night cards are non-terminal, I think that just the +2 Coffers is too strong for a $3-cost card, as it's essentially a slow Silver that gives you its money on any turn you want it to.
Stadium - Just a nitpick, but Stadium should either say "you may reveal a card..." or replace "this for +$1 per Coin token" with "this. If you do, +$1 per Coin token" to be consistent with official cards. This is because the [condition] for [reward] wording always starts the condition with "you may." I recommend the "you may" wording, because otherwise, we have the no accountability problem that Throne Room used to have.
Industrious Village - The condition to trigger +2 Cards seems to difficult for this to cost $4. It's easy to trigger when Duration cards are in use, sure, but most of the time, Duration cards aren't even in the Kingdom, and it's fairly rare to have less than 2 Treasures in hand, which would require Ind. Village to be the 3rd or later Action played for it to trigger.
Old Witch - Since Curse cards can't be trashed when they're set aside, I would actually argue that Old Witch's attack is stronger than just giving Curses. Especially since Old Witch is currently cheap enough that players will be playing them long before players would normally be ready to start greening, so I think Old Witch definitely needs to either be nerfed further or cost $5.
Blockade - As others have said, Blockade definitely needs a rewording; I needed to read it 3 times before I even remotely understood what it was trying to say.
Gamble - If you can get your deck down to 5 cards with at least one Action card and the ability to produce at least $2, you'll be able to get +2VP every turn without gaining any cards, which makes the game go on forever if everybody does it.
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Certainly powerful for it's cost, but mid to late game it usually turns in to +2 Coffers, one other player takes 1VP, which is a bit weak. Of coarse niche scenarios probably exist.
I don't think that you always necessarily gift a VP to the other player. Early you can pick Province if you don't want to make Moon Shrines attractive and in the endgame you can always pick Duchy or Estate.
But even if you did, the other player would do the same for you. So the net effect is that the card can come with some VPs on gain and that it provides 2 Coin tokens on play which is too strong (even though it is like Merchant Guild, i.e. you cannot use the Coin tokens this turn). It is hard to play around with this though, one Coin token is too weak and a conditional amount of Coin tokens, like with Stadium, would make the card too complicated.
Stadium would actually be stronger at $4 since amassing Stadiums would almost guarantee $2 Coin out of it. Cost $3 slows it down and makes you think hard about how many you want. In my test it's about as good as a Silver overall when no +Buys exist.
Thanks for pointing this out, I totally did not see that.
Yeah, this is a tough one. If your opponent opens double Old Witch and you don't, they will surely win the Curse split, but what are they giving up? They won't hit $5 until after their second shuffle; you hopefully will have at least once or twice. I think a strong trasher + Silver opening will beat double Old Witch.
I have my doubts. Assuming that you don't green early buying a Victory card implies that you will have 11 extra dead cards in your deck once you start to green. That's a pretty harsh discontinuity and even good trashers might have a hard time to deal with that.
Again, I think that the idea is brilliant but I would follow the usual rule of not putting an Attack on a non-terminal or cantrip unless there are very good reasons for it (like Urchin being a weak Attack, Familiar being gained late, Relic not-stacking or Idol just being a "half-Attack"). I think it would be "safer" to test it with ordinary vanilla stuff like terminal Silver or putting it on a $5 Silver+ like Relic/Idol.
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Stadium - Just a nitpick, but Stadium should either say "you may reveal a card..." or replace "this for +$1 per Coin token" with "this. If you do, +$1 per Coin token" to be consistent with official cards. This is because the [condition] for [reward] wording always starts the condition with "you may." I recommend the "you may" wording, because otherwise, we have the no accountability problem that Throne Room used to have.
I guess I assumed there would never be a situation where you could have money and not reveal a card to take it. Maybe some weird Storyteller situation where you don't want to draw? Perhaps a card will one day come along where this will matter more. But you're right, best to be official. It's been updated per your recommendation. Thanks for the input!
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I don't think that you always necessarily gift a VP to the other player. Early you can pick Province if you don't want to make Moon Shrines attractive and in the endgame you can always pick Duchy or Estate.
But even if you did, the other player would do the same for you. So the net effect is that the card can come with some VPs on gain and that it provides 2 Coin tokens on play which is too strong (even though it is like Merchant Guild, i.e. you cannot use the Coin tokens this turn). It is hard to play around with this though, one Coin token is too weak and a conditional amount of Coin tokens, like with Stadium, would make the card too complicated.
I have my doubts. Assuming that you don't green early buying a Victory card implies that you will have 11 extra dead cards in your deck once you start to green. That's a pretty harsh discontinuity and even good trashers might have a hard time to deal with that.
Again, I think that the idea is brilliant but I would follow the usual rule of not putting an Attack on a non-terminal or cantrip unless there are very good reasons for it (like Urchin being a weak Attack, Familiar being gained late, Relic not-stacking or Idol just being a "half-Attack"). I think it would be "safer" to test it with ordinary vanilla stuff like terminal Silver or putting it on a $5 Silver+ like Relic/Idol.
I'll be testing both of these soon and post the results. I can only do basic play testing, but it should help shed some light on whether they are just strong or broken. :)
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The new Old Witch is interesting. Self-Milita-ing makes trashing less relevant so this will lead to an interesting decision about when to go heavy for trashers in a mirror match.
Commander is very similar to Sleigh (https://i.imgur.com/HVihIaA.png), a joke card DXV and/or LastFootnote did for Christmas:
While it is easy to argue that the card is broken I think it is worth nothing that Commander only becomes a Lab if you play 2 cards afterwards; the first one retroactively makes Commander into a cantrip. This shouldn't be hard to do in an Action-dense deck but it is probably not as explosive as e.g. City Quarter due to the simple fact that the first Commander played doesn't draw. For the very same reason an engine like Festival+Smithy is less reliable than Village+Smithy.
It seems kind of trivial but the fact that Commander is conditional non-terminal draw matters. So why not give Commander a Debt cost? The current cost seems too high and Debt is justified given that the card, like City Quarter, becomes only good once the density of non-terminals is large enough.
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I'm surprised that Commander hasn't been compared to Pathfinding (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Pathfinding) yet. It seems like mostly a weakened version of Pathfinding.
Disadvantages compared to Pathfinding:
- The +1 card only works if you have any actions remaining after playing the action (though you aren't generally using Pathfinding on a terminal action if you don't have extra Villages anyway).
- The +1 card is after the action, not before. Before is better for most things; after is only better for draw-to-x.
- You have to buy multiple copies, and play it multiple times; as opposed to just buying once and being done.
Advantages:
- Works on more than 1 kingdom pile. Huge advantage to be sure; but I think Pathfinding is already going to make you very likely to draw your deck anyway; so even more draw isn't going to matter as much.
- Potential to stack with multiple in play.
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I don't see Army as being broken or strong at all... it's super weak the times that you choose the first option; costing you an action and 2 cards from your hand.
Compare it to Native Village (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Native_Village)... if anything, I think that Native Village is often stronger. Native Village gives you 2 actions the turn you play it, and only costs 1 card from your hand instead of 2. Also, it gets rid of junk from your deck. Army requires you to remove good cards from your deck in order to get a benefit from it. Army gives you basically unlimited +actions for the turn you pull stuff off your mat, but a handful of Native Villages works just as well.
*Edit* Oh, I totally missed the "leaving them there" part. That makes it quite different. No idea how to judge the power, then. I guess it works kind of like Pirate Ship or Miser; quite weak the first several times you play it, but then possibly super strong after that.
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While it is easy to argue that the card is broken I think it is worth nothing that Commander only becomes a Lab if you play 2 cards afterwards; the first one retroactively makes Commander into a cantrip.
No, Commander by itself is a cantrip; as it is in play when you finish resolving Commander.
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While it is easy to argue that the card is broken I think it is worth nothing that Commander only becomes a Lab if you play 2 cards afterwards; the first one retroactively makes Commander into a cantrip.
No, Commander by itself is a cantrip; as it is in play when you finish resolving Commander.
Thanks, I missed that. Now it seems fair to say that this is too strong, respectively, as you pointed out, too expensive to be bought en masse and thus comparing unfavourably to Pathfinding (although Pathfinding is a bit weaker if you play multiplayer or with Cornucopia or Cornucopia 2.0 aka Nocturne cards).
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The new Old Witch is interesting. Self-Milita-ing makes trashing less relevant so this will lead to an interesting decision about when to go heavy for trashers in a mirror match.
Haha, the "New" Old Witch. Interesting wording. Yes, discarding 2 cards seems to be more in-line with two of my goals with the card. If you go early Old Witch (or double Old Witch), your ability to (1) trash and (2) hit $4 and $5 reliably are both diminished early game. It seems a fair trade off for early cursing and cycling.
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No idea how to judge the power, then. I guess it works kind of like Pirate Ship or Miser; quite weak the first several times you play it, but then possibly super strong after that.
Quite right! By end game it is extremely powerful, but it often takes many turns to get to that point. Here is a recent test I did using Village, Smithy and Market. For brevity I've omitted some unnecessary details.
Turn 6 - First Army, Turn 7 - Placed Village on Army mat, Turn 8 - Second Army, Turn 10 - Placed Smithy on Army mat, Turn 12 - First Army Play for Village+Smithy; Province, Turn 13 - Placed Market on Army mat, Turn 14 - Province, Turn 15 - Province x2, Turn 16 - Province x2.
You can see it ramps up slowly then is quite devastating, but someone running Smith Big Money could have beaten this. So you can build the the biggest and bestest card you can think of, but will you have enough time to play it in the end? It seems concise Army play or even a little deck managing before Army will likely always win.
Also Army is a card that needs all the other Kingdom cards to function. So it may often be the best strategy on the board, but that it no way means the other cards aren't involved. This is the case with some of the more powerful cards in Dominion (Goons, Chapel, etc); they need other cards to perform optimally. Army is very strong, but not in any way broken as some have claimed. Broken implies it's the only card you need to buy on a board.
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I'm surprised that Commander hasn't been compared to Pathfinding (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Pathfinding) yet. It seems like mostly a weakened version of Pathfinding.
Disadvantages compared to Pathfinding:
- The +1 card only works if you have any actions remaining after playing the action (though you aren't generally using Pathfinding on a terminal action if you don't have extra Villages anyway).
- The +1 card is after the action, not before. Before is better for most things; after is only better for draw-to-x.
- You have to buy multiple copies, and play it multiple times; as opposed to just buying once and being done.
Advantages:
- Works on more than 1 kingdom pile. Huge advantage to be sure; but I think Pathfinding is already going to make you very likely to draw your deck anyway; so even more draw isn't going to matter as much.
- Potential to stack with multiple in play.
Yes, comparing it to Pathfinding it seems to add little to the game. Sure it's a bit different, but I'm thinking not enough to warrant a new card. I'll likely remove Commander and try to reuse to base mechanic in another card.
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Certainly powerful for it's cost, but mid to late game it usually turns in to +2 Coffers, one other player takes 1VP, which is a bit weak. Of coarse niche scenarios probably exist.
I don't think that you always necessarily gift a VP to the other player. Early you can pick Province if you don't want to make Moon Shrines attractive and in the endgame you can always pick Duchy or Estate.
But even if you did, the other player would do the same for you. So the net effect is that the card can come with some VPs on gain and that it provides 2 Coin tokens on play which is too strong (even though it is like Merchant Guild, i.e. you cannot use the Coin tokens this turn). It is hard to play around with this though, one Coin token is too weak and a conditional amount of Coin tokens, like with Stadium, would make the card too complicated.
Tested Moon Shrine versus Big Money at +2 Coffers and it was quite strong! 6 Provinces, 3 Estates, and 14 VP tokens in 16 turns. Wowzah! Clearly a nerf was needed, so I made it +1 Coffer with the second +1 Coffer conditional upon adding VP tokens to a pile that does not already have it. Also you can now only add VP tokens to Victory Supply piles. This still allows it to be powerful early, but it really reigns it in mid game. Late game it picks back up again, but VP piling needs to be managed well. In this version versus Big Money it netted 3 Provinces, 3 Duchies, 3 Estates and 10 VP in 19 turns. Very poor outcome, but this was the outcome I was hoping for. Essentially a few Moon Shrines will go a long way, but if too many people are grabbing them, they fall a part. I'm hoping this creates interesting game play.
It's power level is also now directly tied to how many Victory Supply piles there are. More Moon Shrines producing +2 Coffers will speed the game up, but the access to more VP should slow it back down. It should also make alt-VP strategies versus Province rushes more viable. You can load up VP tokens on Victory Supply piles that help you and not your opponent.
So you were right; +1 Coffer wasn't good enough and +2 Coffers was too good. Hopefully this conditional version (v0.2) is straightforward enough. I think it is, but I'd like to hear your opinion.
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Army:
Here is a recent test I did using Village, Smithy and Market. For brevity I've omitted some unnecessary details.
Turn 6 - First Army, Turn 7 - Placed Village on Army mat, Turn 8 - Second Army, Turn 10 - Placed Smithy on Army mat, Turn 12 - First Army Play for Village+Smithy; Province, Turn 13 - Placed Market on Army mat, Turn 14 - Province, Turn 15 - Province x2, Turn 16 - Province x2.
Did you try this without using Army? It would be interesting to see if it adds any definite impact; 16 turns seems about average, and the same deck without Army could do the same? Also, if I understand correctly, you don't need to put Village on Army for its actions, as 1 Market by itself makes Army nonterminal ('playing' all the cards won't use actions).
As worded, playing all the cards on the Army mat leaving them there, is confusing with Reserve cards; if they don't go to the Tavern mat, they can't be called.
A little thing I note with Royal Decree that's probably only rules errata, but you play Treasures from opponents' hands, then buy Mandarin or Bonfire. Even though they are now on your deck or trashed, they still would get returned? Certainly snatching some Heirlooms away could get a bit unpleasant.
Moon Shrine - so this version has competition to get the bonus coffers, and it encourages spreading the VP around a bit more. Did you try raising the cost of the first version, or is $3 cost necessary to you? I just feel it would play better, but it's only a feeling.
Crane - this is probably a $5 cost card. It's a more flexible Lab. The setback is a bit questionable since if you make this the last Action you play it'll do nothing, and with multiple Cranes that won't be hard to do. Also, something I learned from a card I tried is that having leftover actions is something of a punishment in itself, your investments in the nonterminal Actions are less effective.
Difficult to call with Mimic, I've never played Alchemy. It could have the power to persuade players to buy potions? It first looks like a better Overlord for less cost, but comes at a different time so would play differently, and also can't be the card it was under as the would-be empty pile has now left the Supply. They slow down a 3 pile ending and encourage an engine instead. It feels like it will either be interesting, or make games annoyingly slow.
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Hey, cool cards!
Army: The opportunity cost here is huge, but the effect gets insane when you start playing multiple Armies per turn. My worry is that getting to the point where your deck is all Armies and your turns are just playing Armies doesn't seem particularly interesting.
Heir: It isn't very difficult to build a deck that consistently makes $9 per turn, and that's also something that you often want to do anyway, at which point these are just way too good. It seems quite similar to Grand Market in that you have to build up payload before they do anything, except these are easier to gain and give a bigger payoff than GM and it's arguably easier to hit $9 that to hit $6 with no Copper (that depends on the board I guess). I think this could give +$2 and cost $6 and it'd still be quite strong.
Royal Decree: This reminds of Fortune, nowhere near as crazy as Fortune but these do stack really well so they have that going for them. Looking at the player to your left will reduce the effect of multiple opponents and this should probably use wording similar to Necromancer and Army (playing the cards but leaving them in opponent's hand) to avoid nasty interactions with Bonfire/mandarin etc. I'm not sure this really needs the on-gain bonus though? All it really does is make this pay off some of it's debt immediately and it seems strong enough without it. Also I'm npt sure $3+8D is really different enough from 11D to be worth the weird cost?
Moon Shrine: My first reaction was that the +2 Coffers is too good on a non-terminal $3 next to Silver. Although the Vp part is probably more of a drawback than a bonus given that the opponent will have the 1st chance to buy the card with a token given that this is a Night, and this isn't as good as Silver at hitting $5 on the 1st shuffle because you need to draw this turn 3 to be able to make use of the Coppers before you shuffle on turn 5. I guess play testing showed that it was in fact too good though, although I don't think playing things vs big money is particularly useful. Edit: Much to the chagrin of the dominion discord community it's +1 Coffers not +1 Coffer.
Slumlord: Cool card, might end up being too strong though, even just playing something as weak as a Pearl Diver after this is basically giving you a Lost City effect. Perhaps having to draw your cards in the correct order will keep it in check but it seems much easier to do than herald or Diplomat (similar $4 conditional Lost City type things). That isn't even taking into account playing stronger actions with it.
Stadium: This should perhaps tell you to remove the tokens when you discard it from play? My concern with this is that it's basically a guarantee that you can make +$1 with this. That baseline of +$1 is already a Caravan Guard, and the upside of potentially being able to make +$2 or more once you've built up a bit seems much better than the Caravan Guard reaction.
Lost Temple: I think without the using up a Buy part this would be a strong card, but in line with Steward. With the playing it twice thing this becomes pretty crazy I think, it's basically Chapel that becomes a cantrip later, because if you're trashing 4 then you weren't using that Buy anyway. If there are abundant extra Buys then this can basically become a Lost City later too, yikes. I think that's enough to push this up into $5 territory? If you couldn't choose the same option twice then I think it might be okay at $4 though.
Industrious Village: Hmm a lot of conditional Lost Cities here, also I've noticed a lot of these cards that involve jumping through some sort of hoop are rewarding you for doing things that Dominion rewards in general - e.g. Heir rewarding you for building big, Stadium for adding expensive cards to your deck/trashing starting cards and now this for trashing your Coppers and buying lots of Actions. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, just thought it was interesting to point out.
Old Witch: Now as opposed to rewarding you for what you're doing anyway we're punishing people for doing something you didn't want to do anyway :P. It's perhaps worth noting that this doesn't actually hurt the opponent's deck until they choose to buy a Victory and let the Curses in, that makes this quite weak imo. Well I prefer weak Cursing attacks where it isn't obvious when to go for them to Mountebank-esque things so that isn't really a problem in my book.
Crane: This has to be at least a $5 right? And probably a $6 really, the top part is strictly better than Lab and even lets you use all unused Actions you have so I can't really see the drawback coming into play very often. And really this is just looking at it on its own, taking into account how well this plays with other sources of +Action and it seems clear that $4 is way too low of a cost?
Mimic: Well the setup here is weird, makes games almost impossible to 3 pile for one. I guess that there would have to be 72 Mimics to account for a 6 player game with Young Witch+Ruins (12 action supply piles!). I'm not sure whether the on-play of this actually works within the rules, Band of Misfits things are always a bit of a danger zone. I think it needs an "this is that card until it leaves play" too to match Band/Overlord. Being able to be any Action is probably dangerous too, might want to put a limit on that. Potion cost is a clever way to make it difficult for the player uncovering these to buy them all up before other players have a chance.
Blockade: I personally don't think I'd enjoy playing with this, having to make this decision once at the start of the game seems like it could take a while to think through, doing it 3 times will slow the start of the game to a halt. I don't much care for the gameplay either, with the choices being hidden it'll be impossible to play around and just come down to the shuffles whether you get the points for it. If you got the points for gaining one of your choices at least you could play towards it. But if you enjoy that kind of thing then go for it!
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Army:
Here is a recent test I did using Village, Smithy and Market. For brevity I've omitted some unnecessary details.
Turn 6 - First Army, Turn 7 - Placed Village on Army mat, Turn 8 - Second Army, Turn 10 - Placed Smithy on Army mat, Turn 12 - First Army Play for Village+Smithy; Province, Turn 13 - Placed Market on Army mat, Turn 14 - Province, Turn 15 - Province x2, Turn 16 - Province x2.
Did you try this without using Army? It would be interesting to see if it adds any definite impact; 16 turns seems about average, and the same deck without Army could do the same? Also, if I understand correctly, you don't need to put Village on Army for its actions, as 1 Market by itself makes Army nonterminal ('playing' all the cards won't use actions).
As worded, playing all the cards on the Army mat leaving them there, is confusing with Reserve cards; if they don't go to the Tavern mat, they can't be called.
As there are already good, established baselines for Smithy+Big Money and straight Big Money, I only tried various versions of Army play against one another. This was to try and establish baselines using some of Dominions more straight forward cards. So in this instance without trashing or any kind of reliability, a normal Smith+Big Money would have won. Of coarse games are generally more complicated than this and I think Army can be built faster or slower depending on the Kingdom. Militia for instance seems to destroy any kind of Army play (unintentional card flavor for the win!).
Yes, Market and Smithy alone would create a +4 Cards, +1 Action, +1 Buy, +1 Coin card. Village was more there for other testing purposes.
For Reserve cards I'm using Necromancers language. Reserve cards can be put on the Army mat, but once they are played they remove themselves to the Tavern mat and are no longer playable with Army. So you can do it, but there doesn't really seem to be a point.
A little thing I note with Royal Decree that's probably only rules errata, but you play Treasures from opponents' hands, then buy Mandarin or Bonfire. Even though they are now on your deck or trashed, they still would get returned? Certainly snatching some Heirlooms away could get a bit unpleasant.
Sound your air horns for the wombo combo! This is pretty interesting, but was totally unintentional. I have removed it in (v0.2) I would love to see a balanced card that had some kind of interaction like this.
Moon Shrine - so this version has competition to get the bonus coffers, and it encourages spreading the VP around a bit more. Did you try raising the cost of the first version, or is $3 cost necessary to you? I just feel it would play better, but it's only a feeling.
Yeah, Moon Shrine would have to be about a cost $5 with an unconditional +2 Coffers, which for what I wanted out of the card was too high. Testing against Big Money is about the only thing I can do without computer simulations. It only really gives me a baseline for a card, so I don't quite know how strong Moon Shrine will be on some boards, but this is the best I can do. :)
Crane - this is probably a $5 cost card. It's a more flexible Lab. The setback is a bit questionable since if you make this the last Action you play it'll do nothing, and with multiple Cranes that won't be hard to do. Also, something I learned from a card I tried is that having leftover actions is something of a punishment in itself, your investments in the nonterminal Actions are less effective.
Agreed. I had it at cost $5 for a long time and changed it last minute along with the -1 Card token addition hoping that would offset the lower cost, but it likely will not. It has been changed back to cost $5 as of (v0.2).
Difficult to call with Mimic, I've never played Alchemy. It could have the power to persuade players to buy potions? It first looks like a better Overlord for less cost, but comes at a different time so would play differently, and also can't be the card it was under as the would-be empty pile has now left the Supply. They slow down a 3 pile ending and encourage an engine instead. It feels like it will either be interesting, or make games annoyingly slow.
Yeah this one is different for sure. 3-Piles are pretty much out of the question. Mimic itself is incredibly strong and probably can't be balanced, so I thought sticking them under each Action pile would be interesting. Probably not for everyone, but I think it will play fine. The "This is that card until it leaves play' was omitted for brevity. I believe this merely leaves it open to being gained through cards like Changling and Disciple, which seems like an edge case to me.
Thanks for all your comments and catches. It helps a lot getting thoughtful feedback.
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Thanks for making these cards. Is it possible to get hi-res versions of the cards (even in a zip file somewhere)? I find the hi-res files improve the clarity and look when I'm printing them out.
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If I got this correctly e.g. a village pile becomes empty, one player has the chance to buy that Mimic underneath it and can use it now to make Mimic on play e.g. a double Laboratory when it mimics a Smithy (variant). Assuming that there are no other Potion cards in the Kingdom, as that player cannot use the Potion for anything else until a second pile empties Mimic just becomes an ordinary Lab which is not that impressive. So Mimic is basically BoM with an extra Action, no cost-limit and a high opportunity cost.
My point is that this is not nearly as crazy as it seems at first.
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Hey, cool cards!
Army: The opportunity cost here is huge, but the effect gets insane when you start playing multiple Armies per turn. My worry is that getting to the point where your deck is all Armies and your turns are just playing Armies doesn't seem particularly interesting.
Heir: It isn't very difficult to build a deck that consistently makes $9 per turn, and that's also something that you often want to do anyway, at which point these are just way too good. It seems quite similar to Grand Market in that you have to build up payload before they do anything, except these are easier to gain and give a bigger payoff than GM and it's arguably easier to hit $9 that to hit $6 with no Copper (that depends on the board I guess). I think this could give +$2 and cost $6 and it'd still be quite strong.
Royal Decree: This reminds of Fortune, nowhere near as crazy as Fortune but these do stack really well so they have that going for them. Looking at the player to your left will reduce the effect of multiple opponents and this should probably use wording similar to Necromancer and Army (playing the cards but leaving them in opponent's hand) to avoid nasty interactions with Bonfire/mandarin etc. I'm not sure this really needs the on-gain bonus though? All it really does is make this pay off some of it's debt immediately and it seems strong enough without it. Also I'm npt sure $3+8D is really different enough from 11D to be worth the weird cost?
Moon Shrine: My first reaction was that the +2 Coffers is too good on a non-terminal $3 next to Silver. Although the Vp part is probably more of a drawback than a bonus given that the opponent will have the 1st chance to buy the card with a token given that this is a Night, and this isn't as good as Silver at hitting $5 on the 1st shuffle because you need to draw this turn 3 to be able to make use of the Coppers before you shuffle on turn 5. I guess play testing showed that it was in fact too good though, although I don't think playing things vs big money is particularly useful. Edit: Much to the chagrin of the dominion discord community it's +1 Coffers not +1 Coffer.
Slumlord: Cool card, might end up being too strong though, even just playing something as weak as a Pearl Diver after this is basically giving you a Lost City effect. Perhaps having to draw your cards in the correct order will keep it in check but it seems much easier to do than herald or Diplomat (similar $4 conditional Lost City type things). That isn't even taking into account playing stronger actions with it.
Stadium: This should perhaps tell you to remove the tokens when you discard it from play? My concern with this is that it's basically a guarantee that you can make +$1 with this. That baseline of +$1 is already a Caravan Guard, and the upside of potentially being able to make +$2 or more once you've built up a bit seems much better than the Caravan Guard reaction.
Lost Temple: I think without the using up a Buy part this would be a strong card, but in line with Steward. With the playing it twice thing this becomes pretty crazy I think, it's basically Chapel that becomes a cantrip later, because if you're trashing 4 then you weren't using that Buy anyway. If there are abundant extra Buys then this can basically become a Lost City later too, yikes. I think that's enough to push this up into $5 territory? If you couldn't choose the same option twice then I think it might be okay at $4 though.
Industrious Village: Hmm a lot of conditional Lost Cities here, also I've noticed a lot of these cards that involve jumping through some sort of hoop are rewarding you for doing things that Dominion rewards in general - e.g. Heir rewarding you for building big, Stadium for adding expensive cards to your deck/trashing starting cards and now this for trashing your Coppers and buying lots of Actions. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, just thought it was interesting to point out.
Old Witch: Now as opposed to rewarding you for what you're doing anyway we're punishing people for doing something you didn't want to do anyway :P. It's perhaps worth noting that this doesn't actually hurt the opponent's deck until they choose to buy a Victory and let the Curses in, that makes this quite weak imo. Well I prefer weak Cursing attacks where it isn't obvious when to go for them to Mountebank-esque things so that isn't really a problem in my book.
Crane: This has to be at least a $5 right? And probably a $6 really, the top part is strictly better than Lab and even lets you use all unused Actions you have so I can't really see the drawback coming into play very often. And really this is just looking at it on its own, taking into account how well this plays with other sources of +Action and it seems clear that $4 is way too low of a cost?
Mimic: Well the setup here is weird, makes games almost impossible to 3 pile for one. I guess that there would have to be 72 Mimics to account for a 6 player game with Young Witch+Ruins (12 action supply piles!). I'm not sure whether the on-play of this actually works within the rules, Band of Misfits things are always a bit of a danger zone. I think it needs an "this is that card until it leaves play" too to match Band/Overlord. Being able to be any Action is probably dangerous too, might want to put a limit on that. Potion cost is a clever way to make it difficult for the player uncovering these to buy them all up before other players have a chance.
Blockade: I personally don't think I'd enjoy playing with this, having to make this decision once at the start of the game seems like it could take a while to think through, doing it 3 times will slow the start of the game to a halt. I don't much care for the gameplay either, with the choices being hidden it'll be impossible to play around and just come down to the shuffles whether you get the points for it. If you got the points for gaining one of your choices at least you could play towards it. But if you enjoy that kind of thing then go for it!
Thanks for the input Gazbag. I was just looking at some of your cards and I'm quite impressed. They are generally straight forward and anyone using them should have an easy time knowing what to do with it. My cards.... not so much. I'd like to respond to a few of things (not all though since it is quite late currently).
Army - You nailed this one, but I should state that my playtesting has shown in standard games that you can get about 2-4 cards on your Army mat and 2-4 Army cards by around turn 13 or so. Army is a powerhouse at this point, but the game is generally about over and any more building might cost you the game. So yes, getting 5-6 Army cards and having them beefed out would result in some boring games, but a skilled player should be able to beat an opponent trying to overbuild Army (at least this has been the case in my limited testing; edge cases are sure to exist).
Heir - I can see a point for making this cost $6. It's true that hitting $9 consistently shouldn't be too hard on most boards, but it takes longer when you have to spend a bunch of money on Heirs that won't do anything for awhile. Kind of another overbuild card, but as an underbuild kind of player, I think I can punish an opponent going for too many of these.
Royal Decree - You and Aquila both brought up the Mandarin/Bonfire thing and my first reaction was "That is freakin' awesome. Why didn't I think of that!?" Well, it was of coarse an unintended use of the card and I removed it (v0.2). Probably no way to make that a viable in another card right? The on-gain effect is the core of the card. Everything else about it really revolves around this and not the on-play ability.
Slumlord - Everyone seems to love Slumlord. What does that really say about you people? :) I also really like how it plays, but can see games where it is too strong. Of coarse that's kind of Dominion for you. Some combos are ridiculous, just hopefully fun and somewhat fair at the same time. But hitting Slumlord and Swindler turn 3! Ugh, so sorry world.
Stadium - This is probably my most tested card and I'm confident in saying it's balanced. Caravan Guard is actually weaker than Silver and without the reaction is sub-cost $3. It's the reaction that makes it more useful. So yes, Stadium hits $1 easily early on, but that's not very good for the price. The $3 to $4 range is where the real value is, but don't forget you can completely whiff with this and get $0. EDIT My first version specifically said to remove the tokens, but it seemed unneeded. I think people will in general know to discard them and to help with the people who are unsure I will address it in the expanded rules.
Lost Temple - Like Chapel this card is way under priced for it's power, but on purpose. Also like Chapel, Lost Temple needs other cards to work well. Having +Buys certainly helps turn it into Lost City's, but those are hard to come by in cantrip form. And lastly like Chapel, I wanted every opening hand to have access to it, so $4 seemed fair.
Old Witch - Yeah, the delayed reaction makes this one manageable, but having 10 Curses waiting in the shadows for that first Victory buy is scary. There are ways around this, but I think Old Witch is still something to be feared. You do give up a lot to open with them though, so it seems balanced.
Crane - Always thought this should be $5, but changed it to $4 for some reason. Haven't playtested this one yet, but I think the -1 Card token will definitely sting a bit in a mirror match. Playing as Laboratory is nice, but drawing blind could leave you with that last Action and a -1 Card token. Playing as Smithy saves you from that, but may draw Actions dead. These are at least the decisions I was hoping a player would need to consider with it.
Mimic - 72 Mimic cards and you might never see a single one! Haha. Thanks for doing the math on that! I knew it would be a lot, but never bothered to get a number. Certainly a card that will never be published, but thank heaven for blank cards! I had the "this is that card until it leaves play" text in it at one point, but cut it for the sake of brevity. I don't think it actually needs it. I believe it just changes how it interacts with some gaining cards like Changling and Disciple. For instance if you Disciple an Overlord, you don't gain an Overlord, but the card Overlord was played as. Disciple a Mimic and you actually gain a Mimic, which I'm fine with. They are so hard to buy, I think a few edge cases for gaining them is fine. Of coarse I may be wrong and would love to hear if I am.
Blockade - I completely understand about Blockade. When I first made it I thought, "What the hell did I just make!" I was very nervous about it for a long time, but after a few games, it became quite natural to play with. I generally like to spend 4-5 minutes analyzing the board anyways so this certainly fits right in with my play style. I think most boards are quite predictable so there should be some easy points, but it also opens up opportunities to go for unusual combos where your opponent has not likely placed anything. If you ever want to try it, maybe agree to place everything within the first 5 cards to lessen the fear of giving your opponent 6-10 points. Or maybe this is something I should just put into it?
Well thanks again for the comments. I'll have to get back over to your cards soon and post a few things. Maybe even play test some stuff. Take care!
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If I got this correctly e.g. a village pile becomes empty, one player has the chance to buy that Mimic underneath it and can use it now to make Mimic on play e.g. a double Laboratory when it mimics a Smithy (variant). Assuming that there are no other Potion cards in the Kingdom, as that player cannot use the Potion for anything else until a second pile empties Mimic just becomes an ordinary Lab which is not that impressive. So Mimic is basically BoM with an extra Action, no cost-limit and a high opportunity cost.
My point is that this is not nearly as crazy as it seems at first.
It has +1 Card and +1 Action before becoming another card, so playing it as Smithy would yield +4 Cards and +1 Actions, which is equal to three Laboratory plays. I think everything you said is still correct though. It's strong, but comes at about mid-game and can be very awkward if it's the only Potion in the Kingdom. I think it's power level is unquestionably strong, but the opportunity cost to get it can be too high at times to even make it worth it. It all depends I guess.
EDIT And yes, you got the setup part perfectly!
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Thanks for making these cards. Is it possible to get hi-res versions of the cards (even in a zip file somewhere)? I find the hi-res files improve the clarity and look when I'm printing them out.
You're very welcome. It can be nerve wrecking sharing cards you've worked so hard on so I greatly appreciate the thanks. I'm currently trying to implement a way to expand the card thumbnails, but need to learn some more of how to code on these forums. So it may be a bit, but high-red images will be coming. If you need them sooner I can try and get those to you through email or some photo sharing website.
EDIT You should now be able to click on the images to enlarge them. Not sure if they save to this larger size or not. Let me know.
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Stadium: This should perhaps tell you to remove the tokens when you discard it from play?
My first version had this in the text, but it seemed unneeded. I think people will in general know to discard them and to help with the people who are unsure I'd address it in the expanded rules.
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Lumber Camp is interesting. I am not sure I totally like it but that's probably only due to the inexistence of offical terminal cards that only draw 1. I think it is sound.
About Canal, it should specify whether you shuffle your deck afterwards or whether you can put the green anywhere in your deck, like Secret Passage.
Like all nonterminal cards that can gain Victory tokens it should be treated very carefully and I am not sure whether the condition is harsh enough. On the other hand we know from Settlers how frequently the discard pile doesn't exist.
Groundskeeper only gains VPs when you make your deck worse and progress towards the end whereas this can be used once you have a moderate amount of green in your deck or from the very start on in games in which you cannot or do not get rid of your Estates. And even though the anti-Lab effect seems nasty it just makes the card roughly be "+1 Action +1 VP" and in the presence of sifters it is no big deal (especially if the card is meant as to be worded like Secret Passage which is my guess). With Shepherd it is obviously bonkers.
In short, it could be OK but I fear it is not.
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Lumber Camp is interesting. I am not sure I totally like it but that's probably only due to the inexistence of offical terminal cards that only draw 1. I think it is sound.
About Canal, it should specify whether you shuffle your deck afterwards or whether you can put the green anywhere in your deck, like Secret Passage.
Like all nonterminal cards that can gain Victory tokens it should be treated very carefully and I am not sure whether the condition is harsh enough. On the other hand we know from Settlers how frequently the discard pile doesn't exist.
Groundskeeper only gains VPs when you make your deck worse and progress towards the end whereas this can be used once you have a moderate amount of green in your deck or from the very start on in games in which you cannot or do not get rid of your Estates. And even though the anti-Lab effect seems nasty it just makes the card roughly be "+1 Action +1 VP" and in the presence of sifters it is no big deal (especially if the card is meant as to be worded like Secret Passage which is my guess). With Shepherd it is obviously bonkers.
In short, it could be OK but I fear it is not.
Yes, Lumber Camp is pretty meh, but I wanted to try and explore some simple mechanics that haven't been tried before. The simple stuff seems to be the hardest to get right. It's a little too good with standard Village, but other than that it plays how I'd like it to.
Canal can only put Victory cards directly on top of your deck. There is no choice in the placement. I believe the wording on this should be fine. Cards like Mandarin use the same terminology. As for it's power level I'm unsure. I created this before Shepard/Pasture came out so it slipped my mind to test for that combo before posting. I'll have to playtest it to make sure it's not too wild. In any case, I envision bumping the price to $3 on this.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm a big fan of your cards so it's nice to have your input.
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Thanks man. I must have misread Canal as "into" your deck and as you said, only playtesting will reveal whether the condition is harsh enough or not (I don't think that the price of the card matters much).
Astrolab is cool and the mixed, scaled price might be a way to circumvent the problem that DXV encountered during playtesting a double Lab (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=15660.0l):
One of the first Debt cards was +3 Cards +1 Action, for some large amount of Debt that I tweaked some. It was an interesting card to consider. It's two Laboratories in one card; that's different in various small ways from actually having two Labs. In the end it seemed too strong too early.
I like the general idea of Treaty, i.e it being a one-shot Event, I like the trade-off between an option you want immediately and an option you want later in the game and above all I like that the card is political / anti-kingmaking / prevents runaway leaders in a 3P game. But I fear that the second option will preemptively shut down engine play in most Kingdoms. Even if there is a second village you have to buy them evenly, anticipating that one of them will be perma-Enchantress-ed.
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Maybe Mimic could instead be something like this:
Mimicry, Event, Potion cost
If there is at least one empty supply pile, gain a Mimic from its pile.
Mimic can be reduced to about 10 copies, may lose the setup and just has to say "this is not in the supply". Also it can lose the "non-Mimic". Oh, and you can give it a wacky non-Potion cost, e. g. 6*.
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I really like Astrolab. One concern is that the card is explosive enough that once you get it in your deck the debt is trivial to pay off, but I think here the punishment is severe enough that that won't happen.
Treaty is way, way too brutal. It's extremely likely to shut the other guy down completely. You have to get a Province first, but this makes it worse, in a way. The first person to get a Province will be able to hobble his opponent to such an extent that it will be difficult for him to even get his own Province if he doesn't already have one. It's Tournament on steroids with a liter bottle of caffeine.
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Thanks man. I must have misread Canal as "into" your deck and as you said, only playtesting will reveal whether the condition is harsh enough or not (I don't think that the price of the card matters much).
Astrolab is cool and the mixed, scaled price might be a way to circumvent the problem that DXV encountered during playtesting a double Lab (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=15660.0l):
One of the first Debt cards was +3 Cards +1 Action, for some large amount of Debt that I tweaked some. It was an interesting card to consider. It's two Laboratories in one card; that's different in various small ways from actually having two Labs. In the end it seemed too strong too early.
I like the general idea of Treaty, i.e it being a one-shot Event, I like the trade-off between an option you want immediately and an option you want later in the game and above all I like that the card is political / anti-kingmaking / prevents runaway leaders in a 3P game. But I fear that the second option will preemptively shut down engine play in most Kingdoms. Even if there is a second village you have to buy them evenly, anticipating that one of them will be perma-Enchantress-ed.
Canal - You're likely right about the price increase not mattering, but I'd feel better about 5/2 split players not being able to open Canal and say a $5 power trasher. I can see the $3 cost making it a little more difficult to 3 pile as well.
Treaty - Definitely comes down to the board on this one. Single village boards are probably the most vulnerable to being blocked and will force alternative strategies. Can't overlook the power of the extra $5 cost card early on either. That at times may provide enough deck acceleration that the block will come too late to have a real effect. At least these are the decisions I'm hoping players will have to make. In the games I've play-tested, a few had the only villages blocked, but the decks were diverse enough that it hurt, but it wasn't crippling.
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Maybe Mimic could instead be something like this:
Mimicry, Event, Potion cost
If there is at least one empty supply pile, gain a Mimic from its pile.
Mimic can be reduced to about 10 copies, may lose the setup and just has to say "this is not in the supply". Also it can lose the "non-Mimic". Oh, and you can give it a wacky non-Potion cost, e. g. 6*.
This is a great suggestion! Will definitely make the card print simple and more clear. I do want to keep the price and mechanics the same, but I think these all can be ported over. Hooray for more Potion cost Events!
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I really like Astrolab. One concern is that the card is explosive enough that once you get it in your deck the debt is trivial to pay off, but I think here the punishment is severe enough that that won't happen.
Treaty is way, way too brutal. It's extremely likely to shut the other guy down completely. You have to get a Province first, but this makes it worse, in a way. The first person to get a Province will be able to hobble his opponent to such an extent that it will be difficult for him to even get his own Province if he doesn't already have one. It's Tournament on steroids with a liter bottle of caffeine.
Thanks for the input Commodore!
Astrolab - Could be too explosive, but a few, basic baseline test should figure this out. I'll keep you posted.
Treaty - My play-testing of this has shown the block is powerful, but can be managed with diverse enough decks. If diversity isn't an option, taking the extra $5 cost early should give you quite an advantage over an opponent who is going for the block. Enough to get a few Provinces before your opponent gets even one? That probably also depends on the board. You probably don't want to be the first person to buy a Province, but you should be prepared to grab one as soon as another player does. It's a tough balance to maintain, but I think it makes for interesting games. I'm not saying Treaty is not potentially overpowered, I'm just saying my test so far have shown it's balanced. I'll keep you posted if further testing proves otherwise. :)
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I'll try to take a different slant on what others have said:
Lumber Camp - it's a simple card with a bonus that can affect when you play it in your turn. Easy to conclude it's fair and balanced as is, but could it cost $3 if Woodcutter was uninteresting at the price?
Canal - it can feel a bit boring to weaken your deck power for one extra point, and sometimes it won't even do anything. So yes it's a cheap cantrip you can pick up with a spare buy but will you want to, will it feel nice to? I get the sense this is a niche card, one that depends a lot on others for it to become worthwhile. But, in such cases (like overdraw, Inheriting Canals or something else, sifting), you get the same thing as with Gamble, an infinite source of VP that unlike Monument or Plunder doesn't compel players to bring the game closer to its end, so games can drag on.
Astrolab - test this out with Vault. Without handsize reduction Vault can guarantee you $6 without any Treasure in play, and later Astrolab will increase handsize for Vault to yield more $ from. You'd want this to be a very powerful combo, but not an imbalanced one.
Treaty - I'm thinking about a player's thought process with this one, right at the beginning of the game. Everyone could feel scared about buying any more than 1 copy of an Action card, or going for any payload Action, or really devising any definite strategy at all; because doesn't every game strategy hinge around a single card? By the time a Province is bought deck strategies are established. So surely everyone's going to be willing inside themselves, "please, everybody just take a $5".
So if you took that bit off, so everyone gets to open with an extra $5, is it really interesting?
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I agree that Treaty is really awful and that Canal breaks the common rule that VP cards need to progress the game. I feel Gamble runs into the same trouble, though probably a golden deck using it isn't all that great. Welp, if that card is some unfriendly attack like Ghost Ship (or instead, Monument), maybe it's good enough.
I do like Lost Temple, though. If you really want to trash four cards, you won't be needing that buy, either way. Sweet.
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I think the problem with Treaty isn't necessarily how balanced the options are but that the 2nd option leads to unfun games when it's good, basically for the reasons Commodore Chuckles pointed out. You know, here's a cool deck to build that relies on a key card to work (a village being the most obvious case) oh wait no Treaty is here, guess we're rushing Provinces and playing big money instead. Another big issue is that it's basically a targeted attack in 3+ player games and that's no good. I'd prefer it if it gave you a bigger friendly effect if you wait till you get a Province, like placing your +Card token or gaining 3 $5s or even gaining a special powerful card .
Astrolab is cool, but isn't the word astrolabe? What's the thinking behind the cost? Is it just so that it can't be gained with cards like University? I guess you'd need to test this a lot to get the right price down, seems like a reasonable starting point.
Lumber Camp is also cool, it's terminal +1 Card but only when you have spare actions so it never really faces the usual problems associated with terminal +1 card. I also enjoy cards that make you sequence your actions differently, usually you'd save your Woodcutters till the end of the turn but this rewards you for playing them mid-turn. I like this one... I have a soft spot for Woodcutters for some reason.
Canal I think I agree with others here, worse than not progressing the game, this is more likely to slow games as it's making you topdeck dead cards. If you're set on testing it before you decide on it though I'd flag Mill as another potential problem card with this, it can seed your discard with victories and is a victory that you aren't sad to topdeck itself too!
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I think the problem with Treaty isn't necessarily how balanced the options are but that the 2nd option leads to unfun games when it's good, basically for the reasons Commodore Chuckles pointed out. You know, here's a cool deck to build that relies on a key card to work (a village being the most obvious case) oh wait no Treaty is here, guess we're rushing Provinces and playing big money instead. Another big issue is that it's basically a targeted attack in 3+ player games and that's no good. I'd prefer it if it gave you a bigger friendly effect if you wait till you get a Province, like placing your +Card token or gaining 3 $5s or even gaining a special powerful card .
Astrolab is cool, but isn't the word astrolabe? What's the thinking behind the cost? Is it just so that it can't be gained with cards like University? I guess you'd need to test this a lot to get the right price down, seems like a reasonable starting point.
Lumber Camp is also cool, it's terminal +1 Card but only when you have spare actions so it never really faces the usual problems associated with terminal +1 card. I also enjoy cards that make you sequence your actions differently, usually you'd save your Woodcutters till the end of the turn but this rewards you for playing them mid-turn. I like this one... I have a soft spot for Woodcutters for some reason.
Canal I think I agree with others here, worse than not progressing the game, this is more likely to slow games as it's making you topdeck dead cards. If you're set on testing it before you decide on it though I'd flag Mill as another potential problem card with this, it can seed your discard with victories and is a victory that you aren't sad to topdeck itself too!
Treaty - It's as the old saying goes, "A good agreement is one with which both parties are equally dissatisfied." I actually did tinker around with a positive type effect that used this mechanic, but because I am a glutton for Dominion punishment I opted for this. My biggest fear was that this would lead to BM type games, but none of my play-testing panned out that way. I think Dominion in it's current state (post Nocturne) is in the best state possible for diverse card play and there are generally 2-4 cards you can come to rely on in a Kingdom. The targeted attack was the best thing I could think of when playing with 3-6 players. I'm open to other suggestions, but I think this works fine. I guess you just don't want to be in the lead when it comes time to make a Treaty, or at least appear to not be in the lead. This card really does change the game a bit, but I strongly believe it's in a good way. It's easy to focus on the blocking mechanic, but I think starting out with an extra 5 cost turn 1 is going to be about as powerful most times. The fun is trying to figure out when to go which, and is your opponent going to punish you for it.
Astrolab - Astrolabe is a sort of instrument; astrolab is a word I made up that sounds like a bigger, badder laboratory. :) I won't go into to much detail about the pricing choice, but I had to settle on an above fair price to pay for it and make sure it was possible to achieve that in every game. I concluded (hopefully correctly) that 5 Coin and 5 Debt would be a steal for this, which can be achieved with only two Golds in play. Of coarse you're likely not playing other Treasures in your hand in this scenario so there is a hidden opportunity cost. A Platinum would really do the trick also, but really my hope is that people will seek out Coin from Actions if possible.
Canal - Really only intended for this to help with early game trashing and work in some niche scenarios, not to be a power source of VP tokens. But there seems to be a few niche applications that make it a bit too strong. Other than that I think it's pretty fair. The VP token isn't guaranteed and most Kingdoms it doesn't work with overdraw. I still find it interesting, but perhaps I should go back to a cost 5 Coin version where you could also topdeck a Treasure for a Coin.
Lumber Camp - I too have a soft spot for Woodcutters. (Tears)
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Getting an extra $5 in the opening is definitely very strong. But what if none of the $5s are cards you want to open with (junkers, trashers) and the Kingdom presents a nice opportunity for an engine but with just one village? Then I am pretty sure that the threat of Treaty will be to shut down that village one day and all players will play BM.
Also note that if the other guy plays money he will also get a Province relatively early so he can hit you with Treaty soon enough (not that getting hit late by Treaty would not also totally shut down an engine).
Did you test Treaty in 2P games? Because here the problem is more pronounced: engines are easier to build (you get more pieces) and hurting your opponent is always as good as helping yourself whereas in multiplayer you just hurt the leader and struggle for position.
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I'll try to take a different slant on what others have said:
Lumber Camp - it's a simple card with a bonus that can affect when you play it in your turn. Easy to conclude it's fair and balanced as is, but could it cost $3 if Woodcutter was uninteresting at the price?
Canal - it can feel a bit boring to weaken your deck power for one extra point, and sometimes it won't even do anything. So yes it's a cheap cantrip you can pick up with a spare buy but will you want to, will it feel nice to? I get the sense this is a niche card, one that depends a lot on others for it to become worthwhile. But, in such cases (like overdraw, Inheriting Canals or something else, sifting), you get the same thing as with Gamble, an infinite source of VP that unlike Monument or Plunder doesn't compel players to bring the game closer to its end, so games can drag on.
Astrolab - test this out with Vault. Without handsize reduction Vault can guarantee you $6 without any Treasure in play, and later Astrolab will increase handsize for Vault to yield more $ from. You'd want this to be a very powerful combo, but not an imbalanced one.
Treaty - I'm thinking about a player's thought process with this one, right at the beginning of the game. Everyone could feel scared about buying any more than 1 copy of an Action card, or going for any payload Action, or really devising any definite strategy at all; because doesn't every game strategy hinge around a single card? By the time a Province is bought deck strategies are established. So surely everyone's going to be willing inside themselves, "please, everybody just take a $5".
So if you took that bit off, so everyone gets to open with an extra $5, is it really interesting?
Lumber Camp - I considered a $3 Coin, but I recall reading that Woodcutter was priced fairly at $3 Coin, it just got cut purely for being bland. Although this is sometimes identical to Woodcutter, on some boards it is clearly superior. I think $3 would be just a bit too low for it's potential power.
Canal - As more and more combos come to light I think this needs a price bump and some added effect to justify it. Beyond these few interactions, I think Canal is fine for what it does, but it does need some attention.
Astrolab - Great combo catch! I hadn't thought of this one. I also expect this to be powerful. Even if it's a combo that ruins a game, those already exist and pop up from time to time. I'll have to see what playtesting shows. Thanks again for the suggestion.
Treaty - Sure, everyone wants everyone else to take the $5 card, but it's the not knowing what your opponent will do that I think makes it interesting and opens up opportunities to play mind games with your opponents that can have actual results on the game. I think everyone has been very focused on the attack portion, but I think most boards are diverse enough to support 2-4 strategies. I really think anyone who just goes BM is still going to loss to a good player with an Action based strategy (with or without having a Treaty token on them). All playtesting thus far has supported my statements, but you can never play test enough!
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Getting an extra $5 in the opening is definitely very strong. But what if none of the $5s are cards you want to open with (junkers, trashers) and the Kingdom presents a nice opportunity for an engine but with just one village? Then I am pretty sure that the threat of Treaty will be to shut down that village one day and all players will play BM.
Also note that if the other guy plays money he will also get a Province relatively early so he can hit you with Treaty soon enough (not that getting hit late by Treaty would not also totally shut down an engine).
Did you test Treaty in 2P games? Because here the problem is more pronounced: engines are easier to build (you get more pieces) and hurting your opponent is always as good as helping yourself whereas in multiplayer you just hurt the leader and struggle for position.
I've only tested in 2P games. I also am fearful that this will lead to BM like games, but so far the Kingdoms have been diverse enough that even when losing the only village, engines were still more attractive. I will one day do some baseline test to see how single village engines with the $5 boast fair against big money. If BM is too strong, perhaps the early boast can be upped to two cards of some in-determined coin value. I've also thought about a Setup clause that adds a few extra Kingdom cards to add even more diversity. Just ideas for now though. Perhaps this needs some tweaking, but I think the core mechanics are fine. Any thoughts on that?
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The thing with Treaty is simply, it's a directed attack, being hit by it will lose you the game (believe it or not), and the only way to ensure you won't be hit by it is to be a threat yourself first so nobody attacks you. But as you are the biggest threat, why not simply attack and annihilite your opponents. I really feel "Nuclear warhead" is a more fitting name.
The only way to have a decently fun game with Treaty is if nobody ever uses it (to attack). If you use it early to build faster, then it sucks to be you, cause you just gave up your only way of keeping others from eradicating you. Well, what does that say about the card?
You could very well try to make players go for diverse strategies without having to resort to a mechanic where you can attack exactly one other player and everybody just wishes the Event didn't exist. Do a Landmark that rewards you for having many different cards. Or rather, use Museum, which already exists. If you must, do anti-Museum which gives you - 1Vp per card you have the most copies of. That too isn't much fun, and also fairly redundant, but at least it doesn't make Dominion degenerate into a game about balance of terror.
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I really think anyone who just goes BM is still going to loss to a good player with an Action based strategy (with or without having a Treaty token on them). All playtesting thus far has supported my statements, but you can never play test enough!
Sorry but I don't get how this is supposed to technically work unless there are 2 splitters in the Kingdom. If I have a hand with 2 villages and 2 Smithies I can play them to get a hand of 9 cards and the chance to play further Actions. If I get shut down by Treaty I can increase my hand to 7 (with one of the cards being dead) without the chance to play further Actions.
No matter how brilliant a player you are, unless there are Throne Room variants, Lost Arts, Summoning or another village in the Kingdom the engine gets shut down. And even with 2 splitters available it is questionable whether the engine has any chance given that you have to gain twice as many!
Of course there are other things under the skies besides draw engines. A bunch of Minions or Hunting Parties or Peddlers is also nice. But such a deck also gets shut down! So the best you can hope for is a Prosperity Kingdom in which you somehow get a lot of Grand Markets and a lot of Peddlers, your Grand Markets get castrated so the Peddlers survive.
Somehow I am pretty sure that such decks will not win games.
Don't get my wrong, I like everything about Treaty: the political nature, the trade-off betweens something good for you now or something bad for the other folks later. And I would love it to work but in its current form it cannot so one or both options have to be tweaked.
If you must, do anti-Museum which gives you - 1Vp per card you have the most copies of. That too isn't much fun, and also fairly redundant, but at least it doesn't make Dominion degenerate into a game about balance of terror.
I know you intended this as Landmark or Event but I think that it would be a decent way to change the second option. Instead of enchanting all the villages of the engine player they score -1VP. Or if playtesting shows that the snowball effect of the $5 is too good, -2VP per card from the selected pile.
It would just punish engine play and not totally shut it down.
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I know you intended this as Landmark or Event but I think that it would be a decent way to change the second option. Instead of enchanting all the villages of the engine player they score -1VP. Or if playtesting shows that the snowball effect of the $5 is too good, -2VP per card from the selected pile.
It would just punish engine play and not totally shut it down.
I'm still holding out hope that the Enchantress block will work, but this is a great suggestion. It really stays true to what I was hoping to accomplish with this. I've gotta say I knew Treaty would be contentious, but the feedback has been a bit jarring. People have had plenty to say wrong about it, but not a lot of potential fixes have been thrown around. So thanks a lot! I'm excited to have a backup plan if the first idea doesn't pan out. I'll keep you posted how testing goes, but it might be some time before I can sit down for that.
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Even with the Landmark effect (which is an improvement) I think it would need to hit all other players. The problem I see there is that then you have the choice to harm every other player OR get the advantage. Here's an attempt at a version that tries to cover that:
Treaty, 0 coin, Event
Once per game: +1 Buy, gain a card costing up to 5. You may reveal a Province from your hand to put each other player's Treaty token on an Action supply pile of your choice. Cards from that pile are worth - 1VP at the end of the game.
It still has issues, for instance somebody may put your token on Village early and then later when you changed your strategy, somebody else moves it to e.g. Minion. You could solve that by having 30 tokens, one in each player's color for the others to place, but obviously that means excessive components for one Event.
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About the new cards, Yurt Village isn't exciting but looks sound. Like Conclave an auto-open if there is nothing better around but you cannot put them mindlessly into your deck.
Wow, Marshal is a great way to fix Commander. I don't get the Commander type though.
Even with the Landmark effect (which is an improvement) I think it would need to hit all other players. The problem I see there is that then you have the choice to harm every other player OR get the advantage. Here's an attempt at a version that tries to cover that:
Treaty, 0 coin, Event
Once per game: +1 Buy, gain a card costing up to 5. You may reveal a Province from your hand to put each other player's Treaty token on an Action supply pile of your choice. Cards from that pile are worth - 1VP at the end of the game.
It still has issues, for instance somebody may put your token on Village early and then later when you changed your strategy, somebody else moves it to e.g. Minion. You could solve that by having 30 tokens, one in each player's color for the others to place, but obviously that means excessive components for one Event.
I think that scaling would be improved if every player had a Treaty token of each other player, i.e. in a 3P game your token could land on 2 piles or twice on the same pile. In this version you should be able to put the tokens on different piles in multiplayer, i.e. Alice can put Bob's token on Working Village and Charlie's token on Hamlet.
+1 Buy
Once per game, choose one: Gain a card costing up to 5 ; or reveal a Province
from your hand to put your Treaty tokens on Action Supply piles of your choice.
Cards from that pile are worth -1VP per Treaty token of your colour on them.
Assuming for the sake of simplicity that a village pile splits evenly this would be -5VP in a 2 game and -6,66VP in a 3P game and -7,5 in a 4P game so -2VP is an option that should seriously be considered. 10-15VP seem like much but it is just a difference of one Province more vs one Province less.
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About the new cards, Yurt Village isn't exciting but looks sound. Like Conclave an auto-open if there is nothing better around but you cannot put them mindlessly into your deck.
Wow, Marshal is a great way to fix Commander. I don't get the Commander type though.
Even with the Landmark effect (which is an improvement) I think it would need to hit all other players. The problem I see there is that then you have the choice to harm every other player OR get the advantage. Here's an attempt at a version that tries to cover that:
Treaty, 0 coin, Event
Once per game: +1 Buy, gain a card costing up to 5. You may reveal a Province from your hand to put each other player's Treaty token on an Action supply pile of your choice. Cards from that pile are worth - 1VP at the end of the game.
It still has issues, for instance somebody may put your token on Village early and then later when you changed your strategy, somebody else moves it to e.g. Minion. You could solve that by having 30 tokens, one in each player's color for the others to place, but obviously that means excessive components for one Event.
I think that scaling would be improved if every player had a Treaty token of each other player, i.e. in a 3P game your token could land on 2 piles or twice on the same pile. In this version you should be able to put the tokens on different piles in multiplayer, i.e. Alice can put Bob's token on Working Village and Charlie's token on Hamlet.
+1 Buy
Once per game, choose one: Gain a card costing up to 5 ; or reveal a Province
from your hand to put your Treaty tokens on Action Supply piles of your choice.
Cards from that pile are worth -1VP per Treaty token of your colour on them.
Assuming for the sake of simplicity that a village pile splits evenly this would be -5VP in a 2 game and -6,66VP in a 3P game and -7,5 in a 4P game so -2VP is an option that should seriously be considered. 10-15VP seem like much but it is just a difference of one Province more vs one Province less.
Yes, the option to give each player a token for each opponent was exactly what I meant when talking about 30 tokens: 6*5=30.
It's better than each other player having exactly one token, but oh the components...
It also was supposed to mean that you can put tokens on different piles.
I don't really think tokens need to be in player color per "attacker", though. Using my wording otherwise, just write "Add one of each other player's Treaty tokens" instead of "put each other player's Treaty token"...
Here's another idea: Instead of making another player lose points, you could GET points for each copy of a specified card another player has. In a 2P game that's pretty much the same anyway, and you could make it targeted again because it hurts noone. Problem's just, I think you'll need ten tokens again, unless you use a physical card to track of which card you want to count the copies a specific opponent has.
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I guess my main gripe with Yurt Village is that it's too obviously a better opener than Silver. There are other $3 cards that you usually get over Silver (Swindler and Fishing Village come to mind) but they have their potential drawbacks (Swindler is terminal; Fishing Village's $ is delayed.) Obviously Yurt Village might only be a Silver once or twice, but are there many games where you buy more than 2 Silvers anyway? To me, it just seems too clearly better than Silver.
What's the "Commander" type on Marshal supposed to mean?
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Treaty - I appreciate everyone's suggestions and in depth analysis. It offers great perspective. Changes are coming, and any one of the suggested modifications seems exciting, but I'd first like to explore modifying the block mechanic. Here are my current thoughts: Blocked piles only effect the first two cards (or some other amount) played per turn; tokens can only be moved once per game; possibly adding a condition where only players with a token can be blocked. Any thoughts on these changes are appreciated.
Yurt Village - Hadn't considered Conclave. The play style is about the same, but Conclave is much more interesting. Yurt Village will likely be removed.
Commander (type) - Mainly meant to remind players that cards with these types do effect other cards while the top card of your discard. I'm planning about 4 other Commander cards that effect/change how the following themes work: trashing, payload, attacks and Commander type cards. Still need to work out some kinks though. Any thoughts on Commanders? I've always thought the top card of the discard pile had a lot of design potential. Has this been tried before?
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Cards that care about another card being the top card of your discard pile have actively been discouraged by Donald X, arguing that you'd be taking care to reorder your discards every time, usually pointlessly. But again, that was about cards that care about other cards being on top.
A card that does something when it is the top card of your discard pile has similarity to a Duration, even though it's not entirely the same. It leads to the rules question of whether you can reorder your discard pile when you look through it. I'd argue no.
For a card like Marshal, it seems fair enough, and doing several cards that use a broader new mechanic is always better, as you only have to learn that mechanic once. In this case, it's a bummer though that there can always only be one card on top of your supply pile. I feel a card like Marshal could be implemented in a more satisfying, less exclusive way, e.g. as a Duration and/or Reaction or Night card.
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The Commanders and discard searching cards also introduce an accountability problem. I doubt it'd be a worry in the kinds of groups that play with fan cards, but they do introduce an opportunity to cheat quite easily. You don't have to reveal the discard when playing e.g. Harbinger, so you could slip the Commander to 2nd from the top and then topdeck the top card of the discard. I guess you'd just have change the rules to allow them to reorder the discard to avoid this?
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I feel a card like Marshal could be implemented in a more satisfying, less exclusive way, e.g. as a Duration and/or Reaction or Night card.
I disagree. Commander was broken and this is a great way to fix it. Now of course something like "While this is in play, after you resolve an Action, +1 Card. Ignore all other Commanders in play but the first." would also do the trick but I don't like the awkward wording. As it stands it is in my eyes a more elegantly worded way to implement a card that shouldn't have any effect beyond its first copy in play.
Furthermore, the 'top of the discard' pile mechanic emulates a Duration card without the disadvantage of Durations card being out for 2 turns and missing shuffles. So it is like a Duration as it features a delayed effect but it is also unlike a Duration as it can be played more frequently.
I do especially like the fact that Marshal loses its effect when you shuffle. So perhaps you are lucky, draw into Marshal and can play it in the same turn but perhaps the reduced draw power doesn't do the trick. This implies some potential subtleties about how to draw and when to trigger the shuffle.
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I feel a card like Marshal could be implemented in a more satisfying, less exclusive way, e.g. as a Duration and/or Reaction or Night card.
I disagree. Commander was broken and this is a great way to fix it. Now of course something like "While this is in play, after you resolve an Action, +1 Card. Ignore all other Commanders in play but the first." would also do the trick but I don't like the awkward wording. As it stands it is in my eyes a more elegantly worded way to implement a card that shouldn't have any effect beyond its first copy in play.
Furthermore, the 'top of the discard' pile mechanic emulates a Duration card without the disadvantage of Durations card being out for 2 turns and missing shuffles. So it is like a Duration as it features a delayed effect but it is also unlike a Duration as it can be played more frequently.
I do especially like the fact that Marshal loses its effect when you shuffle. So perhaps you are lucky, draw into Marshal and can play it in the same turn but perhaps the reduced draw power doesn't do the trick. This implies some potential subtleties about how to draw and when to trigger the shuffle.
You could just use the Crossroads wording: If this is the first time you play a Commander this turn, during your next turn, when you play an Action card: +1 Card
Personally I think that cards where only the first copy does something are kind of downers, especially if you turn it into an entire class of cards. If two Commander type piles are in the kingdom, you got twenty cards of which you can only use one at a time. Crossroads at least does something when it's not the first and Fortune as well as Champion only have 5 copies (edit: Also they become available late-game only). 10,20 or 30 cards of which you can only use one really doesn't seem like something to intentionally go for I feel.
Edit 2: The only card with 10 copies I can think of that doesn't stack at all is Tactician, but even if stacks with other Durations. Secret Chamber, which also only rarely stacks, was removed.
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About Osho, I like the second Commander but it could easily provide several coins during the second turn, thus becoming as good / better than Merchant Ship which would justify a price of $5. Note that unlike Merchant Ship this is a good payload card for an engine due to the extra Buy so it is not unlikely that you will play several Action cards in the second turn.
You could just use the Crossroads wording: If this is the first time you play a Commander this turn, during your next turn, when you play an Action card: +1 Card
This would make tracking a mess. With the 'top card of your discard pile' mechanic on the other hand you can constantly read the effect, as it should be.
Personally I think that cards where only the first copy does something are kind of downers, especially if you turn it into an entire class of cards.
Nothing wrong with that but as the concrete cards Kudasai did would be too strong otherwise it is simply mechanically necessary. Osho and Marshal are more or less temporary Training and Pathfinding and if both effects could apply, if every card could become an additional Peddler and Laboratory or if there could be 3 Marshals in play, converting a lousy Pearl Diver into a triple Laboratory, this would be totally bonkers.
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About Osho, I like the second Commander but it could easily provide several coins during the second turn, thus becoming as good / better than Merchant Ship which would justify a price of $5. Note that unlike Merchant Ship this is a good payload card for an engine due to the extra Buy so it is not unlikely that you will play several Action cards in the second turn.
You could just use the Crossroads wording: If this is the first time you play a Commander this turn, during your next turn, when you play an Action card: +1 Card
This would make tracking a mess. With the 'top card of your discard pile' mechanic on the other hand you can constantly read the effect, as it should be.
Personally I think that cards where only the first copy does something are kind of downers, especially if you turn it into an entire class of cards.
Nothing wrong with that but as the concrete cards Kudasai did would be too strong otherwise it is simply mechanically necessary. Osho and Marshal are more or less temporary Training and Pathfinding and if both effects could apply, if every card could become an additional Peddler and Laboratory or if there could be 3 Marshals in play, converting a lousy Pearl Diver into a triple Laboratory, this would be totally bonkers.
The tracking claim is simply not true. If you really limited it to only one Commander type card, all you had to do would be to remember which type of Commander was the first you played this turn, discarding all but one copy of that card at the end of the turn (as you always do with Durations that don't do anything in a future turn). If you go by card instead of type, you don't even need to remember that - just leave out one copy of every Commander type card. Ta-dah. Sure, the card you leave out might not be the exact physical card you played first, but to have this make a difference you'll have to run into obscure edge case rule territory like e.g. Enchantress, which by the way breaks every other Duration, too. It's trivial, really.
I agree that a broken card's brokenness becomes less noticeable if you can't use it as much. And don't get me wrong, I do like the originality and cleanliness of a card type that does something from your discard pile - it just irks me that they are so brutally exclusive, especially if one wants to do a whole bunch of cards using that type.
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The tracking claim is simply not true. If you really limited it to only one Commander type card, all you had to do would be to remember which type of Commander was the first you played this turn, discarding all but one copy of that card at the end of the turn (as you always do with Durations that don't do anything in a future turn). If you go by card instead of type, you don't even need to remember that - just leave out one copy of every Commander type card. Ta-dah.
True, I missed that you talk about Durations.
I actually played Ghost wrong several times during my first plays of Nocturne until I actually re-read the rulebook and noticed that tiny detail. Sure, it is in the Duration rules but you are so used to Durations at least staying out for one turn that it is easy to forget that.
Sorry but this is why compared to Kudasai's neat and clean new mechanic what you suggested it is just too messy and prone to not remembering rules and misinterpreting how the whole thing is meant to work.
I agree that a broken card's brokenness becomes less noticeable if you can't use it as much. And don't get me wrong, I do like the originality and cleanliness of a card type that does something from your discard pile - it just irks me that they are so brutally exclusive, especially if one wants to do a whole bunch of cards using that type.
That's not really a big issue. First of all, it depends on how you randomize your Kingdom. In total random chances for more than one Commander appearing are pretty low, even if Kudasai does 4 or 5 Commanders.
Second, while Marshal is a card that hurts you if you cannot use the second turn effect Osho is still a Woodcutter on play. Often enough it will be just bought because you need that extra Buy and the second turn thing is an accidental cherry on the top.
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As always, thank you everyone for the comments. To be concise I'll try and address everyone's posts here in one section.
Commander Type - I should first apologize for not having released all of the Commanders at once. I think it's hard to see the whole picture of what they are capable of and how they can interact without seeing the whole set. Unfortunately I only have the two cards I'm comfortable enough sharing, but I can try and talk about some of the design elements I have in mind. Hopefully this will help justify why I decided to go with a new card type and why I opted for only having one Commander out at a time. :)
Durations would certainly work, but I do agree with Holunder9 that the execution would get a bit tricky. Also, Commanders have interactions with mid-turn gainers and discarding cards that essentially allows for Commander swapping. Some Commanders you will want out for certain parts of your turn, but not others. For example, Osho is good with non-terminal Actions, but not terminal Actions. If you could have it out for the former and then discard another Commander from your hand (Commander swap) to end your turn you can get all the +1 Coin benefits without the -1 penalty. Hopefully this also highlights how multiple Commanders can be played despite only being able to have one benefit at a time. I couldn't see a good way to have all these interactions using Durations and first time played clauses.
I whole hardly agree with Asper that games with multiple Commanders can't just end up being dead cards, so I'm doing my best to add small interactions that make the play feel fun and satisfying. As I mentioned some Commanders will shine at certain parts of your turn and not others. I'm hoping to have a card that adds benefits from both your discard pile and the trash, but the latter will benefit all players (this of course will be some sort of Zombie Commander #chills). I may even have a card that specifically calls on the Commander type itself in some way.
I would agree that I think revealing your discard pile does not allow for it to be reshuffled. In any case I don't think this allows for players to be dishonest as Gazbag mentioned. Everyone's top card of their discard pile can be seen by all players at anytime so I'm not sure how someone could slip a Commander on top during a discard pile search.
Osho - Nice comparison to Merchant Ship Holunder9! This certainly needs a bump in price. I was hoping to keep this one at $4 Coin, but I'd certainly have to remove something. Do you think changing the on-play ability to either +1 Coin, +1 Buy or just +2 Coin would justify keeping it at $4 Coin?
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You slip it 2nd from the top and then use the ability of the card in question (Harbinger, Settlers, Counting House, whatever) to topdeck the top card thus uncovering the commander. There is no way for the opponent to know that you reordered the commander to 2nd from the top (assuming you have good enough sleight of hand).
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You slip it 2nd from the top and then use the ability of the card in question (Harbinger, Settlers, Counting House, whatever) to topdeck the top card thus uncovering the commander. There is no way for the opponent to know that you reordered the commander to 2nd from the top (assuming you have good enough sleight of hand).
Ahh, now I see what you're saying. This does create an issue. I don't see much of a way around this other than allowing a reshuffle of your discard after such cards are played. Not a solution I'm happy with, but I don't think it does anything catastrophic to the game. It certainly doesn't effect any other official cards. Thoughts?
EDIT This is off topic, but to answer a question you asked a few days ago about Astrolab's cost: Yes, the wonky 5 Coin 1* Debt is to prevent it from being gained. I don't think 5 Coin 0* Debt would work as it would just be 5 Coin.
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The big problem I see with Osho is: how often is it actually going to be on the top of your discard? If you're drawing your whole deck (which you generally want to do) then it will only be in your discard if there's a way to discard stuff (which there often isn't.) The Commander ability can be used in slogs, but it will usually punish you there because you're likely to only play one terminal card per turn - plus, it's just a crummy Woodcutter on play.
Marshal solves this by discarding stuff on-play, which is nice. Overall it seems like all of the Commander cards will have to either be able to discard themselves or other cards in order for the mechanic to really be useful.
One final, minor thing: your dual-type formatting seems to be off. Why is the top border red almost completely covered by white instead of just red?
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The big problem I see with Osho is: how often is it actually going to be on the top of your discard? If you're drawing your whole deck (which you generally want to do) then it will only be in your discard if there's a way to discard stuff (which there often isn't.) The Commander ability can be used in slogs, but it will usually punish you there because you're likely to only play one terminal card per turn - plus, it's just a crummy Woodcutter on play.
Marshal solves this by discarding stuff on-play, which is nice. Overall it seems like all of the Commander cards will have to either be able to discard themselves or other cards in order for the mechanic to really be useful.
One final, minor thing: your dual-type formatting seems to be off. Why is the top border red almost completely covered by white instead of just red?
Everything you've said is true, but for now I'm calling these design choices instead of flaws. :) Cards that discard will definitely have a good synergy with Commander cards. This is why I have Marshal priced much higher despite it doing really nothing on play. I'm hoping to have a balanced Osho card at cost $3 since as you said it is at the mercy of where it ends up in your deck on the reshuffle. Draw cards will clash a bit, which for the moment I'm okay with. I just hope a player won't feel the Counting House Blues too often.
The border looks as I intended it to. It's custom so I took some liberty with it and ventured away from the normal look. I felt the new type needed a visual cue to remind player's that this card does stuff from your discard, but I didn't simple want to make a new shade of back since the Dominion color-wheel is getting a bit crowded. So I opted for the Action back with some Commander Banners added.
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Isle(v0.1) - I just wanted to point out that Gazbag has a cool, nearly identical card called Bastion. Although neither card influenced each other in any way, seeing Bastion certainly inspired me to post this card. I think both are cool concepts and wanted to make sure Gazbag got the deserved credit.
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Wow stop stealing my ideas! Jk, thanks for giving me a shout out, I appreciate it. Also I think it's great that you give people credit for feedback and changes you've made in the update history, I should have done that with my cards...
Something interesting I found while looking through the Adventures secret history was this:
Briefly I tried an Action-Victory card that put a card on your mat, and was worth VP based on the number of cards there. It just didn't give a new-enough experience; there's Island. It sounded like it would be a strategy but it usually wasn't, it was usually Island but maybe not worth the 2 VP.
It seems like Donald tried a similar thing, but not limited to Estates and not 1vp per card set aside. Also given that he is comparing it to Island maybe his version set itself aside too? It isn't really clear. Well it sounds different enough from Bastion/Isle from what I can gather.
Another thing about Isle is that exchange is a word with mechanical meaning in Dominion, because of this you wouldn't be able to exchange a Shelter or Heirloom with an Isle as they don't have a pile to return to. Not sure whether that's intentional or not, you could just say replace or something instead of exchange if you want to be able to do that.
I have to say that I still prefer Lumber Camp to Osho (I assume you retired Lumber Camp due to their similarity?), I thought it only giving +Card when you had Actions left to use it was a really clever way to avoid the feel-bad moments that terminal +1 Card can make while giving you a fun little hoop to jump through. It feels a lot less relevant on the overall package of Osho, more just an arbitrary way to tone down its power than an important part of the card.
Airship: I think I like this, it's very appealing early on making potion a good fit, but it could drop off hard later depending on the kingdom, which is a good thing. Although if lots of gaining is going on then multiples of these could still be good, you only have 5 cards to discard so after that there's no drawback to getting more of these down, would be like those rare Torturer games where you discard your hand and rely on Duration-draw to still have a turn. Not sure why an Airship needs Potion though, from a flavour perspective.
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Airship looks sound. Like with Cellar you have to discard before you draw which is significant liability.#
Isle doesn't excite me and the decisions is trivial. If you cannot trash your Estates you get Isle, if you can trash your Estates you don't mind, if there is trash-for-benefit Isle is bonkers (remodel into a Province, salvage for a huge amount of Coins, etc.).
Overall it seems like all of the Commander cards will have to either be able to discard themselves or other cards in order for the mechanic to really be useful.
This is false. You always discard your hand during your Clean-up phase and can arrange the order such that the Commander will be the top card of your discard pile. Actually that's the main point of Commanders: Durations that cannot be stacked but also don't miss shuffles.
Getting them into play via sifters will occure less frequently but is of course also neat as it creates non-trivial decisions (do you really want to discard it if it happens "late" in your turn or do you want to set up a better next turn?) and shows the great flexibility of the mechanic.
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A lot of these cards are highly creative and I for sure enjoy the elegant boldness of them.
Army seems insanely strong, probably too strong. It could cost more.
Heir is cute, but does nothing unless you’re already drawing deck and then it’s only about the same as Wine Merchant that can be triggered only once. Pretty meh on it, it could cost cheaper. Very weak.
Royal Decree is very strong, and I like the attack aspect of it for sure.
Moon Shrine seems horrifically weak. It’s a delayed Silver, dead on play since you can’t use the Coffers until next turn and even potentially helping the opponent score VP. It’s slow and weak. I would probably never buy this in the current form.
Slumlord is awesome.
Stadium is really wonky, and it’s essentially a gamble. Also couldn’t you technically reveal no tokens, and then reveal a copper, since double 0 is 0? Might want a clause for that, such as a “if you added any tokens, at the start of the next turn…” Anyways it’s cute but not sure if it’s worth keeping around, it seems meh.
Lost Temple is a busted thinner, pretty much auto-open that since it’s a Chapel. And then it’s useful afterwards too! You only really want one ever though, no reason to get more than one.
Industrious Village seems pretty strong, like stronger than $4 strong. It really could cost $5.
Old Witch is interesting!
What the heck, Mimic is so damn weird that I would want to try it, although it’s presence basically makes any three piling infinitely harder, so it could be a serious board decider, depending on how good the Mimics are.
I had some version of Crane without the bottom part, and you made a far more elegant version.
Astrolab is still too strong I think.
Yurt Village is so weird, but an interesting weird.
Holy shit Marshal is a crazy mechanic idea. I love it. Osho, no idea what to think of it. The main worry with this mechanic though, is how slow it could be.
Isle is really cool, especially the part where you can just straight up decide which starting card to lose.
Airship is a suicide card in any remotely engine board, and it is thusly really really bad.
Treaty has some of the clunkiest wording. You need to find a way to shorten this, which might include scrapping the gain a $5 thing. Also this is so Kingmaking in 3P or above, so watch out with that. Might need a total redesign or scrapping.
Blockade is weird. You’ll just cover the Province pile and whatever two cards you deem will be gained, which you will almost certainly be right. And oh shoot, maybe you miss one and the opponent gets there first. At the end of all of this laborious logging, you end up with at most… 3 VP. Yeah, this is a terrible Landmark. Scrap. It’s a lot of work and it doesn’t seem fun to play with.
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Wow stop stealing my ideas! Jk, thanks for giving me a shout out, I appreciate it. Also I think it's great that you give people credit for feedback and changes you've made in the update history, I should have done that with my cards...
Something interesting I found while looking through the Adventures secret history was this:
Briefly I tried an Action-Victory card that put a card on your mat, and was worth VP based on the number of cards there. It just didn't give a new-enough experience; there's Island. It sounded like it would be a strategy but it usually wasn't, it was usually Island but maybe not worth the 2 VP.
It seems like Donald tried a similar thing, but not limited to Estates and not 1vp per card set aside. Also given that he is comparing it to Island maybe his version set itself aside too? It isn't really clear. Well it sounds different enough from Bastion/Isle from what I can gather.
Another thing about Isle is that exchange is a word with mechanical meaning in Dominion, because of this you wouldn't be able to exchange a Shelter or Heirloom with an Isle as they don't have a pile to return to. Not sure whether that's intentional or not, you could just say replace or something instead of exchange if you want to be able to do that.
I have to say that I still prefer Lumber Camp to Osho (I assume you retired Lumber Camp due to their similarity?), I thought it only giving +Card when you had Actions left to use it was a really clever way to avoid the feel-bad moments that terminal +1 Card can make while giving you a fun little hoop to jump through. It feels a lot less relevant on the overall package of Osho, more just an arbitrary way to tone down its power than an important part of the card.
Thanks, I'm just glad someone is reading that stuff! :) I actually had planned for Isle to work only with Copper and Estates, but just thought last night how it was a bummer that it could interact with Heirlooms. Well I guess my problem fixed itself! Thanks for checking though. I guess I've misunderstood the exchange rule all this time, but it actually worked out in my favor on this one.
Yes, I cut Lumber Camp because (1) Osho seems to achieve what I wanted out of Lumber Camp (a bland card that got better with Village support) in a more entertaining way; and (2) I have another version of Lumber Camp that I think I'm going to use instead. It's wacky and involves States. Excited to share it, but I need to get some playtesting on it. I would love to see the 2nd half of Lumber Mill implemented on another card though. Any ideas on that? The effect did seems more suited for Lumber Camp, but I'm using it on Osho more to distinguish itself and it's play-style from the other Commander cards. I could all be a bust though. If I go back on it I'll be sure to give you credit! :P
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Isle doesn't excite me and the decisions is trivial. If you cannot trash your Estates you get Isle, if you can trash your Estates you don't mind, if there is trash-for-benefit Isle is bonkers (remodel into a Province, salvage for a huge amount of Coins, etc.).
I don't think the decision will ever likely be whether to exchange for Isle or not, but whether you exchange an Estate or Copper.
-Exchanging for an Estate secures your buy power at 7 and gives you the standard openings, but you have added an Estate back into the Supply both reducing your Isle point potential and giving your opponents more potential Estates to pick up.
-Exchanging for a Copper makes your Isles more likely to hit Estates and will likely be worth more, but reduces your buy power to 6, which on some boards could be quite terrible.
I'm not sure how I feel about Isle's interaction with trash for benefit cards yet. Part of me thinks it's really cool, but I don't want it to make games too wonky. Will have to play-test this.
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Army seems insanely strong, probably too strong. It could cost more.
Moon Shrine seems horrifically weak. It’s a delayed Silver, dead on play since you can’t use the Coffers until next turn and even potentially helping the opponent score VP. It’s slow and weak. I would probably never buy this in the current form.
Stadium is really wonky, and it’s essentially a gamble. Also couldn’t you technically reveal no tokens, and then reveal a copper, since double 0 is 0? Might want a clause for that, such as a “if you added any tokens, at the start of the next turn…” Anyways it’s cute but not sure if it’s worth keeping around, it seems meh.
Lost Temple is a busted thinner, pretty much auto-open that since it’s a Chapel. And then it’s useful afterwards too! You only really want one ever though, no reason to get more than one.
Treaty has some of the clunkiest wording. You need to find a way to shorten this, which might include scrapping the gain a $5 thing. Also this is so Kingmaking in 3P or above, so watch out with that. Might need a total redesign or scrapping.
Blockade is weird. You’ll just cover the Province pile and whatever two cards you deem will be gained, which you will almost certainly be right. And oh shoot, maybe you miss one and the opponent gets there first. At the end of all of this laborious logging, you end up with at most… 3 VP. Yeah, this is a terrible Landmark. Scrap. It’s a lot of work and it doesn’t seem fun to play with.
Thanks for the comments Seprix! I appreciate you touching on all of the cards. I'll keep my replies strictly to the negative feedback to be concise. :)
-Army: Very strong, but only after much building. You can only get about 3 cards on your mat before a good engine starts greening. I think $7 Coin and above would make this unusable, but I can try it sometime.
-Moon Shrine: Getting the +2 Coffers is incredibly good. You are putting VP out there for your opponents, but the person with a good Coffer store is usually in a better position to green. That's why I had to make this one conditional, giving only +1 Coffers for most of the mid-game.
-Stadium: Yes, probably should have called this one Gamble Hall or something like that. You can put zero tokens and reveal a Copper, but it would just give you $0 Coin, so I don't think an extra clause needs to be added.
-Lost Temple: Probably should cost $6 or above, but I kept it artificially low (like chapel) so everyone has a chance to open it. It can be a Lost City, but the cantrip +Buys to make that happen are few and far between. So most games it's a Chapel that can hide itself. Strong, but $4 Coin seems fair given Chapel's price of $2 Coin.
-Treaty: Yes, the wording needs some attention. I had it in a nice spot, but had to make some hasty changes.
-Blockade: This only effects Kingdom cards, so Provinces and all other standard Victory cards are excluded along with standard Treasures. It's a bit weird at first, but rewards good planning. It takes a few minutes to do, but I personally think a board that doesn't take at least a few minutes to think on is a simple, bad board to begin with. This punishes people who go for the power cards and rewards those with creative engines.
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Airship: I think I like this, it's very appealing early on making potion a good fit, but it could drop off hard later depending on the kingdom, which is a good thing. Although if lots of gaining is going on then multiples of these could still be good, you only have 5 cards to discard so after that there's no drawback to getting more of these down, would be like those rare Torturer games where you discard your hand and rely on Duration-draw to still have a turn. Not sure why an Airship needs Potion though, from a flavour perspective.
I think if an Airship were to exist around the 1400's (and I don't believe they did) it's means of lift would likely be hot-air heated by some sort of chemical reaction, hence the Potion flavor. Beyond that I like the tough choices a player has to make when discarding. Do you discard your Potion right away and hope to redraw it, or do you hang on to it to hopefully get $3 Coin and a Potion. The latter could very well be end up being a $2 Coin and a Potion dud hand. I also like how Potions solidify a players build path. If a player opens Potion, it may trick their opponent into rushing +Buys needlessly. At least I hope these kinds of situations arise.
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Isle doesn't excite me and the decisions is trivial. If you cannot trash your Estates you get Isle, if you can trash your Estates you don't mind, if there is trash-for-benefit Isle is bonkers (remodel into a Province, salvage for a huge amount of Coins, etc.).
I don't think the decision will ever likely be whether to exchange for Isle or not, but whether you exchange an Estate or Copper.
I missed that. Now the decisions is indeed not trivial.
Let's assume that you go for Isle Alt-VP with 4 Isles (this is a conservative benchmark, in a non-mirror it will be more). Then that extra Estate is worth 4VPs at the end of the game. So this is roughly equivalent to the option of exchanging a starting Copper for a Distant Lands (it is a bit worse than that as you might set aside "another" Estate with your Isle during the opening so you could say it is like exchaning a starting Copper for a Distant Lands in a deck in which terminal space is very scarce).
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Risen King looks balanced, especially as you rightly made the trashing on a payload card non-mandatory. It is interesting as this is the first conditional Commander effect; if you don't play a trasher in the second turn it does not do anything.
I like that you intentionally avoided Transmogrify tricks around Victory cards and that it is precisely worded such that trashing attacks don't interact with the Commander effect.
I would consider changing it slightly though and make the Transmogrify effect voluntary, otherwise you could shoot yourself in the foot when you play with Risen King and another trasher that you want to use for Copper/Curse/Ruins trashing in the second turn.
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Upgrading a regular trash into a mini Remodel is cool. I'm not really sold on the whole commander mechanic but ignoring that it's a cool card. I do agree with Holunder that the gain should be optional, with the current version you could trash a Risen King and basically block all other players from trashing their Coppers.
I'd also give this Market Square wording "when one of your non-victory cards is trashed" I think it has the same functionality because other people never trash your cards.
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Risen King - Perhaps it's a bit too much, but the cost $0 Coin trash blocking while a Risen King is in the trash was an intentional design element. I'm a big fan of Catapult and was hoping to latch on to the cool decision process a player has to make when choosing to trash an early Estate or Copper. This is the scenario I kept envisioning: Your hand is Risen King, Estate and Copper x3. Do you trash the Estate and hit $5 Coin knowing that at some point Coppers become untrashable or do you trash the Copper now and hit $4 Coin knowing you can always trash Estates later in the game? This kind of perma-blocking maybe too harsh, but I'm hoping this is offset a bit by the gaining potential of having Risen Kings in the trash.
The Commander effect for being in your discard may be trivial for most of the game, but it does allow for some cool, mid-turn gaining of Commanders to the top of your discard.
Gazbag, thanks for the syntax suggestion. I hadn't thought to look at Market Square for wording. It has been updated.
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because other people never trash your cards.
They do if there are trashing attacks.
I hadn't thought to look at Market Square for wording. It has been updated.
Not a fan of this decision as it totally defangs Knights and Swindler; the attacks would be nearly always (Swindler hitting a $0 is an exception) beneficial for the attacked player.
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I am so very confused now. How does the Commander effect prevent you from trashing Coppers? You just trash them and fail to gain anything. In Dominion you can always choose an option even if you can't fully execute it.
because other people never trash your cards.
They do if there are trashing attacks.
Technically, trashing attacks don't directly trash cards, they force each other player to trash cards.
Also, I think the "when one of your cards is trashed" wording might cause rules confusions, as if it's in the trash it's no longer "your" card. I think all of the official cards say "when you trash a card."
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I am so very confused now. How does the Commander effect prevent you from trashing Coppers? You just trash them and fail to gain anything. In Dominion you can always choose an option even if you can't fully execute it.
The Commander effect of Risen King is worded like Transmogrify; gain a card costing up to 1 more than it.
So if you trash Copper you have to gain a card that costs between 0 and 1 which is usually, ignoring cost reduction and Poor House, a Copper or a Curse. Usually you take Copper.
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It's up to (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png) more, so if you trash a Copper you'd have to gain something costing up to (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png). So like, another Cooper.
As pointed out trashing attacks make the attacked player trash their cards.
I don't see the rules confusion, the wording is lifted from Market Square. Saying when you trash a card means it works with Luker etc, which isn't a good idea.
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Saying when you trash a card means it works with Luker etc, which isn't a good idea.
A wording that castrates trashing attacks is not good either. It is like having a permanent Transmogrify on your Tavern mat so you could just put the Knights back into the box and play with 9 piles.
It has to be some new wording that goes into the direction of the first wording, something like "when you cause one of your cards to be trashed" or something like that to indicate that the Commander effect should not be triggered when another player makes you trash one of your cards.
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Saying when you trash a card means it works with Luker etc, which isn't a good idea.
A wording that castrates trashing attacks is not good either. It is like having a permanent Transmogrify on your Tavern mat so you could just put the Knights back into the box and play with 9 piles.
It has to be some new wording that goes into the direction of the first wording, something like "when you cause one of your cards to be trashed" or something like that to indicate that the Commander effect should not be triggered when another player makes you trash one of your cards.
I think the interaction with trashing attacks is a benefit, Dominion is all about card interactions. It's not worth making up some tortured wording over certainly. If this is in the kingdom maybe you think twice before buying Knights... yay?
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Huh? There is nothing "tortured" (it is two extra words dude, not a wall of messy text) about my suggested wording, it is just new.
Words are just a way to implement a desired mechanic and should serve that mechanic, not the other way around.
I fail to see the point of designing a card that makes an entire category of other cards worthless in particular Kingdom for no particular reason and especially not if you can easily prevent that dubious destructive interaction from occuring.
Also note that this is not just a card interaction between two random cards. Risen King is one of the few Dominion cards with a global effect which has to be carefully balanced. The only two problems of a permanent Transmogrify that come to mind are green and trashing attacks.
You could do Risen King without the exemption of Victory cards but I am pretty sure that it will lead to some unfun broken games. Trashing attacks are not so horrible, it doesn't lead to a broken game but just to a Kingdom with quasi one pile less. Not fun in my mind.
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I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I mean there are only a handful of trashing attacks in the game anyway and they're generally among the least popular cards, so I really don't think there's a problem here at all. I assume Lighthouse and Guardian are your least favourite cards because they also shut down trashing attacks completely :P. Are powerful trashers awful because they make junkers much less relevant? It's all part of the game dude, it's a feature not a bug.
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Note that DXV did not do Reactions that backfire (https://boardgamegeek.com/article/4787469#4787469).
Now Risen King isn't a Reaction-Attack but something similar: a nullification of the attack with a cherry on top for the defender, e.g. Lighthouse plus Horse Traders: While this is in play, when another player plays an Attack card, it doesn't affect you and you draw a card. This is nearly as bad as a Reaction-Attack would be and shouldn't be done.
I am pretty sure that this is, in your words, a bug and not a feature. Or to be more precise, it is a design artifact, an incidental thing that Kudasai did not intend. So why shouldn't he improve his card?
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No it's fine, it's more like Market Square or Fortress vs trashing attacks. There's a big difference between shutting down all attacks and making a small subset of attacks worse. LastFootnote actually just made a great post on the subject in that Favourite/Least favourite Events topic.
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No it is not. LFN doesn't argue anywhere for what you do: shutting down attacks and gifting the attacked player something. Not to mention that Advance doesn't defend against Looters, you still draw the junk and have to spend a Buy to get rid of it. Even Sacrifice doesn't shut down Looters, a conditional Village for $4 is nothing to write home about.
No offical card does shutdown. Just take a look at Enchantress. The card would be a bad design if it said +2 Coins instead of the cantrip.
Or, to use a ludicrous self-shutdown example, why not do a Curser that reads "in this game, all Curses gain the Action type and can be played for +2 Cards +1 Action". Somehow I guess that this very card will never be bought.
The main issue about Market Square and Fortress is that they are CARDS, i.e. the benefit for the attacked player is conditional upon having a Market Square in hand respectively having to trash a Fortress. Getting these benefits requires good play and adding those cards to your deck.
Risen King on the other hand features a GLOBAL EFFECT. If A trashed Risen King and B plays with Knights C does not have to do anything to welcome those Knight attacks. It is as if the Kingdom randomly featured a general rule that said "when somebody plays an Attack card it does not affect anybody and each other player gets +1VP".
All I suggest is to get rid of this ridiculous general rule that the card INCIDENTALLY implies while keeping the rest of the card intact.
Now if the card change came at a cost, too much text, too much complexity or whatever I would be the first to admit that trashing attacks occur rarely and that the quantitative effect of the attack that benefits the defender is fairly negligible.
But it doesn't so I fail to see why you argue against mending something which violates basic design principles. I learned on this board how important it is to follow basic guidelines and prevent bad interactions, even if they occur infrequently.
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I simply disagree with you, I don't think it goes against basic design principles at all. I actually might go as far as to say that your suggestion is the thing going against design principles honestly, interactions like this are good for the game and shouldn't be stifled. All of these silly examples you give are irrelevant. If Fortress is the kingdom and if this thing are in the kingdom you're not going to go for a trashing attack, apart from the situations where you do of course, the end result is the same though so the mechanism at which this result is achieved isn't particularly relevant. You're also hand-waving away the setup cost of gaining and trashing a $5 cost card, which also will probably give a hefty benefit to your opponent for being in the trash, which I would argue is a much higher opportunity cost than say buying some Fortresses. You obviously disagree with me and that's fine, maybe we can draw a line on it here and see what Kudasai decides on.
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Risen King(v0.2) - I actually can't recall how I intended for this to interact with Trashing Attacks. I imagine it was an oversight, thinking that when attacked it was the player trashing your cards and not you yourself. Not the case! I think by adding "during your turn" it should clear everything up.
You both argue really good points and I'm not sure if Risen King is fine without the fix or not, but in this instance I think erring on the side of caution is best. Thanks for the lively discussion and can't wait to see what you think of the next Commander - General!
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Risen King(v0.2) - I actually can't recall how I intended for this to interact with Trashing Attacks. I imagine it was an oversight, thinking that when attacked it was the player trashing your cards and not you yourself. Not the case! I think by adding "during your turn" it should clear everything up.
I like your "during your turn" wording, that's much clearer better than my "when you cause" suggestion.
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Funeral - I usually wait until people have commented on a card before I give my own input, but I just wanted to acknowledge that Funeral may be unready for presentation. I'm merely posting it today in honor of the little, baby crow that didn't make it through the night. It may have grown up to be a curse to all (as crows sometimes do), but to us it was the sweetest little crow and it will be missed. So Funeral is for it. If fixes are needed, they will come soon!
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Funeral looks sound. I like that it becomes slightly better after the first play. The below-the line-text should read "when you trash" instead of "when you play".
Border Wall isn't particularly exciting but the liability is in my opinion better than that of Poacher.
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Border Wall seems broken with Goons/Merchant Guild. The "while in play" attack may be awkward with Moat as you have to remember which players have revealed, and they may no longer have the Moat in hand by the time the effect takes place, so there's no easy way to check.
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Commanders - I get the elegance of implying one passive effect with something there's only one of, a top discard pile card. But how reliable can it be in practice? Basically, I'm raising the thought: why aren't these using their own mat? Since you have multiple Commanders you seem to want to enable switching between different 'command modes' when there is more than one in a kingdom, and a mat would make this simpler, even if it is adding more components.
That Risen King giving a global effect on trash is well discussed. I firstly wonder when you'd choose to trash one and get an advantage out of it for yourself, and secondly if there is more than one in the trash, I think you'd gain a card per copy in the trash?
And the global effect theme doesn't stop there. Funeral takes a lot of setup that affects everybody. Who's going to be the one to get a Bridge on the mat? It's bound to be asked. Suppose somebody goes for it, adding Funeral and Bridge to their deck; everyone else rushes Bridges ignoring everything else, and then...what does he do now? He would even have to lose his Bridge and so fall behind. Or nobody does it because they're all depending on others, a bit like Bishop trashing. Perhaps if everyone's trashing Coppers someone could choose not to and make their Coppers Silvers, and this is the best use for it?
Border Wall shares a similarity with Lost Temple in that you use a Buy to do more, launch a junking Attack. Could be fun, though I'm confident this is a Peddler+ so costs at least $5.
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Border Wall seems broken with Goons/Merchant Guild. The "while in play" attack may be awkward with Moat as you have to remember which players have revealed, and they may no longer have the Moat in hand by the time the effect takes place, so there's no easy way to check.
Actually as Border Wall is not an attack, players can't reveal a Moat. Even an attack version wouldn't introduce any issues that weren't there already with e.g. Swamp Hag, though.
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Hmmm I'm pretty sure Border Wall was different when I looked last night... This version seems kind of busted right? Like it's uncommon to not reach (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/2a/Coin4.png/16px-Coin4.png) on the turn you play this (until you start getting junked I guess) and even then giving out a Curse seems stronger than most (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/32/Coin3.png/16px-Coin3.png)s anyway so it's not really like there's a drawback there. If you have multiple buys you can give out a Curse and buy something. I don't know this seems like a bonus more often than a drawback?
So the base effect of Funeral ignoring the mat thing is +2 Cards, trash up to 2 cards, trash this. Which seems like a reasonable enough for a (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png). I'm not sure how well the mat will work, I think the main effect it will have is making you not want to leave a Copper on there early on to give your opponent like +(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png)-(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/32/Coin3.png/16px-Coin3.png) for free early on. You you'd want to set aside Copper first then Estate (or 2 Estates ideally). Like trashing one of your cards to maybe make your remaining copies better if your opponent doesn't just cover it up on their turn but also making opponent's copies better too seems not worth it?
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Border Wall (v0.2) - Just a quick addition, Faust was commenting on a previous version (v0.1), which had an Attack type. Sorry for the quick switch.
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I can only speak to how I'd like Funeral and Border Wall to play as they are both untested currently.
Funeral (v0.1) - Gazbag summed this one elegently. I imagine during the early game in most cases a player will want to "bury their Copper" under Estates or Shelters. If not, welcome back Coppersmith; you've been missed! Even if this isn't used mid to late game, my hope is that it's a good enough one-shot trasher that people will still pick it up.
Mid to late game, I can't say much that hasn't already been said. Again I can only speculate how this will play. I just hope this entices players to diverge from normal strategies and play with cards that are seldom touched. +1 Card and +1 Action should make any Action fit into any strategy. You just can't rely on the bonus being around forever, unless you get the last Funeral play off.
So the hope is that funeral is very powerful with calculated play and a disaster for those who just buy a bunch of bridges and try to get a cantrip effect on them. Of course playtesting is needed!
Border Wall (v0.3) - Asper is correct that an Attack type shouldn't be too hard to resolve. Beyond that, there isn't much I can say about this card. It's a bit beyond my reasoning ability and may end up being unbalanceable, but I thought it was an interesting enough concept to share and get thoughts on. I'll try and get some playtesting in soon.
Commanders - I get the elegance of implying one passive effect with something there's only one of, a top discard pile card. But how reliable can it be in practice? Basically, I'm raising the thought: why aren't these using their own mat? Since you have multiple Commanders you seem to want to enable switching between different 'command modes' when there is more than one in a kingdom, and a mat would make this simpler, even if it is adding more components.
That Risen King giving a global effect on trash is well discussed. I firstly wonder when you'd choose to trash one and get an advantage out of it for yourself, and secondly if there is more than one in the trash, I think you'd gain a card per copy in the trash?
Commanders - A mat would be elegant, but playing from the discard opens up a lot of interactions with discarding cards and mid-turn gainers. The absence or inclusion of these cards will say a lot about how reliable Commanders will be. I'm also trying to implement various levels of reliability into each Commander. Marshal only hurts your hand when played, but it allows you to put another Commander in your discard, which I think should be quiet powerful. Osho has no reliability built in, but is very cheap. Risen King has some mid-turn gaining abilities and as you mentioned, has a global impact from the trash. And yes, multiple Risen Kings in the trash means multiple cards gained off of trashing. I haven't revealed General yet (the 4th Commander), but it's Commander effect will apply while in play and while in the discard, so it will be very reliable, but very expensive.
Honestly though, you raise some good questions. The Commander concept is all hypothetical at this point, but play-testing will come soon enough. As always, thanks for your thoughtful analysis Aquila! I really like some of your cards and will soon try my hand at returning the analysis favor, but be warned, my card analysis skills are sub par!
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Isn't the majority of mid-turn gainers that can actually get you a 5-cost card like Marshal(into your discard pile) Remodel variants? I can't think of one that isn't, actually.
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University, Horn of Plenty, arguably Altar (is that more of a Remodel variant or more of a trasher/gainer?) and more recently Vampire.
About the issue of the strength of Commanders, I am pretty sure that Marshal would be overpowered if it worked all the time.
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University, Horn of Plenty, arguably Altar (is that more of a Remodel variant or more of a trasher/gainer?) and more recently Vampire.
About the issue of the strength of Commanders, I am pretty sure that Marshal would be overpowered if it worked all the time.
I count Altar as a Remodel variant, whereas Horn of Plenty and Vampire arguably are "mid-turn". That leaves University. Oh, and Smugglers and Jester, I guess.
I think it's save to say that the vast majority of gainers that allow some kind of reliable interaction with Commanders will first reduce your hand size. Whatever that means.
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Oops, you are of course right, I totally ignored the mid-turn activate-this-turn aspect.
Commanders are probably best though when you buy them (respectively hand-gain them via Artisan or Wish, play or not play but discard them at the end of the turn) as they are then active for the entire next turn and not just for a part of the current turn.
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Oops, you are of course right, I totally ignored the mid-turn activate-this-turn aspect.
Commanders are probably best though when you buy them (respectively hand-gain them via Artisan or Wish, play or not play but discard them at the end of the turn) as they are then active for the entire next turn and not just for a part of the current turn.
Buying doesn't work, as you will cover them up with the cards in play. Hand-gainers just stay hand-gainers. It's good to gain a card to your hand, but it's not like a hand-gained Commander is any better than another hand-gained card. You gain an additional copy and get to use the card as if you had drawn it. That's something Artisan and Wish do, not something Commanders do.
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Oops, you are of course right, I totally ignored the mid-turn activate-this-turn aspect.
Commanders are probably best though when you buy them (respectively hand-gain them via Artisan or Wish, play or not play but discard them at the end of the turn) as they are then active for the entire next turn and not just for a part of the current turn.
Buying doesn't work, as you will cover them up with the cards in play. Hand-gainers just stay hand-gainers. It's good to gain a card to your hand, but it's not like a hand-gained Commander is any better than another hand-gained card. You gain an additional copy and get to use the card as if you had drawn it. That's something Artisan and Wish do, not something Commanders do.
Right, buying doesn't work but hand-gainining does as you can then last discard the hand-gained Commander at the end of the turn such that it becomes active next turn.
This is meant as comparison to gaining a Commander mid-turn via something like University. The advantage is that the Commander is active earlier, this turn, but when you play that University late in your turn the Commander might not do that much anymore and you would prefer a hand-gainer like Artisan as this enables you to set up the Commander for the entire (well, until you shuffle) next turn.
Of course this partially depends on the relative strengths of the active and passive effects of the respective Commander. I am mainly having Marshal here in mind which is semi-dead on play but brilliant in discard whereas Risen King is roughly the other way around.
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Border Wall(v0.3) - To further complicate the Border Wall discussion I've made it a split-pile along with Refugees. 5 Border Walls on top and 5 Refugees on the bottom. This goes against having cheaper split-pile cards on top, but hopefully that's more of a general rule and not a hard rule. I have no idea how this is going to work out, but I think everyone agrees Border Village on it's own needed a nerf. So what better way to nerf a card than to share it with it's anti-card? Oh boy, this could be a disaster!
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Buying doesn't work, as you will cover them up with the cards in play. Hand-gainers just stay hand-gainers. It's good to gain a card to your hand, but it's not like a hand-gained Commander is any better than another hand-gained card. You gain an additional copy and get to use the card as if you had drawn it. That's something Artisan and Wish do, not something Commanders do.
I believe it's possible to get around this with Crypt. Very niche! Other than that, I'm trying to make some cost $4 Commanders so more mid-turn gaining options are available. Also very niche, but the more interactions the better.
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Sanctuary/Monk: If there's good trashing and no handsize attacks, then with just 2 Sanctuaries you'll have a guaranteed Province every turn.
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Sanctuary/Monk: If there's good trashing and no handsize attacks, then with just 2 Sanctuaries you'll have a guaranteed Province every turn.
Sanctuary/Monk - I think you're thinking of 4 Sanctuary cards in play. 2 Sanctuaries would only give Monks +1 Coin each. Even with 4 Sanctuaries, with each Province you gain you have less and less control over how many Monks you gain on the reshuffle. In my chapel game tests, you're able to nab a few Provinces back to back once thin, but then the strategy grinds to a halt. You're forced to buy Treasure in order to get your reshuffles corrected and that takes 6-7 turns. I'm sure it's possible to make this into a golden deck, but I think it would be harder, more complicated and take longer than it appears.
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Sanctuary/Monk sure is a weirdo. I'm pretty sure it sucks though, like almost never worth buying? Monk is basically (action) Copper, or if you for whatever reason buy 3 Sanctuaries is a Silver? Am I misunderstanding the card or what?
It's also very unclear what is meant by draw instructions, is it just +cards? Things that are effected by the -card token? Does Envoy count? How does it deal with Catacombs?
I still thing Border Wall looks broken, and Refugees also looks broken? Grand Market for $3 yay! Apart from when it's a million vp for $3! I get that you can't buy them if you have a Border Wall in play, but at $3 they're gainable by pretty much everything and shouldn't be too tough to afford while holding back your Border Walls. I suppose Border Wall is also supposed to get Curses in the trash and mess up Refugees? But if players trash their starting Coppers then that won't really happen. The whole package just seems bonkers to me, which is kind of a problem with split piles where winning the split can just decide games.
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Sanctuary/Monk - I think you're thinking of 4 Sanctuary cards in play. 2 Sanctuaries would only give Monks +1 Coin each.
D'oh! Missed the "2" on the card, sorry.
Sanctuary/Monk - Even with 4 Sanctuaries, with each Province you gain you have less and less control over how many Monks you gain on the reshuffle.
How so? You get the Monks at the start of Clean-up. At that point the Provinces you gained this turn will still be in your discard, so they won't interfere. This really seems to me like a Mandarin/HoP thing where you can top deck the same 5 cards over and over, unless I missed something else.
It's also very unclear what is meant by draw instructions, is it just +cards? Things that are effected by the -card token? Does Envoy count? How does it deal with Catacombs?
I'm pretty sure it works the same as -Card, yes. It specifies "draw" instructions, but when a card tells you to "put X in your hand" that's not the same as "drawing" it.
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Sanctuary(v0.1)/Monk(v0.1):
Draw Instructions: Yes, the "draw instructions" refers to anything the -1 Card token handles. So some "draw" cards like Advisor and Envoy are excluded. Catacombs is a tricky one as I'm inclined to say the first part is a reveal clause, which is not draw, but the second part is clearly draw. I'm sure Catacombs with the -1 Card token has been addressed somewhere. Good question Gazbag!
Golden Deck: Keep in mind you need a minimum of 6 cards in your deck for your Sanctuary cards to provide Monks. 5 or less cards and your deck will have 0 cards every time, which does not satisfy the 1 to 4 card requirement. So for the Golden deck strategy let's say you do have 6 cards and you have 5 Sanctuary cards out (Monks = $3 Coin). The play order will go as follows: 1 Card, 4 Monks = $12 = Province; No Monks = $?; 2 Cards, 3 Monks = $9 = Province; No Monks = $?; 3 Cards, 2 Monks = $6 = Not Province. You can see that as you add non-Cantrip cards (i.e. Provinces) you draw less and less Monks for less and less money. This is due to the fact that your overall deck size is increasing. So not a viable, straight-forward strategy, but maybe with some clever cantrip play and/or not using all of your Monk cards could work.
So What's The Point: Well I designed Sanctuary/Monk with a very specific goal in mind. To address a problem I'm sure every Dominion player has encountered and cursed the game as a result. Perhaps it didn't need fixing, but I wanted to give it a shot. So what is this problem? Well, I want to see if someone can figure it out. Not to be difficult, but this is a great opportunity to see how people interpret this. If no one can see what it's true purpose is, perhaps it's a bad concept. Besides this, opening a Silver and 3 Sanctuaries guarantees $8-$10 coin on turn 5. That may be helpful at times, right?
Border Wall(v0.3)/Refugees(v0.1): This has been quite a tough one to test, but so far it seems fair. Both cards have great potential, but keep each other in check in various ways. Perhaps this is a flawed concept, but I think it's worth looking into a bit more. I will of course keep everyone updated! I will likely drop the Refugee Treasure clause to +$1 and discard a card. +$2 is likely a bit much, even though it is conditional.
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I like the idea of a split pile with cheaper cards underneath and an antisynergy between the two halves. But I am not so excited about Refugees.
As Gazbag has pointed out, Refugees can be a cantrip Victory token gainer which is something one should generally avoid. But it is not unconditional and getting a majority of Victory cards into the trash requires a huge effort. But after you have jumped through all the the hoops and achieved that hard goal (Rebuild is the only card that comes to mind that could achieve this easily, otherwise you gotta buy Estates and trash them like crazy) the other players could just free ride and buy Refugees. Or you first buy Refugees, buy and trash Estates but then the game is already over.
So my point is that the Victory token option rarely matters. But if it does or could matter it doesn't work well.
About the other option, as already indicated it is simply the standard case and I don't think that the idea of conditioning a card upon a majority of types in the trash really works. With junking and good trashing you could have 30 Curses/Ruins and 21 Coppers in the trash in a 3P game but in a 2P game it is 14 Coppers vs 10 Curses/Ruins.
I think that Refugees is OK if you change it from a Market + Oasis into a Market Square + Oasis:
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 Buy
+1 Coin
Discard a card.
Safe to say that if this were an ordinary Kingdom card it would have to cost $4 (as it is stronger than Oasis but weaker than Market) but as it is available later and as it is harder to get in the presence of Border Wall it can get away with costing $3. If I were you I'd try something else besides a mixture of offical cards though. I also think that your set could get away with more terminals, you only have 3 so far.
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Border Wall(v0.3)/Refugees(v0.2) - Refugees (v0.2) now produces $1 Coin instead of $2. Gazbag and Holunder9, you both bring up good and accurate points, but I simply see these as strengths and weaknesses that need to be considered on a board by board basis, not reasons to not have the cards. My limited baseline testing has shown no matter how Border Wall/Refugees are played solo (as an early game Curser or a late game VP gainer) they are about as good as Big Money. I believe their real strength will come from the other Kingdom cards that tip them to one end or the other of their playable spectrum.
There is a lot more testing to do to ensure this complicated interaction is fair and balanced, but at this initial point I'm happy with how these cards play with each other. The next step will be to see how it plays in various Kingdoms. As always thank you both for the feedback!
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I also think that your set could get away with more terminals, you only have 3 so far.
Fair point! These are not meant to be a cohesive set by any means, but you are correct, I should put more terminal cards on here. I'm just a bit more unsure about them, but I'll start posting more.
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I also think that your set could get away with more terminals, you only have 3 so far.
Fair point! These are not meant to be a cohesive set by any means, but you are correct, I should put more terminal cards on here. I'm just a bit more unsure about them, but I'll start posting more.
Well, there is a clear historic trend towards less terminals, especially with the release of the second edition of the base set, so I understand the "fear of terminality". It did after all nearly break the first edition of the base game (I know this is blasphemy but please don't call the inquisitors) which led to far too many money games.
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I assume Sanctuary is an attempt to stop opening buys from missing the reshuffle?
Also it's worth pointing out that testing your cards vs big money isn't particularly useful. E.g. Scrying Pool is an incredibly strong card, but Scrying Pool big money is probably worse than pure big money. That's an extreme example obviously, but just because a card doesn't crush big money by itself doesn't prove that it's of an acceptable power-level. The only real use is making sure your card doesn't lead to an obscenely fast Province rush by itself, which isn't the worry with Border Wall.
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I cannot judge Smelter because I am not good with cards like Develop and Dismantle but it looks decent.
I like Trade Ship but like all build-up cards you gotta be very careful about the power level. Take Miser, it has to be weak because it would otherwise become too good in too many games.
So what's the potential problem of Trade Ship? If there are decent trashers around you can gain 4 Estates and now have a Province gainer in your deck. Add a village and another Trade Ship and you make as much as any decent engine, 2 Provinces per turn.
I am not claiming that it is broken but any direct, i.e. non-Remodel, Province gainer potentially is which is why I would test it without the 2 tokens for a Victory card.
General is simple and brilliant. I have no idea about how balanced this is but I just love it on first sight.
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I assume Sanctuary is an attempt to stop opening buys from missing the reshuffle?
Also it's worth pointing out that testing your cards vs big money isn't particularly useful. E.g. Scrying Pool is an incredibly strong card, but Scrying Pool big money is probably worse than pure big money. That's an extreme example obviously, but just because a card doesn't crush big money by itself doesn't prove that it's of an acceptable power-level. The only real use is making sure your card doesn't lead to an obscenely fast Province rush by itself, which isn't the worry with Border Wall.
Yes, Sanctuary/Monk is meant to be a reshuffle stabilizer. Maybe something like this isn't needed, but I like the concept. Your cards will now never miss the reshuffle, but it comes at the cost of slowing your reshuffles down. Other than that it can be used for pretty good payload.
In my opinion, testing against Big Money (not using the card with Big Money) is only meant to establish a basic baseline for a card. Big Money is just a baseline for the game correct? To me, playing against the game baseline seems like the logical first step. Of course you don't just stop there though. I would then play it with other cards I thought would either support it or counter it to see what it's potential is. If that all seems fair, I'd look at similar cards (if available) to try and make sure the pricing was correct. Then it would come down to actually playing with it and making sure it was actually fun.
Do you have a method you've found works best for you?
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I cannot judge Smelter because I am not good with cards like Develop and Dismantle but it looks decent.
I like Trade Ship but like all build-up cards you gotta be very careful about the power level. Take Miser, it has to be weak because it would otherwise become too good in too many games.
So what's the potential problem of Trade Ship? If there are decent trashers around you can gain 4 Estates and now have a Province gainer in your deck. Add a village and another Trade Ship and you make as much as any decent engine, 2 Provinces per turn.
I am not claiming that it is broken but any direct, i.e. non-Remodel, Province gainer potentially is which is why I would test it without the 2 tokens for a Victory card.
General is simple and brilliant. I have no idea about how balanced this is but I just love it on first sight.
Trade Ship(v0.1) - Trade Ship can only gain cards costing exactly the amount on your Trade Ship mat. So if you do have 2 tokens and gain an Estate, it bumps it up to 4 tokens no longer allowing Estates to be gained. Same applies for Duchies and Provinces; you can only gain 1 per game. The wording on this alludes to the card playing differently, but this is how Dominion has always handled these types of cards (i.e. Artificer). It's flawed, but I'm just going with the official print. Maybe they will fix this one day.
General(v0.1) - I am also very excited about this one. Can't wait to try it!
And would you look at that... three terminal Actions in a row! I didn't think I had it in me!
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I cannot judge Smelter because I am not good with cards like Develop and Dismantle but it looks decent.
I like Trade Ship but like all build-up cards you gotta be very careful about the power level. Take Miser, it has to be weak because it would otherwise become too good in too many games.
So what's the potential problem of Trade Ship? If there are decent trashers around you can gain 4 Estates and now have a Province gainer in your deck. Add a village and another Trade Ship and you make as much as any decent engine, 2 Provinces per turn.
I am not claiming that it is broken but any direct, i.e. non-Remodel, Province gainer potentially is which is why I would test it without the 2 tokens for a Victory card.
General is simple and brilliant. I have no idea about how balanced this is but I just love it on first sight.
Trade Ship(v0.1) - Trade Ship can only gain cards costing exactly the amount on your Trade Ship mat. So if you do have 2 tokens and gain an Estate, it bumps it up to 4 tokens no longer allowing Estates to be gained. Same applies for Duchies and Provinces; you can only gain 1 per game. The wording on this alludes to the card playing differently, but this is how Dominion has always handled these types of cards (i.e. Artificer). It's flawed, but I'm just going with the official print. Maybe they will fix this one day.
General(v0.1) - I am also very excited about this one. Can't wait to try it!
And would you look at that... three terminal Actions in a row! I didn't think I had it in me!
Sorry man, I read over Trade Ship too quickly. The card is of course totally fine. It takes some time to bump this up to something better than Workshop and after you have gained enough $5s you'll probably try do play such that the last three players of Trade Ship are something like: gain a Duchy, play it for another token, gain a Province.
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Seawall is interesting. It is to Junk Dealer as Hireling is to Laboratory until you decide to stop to use it. I fear though that it is a bit worse than Junk Dealer. Unless there are handsize attack you might have to stop relatively early with thinning lest this destroys a good hand. Obviously it is brilliant with junkers as you can then use it relatively long.
I really like it, one of the best Hireling variants / permanent Durations I have seen.
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Seawall is interesting. It is to Junk Dealer as Hireling is to Laboratory until you decide to stop to use it. I fear though that it is a bit worse than Junk Dealer. Unless there are handsize attack you might have to stop relatively early with thinning lest this destroys a good hand. Obviously it is brilliant with junkers as you can then use it relatively long.
I really like it, one of the best Hireling variants / permanent Durations I have seen.
Yeah, I really like this one conceptually and thematically, but there are still some big, looming questions about how it will play. Junk Dealer and Donate were the main inspirations behind Sea Wall, but hopefully it plays differently enough to justify a new card. I think it's better than Junk Dealer early on, but the risk of playing it into mid-game becomes exponentially worse than Junk Dealer. Donate is better early game, but Sea Wall can take your trashing a little further into the game to deal with junk attacks and such.
I hadn't thought of how hand size attacks interact with this. Very cool catch!
[Edit] I'm also on the fence about the on buy clause. I was thinking of a way to reward player 2 advantage, but this might scale out of control with 3 or more players. 1st player could then buy a 2nd Sea Wall for very cheap, but the question then becomes would you ever want a 2nd one at any price. I guess the risk of having 2 versus 1 is not much greater.
The cost reduction may also mess with opening hands in an unforeseen way.
Any thoughts on this are greatly appreciated!
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I like Smelter, I'd make sure trashing things into Copper and getting a million Coffers isn't too good but apart from that seems neat.
I worry that Trade Ship ranges from useless to broken without much middle ground. It's terribly slow to get going and even adds an Estate to your deck unless there's a different $2, so I think you'd really need to be able to play it a lot for it to be worth it. Gaining $5s is strong though and then you can get a Province out of it. It's probably fine, don't really know!
Seawall: not sure about the cost reduction thing, I don't really think it needs it tbh. Seems very strong, I imagine you'd open with it every time unless there's something else broken going on. My worry is unlike Chapel it makes a pretty big difference whether you draw this turn 3 or 4, although I guess it doesn't matter so much what you draw it with, so maybe that balances out. The wording might need work, too tired to think about that much right now though.
Border Guard: Not sure about this playing from the supply thing, can't it just gain a card costing up to $5? I don't think that's really adding anything to the card. Border Village says less than this so you can't just gain the entire pile after playing 1 Highway, this doesn't face such problems. Seems like a cool spin on Artisan apart from that though! Might have to watch gaining Duchies off the token though.
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Border Guard: Not sure about this playing from the supply thing, can't it just gain a card costing up to $5? I don't think that's really adding anything to the card. Border Village says less than this so you can't just gain the entire pile after playing 1 Highway, this doesn't face such problems. Seems like a cool spin on Artisan apart from that though! Might have to watch gaining Duchies off the token though.
I think you miss that when you play the card the second time you can put the Guard token back on the Province pile or in a Colony game the Colony or Platinum pile, thus enabling you to gain expensive cards.
But in the opening that's probably dubious and you might prefer a cheaper pile. Suppose that both player are building a draw engine with a $4 village and a $5 Smithy variant. You'd rather put your token there as it increases the likelihood of you gaining a card and as it makes your opponent not want to get the good card.
This interactive element is the cool thing about Border Guard; without it would just be a bland Artisan variant.
I'd consider enabling every player to choose the initial placement of the Guard token during Setup (hard to do that secretly so I'd make the first player choose first which should slightly compensate for the first player advantage), otherwise the whole minigame only starts after somebody buys a Province or when you buy Border Guard. As Border Guard is most interactive and interesting in an engine, or more precisely while players are building their engine, Province buying occurs too late in the game.
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Border Guard: Not sure about this playing from the supply thing, can't it just gain a card costing up to $5? I don't think that's really adding anything to the card. Border Village says less than this so you can't just gain the entire pile after playing 1 Highway, this doesn't face such problems. Seems like a cool spin on Artisan apart from that though! Might have to watch gaining Duchies off the token though.
I think you miss that when you play the card the second time you can put the Guard token back on the Province pile or in a Colony game the Colony or Platinum pile.
But more important, early in the game you might prefer a cheaper pile! Suppose both player are building draw engine with a $4 village and a $5 Smithy variant. You'd rather put your token there as it increases the likelihood of you gaining a card and as it makes your opponent not want to get the good card.
This interactive element is the cool thing about Border Guard; without it would just be a bland Artisan variant.
I mean the token could just spell it out instead of weirdly playing it from the supply.
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I mean the token could just spell it out instead of weirdly playing it from the supply.
Do you concrectly see how this could be better worded? The only alternative I see is to repeat the play instructions instead of the 'play it from the Supply and leave it there' thing but that includes more words.
I like the current wording as it makes clear that Border Guard works for you even if you don't have it in your deck. Which is by the way a great innovation (not that Kudasai's cards are short of those).
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(https://i.imgur.com/30sJ6Ud.png)
See, so much better. You're welcome to stick with this re-theme Kudasai!
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I don't like this castrated version as it lacks the key trade-off of the original version (that applies of course only for "passive" play but the "active" part of the card is fairly boring): do I put the token on an expensive card to be able to gain an expensive card or do I put it on a cheaper engine component to make it more likely that I gain a card at all.
If you use your version passively you can just switch the token between the village and the Smithy variant pile and be able to gain 5s while the opponents are building. Now you can have your cake and eat it too.
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I don't like this castrated version as it lacks the key trade-off of the original version (that applies of course only for "passive" play but the "active" part of the card is fairly boring): do I put the token on an expensive card to be able to gain an expensive card or do I put it on a cheaper engine component to make it more likely that I gain a card at all.
If you use your version passively you can just switch the token between the village and the Smithy variant pile and be able to gain 5s while the opponents are building. Now you can have your cake and eat it too.
I don't understand what you mean, I think you're misreading the original card? Mine functions the same as the original (aside from cost reduction/Adventures token weirdness). The card that you gain doesn't depend on the cost of the card with the token on.
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Sorry, looks like I already modded the card in my head: "Gain a card costing less than the card with your Guard token on."
(https://i.imgur.com/6qmj7O2.jpg)
If one just wanted the passive side of this one could implement it as an Asper-ian Edict.
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Sorry, looks like I already modded the card in my head: "Gain a card costing less than the card with your Guard token on."
(https://i.imgur.com/6qmj7O2.jpg)
If one just wanted the passive side of this one could implement it as an Asper-ian Edict.
You could also try an Adventures style token Event, I actually think I tried one like that once.
But yeah I don't like the wordiness of my wording or the playing cards in my opponent's buy phasiness of Kudasai's version, so I guess you just have to choose what you think is the lesser of two evils.
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Here is a shot at an Edict version. Hey, at least it achieves one thing: there are no wording issues anymore as the card does not have to relate to itself anymore. ;D
Not sure about the Coin token. You probably don't mind gifting me a Herald if you buy that first Witch but otherwise the Guard tokens could just shut down buying cards from a pile completely. That Walled Village looks less appealing if it comes with a free Silver for the opponent. Or perhaps I am totally wrong and this would actually work without the Coin token as compensation for the buying player.
Border Protection
Edict
When another player buys a card from the pile with your Guard token on
he takes a Coin token. You gain a card costing less than the bought card
and move your Guard token to a different Supply pile. Setup: In player
order, each player puts their Guard token on a Supply pile of their choice.
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You could make Border Guard a Reaction card and let you play it from your hand when your opponent buys from the pile. That would make it worse, but hey, less wordy and more intuitive, and might be more fun!
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Sea Wall(v0.1) - I agree with removing the on-buy clause. It's nice on paper, but probably doesn't actually do much. Probably best used with another card. I also worry about the discrepancy between getting this turn 3 and getting it turn 5. I do think Sea Wall is less forgiving in this instance than say Chapel, but it is a lot more money. I guess there will always be a certain level of swinginess in Dominion that can't be designed around. Unless I make this a Night-Duration with a gain to hand clause. This would probobably make it too strong as you could trash turn 2 with it. Other than that, I think I already have too many Night - Duration cards and many more already in the pipeline!
Border Guard(v0.1) - Thanks for the praise Holunder9, but sorry Border Guard wasn't as cool as you originally thought! :) I made this one a few years ago and I've never quite felt 100% happy with it. It has played fine, but it always seemed like it could be just a tad better and/or more interesting. So I'm very happy to see these change recommendations. I think gaining a cheaper card than the pile your token is on opens up a lot of game-play potential and fixes some problems at the same time. I will have to think a little on any potential issues with this version, but barring that I think I will change it.
The choice of where to place your token at the start of the game is very interesting, but it needs some careful thought. My first fear is that there will never be a reason to buy Border Guard with this change. I'm sure there's a way to make it work though.
As for how to implement this I have some good options to think on. I'm not in love with playing it from the Supply, but I think I concluded on that not because of word choice, but because the token stops functioning once the Border Guard pile is empty. It's sort of a Band of Misfits/Overlord limiter. I don't see the Border Guard pile being empty most games, but for this reason I'm inclined to keep the playing from the Supply bit in. I will think on it though.
The Reaction suggestion by Commodore Chuckles is interesting, but my main hesitation is you'd have to have the Border Guard in hand to gain the card. But this would be a good fix if Border Guard ever needed a nerf.
Border Gourd - Where to even begin! Clearly Border Gourd's first issue is it's lack of a proper sword, shield and helmet. How can one guard anything so ill equipped? I've made the necessary changes.
(https://i.imgur.com/Sh2PUfd.jpg)
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Border Guard(v0.2) - Well you got me sucked into updating Border Guard. Now that mirror frame for my girlfriend is never going to get built! :P This is just a rough concept going off of Holunder9's idea of having the gained card be less than the top card of the Supply pile your token is on. This is a really cool concept, but as I see it as a nerf in a way, Border Guard's price (initially) is now $5 and now it's price can vary. It now must be able to gain a cheaper card in order to stop players from alternating between the Copper and Curse piles for $0 cost Border Guards. You can still put it on the Estate pile and gain Coppers/Curses, but hopefully that is just plain bad. Also, if you gain too many and deplete the Border Guard pile, your token no longer works (Hey I created a reason to keep the play from Supply bit!).
Well this all came together rather quickly so there might be some issues, but I think it's on the right track. I also like Holunder9's other suggestion of player's choosing the initial pile their token goes on, but I just don't think it will work for this card. There's already a lot going on with this. Maybe it could be worked into an Event or as was suggested an Edict? Would love to see it!
Thanks for all the feedback!
Edit - I can see one issue (albeit probably unlikely). If the Border Guard pile is empty and the last card of a pile your token is on is gained, you cannot move your token, so your Border Guards are now equal to the price of a card that is not there. An easy fix would be to mention in a manual that in this case Border Guard is equal to $0 Coin. This would essentially brick all Border Guards a player has, but I think this is easy enough to avoid.
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I like that you did a Traveller line. That's like the hardest thing to do. Also, while Curse-for-benefit is often frowned upon I don't think that it is a big issue. Mountain Hag is good enough without Ambassador-ing Curses and as second card Witch Hunter is supposed to be weak anyway.
But I don't understand some cards.
Orphan's 'give a VP token back' will not do anything unless there are other cards that provide VP tokens or unless you buy one after you have Grand Witch in play which seems extremly unlikely.
Grand Witch is unlikely to get VPs via Curses unless there is a Curser and no trasher in the Kingdom (so players are forced to play the Ambassador game with Mountain Hag).
These two cards are of course fine otherwise but they have elemets that are a bit too Kingdom-dependent for my taste.
My favourite here is Heretic. Normally you want to progress as fast as possible through a Traveller line but this trade-off between having a good engine piece for a turn longer vs. getting the payload of the 4th and 5th cards earlier is really nice and also mechanically well and clear implemented via the State.
Then again the card also punishes you for trying to exploit that strategy (this is probably very necessary, that Lost City looks more attractive to me than the Coin and VP tokens of the following cards) and use several Heretics as Lost Cities as no tokens are added to Haunted while at least one Heretic is on it.
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I like that you did a Traveller line. That's like the hardest thing to do. Also, while Curse-for-benefit is often frowned upon I don't think that it is a big issue. Mountain Hag is good enough without Ambassador-ing Curses and as second card Witch Hunter is supposed to be weak anyway.
But I don't understand some cards.
Orphan's 'give a VP token back' will not do anything unless there are other cards that provide VP tokens or unless you buy one after you have Grand Witch in play which seems extremly unlikely.
Grand Witch is unlikely to get VPs via Curses unless there is a Curser and no trasher in the Kingdom (so players are forced to play the Ambassador game with Mountain Hag).
These two cards are of course fine otherwise but they have elemets that are a bit too Kingdom-dependent for my taste.
My favourite here is Heretic. Normally you want to progress as fast as possible through a Traveller line but this trade-off between having a good engine piece for a turn longer vs. getting the payload of the 4th and 5th cards earlier is really nice and also mechanically well and clear implemented via the State.
Then again the card also punishes you for trying to exploit that strategy (this is probably very necessary, that Lost City looks more attractive to me than the Coin and VP tokens of the following cards) and use several Heretics as Lost Cities as no tokens are added to Haunted while at least one Heretic is on it.
Thanks for the feedback!
Orphan - In a way I set out to make the worst card in Dominion and still have it have a place in a game. I'll explain this more under Witch Hunter.
Witch Hunter - Glad to hear you're open to Curse-for-benefit cards, as most people are not. You probably know, but the big argument is that they are either too weak or too strong. Well I thought I'd try something that starts out very weak, but becomes quite strong with Grand Witch in play. I think Witch Hunters main late game strength is not it's ability to field Curses into draw/coin (it certainly helps), but it's +Buy that allows for Curse pile outs. In a way, they become like a Princess with Estate piling. Curse piling may not always be the best way to go, but it creates a tremendous amount of pile pressure on your opponent.
So hopefully this Curse/Estate piling addresses both concerns about Orphan and Grand Witch. Orphan's negative VP effect will do nothing early game, but if you wanna pick up late game Witch Hunters (when they shine most) you'll need to go through Orphan and possibly lose some VP. This effect isn't much, but in a tight game it might matter. Concurrently, Grand Witch won't do much to prevent Curse attacks, it's VP gain on Curses is mainly for Curse piling. Other than that, player's should focus on Victory cards.
Heretic - This is also my favorite card in the line so I'm happy to hear someone else both appreciates it and can see the full scope of it's play potential. The previous version of Heretic had all of it's current text and the text of the Hunted state all on one card. You can imagine all that text didn't go over well with people. It was a frustrating experience. I had what I thought was an amazing concept, but I couldn't get anyone to buy into all that reading despite it playing very straightforward. Well, states came out and saved the whole thing for me. On a side note, I'm planning other cards and Events centered around Hunted. I think there is a lot of design potential there. Really glad you like it!
One concern is that the Lost City effect is so good, player's will never exchange these into Mountain Hag's. This could easily break the line for other players going for Grand Witch. One fix would be to make the exchange mandatory for Heretic.
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Heretic: I'm gonna need some explaining again. How is this a Lost City? The wording for Hunted is ambiguous and confusing; "play all cards" seems to mean just play them as usual but put them on the mat, but the "at the start of your turn" part seems to mean it's forcing you to play everything, but without using up actions. What are these "tokens" it's talking about? Is it referring to VP chips?
Orphan: Why not just have it gain you a Curse? Less confusing, and makes the abilities of Witch Hunter and Mountain Witch useful more of the time.
Grand Witch: The cool thing about this is that you avoided the problem a lot of dual-type fan Curses have. This remains in play, so you can't just milk the benefit and then trash it at the end. Well, you can still do it with Bonfire, but that might be a neat little loophole that makes it more interesting. The actual ability of the card I'm not so hot on. From looking at it it seems very weak. VP-when-you-X cards like Goons and Groundskeeper are best when you have a whole bunch of them in play at once, but this is hard to get and each one is a freaking negative Province. I also feel that getting -VP when you get this and then slowly gaining +VP to make up for it just isn't all that interesting. I think it would be more interesting if it gave you some sort of a big engine boost, so that you can make up for the -VP at the very end with a megaturn.
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I like that you did a Traveller line. That's like the hardest thing to do. Also, while Curse-for-benefit is often frowned upon I don't think that it is a big issue. Mountain Hag is good enough without Ambassador-ing Curses and as second card Witch Hunter is supposed to be weak anyway.
But I don't understand some cards.
Orphan's 'give a VP token back' will not do anything unless there are other cards that provide VP tokens or unless you buy one after you have Grand Witch in play which seems extremly unlikely.
Grand Witch is unlikely to get VPs via Curses unless there is a Curser and no trasher in the Kingdom (so players are forced to play the Ambassador game with Mountain Hag).
These two cards are of course fine otherwise but they have elemets that are a bit too Kingdom-dependent for my taste.
My favourite here is Heretic. Normally you want to progress as fast as possible through a Traveller line but this trade-off between having a good engine piece for a turn longer vs. getting the payload of the 4th and 5th cards earlier is really nice and also mechanically well and clear implemented via the State.
Then again the card also punishes you for trying to exploit that strategy (this is probably very necessary, that Lost City looks more attractive to me than the Coin and VP tokens of the following cards) and use several Heretics as Lost Cities as no tokens are added to Haunted while at least one Heretic is on it.
Thanks for the feedback!
Orphan - In a way I set out to make the worst card in Dominion and still have it have a place in a game. I'll explain this more under Witch Hunter.
Witch Hunter - Glad to hear you're open to Curse-for-benefit cards, as most people are not. You probably know, but the big argument is that they are either too weak or too strong. Well I thought I'd try something that starts out very weak, but becomes quite strong with Grand Witch in play. I think Witch Hunters main late game strength is not it's ability to field Curses into draw/coin (it certainly helps), but it's +Buy that allows for Curse pile outs. In a way, they become like a Princess with Estate piling. Curse piling may not always be the best way to go, but it creates a tremendous amount of pile pressure on your opponent.
So hopefully this Curse/Estate piling addresses both concerns about Orphan and Grand Witch. Orphan's negative VP effect will do nothing early game, but if you wanna pick up late game Witch Hunters (when they shine most) you'll need to go through Orphan and possibly lose some VP. This effect isn't much, but in a tight game it might matter. Concurrently, Grand Witch won't do much to prevent Curse attacks, it's VP gain on Curses is mainly for Curse piling. Other than that, player's should focus on Victory cards.
Heretic - This is also my favorite card in the line so I'm happy to hear someone else both appreciates it and can see the full scope of it's play potential. The previous version of Heretic had all of it's current text and the text of the Hunted state all on one card. You can imagine all that text didn't go over well with people. It was a frustrating experience. I had what I thought was an amazing concept, but I couldn't get anyone to buy into all that reading despite it playing very straightforward. Well, states came out and saved the whole thing for me. On a side note, I'm planning other cards and Events centered around Hunted. I think there is a lot of design potential there. Really glad you like it!
One concern is that the Lost City effect is so good, player's will never exchange these into Mountain Hag's. This could easily break the line for other players going for Grand Witch. One fix would be to make the exchange mandatory for Heretic.
I have my doubts about Grand Witch making your want to buy Curses but that's just because I am not used to the "good Curses" idea, with 2 Grand Witches and Mountain Hag / Witch Hunter as support this could work.
Really great conceptually overall and far more complex than the official Travellers (which I cannot stand because they are so overpowered and strategically mandatory).
Heretic: I'm gonna need some explaining again. How is this a Lost City? The wording for Hunted is ambiguous and confusing; "play all cards" seems to mean just play them as usual but put them on the mat, but the "at the start of your turn" part seems to mean it's forcing you to play everything, but without using up actions. What are these "tokens" it's talking about? Is it referring to VP chips?
You might want to read Hunted and Heretic together; Heretic puts the tokens on Hunted as a kind of (it is more complex with several Heretic) emulation of a Duration card with a timer.
What is confusing about something saying that you should play X? It is more or less the same wording as Imp so of course you don't have to spend an Action.
The rest is fairly basic: Heretic is a (delayed) Lost City just like Caravan is a delayed Laboratory.
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I have my doubts about Grand Witch making your want to buy Curses but that's just because I am not used to the "good Curses" idea, with 2 Grand Witches and Mountain Hag / Witch Hunter as support this could work.
Really great conceptually overall and far more complex than the official Travellers (which I cannot stand because they are so overpowered and strategically mandatory).
Yeah, this probably only works if you're building for it (i.e. getting a lot of the Traveler cards). The Curse thing is usually going to be niche, but if you could build a reliable engine around 3-5 Curses, you can do a lot of cool things at that point like: (1) Gain Curses and get 2VP and then dish them out to other players with Mountain Hag resulting in a 3VP swing for each Curse. (2) Give Grand Witches to players with Mountain Hag for -6VP, but this has to be timed well with the end of the game.
I just ask that people don't focus too much on this aspect alone as it is only one side of this Traveller. Managing these scenarios is difficult and can be slow, so it will depend highly on the other Kingdom cards. Other than that, I think there is still enough going on to justify the purchases. And as with all well balanced Dominion cards, there should certainly be scenarios where Grand Witch is not the way to go.
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Heretic: I'm gonna need some explaining again. How is this a Lost City? The wording for Hunted is ambiguous and confusing; "play all cards" seems to mean just play them as usual but put them on the mat, but the "at the start of your turn" part seems to mean it's forcing you to play everything, but without using up actions. What are these "tokens" it's talking about? Is it referring to VP chips?
Orphan: Why not just have it gain you a Curse? Less confusing, and makes the abilities of Witch Hunter and Mountain Witch useful more of the time.
Grand Witch: The cool thing about this is that you avoided the problem a lot of dual-type fan Curses have. This remains in play, so you can't just milk the benefit and then trash it at the end. Well, you can still do it with Bonfire, but that might be a neat little loophole that makes it more interesting. The actual ability of the card I'm not so hot on. From looking at it it seems very weak. VP-when-you-X cards like Goons and Groundskeeper are best when you have a whole bunch of them in play at once, but this is hard to get and each one is a freaking negative Province. I also feel that getting -VP when you get this and then slowly gaining +VP to make up for it just isn't all that interesting. I think it would be more interesting if it gave you some sort of a big engine boost, so that you can make up for the -VP at the very end with a megaturn.
Hunted - I think Holunder9 summed this one up nicely. It's basically Prince, but for a set amount of turns (how many tokens you have) and requires a Wine Merchant condition to get your cards back, otherwise you lose them. There is a lot of text to read through, but I think once a player understands the core concept, it's very easy to play/execute.
Orphan - Gaining a curse is an interesting idea that would be useful late game, but I think it would hurt too much early game. Making the Curse gain conditional kind of goes against my design for the card: Orphan shouldn't hurt early game, but should mid-late game if you're trying to pick up late Traveler components. I'll certainly keep it in mind though. Thanks for the suggestion!
Grand Witch - I'd argue this is pretty strong, but only with the other Traveler cards to support it. On it's own versus Champion and Teacher it is the weakest for sure. It doesn't give a big engine boast (Teacher and Champion do that well enough), but there is still room for big, end-game point swings using the Cursing mechanics in various ways. I talked about this to some length with Holunder9 in the above comments.
Bonfire - I'm glad someone caught this! I certainly didn't when designing these. Very thematic, but in a terrible way. A friend mentioned it though and I think it would be interesting. Perhaps too swingy, but some combos in Dominion will always be that way.
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...Ohhhhh, I get it now.
I thought "play all cards on this" meant "play all cards onto this." You might want to rephrase this as "play all cards that are on this" or something else less ambiguous. Maybe nobody else would get confused by this, but considering how long it took me to figure it out, I'm not so sure. The one thing that still bugs me is just saying "token" instead of "Hunted Token" or something like that, considering how many "tokens" there are in this game. Are there any official cards that just say "token" and expect you to know which "token"?
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I thought "play all cards on this" meant "play all cards onto this." You might want to rephrase this as "play all cards that are on this" or something else less ambiguous. Maybe nobody else would get confused by this, but considering how long it took me to figure it out, I'm not so sure. The one thing that still bugs me is just saying "token" instead of "Hunted Token" or something like that, considering how many "tokens" there are in this game. Are there any official cards that just say "token" and expect you to know which "token"?
It always seems to be a balance between clarity and text space. :) Hunted is even more complicated given you don't get the whole picture by just looking at it alone; you have to look at cards that put themselves on Hunted. I'll have to see what I can do to fix that.
In my mind, adding "that are" might make it a bit more clear, but it adds a lot of text. Changing the top portion is fine, but the bottom would also have to be changed and that is already tight on space.
The Coffers mat uses the generic term "tokens" instead of "Coin tokens" or "Coffer tokens". You could technically use any token on your coffers mat and it would only ever give +1 Coin when called. The token isn't the important part, it's where the token is that matters. But I agree "Hunted token" would go along way towards clarity, it just adds a lot of wording to Hunted and cards that use Hunted.
[EDIT] I think I can skim some text in the following areas:
(1) The "face-up" part of Heretic can probably be removed. Since it is setting itself aside and all players see it when it's put on Hunted, hopefully it is implied that it is common knowledge to all players.
(2) The "Either way" but on Hunted can probably be changed to "Then" or something, but this might be a little more unclear.
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Oh hey some travelling cards! There are things that I can appreciate here but I think there are many problems too.
Grand Witch: I'm starting here because it's the end destination and you kind of have to think about the travellers in the context of the whole line. I think this is very lacklustre, not just compared to Teacher and Champ but seeing all the cards in the line and how weak they are on a whole. With the cards in the line being overall very weak you'd expect some huge payoff at the end and I don't think this cuts it, even without the -6VP which means I have to gain 4 Victory cards before actually making any points off this I don't think this would be particularly exciting.
Another thing that makes no sense to me is that it seems like you made this a Curse type so that it enables the cards in the line that care about having Curses, but then it's a permanent Duration so if you play it you'll never see it again and it also doesn't actually interact with Mountain Hag, and you probably won't want to discard it to Witch Hunter, and it's very difficult to ever gain a copy of it so it doesn't work with itself... so yeah not sure what that's all about. I do like that being a non-supply card answers the question of whether you can gain a copy if an opponent plays a Witch, although I'm not sure if I can block Mountebank with this, or even discard it to Witch Hunter?
Orphan: A thing that comes with being a traveller is that people have to read 5 cards (6 in this case because of the state!) to understand what the card actually does instead of the usual 1. This means that you ideally want the cards to be as simple as possible and cut anything that isn't pulling its weight (this is true for any card imo but travellers especially). So like, why is this removing vp tokens? It only matters if you already have vp, probably from Grand Witch and Grand Witch is already giving -6vp for some reason so why is this doing that too? I don't think the cards need any of this -vp for balance reasons and it's just adding more clutter and confusion to them.
Witch Hunter: As is this doesn't really make Curses pay off or even mitigate Curses much in its current form because it's such a weak card by itself. Playing this and discarding a Curse leaves you at a net -1 card and +$2, +1 Buy up, and I guess you sift the Curse, but if you're adding the Curse yourself to enable this then that's kind of net-neutral. Given that by itself this is just 1 Pawn option and that Curses are Curses though it really isn't much of a payoff at all. I think this could totally just give +1 Card on top of what it already does and still be fine.
Think of the lengths Shepherd goes to to make Estates appealing cards, Pasture making the worth more vp for free and discarding any number of them for +2 Cards each! With this you have to go through the rigmarole of getting a Grand Witch for the extra vp from Curses, you have to go through Orphan to even get one of these and it can only discard 1 Curse. Oh and you don't start the game with 3 Curses in your deck for this to use.
Heretic: This could be a cool card, but I don't think it fits as a traveller. Okay so probably another long tangent, I think with travellers you want to find the sweet spot of a card that's worth doing, but wouldn't just be better as a regular kingdom card. A good example of this in the official travellers is Disciple, it's a really cool card, but it would be completely broken as a kingdom card because Discipling a Disciple would gain another Disciple... that's too many Disciples! Being a traveller fixes this as it can't gain copies of itself and it's also difficult to get many of them. Heretic on the other hand does 2 things that I think are problems for a traveller:
1. It introduces a State to the line, so now we have to parse 6 card-shaped-things to understand the line, on top of this Hunted is also a particularly difficult thing to understand, it took me 3 or 4 reads of Heretic and Hunted to actually get what they were doing, it's really confusing man!
2. Heretic has a completely different mechanism of exchanging than all the other travellers, which frankly I hate.
You also can only ever put tokens on Hunted once per game because you never lose Hunted so you can only take it once per game and you only put tokens on it if you take it, not sure if that's intentional?
Mountain Hag: Should say its pile, not it's pile. Minor grammar fixes aside, reading this I was expecting to see the big payoff for having Curses in your deck, Grand Witch sort of mitigates the -vp, Witch Hunter makes them slightly less bad, but we need a big payoff! And the big payoff for having Curses in your deck was... a Cursing attack? That doesn't make much sense here at all! The whole point of this traveller line was seemingly to make Curses desirable cards to have, so why would you want to send a Curse over to your opponent? Isn't that the opposite of what you want to be doing? Grand Witch is even worded as to give you vp if you gain a Curse, so it kind of counters this attack. I really don't get this, apart from that it would be weird to have a Witch that doesn't give out Curses.
Some final words on the powerlevel of these...
- Orphan is Abandoned Mine with a drawback.
- Witch Hunter is worse than Pawn unless you line it up with Curse.
- Heretic is Page that you have to pay $3 for if you want to exchange it right away.
- Mountain Hag's +3 Coffers probably would be fine as a regular $5 and the Cursing makes no sense given the context of the traveller line.
- Grand Witch represents a fairly modest amount of vp given the -6. I can see that this is trying to be more of a late-game thing than Champ or Teacher so you wouldn't rush out of the gate for Orphan or exchange Heretic as fast as possible but really there are way too many drawbacks here for what the end reward is.
Sorry if this was too harsh, I think these still need a lot of work before they're up to the best standard and I just want to help.
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Oh hey some travelling cards! There are things that I can appreciate here but I think there are many problems too.
Grand Witch: I'm starting here because it's the end destination and you kind of have to think about the travellers in the context of the whole line. I think this is very lacklustre, not just compared to Teacher and Champ but seeing all the cards in the line and how weak they are on a whole. With the cards in the line being overall very weak you'd expect some huge payoff at the end and I don't think this cuts it, even without the -6VP which means I have to gain 4 Victory cards before actually making any points off this I don't think this would be particularly exciting.
Another thing that makes no sense to me is that it seems like you made this a Curse type so that it enables the cards in the line that care about having Curses, but then it's a permanent Duration so if you play it you'll never see it again and it also doesn't actually interact with Mountain Hag, and you probably won't want to discard it to Witch Hunter, and it's very difficult to ever gain a copy of it so it doesn't work with itself... so yeah not sure what that's all about. I do like that being a non-supply card answers the question of whether you can gain a copy if an opponent plays a Witch, although I'm not sure if I can block Mountebank with this, or even discard it to Witch Hunter?
Orphan: A thing that comes with being a traveller is that people have to read 5 cards (6 in this case because of the state!) to understand what the card actually does instead of the usual 1. This means that you ideally want the cards to be as simple as possible and cut anything that isn't pulling its weight (this is true for any card imo but travellers especially). So like, why is this removing vp tokens? It only matters if you already have vp, probably from Grand Witch and Grand Witch is already giving -6vp for some reason so why is this doing that too? I don't think the cards need any of this -vp for balance reasons and it's just adding more clutter and confusion to them.
Witch Hunter: As is this doesn't really make Curses pay off or even mitigate Curses much in its current form because it's such a weak card by itself. Playing this and discarding a Curse leaves you at a net -1 card and +$2, +1 Buy up, and I guess you sift the Curse, but if you're adding the Curse yourself to enable this then that's kind of net-neutral. Given that by itself this is just 1 Pawn option and that Curses are Curses though it really isn't much of a payoff at all. I think this could totally just give +1 Card on top of what it already does and still be fine.
Think of the lengths Shepherd goes to to make Estates appealing cards, Pasture making the worth more vp for free and discarding any number of them for +2 Cards each! With this you have to go through the rigmarole of getting a Grand Witch for the extra vp from Curses, you have to go through Orphan to even get one of these and it can only discard 1 Curse. Oh and you don't start the game with 3 Curses in your deck for this to use.
Heretic: This could be a cool card, but I don't think it fits as a traveller. Okay so probably another long tangent, I think with travellers you want to find the sweet spot of a card that's worth doing, but wouldn't just be better as a regular kingdom card. A good example of this in the official travellers is Disciple, it's a really cool card, but it would be completely broken as a kingdom card because Discipling a Disciple would gain another Disciple... that's too many Disciples! Being a traveller fixes this as it can't gain copies of itself and it's also difficult to get many of them. Heretic on the other hand does 2 things that I think are problems for a traveller:
1. It introduces a State to the line, so now we have to parse 6 card-shaped-things to understand the line, on top of this Hunted is also a particularly difficult thing to understand, it took me 3 or 4 reads of Heretic and Hunted to actually get what they were doing, it's really confusing man!
2. Heretic has a completely different mechanism of exchanging than all the other travellers, which frankly I hate.
You also can only ever put tokens on Hunted once per game because you never lose Hunted so you can only take it once per game and you only put tokens on it if you take it, not sure if that's intentional?
Mountain Hag: Should say its pile, not it's pile. Minor grammar fixes aside, reading this I was expecting to see the big payoff for having Curses in your deck, Grand Witch sort of mitigates the -vp, Witch Hunter makes them slightly less bad, but we need a big payoff! And the big payoff for having Curses in your deck was... a Cursing attack? That doesn't make much sense here at all! The whole point of this traveller line was seemingly to make Curses desirable cards to have, so why would you want to send a Curse over to your opponent? Isn't that the opposite of what you want to be doing? Grand Witch is even worded as to give you vp if you gain a Curse, so it kind of counters this attack. I really don't get this, apart from that it would be weird to have a Witch that doesn't give out Curses.
Some final words on the powerlevel of these...
- Orphan is Abandoned Mine with a drawback.
- Witch Hunter is worse than Pawn unless you line it up with Curse.
- Heretic is Page that you have to pay $3 for if you want to exchange it right away.
- Mountain Hag's +3 Coffers probably would be fine as a regular $5 and the Cursing makes no sense given the context of the traveller line.
- Grand Witch represents a fairly modest amount of vp given the -6. I can see that this is trying to be more of a late-game thing than Champ or Teacher so you wouldn't rush out of the gate for Orphan or exchange Heretic as fast as possible but really there are way too many drawbacks here for what the end reward is.
Sorry if this was too harsh, I think these still need a lot of work before they're up to the best standard and I just want to help.
No problem. Criticism is always welcome as long as it is thoughtful and constructive. There isn't much more I can add to the conversation regarding the entire line's power level and capabilities. I'm sure you've read what I've had to say. I should add a few things though: (1) In all my games and testing these cards have met or exceeded my set expectations for how they interact, play and produce game winning results; (2) This is not meant to be an all inclusive line (as I believe all the official Traveler lines are meant to be). It has a wide range of inter-Traveler play potential, but it will always shine best with the other Kingdom cards.
A few specific issues you brought up:
-Curses: My intention was for a player to be able to use Grand Witch in any manner (minus acting as a distributed Curse attack with normal Cursers) you could use a normal Curse. Unfortunately this is a bit of a grey area though. What does Curse actually mean? Is it a type or a name? Within the official card domain it does not matter, so I'm choosing to say it's a type and thus supports Grand Witch usage.
-Grand Witch: Gaining VP points from gaining a Curse as an attack was an oversight. It has been changed to only apply to Curse cards gained during a player's turn. Thanks for the catch.
-Mountain Hag: It's a stretch, but there is no rule barring Mountain Hag from giving out a Grand Witch as a curse.
-Heretic: I think this is precisely the definition of a card that could not be balanced outside of a Traveler line. Cantrip on play with free Lost City plays for the next 4 turns is quite strong, despite having to pay $3 to get it back, and that's for all cards on Hunted. If you had 2 Heretics in play you'd only be paying $1.5 Coin. It's a bit more complicated than that though.
-Hunted: This actually does discard itself if you fail to remove a token. It is a bit much too read, but I think the play potential and ease of play once understood far outweighs a few minutes of head scratching.
I appreciate the feedback and have given you credit for the fixes.
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Messing around with some more cards that use the Hunted state. Charlatan is a kind of Feast reboot that has late game potential. Could be way too powerful though. Just thought I'd share so people can get more of a sense of how Hunted can be used in different ways.
(https://i.imgur.com/wBZBvcv.jpg)
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- Orphan is Abandoned Mine with a drawback.
- Witch Hunter is worse than Pawn unless you line it up with Curse.
- Heretic is Page that you have to pay $3 for if you want to exchange it right away.
- Mountain Hag's +3 Coffers probably would be fine as a regular $5 and the Cursing makes no sense given the context of the traveller line.
- Grand Witch represents a fairly modest amount of vp given the -6. I can see that this is trying to be more of a late-game thing than Champ or Teacher so you wouldn't rush out of the gate for Orphan or exchange Heretic as fast as possible but really there are way too many drawbacks here for what the end reward is.
Kudasai pointed out that having Grand Witch(es) in play make you want to buy Curses. Witch Hunter convert those bought Curses into double Peddlers which is, as you rightly pointed out, not as good as Shepherd's double Laboratory but still decent. The other way to deal with the bought Curses is to Ambassador them via Mountain Hag. The first strategy is always viable whereas the second one is to be preferred in a non-mirror, i.e. when no other player has Grand Witch (I prefer the old version of Grand Witch that hedges against those Mountain Hag attacks as it precisely opens up this form strategic variety)
I agree that these cards seem weak at the first glance and that's partly objectively true but also partly due to us missing all those complex interactions.
I don't agree though that fan-made Travellers should be as simple or overpowered as the official Travellers. Kind of nice to have a Traveller line which is not mandatory in 99% of all games.
I also think that Curse interaction is just something which we are not used to. Before Adventures nobody was used to Peasant someday converting those worthless Pearl Divers into shiny Laboratories either.
Of course none of these interactions will occur in a Kingdom with Cursers and trashers. But if there is no trasher Mountain Hag and Witch Hunter can be good.
Messing around with some more cards that use the Hunted state. Charlatan is a kind of Feast reboot that has late game potential. Could be way too powerful though. Just thought I'd share so people can get more of a sense of how Hunted can be used in different ways.
(https://i.imgur.com/wBZBvcv.jpg)
I like it (and gee, you even managed to make it thematically sensible with Hunted!). As you said it is a Feast that can stay around. I'd make another comparison though: if you make at l east 3 Coins in the turn and want the card to remain in your deck this is like a Woodcutter that you have to use to a buy a $5. Perhaps no the greatest thing in the world, it takes some time until you are able to buy two cards with one of them costing $5 so until then it is just a terminal Silver. During the endgame it also sucks that you cannot use it to buy two Provinces.
But in the middlegame it can shine and like with Wine Merchant you only gotta pay the $3 once so if you manage to play 2 per turn (or one in the previous turn with a Gold revealed and one in the current turn) you save some.
What fascinates me most about the card is that while it is superficially similar to 2 cards from Base that no longer exist in the second edition it is also totally new and anything but Woodcutter or Feast level of boring.
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(I prefer the old version of Grand Witch that hedges against those Mountain Hag attacks as it precisely opens up this form strategic variety)
Perhaps Grand Witch should still interact with Curse gaining from others. It was never my intention to have this interaction, but I should do some playtesting and see what makes sense afterwards. Thanks for the analysis!
Of course none of these interactions will occur in a Kingdom with Cursers and trashers. But if there is no trasher Mountain Hag and Witch Hunter can be good.
I can't say conclusively, but I think there is still room for cool stuff even with trashers and Cursers. Trashers will enable a non-Grand Witch player to trash curses given out, but Mountain Hag's power comes more from putting Curses back into the Supply to be regained for VP, not cursing. This doesn't scale well into 3-player and up games though. :( Cursers don't seem to change much either. Grand Witch players will likely struggle to handle more than 3 curses in their decks, so it's still a viable attack against them. If you are going Grand Witch either cursing or not cursing seems viable.
I like it (and gee, you even managed to make it thematically sensible with Hunted!). As you said it is a Feast that can stay around. I'd make another comparison though: if you make at l east 3 Coins in the turn and want the card to remain in your deck this is like a Woodcutter that you have to use to a buy a $5. Perhaps no the greatest thing in the world, it takes some time until you are able to buy two cards with one of them costing $5 so until then it is just a terminal Silver. During the endgame it also sucks that you cannot use it to buy two Provinces.
But in the middlegame it can shine and like with Wine Merchant you only gotta pay the $3 once so if you manage to play 2 per turn (or one in the previous turn with a Gold revealed and one in the current turn) you save some.
What fascinates me most about the card is that while it is superficially similar to 2 cards from Base that no longer exist in the second edition it is also totally new and anything but Woodcutter or Feast level of boring.
You can bet all the Hunted cards will have similar themes. Some will certainly deserve to be "hunted", but others may not be so deserving of such treatment. Should be fun to play around with.
I liked the cheaper buy-back feature, but hadn't thought of it in terms of Woodcutter, but that makes a lot of sense. It's like having an extra buy, except you have top use it on Charlatan. I like the early game play, but I'm still concerned about late game, Duchy buying frenzies. I don't play with Gold much, so it's hard for me to say if the Gold requirement for multiple plays is steep enough.
Thanks for the enthusiasm though. It certainly makes me wanna playtest this one a bit.
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I've also got a Hunted Event in the works. I like it mechanically, I just have no idea if the numbers are sound. This seems like it could get out of control, but the opportunity cost is high: Must have the Action card already, can't have played the Action card the turn you buy this, at least $5 Coin to keep it in play one other turn, and ~$3 Coin to get the card back. All of this combined might mean this is only a mid/late game Event.
(https://i.imgur.com/o3sHanl.jpg)
Not sure if the $4 Coin limit is needed. Higher value cards take longer to get and there's always the chance you don't hit $3 unspent to get them back. Losing a few $5 cost cards will hurt much more than a few $3's.
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This compares unfavourably with Summon. Sure, it is better in some respects: instead of 5 you only have to pay 4 and later 3, respectively in the endgame, when you don't mind to get rid of the Action card, nothing. And due to the overpay you can use the effect for several turns which is probably the strongest aspect of the Event.
But unlike with Summon you don't gain a card and overall it just seems weaker.
It also compares unfavourable with Ghost Town whose on-gain effect is very similar: a one-shot next turn Lost City. The only difference is again the overpay of Manhunt and that you can choose what "card you draw and play" (well, you don't literally do that with Manhunt but it is kind of like that).
So I'd try to buff it via eliminating the cost restriction. I could be wrong though if the overpay effect is very strong.
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This compares unfavourably with Summon.
Which isn't a bad thing, is it?
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Not sure if the $4 Coin limit is needed. Higher value cards take longer to get and there's always the chance you don't hit $3 unspent to get them back. Losing a few $5 cost cards will hurt much more than a few $3's.
Take setting aside Mountebank for example... that virtually guarantees you having $3 unspent, and could very easily decide the game if you hit $7 with Mountebank in play early.
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Manhunt - Thanks everyone for the feedback. These are all concerns I share as well. I think the next step is to play test it and hope it all works out. Otherwise, this could be a balancing nightmare!
Card For Feedback - Thought I'd post some wonky ideas that I think are cool, but I fear are broken or are actually boring to play. Maybe they're fine; maybe they'll never be fine. Any thoughts? Changes you'd make? Thanks!
(https://i.imgur.com/mLvTq1a.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/Nze365Q.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/wVvlCAN.jpg)
Note - Regarding Worshippers, the idea of semi-countering cost reduction cards by putting a minimum on the Actions gained came from a discussion on Holunder9's page.
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Manhunt - Thanks everyone for the feedback. These are all concerns I share as well. I think the next step is to play test it and hope it all works out. Otherwise, this could be a balancing nightmare!
Card For Feedback - Thought I'd post some wonky ideas that I think are cool, but I fear are broken or are actually boring to play. Maybe they're fine; maybe they'll never be fine. Any thoughts? Changes you'd make? Thanks!
(https://i.imgur.com/mLvTq1a.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/Nze365Q.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/wVvlCAN.jpg)
Note - Regarding Worshippers, the idea of semi-countering cost reduction cards by putting a minimum on the Actions gained came from a discussion on Holunder9's page.
DXV once tried a Duration Throne Room:
There was a now-and-later Throne Room variant. Play an Action, play it again next turn. It was both confusing and weak.
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=117.0
Smuggler's Cove is different though. Playing the card next turn twice is a bit weaker but in all other respects it is stronger: it is non-terminal and it is a Disciple instead of a Throne Room.
I am pretty sure that Disciple variants cannot be done as ordinary Kingdom cards as they would be far too good. But if one wanted to price Smuggler's Cove it is in my opinion at least a $5.
Work Horse is interesting and a bit like Farming Market: you want the other players to play the card first, move the Estates on the Duchy and Province pile such that you get the full 6 Coins when you play Work Horse.
I am not sure that a game in which you have to buy a lot of Estates will always be fun (it is obviously bonkers with Shepherd) but it provides some cool and indirect interaction in a novel way which is always great.
Worshippers looks sound but it might be too cheap. A Hireling variant that provides an extra Buy would probably be balanced at $4 which is a very similar price as 6D. Worshippers is better in 3 respects: extra gaining option, gained to hand, non-terminal.
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Smuggler's Cove: Way, way too cheap. Otherwise, it seems good, though I might put a price cap on the cards you can gain, maybe $5, because it might be broken otherwise as Holunder said.
Work Horse: So, obviously this breaks the fundamental rule that cards have to stay in their own supply pile. Mostly it might not be a problem. The main confusion that has to be addressed is if a Victory pile with zero cards in it but whose cards are still on the board counts as an empty pile.
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I think the idea of Smugglers Cove is that people can counter it by gaining the card from under it, which is why it's so cheap?
I don't really love that idea myself - it's kind of getting into single target attack territory but i think that's the thought behind it being cheap.
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Smuggler's Cove(v0.1) - Yes, this is priced quite low because although the benefit next turn is very good, player's can steal your cards before that happens. This is meant to introduce a sort of bluffing game into Dominion. You set aside an Action face down and your opponents can steal it, but they don't know what it is. It could be a low level Action or a high level one.
I really like this concept, but practically it probably doesn't work. Firstly, it needs cheap Actions to bluff with. I could make this a Looter type, but buying Ruins just to bluff with them seems like a losing strategy. Secondly, the rewards and punishments it dishes out for pulling off a Smuggler's Cove and/or stealing a card seem too high. I'd want this card to be fun, but with such high stakes each decision would probably be agonizing.
So perhaps this could work with some adjustments.
Work Horse(v0.1) - This should already deal with empty Victory card piles as worded. This concept may be fine as is. It certainly changes to greening dynamic a lot, which I like. Basically forces overbuilding, because of the Province blocking, but I fear being forced to buy Estates and Duchies later in the game might not be fun.
I also need to make sure that getting the first +$6 Coin play isn't too much of an advantage.
Worshippers(v0.1) - I like this one for it's ability to accelerate engine building. I feel it has to be priced low though to keep it fun and competitive after Actions have been bought. I fear this one could be brutal if you keep failing to hit $5 with a few Worshippers in play. I guess a player should have a $4 Coin Action as a backup.
The +1 Buy on an Action buy is very useful early and mid-game, but I think it is quite weak once you start greening. This is my justification for pricing it lower than a permanent, non-conditional +1 Buy.
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Work Horse(v0.1) - This should already deal with empty Victory card piles as worded.
Well, it doesn't, because this question is going to be brought up by pretty much everyone playing with it. I don't know what the answer would actually be, and I'm honestly not even 100% sure of what you intended the answer to be, although I'm guessing your intention is that a pile counts as empty even if cards from it are elsewhere on the board. Ambassador can prevent a game from ending by returning a card to the supply (and the wording is "supply", not "its pile") so I think a genuine case could be made that as long as a pile's cards are still in the supply, the pile does not count as empty even if there are no cards in the pile itself.
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Well, it doesn't, because this question is going to be brought up by pretty much everyone playing with it. I don't know what the answer would actually be, and I'm honestly not even 100% sure of what you intended the answer to be, although I'm guessing your intention is that a pile counts as empty even if cards from it are elsewhere on the board. Ambassador can prevent a game from ending by returning a card to the supply (and the wording is "supply", not "its pile") so I think a genuine case could be made that as long as a pile's cards are still in the supply, the pile does not count as empty even if there are no cards in the pile itself.
Sorry. I misunderstood your original post to be about calculating the minus Coin portion.
I don't believe there are rules to dictate this, but this is how I would intend for the card to be played and interact in these situations:
(1) I would consider any Victory card moved to another pile no longer a part of that pile. So if there was an Estate on the Province pile and the Estate pile was empty along with two other piles, the game would end.
(2) Returning an Estate to the Supply would put it onto the Estate pile and not any Victory Supply piles that have an Estate on them. This is reaching a bit, but official card interactions have been redefined before with the addition of new content/mechanics (Possession would be a great example of this). I would just do the same with Ambassador in the expanded rules for Work Horse. Now this is merely how I'd like it to play, but technically Ambassador could return an Estate to either pile in this case. Perhaps it should be left this way. It's an interesting interaction and it's only one combo that will likely never come up.
Thanks for your question and sorry for not responding accordingly the first time!
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I definitely don't understand what Hunted does at cleanup. It says,
1. If you have at least $3 unspent,
2. you may discard any cards on this.
3. Then you may remove a token from this.
4. If you don't, return this and all cards on it to their piles.
It's ambiguous whether 3 is contingent on 1, or if it's not contingent on anything. I don't know whether the "if you don't" on step 4 is referring to step 3.
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I definitely don't understand what Hunted does at cleanup. It says,
1. If you have at least $3 unspent,
2. you may discard any cards on this.
3. Then you may remove a token from this.
4. If you don't, return this and all cards on it to their piles.
It's ambiguous whether 3 is contingent on 1, or if it's not contingent on anything. I don't know whether the "if you don't" on step 4 is referring to step 3.
Step 4 is referring to step 3 and no other steps. This is a wordy one and I need to make it more simple somehow.
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Cards For Feedback - Some more ideas I'm on the fence about, although I feel much better about these versus the last batch I posted (Smuggler's Cove, Work Horse, and Worshippers). Thanks for looking!
(https://i.imgur.com/gNaTKoD.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/RvLqY5q.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/LiMP6lC.jpg)
[EDIT] Changed Adventurers cost from $4 to $5.
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Great Forest is better than Duchy for $3?
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Great Forest is better than Duchy for $3?
Well, not strictly better... EDIT: Sorry, my bad. It actually is practically strictly better except for e.g. Duke.
It should probably cost more and give other players a bonus unrelated to or even competing with a Great Forest strategy. Like
Unconditional +1 Buy.
Unconditional +1 Action.
Copper produces 2 during their turn.
Duchies are cheaper.
Turn non-Action Victory cards into something better (eg Copper or Necropolis).
And so on. You could also give out coin tokens or States to avoid having to add the Duration type, or take VP tokens on gain to avoid the Victory type (and make tfb more attractive). Example
Town Hall, 6,Action
+1Card
+1Action
If this is the first time you played a Town Hall this turn, each other player takes a coin token.
---
When you gain this, take 4Vp.
Although I don't really mind the type combination of the original. You can have a real VP card once in a while, too. It doesn't all have to be combos.
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Great Forest is just crazy, crazy strong.
Burial gift seems weak; plus, the wording needs work (does trashing an action make it suddenly worth more? At that point it should have already produced all its money, so that can't be....)
I like adventurers.
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It might be fine at just 2VP or just increase the cost to $6, although I think it might just have a problem where it almost always gets emptied because it's a cantrip and it incentivises your opponents to go for it. I think self-countering cards are a bad idea in general honestly, they're either super oppressive like Ambassador/Knights or just get emptied every game if they're cantrips or whatever. Oh yeah I guess that's what you're getting at too with those suggestions?
How about its just a cantrip that gives your opponents +1 Card when you play it? So it's either a stop card for you if you don't play it, like a regular victory card, or like -1 stop card to your opponent sort of if you decide to play it. Maybe that isn't the most interesting way to take it but I don't think the bonus to other players needs to be contingent upon them following with their own Great Forests.
I guess I can say something on the others, Burial Ground has odd wording, I think the ... is superfluous and the you at the start of the last sentence should be capitalised. Either way this seems too easy to turn into a Gold? You can choose what order you play treasures in so unless you're chaining a million actions you should be able to slot this into your Coppers to make the numbers match. The Action trash being after you get the $ is also strange, although I think in practise either way it'd be relegated to just trashing trashers that you're finished with.
Adventurers is just complicated Adventurer? I don't know, personally I don't miss Adventurer. But I guess it's fine?
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I guess the simple problem of Great Forest that you oversaw is that you do not have to play the card so it is cheaper than Duchy.
About the actual mechanic, that's plain brilliant. Suppose A has 6 Great Forests and B has 2. Now if A has all in play and B plays all of his he will get 12 Coins and the other way around! So when you have few copies you can exploit the others having more copies.
If you change the VP value to 1 or 2 and also consider playing around with the cost (perhaps this is better at $4?) this could lead to a, pardon the pun, great card.
I don't like Adventurers as it is far too weak. You have to play it 3 times until it becomes better than Adventurer and starts skipping Coppers.
LFN has pointed out that Adventurer is so bad that it could cost $2 (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=9978.msg709144#msg709144) and Asper has a version (http://i.imgur.com/2juO53b.jpg) that does at least provide an extra Buy.
As Gazbag has pointed out, in the opening you can always include one copy of Burial Gift in any deck (without Venture or Adventurers) as it is a Gold. Like opening Skulk without getting some semi-junk. If you play an engine you might later have to trash it but the economic spike you got from it will likely compensate for that.
I also doubt that you would often want to trash an Action just to make the other Burial Gift that you have in your hand produce 2 more Coins. Ruins, some Cursers when the Curse pile is empty, some trashers when you are thin enough, near the end of the game.
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The way adventurers is worded now, I believe means you start skipping coppers after just 1 play, not 3
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I don't know about Adventurer at $2, it's comparable to a terminal Silver with the potential for quite a bit of upside so seems more in line with $3-4? I mean it doesn't really make much difference between 2, 3 and 4 in this case anyway.
One thing about Adventurers is that the Coin token is mandatory and there doesn't seem to be a way to remove them, which puts a cap on how many times you can play Adventurers which seems a little unnecessary to me.
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I don't know about Adventurer at $2, it's comparable to a terminal Silver with the potential for quite a bit of upside so seems more in line with $3-4? I mean it doesn't really make much difference between 2, 3 and 4 in this case anyway.
I agree that the price doesn't matter much.
But let's nonethless play the price game: Adventurer is worse than +2 Cards if you play an engine and better than +2 Cards as you can skip green and purple. As Moat exists +2 Cards would be weak at a price of $2 so the only question is whether the upsides or the downsides matter more.
I am pretty sure that most of the time the downsides overweigh: just like with Poor House you have to get rid of your Coppers and gain some villages and in addition to Poor House you need to add some Treasures to your deck to make Adventurer a decent payload card.
The last thing is the big issue; why would you want to waste terminal space if you need a few Silvers or Golds in your deck to enable this conditional terminal payload card. It is not like Gold vs Wine Merchant but some Golds vs some Golds and Adventurer.
Also, if there is in addition to copper trashing and splitters terminal draw in the Kingdom this points more towards draw engine than Adventurer.
So Adventurer is competing with nearly every other type of card and mostly losing. The only thing that can save it IMO is something like what Asper did: +1 Buy which might make it less than totally bad in Kingdoms without extra Buys.
On a sidenote, while Miser is often viewed as friendly Pirate Ship I think that one can also view it as an Adventurer fix: instead of 4 different cards you only need 2 now (no need for Copper trashers and Treasures).
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I think the main thing is that it's a much better opening buy than Moat and imo enough better to cost $3. But it would be a terrible card either way so who cares right?
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I think the main thing is that it's a much better opening buy than Moat and imo enough better to cost $3. But it would be a terrible card either way so who cares right?
How is it a good opening buy?
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Thanks everyone for the replies and insights! A lot of good ideas have been thrown around. Briefly, here are my thoughts so far.
Adventurers - I've only tested this at cost $3 coin and it was insanely fast at Province rushing, so I don't think there is a question about it being good or not. Of course cost $5 coin is much different than cost $3 coin, but I'm sure it would still retain a lot of it's power.
However, I agree with everyone in that I just don't think drawing Treasure cards alone is very fun. So my next test will be essentially the same card, but with no Treasure card condition and probably make it cost $2-$4. My hope is for a draw card that starts slow, is incredibly good mid-game and then stops functioning if used too much.
Great Forest - I didn't overlook that this can straight up be a cheaper Duchy, I guess I just didn't see it as a big deal. My rational is that the opportunity cost even for a cantrip Duchy is really high in the early game and playing Great Forest late game is quite risky in that you can give your opponents a lot of free coin. With all those downsides I felt cost $3 coin seemed correct, but I'll be the first to admit this logic is likely not sound.
As much as I enjoy the giving out free coin concept, I feel player's will agonize too much over whether it's appropriate or not to play a Great Forest. So I think I'm gonna scrap that portion and go with Asper's suggestion that it make Duchies cost less. This really gets at the heart of what I wanted out of this card anyway: to create interesting 3VP card play. Also Duchy gaining is generally a more defined time period in a Dominion game, so that should go along way in helping player's determine when to play Great Forest.
So now that Great Forest no longer gives out Coin that name really doesn't fit. I really like Asper's suggestion of Town Hall. I'd love to use that, but with permission of course.
Burial Gift - Not much I can say other than this likely won't stick around. I think it's interesting mechanically, but probably just doesn't play well in most games. I'll have to think on it more!
Thanks again for the great feedback from everyone. Although I'm not directly commenting on what people had to say, just know I took everything said under consideration. A lot of cool ideas that I think can be used in other cards.
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I think the main thing is that it's a much better opening buy than Moat and imo enough better to cost $3. But it would be a terrible card either way so who cares right?
How is it a good opening buy?
Guarantees at least +$2 so good for hitting $5 and cycles at least 2 cards so you'll shuffle your turn 3 buy in a turn sooner.
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I think the main thing is that it's a much better opening buy than Moat and imo enough better to cost $3. But it would be a terrible card either way so who cares right?
How is it a good opening buy?
Guarantees at least +$2 so good for hitting $5 and cycles at least 2 cards so you'll shuffle your turn 3 buy in a turn sooner.
Yeah but how often do you open Duchess? I mean you do it sometimes, but it's rare, at least for me.
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I think the main thing is that it's a much better opening buy than Moat and imo enough better to cost $3. But it would be a terrible card either way so who cares right?
How is it a good opening buy?
Guarantees at least +$2 so good for hitting $5 and cycles at least 2 cards so you'll shuffle your turn 3 buy in a turn sooner.
Yeah but how often do you open Duchess? I mean you do it sometimes, but it's rare, at least for me.
Fairly often on 5/2 I'd say, well pretty much always if it's alongside a non-terminal $5 and sometimes if it's with a terminal. It's probably the most common time I get Duchess tbh, adding economy to your deck early is great!. I think Adventurer is significantly better than Duchess if we're ignoring costs too.
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Ehm, you argued for a price of $3 at which it competes with Silver during the opening.
I'd argue that Adventurer at a price of $3 is virtually always worse than Silver. Sure, you cycle through 2 extra cards but at the price of adding a card to your deck that is bad in nearly all Kingdoms and that will thus have to be trashed in nearly all Kingdoms.
It is like arguing that Baron is brilliant after the first shuffle (which is correct) while ignoring that it may suck later.
However, I agree with everyone in that I just don't think drawing Treasure cards alone is very fun. So my next test will be essentially the same card, but with no Treasure card condition and probably make it cost $2-$4. My hope is for a draw card that starts slow, is incredibly good mid-game and then stops functioning if used too much.
You might want to keep Gazbag's point in mind: you can only play the card a limited number of times. Not being able to draw your $4 villages after having played Adventurer 2.0 5 times seems broken.
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This is getting a bit too into the theory-crafting nonsense that I try to avoid, but Holunder you're just underrating the effect of Adventurer, it wasn't Scout! Like it was absolute trash at $6 but at a cheaper price it's actually a reasonable tool to use to reach those higher prices. I don't understand why you think it sucks later either, it'll start drawing Silvers or better later if you aren't playing badly. Like I'm not arguing it's actually a powerhouse or anything but it seems much better than Navigator or Chancellor(rip) or whatever in many situations where they're good.
I'll just add that Asper/Cookielord's Lumbermen is basically what I'd do to fix Adventurer, aside from the below the line bit, would have to play with that to know whether I like that :P. Anyway I think that's enough on why I think Adventurer is fine at $3, I'll stop with that and focus on Kudasai's cards.
I think that being able to add or remove a token from Adventurers (or whatever then non-restricted to treasures version is called) would add a lot of play to the card.
The thing with Great Forest is that you can just not play it, so it doesn't have any downsides next to Duchy (apart from interactions with action type, but I think that makes it better more often than not anyway?). Also I don't get the Forest giving out Coin thing, I assumed it was a Great Hall reference?
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This is getting a bit too into the theory-crafting nonsense that I try to avoid, but Holunder you're just underrating the effect of Adventurer, it wasn't Scout! Like it was absolute trash at $6 but at a cheaper price it's actually a reasonable tool to use to reach those higher prices. I don't understand why you think it sucks later either, it'll start drawing Silvers or better later if you aren't playing badly. Like I'm not arguing it's actually a powerhouse or anything but it seems much better than Navigator or Chancellor(rip) or whatever in many situations where they're good.
I'll just add that Asper/Cookielord's Lumbermen is basically what I'd do to fix Adventurer, aside from the below the line bit, would have to play with that to know whether I like that :P. Anyway I think that's enough on why I think Adventurer is fine at $3
I already went deeply into it and will just provide the short version: Adventurer is IMO on average worse than +2 Cards because in the situation in which it works, Copper trashers, villages and Treasures in your deck you mostly a) don't want a terminal payload card without extra Buys as you already have Treasures that do the same job or b) play an engine in which you want to use your terminals to draw Actions instead of Treasures.
For $3 you can get cards like Gear or Oracle which also draw Actions and can do the petty sifting tricks (how much green/purple is in the average deck?) that Adventurer can do as well or even better.
I also think that Navigator is significantly better. It is a pretty horrible card but it has its place. If you play Scrying Pool or Herald or Tactician virtual coins is what you want. Despite all the comparisons of Adventurer with cards that provide virtual coins this is simply not what Adventurer actually does.
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I think that being able to add or remove a token from Adventurers (or whatever then non-restricted to treasures version is called) would add a lot of play to the card.
The thing with Great Forest is that you can just not play it, so it doesn't have any downsides next to Duchy (apart from interactions with action type, but I think that makes it better more often than not anyway?). Also I don't get the Forest giving out Coin thing, I assumed it was a Great Hall reference?
Adventurers (Treasure Draw Version) - My first version actually removed a token when you trashed Adventurers. Seemed neat, but isn't always practical. My hope was that for the time you do play Adventurers, it is so good that it more than makes up for the fact that it becomes a dead card after so many plays. The player who best managed their Adventurers plays with what Treasures they have should win. Would work for a Treasure version, but now that I'm going more for an all-purpose draw card, perhaps I should reincorporate a way to remove tokens. Maybe make it a "choose one" type; remove a token, or draw cards costing more than the number of tokens. Using an Action to remove a token seems like an adequate punishment for poor play.
Also, this is going to now need a new name! Any suggestions?
Great Forest - Yes, it is straight up better than Duchy, but I'm okay with that. I really want a card that changes the 3VP gaining dynamic. Most games you grab a Duchy late and only when you can't get a Province. I don't think the lower cost throws the game into chaos (hopefully not!). With Great FOrest there will be more 3VP options, but Provinces will still be the main source of points.
As for the name, yes it was partly a homage to Great Hall. The coin giving was akin to the "Forests Gift" boon, so Great Forest seemed apt. I wasn't in love with the name though. Town Hall seems much better!
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This seems like a moot point as Adventurers will be changed, but here is the data from one test I did with Big Money.
Adventurers(v0.1) - Cost $3
(1) Silver, (2) Adventurers, (3) Silver, (4) Gold, (5) Gold, (6) Adventurers, (7) Province, (8 ) Gold, (9) Gold, (10) Province, (11) Gold, (12) Duchy, (13) Province, (14) Province, (15) Province, (16) Duchy, (17) Province, (18) Nothing, (19) Province
4 Provinces, 1 Duchy - 14 Turns
8 Provinces, 2 Duchies - 20 Turns
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The thing with Great Forests is, it violates one general principle you can observe in Dominion, but which you'll also find in a lot of other games: Benefits should scale overproportionally relative to your expenses.
Consider Estate, Duchy, Province, Colony and even Dominate. Duchy costs 2 and a half times as much as Estate, but gives three times its points. Province costs less than double compared to Duchy, but gives twice as many points. And so on, each gives disproportionally many points compared to their cost increase.
What's the reason for that? The reason is that we want players to aim high. Even in Dominion, where the number of dead cards alone is a reason to go for a Province instead of two Duchies (or six Estates), the basic VP value still pushes you to go for the more expensive one.
As mentioned, this principle is not unique to Dominion. When I first read about it, it was in an article about fighting games. Nobody wants to learn how to play a complicated character if their relative strength is equal to that one dude who fires Hadoukens by just pressing B. Nobody wants to buy Provinces if there's a card that costs less than half of it and gives half as many points.
Instead, players will buy out the Great Woods, and only then think about what they actually want to do beyond this. If you got almost all of them, great, you already got so many points that 3 Provinces are enough to win (and also you can play them without much risk). Get them equally shared to boost each other and basically start a game where all who went for Forests now can reach Provinces much easier than everyone who didn't. People who try to skip Great Forest to go for Province just lose, making it a non-decision.
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This seems like a moot point as Adventurers will be changed, but here is the data from one test I did with Big Money.
Adventurers(v0.1) - Cost $3
(1) Silver, (2) Adventurers, (3) Silver, (4) Gold, (5) Gold, (6) Adventurers, (7) Province, (8 ) Gold, (9) Gold, (10) Province, (11) Gold, (12) Duchy, (13) Province, (14) Province, (15) Province, (16) Duchy, (17) Province, (18) Nothing, (19) Province
4 Provinces, 1 Duchy - 14 Turns
8 Provinces, 2 Duchies - 20 Turns
I am no simulation expert but I guess that this isn't that much worse or better than BM with 2 other drawing terminals thrown in. So Adventurer looks fine at the first glance.
The main issue though is that an Action card should not just be good with money (Smithy is nice for money and nice for engines) but also good in an engine and here is where Adventurers will mostly fail. Now of course there are Actions which are biased towards money decks like Embassy but not totally.
Of course if you are fine with a narrow card an Adventurer version is OK but if you like a card to be flexible, allow unforseen combos and all the other stuff that makes Dominion, at least to me, so interesting, it is not.
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I believe Smithy BM takes 14.8 turns on average for 4 Provs, if I'm understanding the simulator right lol.
It's probably worth mentioning that as this can't draw actions dead it should play much better with the rest of the kingdom and blow Smithy BM out of the water in a real game of Dominion. Also worth mentioning that Smithy BM is a terrible strategy.
To touch upon the Great Forest thing again, you can have more options for 3vp without it being strictly better than Duchy. At the moment there's no decision here, you just get the Great Forest because it's cheaper and better when it's in your deck. If it had a similar level to Duchy then there'd be a meaningful decision on which you buy, more like Distant Lands vs Duchy. I know Distant Lands is 4vp but that's just a number really, it's more that you have to buy them at a different point in the game as Duchy and there's skill in knowing when it's too late for Distant Lands over Duchy or whether your deck has the terminal space and whatnot. Great Forest has none of this which makes it boring, boring and powerful isn't a great combination in my book.
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The main issue though is that an Action card should not just be good with money (Smithy is nice for money and nice for engines) but also good in an engine and here is where Adventurers will mostly fail. Now of course there are Actions which are biased towards money decks like Embassy but not totally.
Of course if you are fine with a narrow card an Adventurer version is OK but if you like a card to be flexible, allow unforseen combos and all the other stuff that makes Dominion, at least to me, so interesting, it is not.
I agree wholeheartedly! For Adventurers I got caught up in how I could make the original Adventurer concept work without really thinking about if it would be fun. I've applied the "token advancing" mechanic towards what I feel is a more gratifying and fun way - Chaplain. Hard to say if this is balanced. I could see a good argument for it costing $6 Coin at least. I just don't want it to be so inaccessible early on that some players may end up getting it 2-3 turns faster by simple luck. Anyways, here's Chaplain!
(https://i.imgur.com/gWjmb7z.jpg)
To address Asper's and Gazbag's comments on Great Forest. I'm sure you're both quite right about the 3VP game space. I can't argue this definitively, but I don't think a plain Duchy at say cost $4 Coin (maybe even $3) breaks the game as long as the player is only incentivized to buy it early. I think if it's early enough in the game the opportunity cost balances out the reduced price. So in my mind, if I wanna make a card that mixes up the 3VP space I need to address the cheap, late-game gaining issue. Perhaps Distant lands already does this well enough like Gazbag said. Maybe this should be an Event that gains Duchies for cheap. Why are Victory cards so hard to make! Anyways I do appreciate the insight!
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Chaplain feels like it would run out of utility fast. I mean sure it's incredible for the first 3 plays, but after that, phew. I'd bump it to +3 Cards.
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Chaplain is hard to judge. For the first 3 plays it is better than Laboratory (unless you draw a hand without an Estate and a $2), for the next 3-6 plays it is worse (depends on whether you have $6s or Provinces in your deck/hand) and then it is identical to it.
So if the junk trashing compensates for the trashing of good cards it is similar in strength to Lab.
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Chaplain feels like it would run out of utility fast. I mean sure it's incredible for the first 3 plays, but after that, phew. I'd bump it to +3 Cards.
Chaplain is hard to judge. For the first 3 plays it is better than Laboratory (unless you draw a hand without an Estate and a $2), for the next 3-6 plays it is worse (depends on whether you have $6s or Provinces in your deck/hand) and then it is identical to it.
So if the junk trashing compensates for the trashing of good cards it is similar in strength to Lab.
Going along with this, when you do get to that point in the game, the card as written would become unwieldy, as you can wind up with an obscene number of tokens on your Chaplain mat, and have to reveal your hand for no reason every time (See, I don't have any $25s. Look, now I don't have any $26s, etc.). If you gave this +3 Cards, it would be such a strong unignorable draw card that I'd expect you'd see this happen in every single game! (if there's an engine, at least)
To balance that, if you did decide to try +3 Cards, I would make the adding a token to the Chaplain mat contingent on actually trashing a card. Then you can't easily bypass the Province (and other good card) trashing by just waiting until you have 9 tokens on the mat.
I was going to say that revealing your hand nearly every time on a spammable card might bog the game down too much, but then I realized Hunting Party already does that... Still, something to consider.
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Chaplain feels like it would run out of utility fast. I mean sure it's incredible for the first 3 plays, but after that, phew. I'd bump it to +3 Cards.
My original thought was to have this at +3 Cards and +1 Action, but thought the end result (an unconditional double lab) would be too much of a reward. Thinking more on how many hoops you have to jump through and how late in the game this would come I think this could work. I wonder though if +3 Cards and +1 Actions will make the mid-game trashing even worse. You draw more cards, but now there's more of a chance you'll hit your good cards.
Chaplain is hard to judge. For the first 3 plays it is better than Laboratory (unless you draw a hand without an Estate and a $2), for the next 3-6 plays it is worse (depends on whether you have $6s or Provinces in your deck/hand) and then it is identical to it. So if the junk trashing compensates for the trashing of good cards it is similar in strength to Lab.
I'd like the end reward to better than a simple lab, so I take your analysis as another reason to try the +3 Cards and +1 Action version out.
Going along with this, when you do get to that point in the game, the card as written would become unwieldy, as you can wind up with an obscene number of tokens on your Chaplain mat, and have to reveal your hand for no reason every time (See, I don't have any $25s. Look, now I don't have any $26s, etc.). If you gave this +3 Cards, it would be such a strong unignorable draw card that I'd expect you'd see this happen in every single game! (if there's an engine, at least)
To balance that, if you did decide to try +3 Cards, I would make the adding a token to the Chaplain mat contingent on actually trashing a card. Then you can't easily bypass the Province (and other good card) trashing by just waiting until you have 9 tokens on the mat.
I was going to say that revealing your hand nearly every time on a spammable card might bog the game down too much, but then I realized Hunting Party already does that... Still, something to consider.
Yeah the unlimited number of tokens you can gain is technically a problem, but I'd just hope player's would agree it's sensible to stop keeping track after the most expensive card on the board has been surpassed. It's not a solution that sits well with me, but it could prove wordy and mostly unnecessary to add text to the card that addresses this.
I see foregoing the purchase of expensive cards until your Chaplains have surpassed that trashing point as just being one strategy for playing the card. I do think players that buy their power cards ($5 and up) and build a deck around protecting those cards will be rewarded over those who just play Chaplains and then build. At least I hope! Testing will have to be done.
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I do think players that buy their power cards ($5 and up) and build a deck around protecting those cards will be rewarded over those who just play Chaplains and then build. At least I hope! Testing will have to be done.
I doubt that this will happen often as "draw before payload" is a decent rule of thumb (of course it is not that simple as Coin generating cards enable you to buy 5s more easily but it is nonetheless a good guideline).
So why should you buy a Gold or a Goons if they get perchance trashed by Chaplain?
I wouldn't go into the unconditional double Laboratory territory as this is just too good for 5 or 6.
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So why should you buy a Gold or a Goons if they get perchance trashed by Chaplain?
Yeah, this is a hard sell to the player. I think I might try and limit the cards revealed to what is drawn and not your whole hand. This would make it easier for players to track where their power cards are in their deck and limit them being drawn/trashed by Chaplain. Also since this would lessen the harshness of the trashing, I think ending up with a Laboratory when it's all said and done is probably fine. Still unsure about this one though.
Also, thanks for the Slinger comments in Krus5's thread. I posted it here so we wouldn't have to discuss it over there. Seems rude to talk about your own cards in someone else's space. Anyways, I agree it probably needs a price increase. +1 Coffers isn't guaranteed with after two plays, but then your opponent is down to three cards and that's pretty good as well.
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A few more cards I'm thinking on. Some of these are some of my original concepts from many years ago. Bivouac is a 12-card, Action, Supply pile.
(https://i.imgur.com/8ID5CzU.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/tEALSNz.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/8M9XZXC.jpg)
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Barbarian Village is obviously the most innovative of the bunch. Hard to say anything about it besides that it probably requires other villages to work well. I particularly like the idea of a Duration that stays in play for a number of turns (with official cards it is 0, 1, 2 or infinite) that can be influenced by the player.
Reservoir could probably get away without discarding down to 3. Even without the discarding applications of this are limited (handsize attacks, engine play that reduces your handsize below 5).
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Holunder's suggestion for Reservoir is good. Try it alongside Oasis.
The other two seem to suffer the design oddity of self-junking Villages. It's all very well having extra actions, but only if you have Action cards for them. If you aren't drawing Actions with the Village, it is useless, and junk makes this more likely.
You Keep Barbarian Village in play, and end up not doing a lot with it as the Actions you most likely draw are weak, Ruins or Moat. And that Moat doesn't only draw the junk but it attacks; that's going to make a very slow game where the only advantage you can get out of it is emptying the Estates, Ruins and Curse piles whilst somehow ahead on points. Try that in a 3+ player game.
Bivouac is similarly gaining Ruins, making itself progressively harder to connect up. Spoils is fine; it disappears, as Bandit Camp demonstrates. From there, you can compare it to Fool's Gold to see what kind of bonus is good for lining copies up.
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As Barbarian Village has similarities to a temporary form of Inheritance it might be worthwile to estimate how strong the Estates become. My guess is a strong $3. The more obvious problem, known from Inheritance, is that you often choose a non-terminal as Estate target in order to be able to get a lot of them. This isn't possible with Barbarian Village and building a draw engine with cards that only draw 2 is feasible but a lot harder than with Smithy variants (as its net draw power is only half as good).
But then again if Barbarian Village would always enable a draw engine it would be Sauna/Avanto leve overpowered so I think that Kudasai made the right decision here.
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Thanks for the comments everyone!
Reservoir - Now I'm remembering why I never posted this; it's way too much like Oasis. There are casual differences, but I'm not sure they warrant a new card.
Barbarian Village - I can see bumping this up to +2 Actions on play (which would give +3 Actions the next turn). Just wanna make sure everyone is seeing that Barbarian Villages can stack. Having two out makes your Estates +4 Cards and each other player discards down to 3 cards. Picking up a free Estate is great with this, but Ruins and Curses should only be taken sparingly.
Bivouac - This really isn't a matter of trying to collide them as they top deck themselves if you have 2 or less in play. They will collide eventually and you will have basically traded two cards each turn for +$2 Coin and +2 Actions (and of course the time it took to set it up) at the start of your turn. The trade off may be poor, but at least it's reliable. Maybe this should give 2 Spoils for all the trouble this is worth!
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I like Barbarian's concept of a Village that you can use again next turn if you are willing to junk yourself. Though I think it could be on a much simpler card, like
Waggon Village, Action, 4
+1 Card
+2 Actions
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When you discard this from play, you may gain a Copper to put this onto your deck.
Barbarian Village's other effect is fine, but like most effects that try to make another card do something else it creates a whole lot of rules questions. For instance, how does this interact with Inheritance? C0okieL0rd solved this by giving each player a special Action card on setup and putting the Estate token on it, something that doesn't work here. Most official cards would do something like this by saying "discard any number of Estates, if you did...". This is what I'd recommend:
Baroness, Action-Duration, 2
+1 Action
Now and at the start of your next turn, you may discard an Estate, for +2 Cards.
Of course this makes salvaging the Attack hard. One solution would be to not have it be a Duration:
Baroness, Action-Attack, 3
+1 Action
You may discard an Estate. If you did, +2 Cards and each other player with 4 or more cards in hand discards a card.
In general I think this should be split up into two cards.
Edit: A Waggon Village version might be a tad more interesting if one could also trigger the optional topdecking on gain, though. It needs to be reworded slightly, anyhow, as gaining a Copper would technically cover it up.
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Barbarian Village's other effect is fine, but like most effects that try to make another card do something else it creates a whole lot of rules questions. For instance, how does this interact with Inheritance? C0okieL0rd solved this by giving each player a special Action card on setup and putting the Estate token on it, something that doesn't work here. Most official cards would do something like this by saying "discard any number of Estates, if you did...". This is what I'd recommend:
I've never quite understood the reasons behind why Inheritance sets a card aside versus putting the token directly onto the Supply pile like the other Adventurer tokens. Is it to prevent inherited Estates from gaining the bonuses from other tokens? If that's the case, Barbarian Village should be okay as it simply adds instructions and is not copying a card.
If your Estates are both inherited and under the effect of Barbarian Village, you'd just get both effects and in any order you choose. I see this acting the same as having two or more Adventurer tokens on a card.
Thanks for the card change ideas. I'm certainly considering them, but wanna think on Barbarian Villages current form a little bit longer before jumping into any of that.
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Barbarian Village's other effect is fine, but like most effects that try to make another card do something else it creates a whole lot of rules questions. For instance, how does this interact with Inheritance? C0okieL0rd solved this by giving each player a special Action card on setup and putting the Estate token on it, something that doesn't work here. Most official cards would do something like this by saying "discard any number of Estates, if you did...". This is what I'd recommend:
I've never quite understood the reasons behind why Inheritance sets a card aside versus putting the token directly onto the Supply pile like the other Adventurer tokens. Is it to prevent inherited Estates from gaining the bonuses from other tokens? If that's the case, Barbarian Village should be okay as it simply adds instructions and is not copying a card.
If your Estates are both inherited and under the effect of Barbarian Village, you'd just get both effects and in any order you choose. I see this acting the same as having two or more Adventurer tokens on a card.
Thanks for the card change ideas. I'm certainly considering them, but wanna think on Barbarian Villages current form a little bit longer before jumping into any of that.
It's because of knights and split piles I believe.
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Dinking around with an "underpay" mechanic. Really an overpay mechanic that penalizes you for taking the card for cheaper. Any thoughts? Ideas for other good cards?
(https://i.imgur.com/qcQ6us2.jpg)
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I did something like that a while ago. I think the card was called Aqueduct or Town Hall or so... I forgot why I discarded it, though :-[
Anyhow, I like your wording.
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Dinking around with an "underpay" mechanic. Really an overpay mechanic that penalizes you for taking the card for cheaper. Any thoughts? Ideas for other good cards?
(https://i.imgur.com/qcQ6us2.jpg)
$7 for a Peddler&Lab seems pretty expensive. On the other hand, if you only pay $5 and are able to trash the Curse after the next shuffle, this is on the first play a Peddler and on each subsequent play a Peddler&Lab. So if you interpret it as a $5 Peddler+ it sounds pretty decent.
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I would call it (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/b/bc/Coin7.png/16px-Coin7.png)cost and word it like this:
"During your buy phase, you may gain a curse. If you do, the next Steam Engine you buy this turn costs (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png) less."
That way, it doesn't get to be a really good deal when the curses run out.
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Dinking around with an "underpay" mechanic. Really an overpay mechanic that penalizes you for taking the card for cheaper. Any thoughts? Ideas for other good cards?
(https://i.imgur.com/qcQ6us2.jpg)
I like the mechanic; but might be way too good when you can gain it without buying it.
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Found my old card: ;D (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=9231.msg517601#msg517601)
(http://i.imgur.com/vogBurw.png)
There was a lot of interesting feedback back then you might want to refer to. :)
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I like the changes to the Traveller line, especially as all cards are now potentially useful which is also a feature of all official Travellers (yes, even Page could be decent with Vineyard).
You do now have: conditional payload, sifter, splitter, terminal draw that Ambassadors and VP.
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I like the changes to the Traveller line, especially as all cards are now potentially useful which is also a feature of all official Travellers (yes, even Page could be decent with Vineyard).
You do now have: conditional payload, sifter, splitter, terminal draw that Ambassadors and VP.
I appreciate the vote of confidence! It's funny you bring up Page as that was ultimately what led me to make the current changes to the line. I always thought Page was a useless card; just a stepping stone to the next level in the line. I could see the value of Peasant later in the game with giving a +1 Buy, but if cards like Page could exist, surely I could make an equally useless card in Orphan. In fact I thought it would be funny to make it the most useless card possible. I think I succeeded by the way!
But as you said, Page in fact does have some good uses! Even removing interactions with Vineyard and Peddler, playing a bunch of Pages will boast the attack of your Warriors. So with that realization I knew Orphan needed something more. It's still bad in most situations, but it now has good early game interactions with Landmarks, VP token gainers and of course VP tokens from Grand Witch.
The previous version of the line specifically lacked drawing power, because I was afraid it would make it too strong, but that was just poor thinking. I believe the expectation has been set that Traveler lines should provide, in one way or another, a solid foundation for an engine. Making players jump though the hoops only to have them realize the line isn't working without draw isn't fair to the player.
So I think the line may be a bit too strong for my liking, but I wouldn't say it's any stronger than the other two Traveler lines. It certainly plays a lot different and that is a big plus in my book.
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Found my old card: ;D (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=9231.msg517601#msg517601)
(http://i.imgur.com/vogBurw.png)
There was a lot of interesting feedback back then you might want to refer to. :)
Thanks for sharing a link straight to where that conversation took place. I was weary of having to search through 48 pages of text to find it! After reading through it, I'm still unsure if an "underpay" mechanic could work. I don't think cost balancing would be too much of an issue. The big concern, as you and others have pointed out are gainer cards. Adding a debt cost could solve this though. It just makes cost balancing a bit more tricky.
I would call it (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/b/bc/Coin7.png/16px-Coin7.png)cost and word it like this:
"During your buy phase, you may gain a curse. If you do, the next Steam Engine you buy this turn costs (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png) less."
That way, it doesn't get to be a really good deal when the curses run out.
Interesting idea! Would need additional buys to work though. Maybe the solution is to make Steam Engine itself give buys. That might mean the first Steam Engine has to be paid at full price on some boards. Really the easy solution is to just ignore the problem. How Steam Engine interacts with Cursers seems like a fair part of the game. If a player chooses to go for Cursers, it could go in their favor or it could give their opponent an advantage.
I'm also banking on the fact that so few $5 cost gainers exist that the problem will rarely come up. I'll have to test this all out though.
Thanks to everyone for the input and sorry for the slow response.
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I would call it (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/b/bc/Coin7.png/16px-Coin7.png)cost and word it like this:
"During your buy phase, you may gain a curse. If you do, the next Steam Engine you buy this turn costs (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png) less."
That way, it doesn't get to be a really good deal when the curses run out.
Interesting idea! Would need additional buys to work though. Maybe the solution is to make Steam Engine itself give buys. That might mean the first Steam Engine has to be paid at full price on some boards. Really the easy solution is to just ignore the problem. How Steam Engine interacts with Cursers seems like a fair part of the game. If a player chooses to go for Cursers, it could go in their favor or it could give their opponent an advantage.
I'm also banking on the fact that so few $5 cost gainers exist that the problem will rarely come up. I'll have to test this all out though.
I was intending it to be like peddler's (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/55/Coin8star.png/16px-Coin8star.png) cost thing, so if it's your buy phase you could gain a curse and then buy a Steam Engine for (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png) regardless if you have more than one buy or if you have a Steam Engine in play already.
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I'm also banking on the fact that so few $5 cost gainers exist that the problem will rarely come up. I'll have to test this all out though.
University, Smugglers, Artificer, Altar, Artisan, Vampire and, most importantly, all Remodelers.
LibraryAdventurer's wording gets rid of all these "strictly better than Lab" problems with gainers.
I think that you could then get away with reducing the cost by $1 though. Getting $2 for a Curse is not the sweetest deal in the world, most of the times you gotta draw into that Curse before you can trash it and then you still had to pay $4 for a Peddler that only becomes better after you shuffle again.
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I'm also banking on the fact that so few $5 cost gainers exist that the problem will rarely come up. I'll have to test this all out though.
University, Smugglers, Artificer, Altar, Artisan, Vampire and, most importantly, all Remodelers.
Those ARE few. Enough to make it a feature, but certainly not enough to make it a problem.
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I am counting 12 Remodelers: Remodel, Replace, Upgrade, Expand, Remake, Develop, Procession, Butcher, Transmogrify, Dismantle, Governor and Zombie Mason. Plus 6 direct 5-gainers. 18 cards out of 297 (all expansion except Renaissance plus Promos). This is conservatively ignoring cost reduction - Workshop variation combos.
Chances that none of these 18 cards are in the Kingdom are 52,98% (279/297 * 278/296 * ...).
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I am counting 12 Remodelers: Remodel, Replace, Upgrade, Expand, Remake, Develop, Procession, Butcher, Transmogrify, Dismantle, Governor and Zombie Mason. Plus 6 direct 5-gainers. 18 cards out of 297 (all expansion except Renaissance plus Promos). This is conservatively ignoring cost reduction - Workshop variation combos.
Chances that none of these 18 cards are in the Kingdom are 52,98% (279/297 * 278/296 * ...).
Funny, because I end up with a probability of 87,9%. Which is, uh, a lot more? Anyhow, where's the problem if a card is good with Remode variants? I never heard about Hunting Grounds being banned for it.
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I'm also banking on the fact that so few $5 cost gainers exist that the problem will rarely come up. I'll have to test this all out though.
University, Smugglers, Artificer, Altar, Artisan, Vampire and, most importantly, all Remodelers.
LibraryAdventurer's wording gets rid of all these "strictly better than Lab" problems with gainers.
I think that you could then get away with reducing the cost by $1 though. Getting $2 for a Curse is not the sweetest deal in the world, most of the times you gotta draw into that Curse before you can trash it and then you still had to pay $4 for a Peddler that only becomes better after you shuffle again.
Why not make it cost $4+1Debt or $3+2Debt? That would make it cheaper, and eliminate most of the potential for using gainers (you could still Butcher an Engineer or something, but that would be rare enough to not be problematic, IMO). It might look odd (especially if you go for $4+1Debt), but I do feel there's something thematic to "Steam Engine" having Debt in its cost.
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I don't really see how this kind of interaction isn't a good thing. Noticing things like this makes you feel clever and is part of the fun of the game, to me at least. It's not like getting an extra $1 on your Lab is particularly broken anyway?
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I am counting 12 Remodelers: Remodel, Replace, Upgrade, Expand, Remake, Develop, Procession, Butcher, Transmogrify, Dismantle, Governor and Zombie Mason. Plus 6 direct 5-gainers. 18 cards out of 297 (all expansion except Renaissance plus Promos). This is conservatively ignoring cost reduction - Workshop variation combos.
Chances that none of these 18 cards are in the Kingdom are 52,98% (279/297 * 278/296 * ...).
Funny, because I end up with a probability of 87,9%. Which is, uh, a lot more? Anyhow, where's the problem if a card is good with Remode variants? I never heard about Hunting Grounds being banned for it.
You might wanna check your maths, I did it several times and the probability is definitely 52,98% and thus the issues with gaining Steam Engine directly exist in about half of all Kingdoms.
I think that the best version for the card is LA's Peddler-like suggestion with a price of $6 such that you somtimes just buy it when you hit $6 and want an engine piece and the "Curse for $2" thingy is still in there.
No issues with gainers for a too cheap price ($5) relatively to Lab and no issues when the Curse pile is empty.
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I am counting 12 Remodelers: Remodel, Replace, Upgrade, Expand, Remake, Develop, Procession, Butcher, Transmogrify, Dismantle, Governor and Zombie Mason. Plus 6 direct 5-gainers. 18 cards out of 297 (all expansion except Renaissance plus Promos). This is conservatively ignoring cost reduction - Workshop variation combos.
Chances that none of these 18 cards are in the Kingdom are 52,98% (279/297 * 278/296 * ...).
Funny, because I end up with a probability of 87,9%. Which is, uh, a lot more? Anyhow, where's the problem if a card is good with Remode variants? I never heard about Hunting Grounds being banned for it.
You might wanna check your maths, I did it several times and the probability is definitely 52,98% and thus the issues with gaining Steam Engine directly exist in about half of all Kingdoms.
I think that the best version for the card is LA's Peddler-like suggestion with a price of $6 such that you somtimes just buy it when you hit $6 and want an engine piece and the "Curse for $2" thingy is still in there.
No issues with gainers for a too cheap price ($5) relatively to Lab and no issues when the Curse pile is empty.
Huh, I don't really know how I arrived there before... It's still 56% of course, as you only draw 9 other cards, but whatever.
Anyhow, it's not an issue. Remodels don't give you cards for free. To gain a card costing up to 5$ with them, you have to work for it, and if that work pays off a bit better because you cleverly saw an interaction, that's good. I'm fully with Gazbag on this one.
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Steam Engine(v0.2) - As always thank you everyone for the lively debate and input! This was a rough concept to start so some changes were bound to be needed. Where to start!? How about with the new version.
(https://i.imgur.com/PZ6VHeC.jpg)
Price - Gazbag asked about the price of Steam Engine and I'd put it about roughly $7.5 coin. I'm using Grand Market's actual price (~$7.5) as a bench mark as they are very similar in power. So getting it for $7 was probably too good of a deal. $7 coin and 1 debt is not that much more, but it's something. This also makes the cheaper option more in line with what Peddler is worth (~$4.5 coin), since that is in some ways what you are getting when you gain Steam Engine with a Curse card.
Gainers - I don't thing remodel variants would have been a big deal, but $5 cost (and up) gainers would have been a bit too strong. Adding the debt cost eliminates the latter completely (happy) and makes the former very unlikely (sad). Thanks for the suggestion Erick648.
Curses - I do like LibraryAdventurers suggestion (now that I actually am reading your post correctly; sorry!), but as of now I don't think see getting these for cheap after the Curses run out as a big deal. I could eat my words later after some testing, but for now I'm going to keep this part as is. If testing shows an issue, I will use your wording for sure!
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Do you think cards like these could ever work?
(https://i.imgur.com/wn3Viud.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/8uIFKJ1.jpg)
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At first glance I like both of them.
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Frontier doesn't gain VP tokens unconditionally but it nonetheless looks too good unless there is junking or decent pile control.
Let's do some simple maths with Pontoon Bridge. I write how much Buys you use, the + is the Coin equivalent you get out of it whereas the - is the Debt you take at the end of the turn. A simple way to think about it is to first ignore this Capital-like element and just take a look at the net yields.
1 Bridge - 1 Buy - +1 -1 = 0
2 Buys - +2
2 Bridges - 1 Buy - +2 - 4 = -2
2 Buys - +4 - 2 = +2
3 Buys - +6
3 Bridges - 1 Buy - +3 - 9 = -6
2 Buys - +6 - 6 = 0
3 Buys - +9 - 3 = +6
4 Buys - +12
4 Bridges - 1 Buy - +4 - 16 = -12
2 Buys - +8 - 12 = -4
3 Buys - +12 - 8 = +4
4 Buys - +16 - 4 = +12
5 Buys - +20
Needless to say, this simple countring also ignores all the usual Highways tricks with gainers. But it shows that this card is perhaps not as crazily overpowered as I initially considered a Highway variant with extra Buys to necessarily be.
It could nonetheless be too strong for $4 (I'd first test it at $5) but punishing unused Buys is definitely a great mechanic that avoids the mindless monocard strategies that usually appear with cost reducers.
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Frontier doesn't gain VP tokens unconditionally but it nonetheless looks too good unless there is junking or decent pile control.
Let's do some simple maths with Pontoon Bridge. I write how much Buys you use, the + is the Coin equivalent you get out of it whereas the - is the Debt you take at the end of the turn. A simple way to think about it is to first ignore this Capital-like element and just take a look at the net yields.
1 Bridge - 1 Buy - +1 -1 = 0
2 Buys - +2
2 Bridges - 1 Buy - +2 - 4 = -2
2 Buys - +4 - 2 = +2
3 Buys - +6
3 Bridges - 1 Buy - +3 - 9 = -6
2 Buys - +6 - 6 = 0
3 Buys - +9 - 3 = +6
4 Buys - +12
4 Bridges - 1 Buy - +4 - 16 = -12
2 Buys - +8 - 12 = -4
3 Buys - +12 - 8 = +4
4 Buys - +16 - 4 = +12
5 Buys - +20
Needless to say, this simple countring also ignores all the usual Highways tricks with gainers. But it shows that this card is perhaps not as crazily overpowered as I initially considered a Highway variant with extra Buys to necessarily be.
It could nonetheless be too strong for $4 (I'd first test it at $5) but punishing unused Buys is definitely a great mechanic that avoids the mindless monocard strategies that usually appear with cost reducers.
Thanks for the math breakdown. I always appreciate your commitment to making other people's fan cards the best they can be. It's good to know this could be possible. There are of course many other factors to consider, but I'm sure at some price it will work. I'll test at $4 first, but I imagine this could be wildly swingy depending on how you draw these up. A cost of $5 would be a steep price, but would prevent that from happening.
Also, I'm not too big on the name and lack of associated artwork. Very open to name recommendations!
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I read Revolutionist as variation on +2 Cards and +2 Coins.
You probably only want to call it when you draw one card, which happens often enough. 1 Card is usually worth less than 1 Coin (Lab being better than Peddler) so Revolutionist is on the one hand slightly weaker than +2 Cards and +2 Coins but you can make up for this via calling more than one Revolutionist. Plus the card is a Reserve and thus able to create huge turns. On the other hand it is trickier to handle than Wine Merchant and Revolutionist is likelier to miss shuffles.
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Why is Frontier a Victory card? I feel these are two cards rather than one.
About Pontoon Bridge, I remain opposed to cards punishing players for having leftover buys. Not that I can't imagine Donald X ever doing one of those, given how LastFootnote seems to like the idea.
My issue with it is, wasting buys is something you already don't want to happen, because it wastes potential of your deck. So punishing you for it creates no interesting decisions, like a tradeoff would, but just makes you want something you already want more.
It would probably work just straight giving you 1 debt.
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My issue with it is, wasting buys is something you already don't want to happen, because it wastes potential of your deck. So punishing you for it creates no interesting decisions, like a tradeoff would, but just makes you want something you already want more.
Relevant Donald X. quote
Punishing buys is okay and there's some of that, e.g. Embargo. Contraband and Delusion try out limiting buys. And Peddler gives you the positive side, where a card costs more for your Remodels.
Regardless, Dominion is not a game of raw Buy\Coin efficiency the way many resource engine games are (which is part of what makes me like it so much). $7 is often better spent on a Smithy than a Gold while $9 and 3 Buys isn't always better to break into three buys. The fact that $5 cards are non-trivially comparable to $4 cards keeps the decisions interesting.
Certainly there are cards that can bring to mind +Buy efficiency. Herbalist and Messenger are pretty awful if you aren't going to use the +Buy they give, but really that's more about +Card\+Action efficiency than +Buy efficiency. There are plenty of cards that are played in multiple that happen to have +Buys like Wharf, Worker's Village, and Villa as well as those trashers which give +Buys in Forager and Trade Route. Squire literally gives +2 Buys, and you can almost never use all of them whenever you need one of them.
Surplus +Buys are often circumstantial, and punishing a player for extras creates a game-state wherein the player must consider extra buys instead of discarding them. Different game-states are at the heart of Dominion.
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My issue with it is, wasting buys is something you already don't want to happen, because it wastes potential of your deck. So punishing you for it creates no interesting decisions, like a tradeoff would, but just makes you want something you already want more.
Relevant Donald X. quote
Punishing buys is okay and there's some of that, e.g. Embargo. Contraband and Delusion try out limiting buys. And Peddler gives you the positive side, where a card costs more for your Remodels.
That is not a relevant quote. Donald X talks about cards that make buying worse, not about cards that make NOT buying worse.
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I read Revolutionist as variation on +2 Cards and +2 Coins.
You probably only want to call it when you draw one card, which happens often enough. 1 Card is usually worth less than 1 Coin (Lab being better than Peddler) so Revolutionist is on the one hand slightly weaker than +2 Cards and +2 Coins but you can make up for this via calling more than one Revolutionist. Plus the card is a Reserve and thus able to create huge turns. On the other hand it is trickier to handle than Wine Merchant and Revolutionist is likelier to miss shuffles.
This makes me more confident that I got the price correct, but it was my intention for players to only be able to call one Revolutionist per draw instruction. I'll have to take a harder look at the wording and make sure it prevents multiple calls.
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Why is Frontier a Victory card? I feel these are two cards rather than one.
I wanted Frontier to still have a function even after a Supply pile was gone. At this point it is essentially just 2VP for $4 and still retains some functionality, albeit much less than being able to gain VP tokens.
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Trying out a few more cards that deal with how much Coin you make in a turn. Unsure of the values, but I wanted to check if the concept and how it plays is clear.
(https://i.imgur.com/Y9w1UG0.jpg)
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The wording is super unclear. What counts as a "time" you "make" $5? Playing a single card that gives you $5? Playing the first card that gets you to $5 total and every card thereafter? I suspect it's the latter, as the former will almost never happen. Even then, it's a rather confusing effect that's difficult to word. My best shot is, "The first time you make $5 this turn, +1 Card, and +1 Card every time you play a card this turn."
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I agree with the Commodore. For instance, what happens when I already have 2$, then play Poor House with 2 Coppers in hand, then play those? Do I draw one card? Two? Three? Four?
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Commodore Chuckles - Although I think the wording I've chosen is sound in terms of execution, it is certainly not an intuitive thing a player will automatically know how to play. I do like your wording suggestion, but I think I'm going to try and go that route incrementally. Hopefully somewhere between what you and I have is a good balance. And yes the latter was the correct way this should play.
Asper - I hadn't thought about Poor House interactions. I first this seemed like a cool card interaction. I could see situations where you already have $5, then play a Poor House for $9 (draw), then get say -$1 to put you at $8 (draw), and so on. Essentially I was viewing "make" as any total coin change over $5, so even going backwards would count. However, this is a big oversight as spending Coin during your Buy phase would also cause you to draw as long as your overall was above $5. This might actually work, but this card is already probably too strong, so that's going to go.
Hopefully this new version is a bit more clear. If not, it at least removes any interactions with Poor House and spending coin.
(https://i.imgur.com/xA4xhX5.jpg)
Thank you both for the comments!
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I actually first thought of Storyteller and then realized Poor House did the same. So, when I play Poor House and get to 6$, I draw only once, not twice, right? What happens when I play cards that iteratively give +1$? Vault and Storeroom for instance give "+1$ per card discarded". What about Diadem? Is it once per card?
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I actually first thought of Storyteller and then realized Poor House did the same. So, when I play Poor House and get to 6$, I draw only once, not twice, right? What happens when I play cards that iteratively give +1$? Vault and Storeroom for instance give "+1$ per card discarded". What about Diadem? Is it once per card?
The intention was for this to draw after each card is played that puts your total coin at $4 or more. As worded though, it would draw each time your total is increased above that amount, so cards like Vault would be quite good. Big oversight! This newest version should address this.
(https://i.imgur.com/K7ijLT2.jpg)
So now hopefully the draw card check is pretty simple and robust.
(1) Play a card.
(2) Did my total coin change?
(3) If yes and my new total is $4 or more, +1 Card.
Applying this to your questions:
-Poor House will only get +1 Card if upon it's resolution (1) you have above $4 coin and (2) it increased your total $. So you could have $4 prior to playing Poor House, but if it nets you $0 or less, you will not get +1 Card.
-Cards that incrementally increase your total $ only get +1 Card if after you resolve them your total coin is at $4 or more.
Other things worth noting:
-This interacts with all cards - Action, Treasure, and Night cards.
-Treasure cards drawn during your Buy phase can then be played to draw more cards, which can then possibly be played to draw more cards.
Thanks for catching yet another big oversight on my part!
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An interesting terminal draw card. Given all the official Smithy variants with something more or less interesting sticked onto +3 Cards this is quite fresh.
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I think you forgot the "or" in "4$ or more". Going with Royal Carriage, it should probably say "finish playing" instead of "resolve". Also, the timing is unclear. For instance, if I play Artificer, do I draw the card before discarding?
My suggestion would be: "While this is in play, when your total coins increases to 4$ or more while playing a card, after you finish playing it, +1 Card"
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I actually first thought of Storyteller and then realized Poor House did the same. So, when I play Poor House and get to 6$, I draw only once, not twice, right? What happens when I play cards that iteratively give +1$? Vault and Storeroom for instance give "+1$ per card discarded". What about Diadem? Is it once per card?
The intention was for this to draw after each card is played that puts your total coin at $4 or more. As worded though, it would draw each time your total is increased above that amount, so cards like Vault would be quite good. Big oversight! This newest version should address this.
(https://i.imgur.com/K7ijLT2.jpg)
So now hopefully the draw card check is pretty simple and robust.
(1) Play a card.
(2) Did my total coin change?
(3) If yes and my new total is $4 or more, +1 Card.
Applying this to your questions:
-Poor House will only get +1 Card if upon it's resolution (1) you have above $4 coin and (2) it increased your total $. So you could have $4 prior to playing Poor House, but if it nets you $0 or less, you will not get +1 Card.
-Cards that incrementally increase your total $ only get +1 Card if after you resolve them your total coin is at $4 or more.
Other things worth noting:
-This interacts with all cards - Action, Treasure, and Night cards.
-Treasure cards drawn during your Buy phase can then be played to draw more cards, which can then possibly be played to draw more cards.
Thanks for catching yet another big oversight on my part!
The wording on the card doesn't work as you intend. You intend that if you play a Market when you already have at least $4, you'll draw an extra card because of the Market's +$1. The problem is, when you get additional $ after you have $4 or more, you aren't increasing your total to $4 or more because it already is $4 or more, so as worded, Heir can only trigger once per copy, which is clearly not what you intend.
Here's my recommended wording, which should function exactly how you intend:
While this is in play, after you resolve a card, if it gave $ and you have at least $4, +1 Card.
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I think you forgot the "or" in "4$ or more". Going with Royal Carriage, it should probably say "finish playing" instead of "resolve". Also, the timing is unclear. For instance, if I play Artificer, do I draw the card before discarding?
My suggestion would be: "While this is in play, when your total coins increases to 4$ or more while playing a card, after you finish playing it, +1 Card"
"Resolve" is used briefly in the Dominion 2nd edition manual so I thought it would be okay to use that instead of "Directly after you finish playing". In my mind they meant the same thing, but now the term seems more ambiguous than before. Being shorter I much prefer it, but since the precedent is to use the latter and I'm not questioning what "resolve" actual means I'll change it. Going to be hard to fir that onto my Commander cards. :(
So with this phrasing hopefully it addresses your question about Artificer. You only get +1 card after you play Artificer and you have $4 or more total coin.
(https://i.imgur.com/7mWpGiC.jpg)
I actually first thought of Storyteller and then realized Poor House did the same. So, when I play Poor House and get to 6$, I draw only once, not twice, right? What happens when I play cards that iteratively give +1$? Vault and Storeroom for instance give "+1$ per card discarded". What about Diadem? Is it once per card?
The intention was for this to draw after each card is played that puts your total coin at $4 or more. As worded though, it would draw each time your total is increased above that amount, so cards like Vault would be quite good. Big oversight! This newest version should address this.
(https://i.imgur.com/K7ijLT2.jpg)
So now hopefully the draw card check is pretty simple and robust.
(1) Play a card.
(2) Did my total coin change?
(3) If yes and my new total is $4 or more, +1 Card.
Applying this to your questions:
-Poor House will only get +1 Card if upon it's resolution (1) you have above $4 coin and (2) it increased your total $. So you could have $4 prior to playing Poor House, but if it nets you $0 or less, you will not get +1 Card.
-Cards that incrementally increase your total $ only get +1 Card if after you resolve them your total coin is at $4 or more.
Other things worth noting:
-This interacts with all cards - Action, Treasure, and Night cards.
-Treasure cards drawn during your Buy phase can then be played to draw more cards, which can then possibly be played to draw more cards.
Thanks for catching yet another big oversight on my part!
The wording on the card doesn't work as you intend. You intend that if you play a Market when you already have at least $4, you'll draw an extra card because of the Market's +$1. The problem is, when you get additional $ after you have $4 or more, you aren't increasing your total to $4 or more because it already is $4 or more, so as worded, Heir can only trigger once per copy, which is clearly not what you intend.
Here's my recommended wording, which should function exactly how you intend:
While this is in play, after you resolve a card, if it gave $ and you have at least $4, +1 Card.
I really like your wording, but the way I have it currently should in fact work since it is referencing any changes the last card played did to your total coin and not what your current total coin is.
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I really like your wording, but the way I have it currently should in fact work since it is referencing any changes the last card played did to your total coin and not what your current total coin is.
Example play 1: You have $3. You play a Copper. It increased your total to $4 or more, so you draw a card.
Example play 2: You have $5. You play a Copper. It did not increase your total to $4 or more, because you already had $4 or more even before playing it, so you do not draw a card.
Example play 2 does not work the way you want it to, as worded, since you cannot change your total $ to something it already is.
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I really like your wording, but the way I have it currently should in fact work since it is referencing any changes the last card played did to your total coin and not what your current total coin is.
Example play 1: You have $3. You play a Copper. It increased your total to $4 or more, so you draw a card.
Example play 2: You have $5. You play a Copper. It did not increase your total to $4 or more, because you already had $4 or more even before playing it, so you do not draw a card.
Example play 2 does not work the way you want it to, as worded, since you cannot change your total $ to something it already is.
I see your point. Thanks for the heads up and your patience! I'll have to make changes later as I'm currently away from my computer.
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Honestly I think that wording can be understood both ways. You are increasing from 4$ or more to 4$ or more. But yeah, it should not be open to interpretation.
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I really like your wording, but the way I have it currently should in fact work since it is referencing any changes the last card played did to your total coin and not what your current total coin is.
Example play 1: You have $3. You play a Copper. It increased your total to $4 or more, so you draw a card.
Example play 2: You have $5. You play a Copper. It did not increase your total to $4 or more, because you already had $4 or more even before playing it, so you do not draw a card.
Example play 2 does not work the way you want it to, as worded, since you cannot change your total $ to something it already is.
But for Example 2 you could read it as you increased your total to $6, which is $4 or more, so +1 card.
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Is Heiress new or has it been there for a while? It's nice that it doesn't leave any room for confusion like Heir does, but obviously doing the same thing for Heir wouldn't make it work. Also, I just saw Slumlord now, and man do I like that card!
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Is Heiress new or has it been there for a while? It's nice that it doesn't leave any room for confusion like Heir does, but obviously doing the same thing for Heir wouldn't make it work. Also, I just saw Slumlord now, and man do I like that card!
Thanks and sorry for the delayed response! I do enjoy Slumlord and think the card ordering mechanic has a lot of design space in it. Cards can care about all sorts of things after it and before it. Maybe it even cares about the previous 2 cards!? I was quite happy to see you exploring some of the potential here. Big fan, but I'll keep my comments on your cards to your forum!
So Heiress has been on here, but as Heir. When I recently added a second card that cares about total $, I decided to do a switch on the names. I may even add a third and call it something along the lines of someone who is trying to steal the inheritance. This will likely be a card that cares about players getting an exact total $. Not sure yet how this will work though. :)
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I've been thinking about cards that scale with a player's total card size. Sort of like Gardens, but for Action cards. It seems simple enough, but given the lack of any such official cards (ignoring Philosopher's Stone) maybe it just doesn't work. Does anyone know if this has been tried? Officially by Donald X. or by any fancard sets?
Here is my go at it. Used Gardens as a rough baseline for these values. At 30 total cards, this is just a bit better than Forum (cost $5 Coin).
(https://i.imgur.com/LmGxV0a.jpg)
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This is a very cool idea with some minor issues:
I think this could get away with only discarding one card. The current version becomes only strong once you are above 30 cards (unless you are in a dire need of an extra Buy). If you are between 20 and 29 it is: +1 Action +2 Cards discard 2 cards aka a mini-Warehouse aka the first-turn effect of Dungeon (I'd go so far and claim that Dungeon would be stronger if it were a cantrip on the first turn) and thus pretty weak.
On the other hand, if it discarded only one card it would be stronger than Fugitive at a price of $4 in decks with 20 or more cards
So one meta design question that arises is, do you want this to only be good in Gardens/junking/no-trashing games or a generally decent sifter?
Also, the card only works if you are allowed you to count the cards in your discard pile so you should consider whether you want some explicit rule change on the card or think that this is implied anyway and prefer less text on the card (like PS the card could say: Count your deck and discard pile. +1 Card per ...)
Due to the counting it is also slow to resolve which isn't per se bad but something you have to keep in mind in case the folks you play with dislike longer games.
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This is a very cool idea with some minor issues:
I think this could get away with only discarding one card. The current version becomes only strong once you are above 30 cards (unless you are in a dire need of an extra Buy). If you are between 20 and 29 it is: +1 Action +2 Cards discard 2 cards aka a mini-Warehouse aka the first-turn effect of Dungeon (I'd go so far and claim that Dungeon would be stronger if it were a cantrip on the first turn) and thus pretty weak.
On the other hand, if it discarded only one card it would be stronger than Fugitive at a price of $4 in decks with 20 or more cards
So one meta design question that arises is, do you want this to only be good in Gardens/junking/no-trashing games or a generally decent sifter?
Also, the card only works if you are allowed you to count the cards in your discard pile so you should consider whether you want some explicit rule change on the card or think that this is implied anyway and prefer less text on the card (like PS the card could say: Count your deck and discard pile. +1 Card per ...)
Due to the counting it is also slow to resolve which isn't per se bad but something you have to keep in mind in case the folks you play with dislike longer games.
Yes, counting does indeed need to be included. Thanks for the catch!
Yes again, I'd want this to be overpriced and underpowered below 30 total cards given how strong it can become at 30+ cards. At this point you are getting a $5 cost card for $4. At 40+ it even becomes a Laboratory with built in sifting.
I have it discarding 2 cards so a player will have a harder time pile driving the Craftsman. If a player got their hands on 10 of these, every 10 total cards would increase their total draw power by 10 cards!
So I certainly want this to reward players who decide to run with bigger decks, but I still think this can be useful in engines. 30 cards is definitely on the cusp of what an engine can handle, especially given a decent amount of these cards will need to be Treasures lest you create a 3-pile opportunity for your opponent. I'd hope making this determination is board dependent and changes from game to game.
I can see the counting being annoying for some, but at least its price won't fluctuate wildly from turn to turn like Philosopher's Stone given that it counts all cards and not just the cards in your deck and discard pile. Wouldn't at all be hard or unreasonable to keep track of your total card count with a piece of paper.
(https://i.imgur.com/LmGxV0a.jpg)
[EDIT: 10/28/2018, 10:48AM PST] Changed the wording so it is hopefully more clear that you count all your cards everywhere. Deck, discard pile, set aside, on a mat, etc.
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I can see the counting being annoying for some, but at least its price won't fluctuate wildly from turn to turn like Philosopher's Stone given that it counts all cards and not just the cards in your deck and discard pile. Wouldn't at all be hard or unreasonable to keep track of your total card count with a piece of paper.
Yeah and you don't have to count each turn. If you counted e.g. 32 you can play for some turns and don't have to count again unless you are sure that you are around 40.
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First, the conversation at hand. I think Craftsmen should work, and be very interesting. Wording suggestion: 'without revealing face-down cards.' On an unrelated note, I think that Sanctuary would be a great candidate to be a Project, since (the way I'm reading it) only one is useful to you.
Edit: Also, some of your card names match Renaissance names, namely Border Guard and Old Witch.
Edit: Nevermind, didn't read Monk hard enough!
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Edit: Also, some of your card names match Renaissance names, namely Border Guard and Old Witch.
Yeah, I guess I'm still in denial about this. I've been dabbling in Dominion fan-cards for many years now and not one name overlap until now. What a run! Maybe I should be excited to finally have some official cards with names I've been using. These two (Old Witch and Border Guard) will be especially tough to rename as their play instructions are intrinsically tied to their names. Ugh! Now I know how Asper felt when he had to rename Werewolf. The card used Silvers to block the Attack! That can't possible get more Werewolfy! That's a rough one. Well, I should get going on these. Any name suggestions?
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Old Hag, maybe? or just Hag?
Maybe Border Patrol, if we can have Village and Border Village (and Fishing Village, etc).
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Here is a stupid idea to change Grand Witch: make the 6VP conditional on the card not being in play. Thus it get buffed when you want to use it constructively, i.e. as the double Groundskeeper, but using it as junk that you can spread via Mountain Hag is still a thing.
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Consulate looks good, neatly avoids Possession abuse.
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Welcome to the club ;)
For Old Witch, the cantrip thing makes it feel similar to Familiar on first glance, so maybe something like Raven? Or Warlock, if you want it to be a Witch variant. Head Witch? Blind Witch? Mountain Hag? Witch Council?
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Name Changes - I appreciate all the name suggestions. I was never in love with Border Guard as a card so I'm just going to remove it. Renaming Old Witch to Old Hag was tempting, but I feel the Hag cards are generally Cursers that don't provide draw. I've been sitting on a good image for a Warlock card so I think I'm going to just go with that!
Grand Witch - Holunder9, this is an interesting idea. I'll consider it if I ever need to buff Grand Witch, but in all my testing the line as a whole has more than made up for the -6 VP deficit you incur. I certainly don't like that it shrinks the window in which you can hit your opponents for the full -6VP. Maybe that's a good thing. I haven't had a lot of chances to test this aspect of the line, but I tried to make it as hard as possible to set this up.
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Messing around with some fun ideas. Haven't done much to refine the values yet, but I think it has potential.
(https://i.imgur.com/AkoCxQQ.jpg)
What's the most broken card combination you can think of?
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If we take the most obvious one, Village and Smithy, the net effect is +1 Action and +3 Cards for you, +1 Card for them.
Compare this to Governor which is +2 Cards for you, +1 Card for them and it already looks pretty broken.
The net effect of Council Room and Urchin is +4 cards for you, some sifting (with handsize remaining equal) for them.
So I think it is clearly too strong. There are also probably some rule issues with Durations, Reserves and one-shots (what happens when Prince or Hireling are on the mat?).
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If we take the most obvious one, Village and Smithy, the net effect is +1 Action and +3 Cards for you, +1 Card for them.
Compare this to Governor which is +2 Cards for you, +1 Card for them and it already looks pretty broken.
The net effect of Council Room and Urchin is +4 cards for you, some sifting (with handsize remaining equal) for them.
So I think it is clearly too strong. There are also probably some rule issues with Durations, Reserves and one-shots (what happens when Prince or Hireling are on the mat?).
I plan to tweak the values, but as it stands, Smithy+Village give you +3 Cards, +1 Action and each other player gets +2 Cards ($7 total rounded up gives +2 Cards).
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If we take the most obvious one, Village and Smithy, the net effect is +1 Action and +3 Cards for you, +1 Card for them.
Compare this to Governor which is +2 Cards for you, +1 Card for them and it already looks pretty broken.
The net effect of Council Room and Urchin is +4 cards for you, some sifting (with handsize remaining equal) for them.
So I think it is clearly too strong. There are also probably some rule issues with Durations, Reserves and one-shots (what happens when Prince or Hireling are on the mat?).
I plan to tweak the values, but as it stands, Smithy+Village give you +3 Cards, +1 Action and each other player gets +2 Cards ($7 total rounded up gives +2 Cards).
Sorry, I misread it as round down. This is of course OK. Like Governor or Council Room probably pretty strong with handsize attacks but this isn't the end of the world.
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Here's a late night attempt at fixing some of Burial Gifts (now Sigil) issues:
-Durations and cards that move themselves (to the trash or Supply pile, etc) no longer work with Sigil.
-Now other players draw a card per $4 coin the cards on your Sigil mat cost total.
(https://i.imgur.com/ZHuAXre.jpg)
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I don't see many good points about Sigil to be honest. One either puts a great deal of thought into it at the start or puts an automatic combo on there. For the latter, I thought of Secret Chamber - Poor House; instant Province without any giveaway draw (or is it one card?). Either way, the player psychology would lean toward focusing on sigils every time, which makes for super fast games like with governor. Army calls for build-up, this doesn't.
Or the first player will always win by getting Ghost Ship.
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I don't see many good points about Sigil to be honest. One either puts a great deal of thought into it at the start or puts an automatic combo on there. For the latter, I thought of Secret Chamber - Poor House; instant Province without any giveaway draw (or is it one card?). Either way, the player psychology would lean toward focusing on sigils every time, which makes for super fast games like with governor. Army calls for build-up, this doesn't.
Or the first player will always win by getting Ghost Ship.
Foiled by a card that isn't even in the game anymore!
I'm not going to worry about Secret Chamber as I don't ever use the removed cards, but Poor House and Attacks directly counter how I had hoped Sigil would play, so I've removed the possibly of having both on the Sigil mat.
I certainly think Army is the best and most fair way to execute the merging of cards, but I wanted to take it a step further and allow players to forge cards from most of the cards available. So really this is more to have fun than anything.
A quick clarification: Players can choose cards other players have already chosen as long as they are not in the Supply. They can even choose the same card twice for their Sigil mat. This initially seemed wonky to me, but it removes any huge disadvantages players 2 and more would have.
Here is the latest version:
(http://i68.tinypic.com/t7mssx.jpg)
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Ghost Ship wouldn't even work well with this (unless the other action you chose costs less than $3) because you make then put 2 cards back and then make them draw 2 cards. Anyway, if my opponent chooses Ghost Ship, I'd choose Cursed village. Cursed village + storeroom would be really strong here anyway. This card looks both fun and possibly broken. Definitely worth trying out.
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Ghost Ship wouldn't even work well with this (unless the other action you chose costs less than $3) because you make then put 2 cards back and then make them draw 2 cards. Anyway, if my opponent chooses Ghost Ship, I'd choose Cursed village. Cursed village + storeroom would be really strong here anyway. This card looks both fun and possibly broken. Definitely worth trying out.
Yeah, most likely fun and broken. Aquila makes some good points though. Determining which two cards to choose will be very tedious, even for seasoned players who know the full card list well. I'm a fan of fast games, but many are not, so this would not be to their liking. Ultimately I would like this to be balanced and fit right in to any Kingdom and play style. Addressing these issues this (v0.3) will likely be how I'm going to implement it:
(https://i.imgur.com/uHh1q0B.jpg)
Restricting the cards to cost $2, unused Actions vastly reduces the available combinations, but it should streamline the setup process while still allowing some fun combinations that cater to many different play styles. This will also help eliminate a lot of broken combinations outside of the $2 cost range. Although there are likely still going to be some issues. *Ahem* Beggar x2, Lurker x2.
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There are 31 $2 Kingdom Action cards among 314 Kingdom cards totally.
So Chances that 0, 1, or more $2 Actions are in the Kingdom are 0,348 0,3937 and 0,2583.
In a third of all Kingdoms Sigil does nothing, in a fourth of all Kingdoms you have a choice among 2 cards and in around 40% of all Kingdoms you have to take 2 copies of the same card.
So while this new version made the card much more balanced it came at the cost of providing no or just very limited choices.
While it would be slighty wacky Sigil could perhaps get away with also playing Treasure and Night cards: Treasures work anyway, Guardian works and Monastery will never be taken (unless there is stuff like Cobbler or Transmogrify).
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By unused, he means not in this kingdom, which means there will be 31 choices minus the number of $2 actions in the kingdom.
I still like the broken version better personally. Just include a veto option.
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My mistake. I like this even less than, no way I would want my fellow players to read 30 cards and then come up with a decision, no way I would want to spend 10 minutes for setup and then everybody has the same Sigil with Pawn and Raze anyway because there is no trasher and extra Buy in the Kingdom.
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Might be good to do it Black market style. Let people choose from a (semi-)random selection of 20 cards that aren't in the kingdom. That way you could do without the $2 cost limitation and still easily exclude completely broken stuff.
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You could also du it Duid style, assign 3/4 $2s to the Sigil mat and players can choose 2 out of 3/4 whenever they play Sigil. The disadvantage is that this totally eliminates the pre-game choice/ drafting. Seems more interesting to play a game and then being able afterwards to tell a story about why Alice won due to her smart Sigil drafting choices.
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You could also du it Duid style, assign 3/4 $2s to the Sigil mat and players can choose 2 out of 3/4 whenever they play Sigil. The disadvantage is that this totally eliminates the pre-game choice/ drafting. Seems more interesting to play a game and then being able afterwards to tell a story about why Alice won due to her smart Sigil drafting choices.
Interesting idea, but there are a lot of $2 cost cards that have repetitive on-play effects. This is an extreme example, but you could end up with Moat, Lackeys and Courtyard which are all about the same. You also could end up with cards that do not discard themselves the turn they were played, which would defeat a lot of the purpose of Sigil.
I'll have to think on the $2 cost restriction. It's true that Black Market calls for all unused Actions to be in the Black Market pile, but players tend to choose the cards in there. Even the online version restricts the number used. So I guess the same logic could apply to Sigil. Give a broad stroke setup and let players figure out what works for them in terms of selectable cards.
Thanks everyone for the comments!
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Maybe using $3's would make it more interesting, as there's a lot more variety among them than $2's, mostly due to number available. It would probably need to cost a good bit more then, though. Maybe each player could get one $2 and one $3? That would get pretty wordy, I would think.
Anyway, I really like the concept, and think it's actually more interesting using lower-cost cards rather than $4+.
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My mistake. I like this even less than, no way I would want my fellow players to read 30 cards and then come up with a decision, no way I would want to spend 10 minutes for setup and then everybody has the same Sigil with Pawn and Raze anyway because there is no trasher and extra Buy in the Kingdom.
Pawn is certainly the go-to, $2 cost, cantrip, but I think what you pair it with has a lot of options:
Pawn/Duchess has a lot of great synergy. Play Duchess, reveal the top card of your deck, if it's a Treasure you can then play Pawn and skip the unneeded +1 Action.
Pawn/Tracker seems like it would add a lot of utility.
Pawn/Courtyard allows topdecking of non-Action cards to be drawn by Pawn.
Giving your opponents +1 Card per play of Bannerman is pretty harsh (maybe too harsh) so you certainly want to measure how many Bannerman you player per turn. Choosing a combination of Pawn and some other card that wants to be spammed may not even be a great strategy. I certainly will try some Pawn combos if I can ever get around to playtesting this.
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Maybe using $3's would make it more interesting, as there's a lot more variety among them than $2's, mostly due to number available. It would probably need to cost a good bit more then, though. Maybe each player could get one $2 and one $3? That would get pretty wordy, I would think.
Anyway, I really like the concept, and think it's actually more interesting using lower-cost cards rather than $4+.
Yeah, I feel like I might be missing an opportunity here by limiting Bannerman to just $2 cost cards, but for my taste the $2 cost cards offer enough diversity to create some fun and interesting combinations without making the choice overwhelming.
This whole premise is based off of a card LastFootnote made called Offering (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=18448.msg752924#msg752924). It believe it ultimately had some issues with swingyness, but I think there's a chance the drafting of $2 cost cards could make it a little more viable in competitive games.
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I like the change to Bannermen as it it introduces asymmetry (before the card was arguably "just" a Governor variant). At best this is something that is slightly better than a double Lab (Patrician+Courtyard).
This is something you should never do but, guess what, a cantrip that yields a VP token is something you never should do either. I also think that this is roughly balanced (this is just a hunch, crazy stuff like this does of course require testing), except perhaps for Colony games.
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One of my play groups is a bit new to Dominion and they seem to really enjoy Throne Room (and variants), but don't quite get the chaining them together aspect for big hands. So my thought was to make a TR variant that rewards payload versus engine play, but could work with both if needed. This is a rough version of where I'd like to go with it:
(https://i.imgur.com/OGpjElE.jpg)
Thoughts?
-What would you make this cost?
-Is this potentially too strong on some Kingdoms; too weak on others?
Thanks for looking and for any feedback!
[Version_0.2] Swapped the instructions text order so the +$1 check happens before the throning. This should reel in random buy power spikes and make tracking much easier.
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Does anything know roughly what a Silver that may trash should cost? A Silver that is a forced trash? I'd imagine the latter would be somewhere around $4.5, but I'm less sure about the former. Is it worth $5? Should something like the following cost more than $5?
(https://i.imgur.com/cCjCHQK.jpg)
Sorry for the onslaught of questions.
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I'm not sure about what a good cost would be, but I would compare to Sauna to find one.
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I was thinking Junk Dealer (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Junk_Dealer) would be the place to look. Basically (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png) instead of (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png) and 1 card. And then the various differences between action and treasure, which I think tend overall slightly favor treasure due to not being able to draw dead.
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Counterfeit seems like the obvious point of comparison to me. Loses the Buy, gives less money for trashing treasures, but gains the ability to trash non-treasures. I'd guess it ends up being a bit worse than Counterfeit overall but still seems like a solid $5 to me.
The other comparison I'd make is Priest, being a treasure seems significantly better than Priest's extra ability.
Edit: I somehow didn't see Ox when I wrote that and was just talking about a regular Silver that can trash.
I think Ox is fine at $5, have you tried it with a mandatory trash to make gaining a bunch early a little worse? Not really for power level reasons but it might make it play more interestingly.
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Oh yeah, Junk dealer might be a bit better. There's also the reaction to factor in, though. It's definitely at least a $5. The question is whether it's too powerful and needs to be a $6. I don't think so personally, but I could be wrong.
Plus, Junk Dealer to Ox is a similar comparison to the one between Bazaar and Festival.
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Thanks for all the analysis. I was intially comparing this to Junk Dealer, but you all brought up many other good cards to consider for comparision. I wonder if Amulet should be thrown into the mix. I agree with Gazbag that this would be more interesting as a forced trasher. I haven't played any games with this yet, but this seems like a good place to start.
Also, I forgot to include that the Reaction can only occur during your Clean-up phase, so the window to gain an Ox is much smaller. This is mainly to counteract bottom decking your $5 cost trasher. Beyond that the added value is probably limited and this should be fine at $5. If it proves too weak, maybe I'll make it a conditional trasher.
Here's Ox with the correct wording:
(https://i.imgur.com/EoCOVJs.jpg)
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Found this old card in my card files. Seems interesting, but probably broken. Any thoughts?
(https://i.imgur.com/w1ESKL2.jpg)
Anyone else have any Hero card (i.e. a card with the text "Gain a Treasure") ideas?
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Seem rather weak to me. In an engine you are likely to have a $5 in play so it seems only good for money decks. You will probably get one or two but that's it, you will stop buying them earlier than you would stop buying Harems (Harem is a Silver on play whereas the benefit of Epic Hero comes one shuffle later).
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Seem rather weak to me. In an engine you are likely to have a $5 in play so it seems only good for money decks. You will probably get one or two but that's it, you will stop buying them earlier than you would stop buying Harems (Harem is a Silver on play whereas the benefit of Epic Hero comes one shuffle later).
Thanks for the input. These are probably some of the reasons I scrapped it years ago. It does seem rather weak. Although I like the decision making aspect of what Treasures to gain. Silvers won't collide with Epic Hero; Golds will but provide more income; and Epic Heros give 2VP but also collide. Maybe dropping it to $4 would make it more competitive. I guess I should think more on what I'd like this cards ultimate goal to be and go from there.
Anyways, I've got a few more if anyone is interested.
The first two I made awhile back, but Tejayes' Morning cards (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=18987.1900) for the Weekly Design Contest inspired me to share. A current problem is they can technically create infinite loops, although to no real effect. Doing this does not generate any coin, it just spins the wheels forever. I could write something in to avoid this, but for now it seems unnecessary.
(https://i.imgur.com/BW7pYe8.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/TpAttvv.jpg)
This last one is a more recent attempt at a Laboratory variant. It has the draw back of not being able to draw through a reshuffle, but has two benefits of adding coin if you've overdrawn and not forcing unwanted reshuffles. I'm unsure if this equals out to a $5 cost card. I have a feeling a card that is non-terminal and can draw and add coin might be too strong. Although early game you have little control over which you get. Any thoughts are appreciated.
(https://i.imgur.com/VKBtLzT.jpg)
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This last one is a more recent attempt at a Laboratory variant. It has the draw back of not being able to draw through a reshuffle, but has two benefits of adding coin if you've overdrawn and not forcing unwanted reshuffles. I'm unsure if this equals out to a $5 cost card. I have a feeling a card that is non-terminal and can draw and add coin might be too strong. Although early game you have little control over which you get. Any thoughts are appreciated.
(https://i.imgur.com/VKBtLzT.jpg)
It definitely doesn't seem worth $5 to me. The most common effect by far is a Lab, but the other possible effects are either +1 Action and +$2 (which is worse than Silver since it can be drawn dead) or +1 Card, +1 Action, and +$1, which is between Poacher and Market. Unfortunately, while I don't think it's quite strong enough for $5, I think it's also too strong for $4, since the "worse" effects rarely trigger anyways. I think it needs to be either nerfed or buffed.
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+1 Action and +$2 (which is worse than Silver since it can be drawn dead)
There are threads on this forum about the difference between Ducat and Candlestick Maker which show why the opposite is true. Action Silver is most definitely better than Silver. If Patron did not exist, Action Silver would be a $4.
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+1 Action and +$2 (which is worse than Silver since it can be drawn dead)
There are threads on this forum about the difference between Ducat and Candlestick Maker which show why the opposite is true. Action Silver is most definitely better than Silver. If Patron did not exist, Action Silver would be a $4.
How so? Throne Room variants and Storyteller are too fringe-case to really say that Actions are better than Treasures because of those combos. (And even if Action Silver is between $3 and $4 worthy, that still doesn't change Vanguard being generally worse than Laboratory.)
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+1 Action and +$2 (which is worse than Silver since it can be drawn dead)
There are threads on this forum about the difference between Ducat and Candlestick Maker which show why the opposite is true. Action Silver is most definitely better than Silver. If Patron did not exist, Action Silver would be a $4.
How so? Throne Room variants and Storyteller are too fringe-case to really say that Actions are better than Treasures because of those combos. (And even if Action Silver is between $3 and $4 worthy, that still doesn't change Vanguard being generally worse than Laboratory.)
Are you missing the fact that Vanguard gives +$2 when you've drawn your deck and a Lab would do nothing? I know Vanguard can get messed up by mid turn reshuffles but that shouldn't happen too often if you play carefully - and if you're drawing your deck every turn that just won't really happen. It seems better than lab generally to me (not strictly better).
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+1 Action and +$2 (which is worse than Silver since it can be drawn dead)
There are threads on this forum about the difference between Ducat and Candlestick Maker which show why the opposite is true. Action Silver is most definitely better than Silver. If Patron did not exist, Action Silver would be a $4.
How so? Throne Room variants and Storyteller are too fringe-case to really say that Actions are better than Treasures because of those combos. (And even if Action Silver is between $3 and $4 worthy, that still doesn't change Vanguard being generally worse than Laboratory.)
Are you missing the fact that Vanguard gives +$2 when you've drawn your deck and a Lab would do nothing?
I didn't think about that situation, but the fact that it can't trigger a reshuffle makes that far harder to trigger. I'd say it's around the same strength as a Lab, though.
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Thank you everyone for the feedback!
+1 Action and +$2 (which is worse than Silver since it can be drawn dead)
There are threads on this forum about the difference between Ducat and Candlestick Maker which show why the opposite is true. Action Silver is most definitely better than Silver. If Patron did not exist, Action Silver would be a $4.
I think this is relevant because it sets the low-bar for what value Vanguard has if it were played 100% incorrectly (i.e. +1 Action and +$2 every play).
+1 Action and +$2 (which is worse than Silver since it can be drawn dead)
There are threads on this forum about the difference between Ducat and Candlestick Maker which show why the opposite is true. Action Silver is most definitely better than Silver. If Patron did not exist, Action Silver would be a $4.
How so? Throne Room variants and Storyteller are too fringe-case to really say that Actions are better than Treasures because of those combos. (And even if Action Silver is between $3 and $4 worthy, that still doesn't change Vanguard being generally worse than Laboratory.)
Are you missing the fact that Vanguard gives +$2 when you've drawn your deck and a Lab would do nothing? I know Vanguard can get messed up by mid turn reshuffles but that shouldn't happen too often if you play carefully - and if you're drawing your deck every turn that just won't really happen. It seems better than lab generally to me (not strictly better).
It seems we are all now in somewhat agreement that a card that can both draw and provide coin afterwards has value beyond $5, but how much value is what I hope to understand. This probably depends on the average value, which cannot be figured out without knowing what the value of Vanguard is if it is played 100% correctly every time. Something like:
"Choose one: +2 Cards and +1 Actions; or +1 Card, +1 Action and +$1; or +1 Action and +$2."
I have to assume this might be around a weak $6 cost, or maybe a very strong $5 cost. All in all, I feel good playtesting this at $5.
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Thank you everyone for the feedback!
+1 Action and +$2 (which is worse than Silver since it can be drawn dead)
There are threads on this forum about the difference between Ducat and Candlestick Maker which show why the opposite is true. Action Silver is most definitely better than Silver. If Patron did not exist, Action Silver would be a $4.
I think this is relevant because it sets the low-bar for what value Vanguard has if it were played 100% incorrectly (i.e. +1 Action and +$2 every play).
+1 Action and +$2 (which is worse than Silver since it can be drawn dead)
There are threads on this forum about the difference between Ducat and Candlestick Maker which show why the opposite is true. Action Silver is most definitely better than Silver. If Patron did not exist, Action Silver would be a $4.
How so? Throne Room variants and Storyteller are too fringe-case to really say that Actions are better than Treasures because of those combos. (And even if Action Silver is between $3 and $4 worthy, that still doesn't change Vanguard being generally worse than Laboratory.)
Are you missing the fact that Vanguard gives +$2 when you've drawn your deck and a Lab would do nothing? I know Vanguard can get messed up by mid turn reshuffles but that shouldn't happen too often if you play carefully - and if you're drawing your deck every turn that just won't really happen. It seems better than lab generally to me (not strictly better).
It seems we are all now in somewhat agreement that a card that can both draw and provide coin afterwards has value beyond $5, but how much value is what I hope to understand. This probably depends on the average value, which cannot be figured out without knowing what the value of Vanguard is if it is played 100% correctly every time. Something like:
"Choose one: +2 Cards and +1 Actions; or +1 Card, +1 Action and +$1; or +1 Action and +$2."
I have to assume this might be around a weak $6 cost, or maybe a very strong $5 cost. All in all, I feel good playtesting this at $5.
The option where you get to choose between the three effects is strictly better than Lab. I think it would actually be a fairly strong $6 cost, anyway; versatility is very valuable and underrated imo.
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+1 Action and +$2 (which is worse than Silver since it can be drawn dead)
There are threads on this forum about the difference between Ducat and Candlestick Maker which show why the opposite is true. Action Silver is most definitely better than Silver. If Patron did not exist, Action Silver would be a $4.
How so? Throne Room variants and Storyteller are too fringe-case to really say that Actions are better than Treasures because of those combos. (And even if Action Silver is between $3 and $4 worthy, that still doesn't change Vanguard being generally worse than Laboratory.)
TR variants (7), draw-to-X (5 cards), Actions that want Actions in your deck like Ghost, Golem, Herald, Vassal and Scrying are 17 Kingdom (yeah, Ghost is not but you can gain it two different ways) cards. That does not constitute a fringe case. Not to mention that sideway cards like Academy, Piazza, Innovation, Citadel also like Actions. Among the Landmarks we have 4 that like Actions (Colonnade, Obelisk, Orchard, Triumphal Arch) and one that likes Treasures (Keep).
Again, just read the threads about Candlestick Maker vs. Ducat. If your argument were true, Ducat would be better than Candlestick Maker in two respects (on-gain ability plus Treasure>Action). But in fact, a Coin yielding non-terminal Action is on average preferable to the Treasure equivalent which is why Ducat is a fine design, its on-gain bonus is compensated via being weaker on play than Candlestick Maker.
Are you missing the fact that Vanguard gives +$2 when you've drawn your deck and a Lab would do nothing? I know Vanguard can get messed up by mid turn reshuffles but that shouldn't happen too often if you play carefully - and if you're drawing your deck every turn that just won't really happen. It seems better than lab generally to me (not strictly better).
Not being able to triggle reshuffles could be a serious liability but I tend to agree with you. The card is overall similar to Minion which also does two things, drawing and providing Coins.
Even without discard for benefit you do often enough want to overdraw (e.g. because you intend to green soon and then your engine must be able to handle the extra cards) and Vanguard reduces the opportunity cost (you could have gotten payload instead of draw power into your deck instead) of overdrawing.
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Some ideas I had for the current Debt Card Weekly Design Contest, but ultimately I didn't pursue. I'm thinking about trying them with my play group so I'm hoping for some feedback/thoughts on here.
Mountain Fort: Not a lot of fancy stuff going on so it should be roughly balanced. Guarantees access to $5 cost cards, but the more debt you incur the more liable playing Mountain Forts become.
(https://i.imgur.com/OJyScPX.jpg)
Sellsword: This one is a bit wonky and probably tedious to play. The idea is you get a very strong card for cheap, but your opponents may be able to take it for some Debt. So all of this is pretty weak for the initial player buying it, but I'd like some high level strategies to exist where a player may opt to hang on to their debt in order to make stealing their Sellswords very unattractive. Players could even cooperative with other players to hang on to their debt so they can keep them longer (ugh!). Ultimately I think this might just be a fun mess around card, but I'd like to try and get it balanced for competitive play. This is probably a long way off from that, so any suggestions are appreciated!
(https://i.imgur.com/9elWCTa.jpg)
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(https://i.imgur.com/OJyScPX.jpg)
I think this should be 4 Debt. It feels pretty strictly better than Vanillage as it is now.
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Vanillage
That is a great word. I am going to start using it from now on.
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I like Mountain fort. I think you should go ahead and enter it into the weekly contest. (maybe at 4 debt)
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I like Mountain fort. I think you should go ahead and enter it into the weekly contest. (maybe at 4 debt)
Thanks! Although I've had this card for some time, I don't want to post it there as other people have posted cards with similar mechanics. Switching Coin to Debt, negative on-play effects if you have Debt, etc.
Here's a quick one I'm going to try with my play group. Just for the fun of it.
(https://i.imgur.com/pHLSYhn.jpg)
And in the probably ever changing saga of Sellsword this is what's new.
(https://i.imgur.com/yb5t9WA.jpg)
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(https://i.imgur.com/pHLSYhn.jpg)
Is this supposed to be a reflex game, like you have to put your hand down on the table as soon as someone plays this? And how long does the "after" last? When is it safe to pick your cards back up? And can you avoid the attack entirely by just leaving your hand on the table until it's your turn?
Either way, the name is awesome.
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(https://i.imgur.com/pHLSYhn.jpg)
Is this supposed to be a reflex game, like you have to put your hand down on the table as soon as someone plays this? And how long does the "after" last? When is it safe to pick your cards back up? And can you avoid the attack entirely by just leaving your hand on the table until it's your turn?
Either way, the name is awesome.
Answers in the order that you asked them:
(1) Yes
(2) Until the player that played Drunken Witch follows the +1 Card instruction and draws a card.
(3) Probably the same as above, but Curses should only really go out the very instant the token hits the Villager mat. Is there room to argue this? Certainly.
(4) Yes, but as the name implies this card is best used if people are a bit inebriated. Simple things like this become much harder.
I've updated this to make the Cursing window more clear and to remove the Attack card type. Now those poor suckers who try and React with a Moat in hand will get a Curse instead! Muh-hahaha. Also, this now has a strange interaction with the -1 Card token in that it makes the Cursing window much larger.
(https://i.imgur.com/lrbavYC.jpg)
Can anyone else this of fun physical elements to bring into Dominion? I'm sure there are some great Duration and "While this is in play" things that could be used to great effect.
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Drunken Witch is merely meant to be for fun, but I can't help but try and solve the issue of player's merely not holding their cards when it is not their turn. With some excellent help from my girlfriend this is the next iteration.
Split Pile - Drunken Witch (5 cards on top) / Brewer (5 cards on bottom):
(https://i.imgur.com/lrbavYC.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/p1HUt4o.jpg)
Brewer - Besides being a pretty strong Coffers gainer, it now creates an incentive for players to have their cards in their hand. Paired with Drunken Witch though you just never know what a player is going to play. Naturally reflexive players may not need to worry though!
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Messing around with some wacky trashers. They are both a bit of a stretch, but I wanted to get a sense of what people think.
Head Hunters - A different take on Masquerade. The idea is to have a powerful trasher that can hurt players if decks get too thin. Having a Head Hunter in play initially helps opponents trash by accelerating trashers. Even playing a Head Hunter with another players Head Hunter in play will make you trash. But in the end you could end up chunking your engine components or worse.
(https://i.imgur.com/E1HE7Sp.jpg)
Cleric - This is a pretty strong trasher on its own, but it can only be played if you're behind on VP tokens. Occasionally playing Cleric is not great, so its real power comes when you can play multiple Clerics during a turn. Probably too swingy.
(https://i.imgur.com/GzoTrpR.jpg)
(Note: I borrowed the name Cleric and it's image from Udzu's card of the same name)
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(https://i.imgur.com/lrbavYC.jpg)
Doesn't the -1 Card token break Drunk Witch? It's very difficult to track and people can't exactly play cards without physically holding any cards. (The -1 Card token would prevent the Drunken Witch from drawing, so "until you draw your next card" would last longer than intended.) I would prevent this situation with "until this card is resolved." That way, losing the -1 Card token would be the call for when you're allowed to hold your cards without getting Cursed.
(https://i.imgur.com/GzoTrpR.jpg)
I assume that if you're tied for having the most VP tokens, you don't do the latter part. If that's the case, isn't Cleric just an Action-Copper if there's no other source of VP tokens? Also, why trash it at the end of your turn instead of immediately?
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Doesn't the -1 Card token break Drunk Witch? It's very difficult to track and people can't exactly play cards without physically holding any cards. (The -1 Card token would prevent the Drunken Witch from drawing, so "until you draw your next card" would last longer than intended.)
Also, this now has a strange interaction with the -1 Card token in that it makes the Cursing window much larger.
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Doesn't the -1 Card token break Drunk Witch? It's very difficult to track and people can't exactly play cards without physically holding any cards. (The -1 Card token would prevent the Drunken Witch from drawing, so "until you draw your next card" would last longer than intended.) I would prevent this situation with "until this card is resolved." That way, losing the -1 Card token would be the call for when you're allowed to hold your cards without getting Cursed.
This was an oversight, but I kind of like this niche strategy. It will likely prove too wonky, but for now I'm going to see how it plays out. As rare as the combination would be, I'd like to try it out first before cutting.
I assume that if you're tied for having the most VP tokens, you don't do the latter part. If that's the case, isn't Cleric just an Action-Copper if there's no other source of VP tokens? Also, why trash it at the end of your turn instead of immediately?
Yes, being tied is not having the most so you can still trash. This probably will lead to a back and forth on Estate trashing without much wonkiness. The delayed trashing is there to allow multiple Clerics to be played for their trashing effect during the same turn without putting you over on your VP token limit. The whole idea is to chain multiple Clerics in a single turn for huge VP token gains, then having to suffer with it just being a weak Action Copper.
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Doesn't the -1 Card token break Drunk Witch? It's very difficult to track and people can't exactly play cards without physically holding any cards. (The -1 Card token would prevent the Drunken Witch from drawing, so "until you draw your next card" would last longer than intended.) I would prevent this situation with "until this card is resolved." That way, losing the -1 Card token would be the call for when you're allowed to hold your cards without getting Cursed.
This was an oversight, but I kind of like this niche strategy. It will likely prove too wonky, but for now I'm going to see how it plays out. As rare as the combination would be, I'd like to try it out first before cutting.
I assume that if you're tied for having the most VP tokens, you don't do the latter part. If that's the case, isn't Cleric just an Action-Copper if there's no other source of VP tokens? Also, why trash it at the end of your turn instead of immediately?
Yes, being tied is not having the most so you can still trash. This probably will lead to a back and forth on Estate trashing without much wonkiness. The delayed trashing is there to allow multiple Clerics to be played for their trashing effect during the same turn without putting you over on your VP token limit. The whole idea is to chain multiple Clerics in a single turn for huge VP token gains, then having to suffer with it just being a weak Action Copper.
I think the wording for Cleric would make most people assume that tied for having the most is considered having the most. I would consider the wording "If you don't have the most VP tokens (or are tied for having the most)..."
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I think the wording for Cleric would make most people assume that tied for having the most is considered having the most.
Most is indeed ambiguous but not the most isn't. The former can mean > as well as ≥ but not the most always means ≤.
Cleric is a pretty cool card. You can simply gain none and block the opponent in a 2P game but in multiplayer you are pretty much forced to buy at least one and then there might be some endgame shenanigans like playing several copies while piling out.
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(https://i.imgur.com/E1HE7Sp.jpg)
Finally Dame Anna isn't the only Knight that can trash your junk anymore!
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(https://i.imgur.com/E1HE7Sp.jpg)
Typo: It should say "any other player," not "any another player."
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(https://i.imgur.com/E1HE7Sp.jpg)
The new promo card is also a 3-cost Duration which is possibly (based on the name) a trasher!
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The new promo card is also a 3-cost Duration which is possibly (based on the name) a trasher!
Very true! My bet is on a duration Salvager.
+1 Action
+1 Buy
At the start of your next turn, trash a card from your hand. +$1 per $1 it cost.
Cost: $3
Not very exciting for a promo, but it could be quite risky and fun to play. I'm not sure if this is what a Duration Salvager would look like, but something along these lines.
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A card that didn't make the cut for this weeks competition. Base-line testing shows this is fairly balanced, but ultimately I wanted to submit something with more pop. The idea is you want a little bit of trashing to play these more often, but not enough so that you don't get the VP tokens. Otherwise, you're paying $6 for what is a $4.5 value.
(https://i.imgur.com/sAmWwSX.jpg)
Any thoughts are appreciated!
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A card that didn't make the cut for this weeks competition. Base-line testing shows this is fairly balanced, but ultimately I wanted to submit something with more pop. The idea is you want a little bit of trashing to play these more often, but not enough so that you don't get the VP tokens. Otherwise, you're paying $6 for what is a $4.5 value.
(https://i.imgur.com/sAmWwSX.jpg)
Any thoughts are appreciated!
It seems way too easy to get the +VP to just cost (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/6/6f/Coin6.png/16px-Coin6.png). It seems like you'd be getting the VP more often than not, unlike with Gardener, which doesn't give (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/6/6d/Coin.png/16px-Coin.png) and only costs (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png) less.
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I think that this is a pretty good shot at a VP cantrip as it disables any pure VP engine.
The problem are in my opinion not un-thinned decks, here Blasphemer probably cannot compete with Gold for BM.
But in a Kingdom with enough engine pieces, such that you trashed most of your junk but still have a relatively thick deck, Blasphemer could be too good.
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I think this version of Blasphemer is too problematic for some of the reasons you both mentioned and others as well. After taking another look at the data I collect, this does seem too strong. It easily outscores BM and Chapel BM. Even at $7 it achieves all of this. Well it was worth a shot, but this doesn't seem like it can be balanced.
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Has anyone messed around with global effects that happen when a card is in the trash? This probably isn't the best idea, but here's a rough example:
(https://i.imgur.com/akLS8at.jpg)
The overall concept seems interesting but tough to balance. Anyone have any other card ideas like this?
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Has anyone messed around with global effects that happen when a card is in the trash? This probably isn't the best idea, but here's a rough example:
(https://i.imgur.com/akLS8at.jpg)
The overall concept seems interesting but tough to balance. Anyone have any other card ideas like this?
For this specific example:
You'd probably want to include a track that tells the +$ value for copper (kinda like what I did with Commodity/the Market Demand track) (https://trello.com/c/aCw6e6V7/50-commodity-market-demand-track), lest someone trash three of these and all the sudden coppers are worth $4 each.
For benefit-for-everyone/global effects:
There's a little of this with my "Causes" card type (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=19759.msg805961#msg805961); I'm working on a couple helps-everyone-but-doubly-helps-you cards with my newest set
(https://i.imgur.com/OE1eife.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/dF9hfku.png)
but I haven't messed with too much in terms of cards that modify base cards
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Has anyone messed around with global effects that happen when a card is in the trash? This probably isn't the best idea, but here's a rough example:
(https://i.imgur.com/akLS8at.jpg)
The overall concept seems interesting but tough to balance. Anyone have any other card ideas like this?
I really like this idea, I might steal this concept :) . Though it's a bit difficult to work around the fact that this card is almost useless without trashing, though the +1 buy here counters it pretty well.
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I don't think that Ore is useless, you do often enough use Charm as a non-terminal Woodcutter. The way I read it, Kudasai picked a fairly vanilla-ish card in order to focus on this cool, innovative idea. And the extra Buy is potentially useful to more easily "reload" Ores, after having trashed them.
I guess that it will matter most in Kingdoms with Remodel variants. If there is Copper trashing (OK, if there are $2s you can also use Remodel to get rid of Coppers), the tempo advantage of trashing Coppers likely dominates keeping Coppers and later "converting" them into Silvers/Golds/...
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For this specific example:
You'd probably want to include a track that tells the +$ value for copper (kinda like what I did with Commodity/the Market Demand track) (https://trello.com/c/aCw6e6V7/50-commodity-market-demand-track), lest someone trash three of these and all the sudden coppers are worth $4 each.
For benefit-for-everyone/global effects:
There's a little of this with my "Causes" card type (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=19759.msg805961#msg805961); I'm working on a couple helps-everyone-but-doubly-helps-you cards with my newest set
(https://i.imgur.com/OE1eife.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/dF9hfku.png)
but I haven't messed with too much in terms of cards that modify base cards
Trashing that occurs during your Buy phase can lead to some interesting tracking issues (i.e. Counterfeit), but mostly I think it should be fine. The trash pile can be organized in a way that the number of Ores in the trash can easily be counted.
As for your cards, I really like the feel of them! They have a nice level of complexity, but not to the point where it's hard to track what's going on. Would like to hear how playtesting goes if that's in the near future.
I don't think that Ore is useless, you do often enough use Charm as a non-terminal Woodcutter. The way I read it, Kudasai picked a fairly vanilla-ish card in order to focus on this cool, innovative idea. And the extra Buy is potentially useful to more easily "reload" Ores, after having trashed them.
I guess that it will matter most in Kingdoms with Remodel variants. If there is Copper trashing (OK, if there are $2s you can also use Remodel to get rid of Coppers), the tempo advantage of trashing Coppers likely dominates keeping Coppers and later "converting" them into Silvers/Golds/...
Yes, I added the +$2 and +1 Buy as a sort of placeholder, but the more I look at it the more I think I'll keep it that way. Funny you mention Charm as I just played a game with that and used it mostly for +$2 and +1 Buy to great effect.
I'll have to see how hanging on to Coppers plays against trashing them. I hope both to be useful about 50% of the time.
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Have you ever had to play with a person that just takes way too long with their turns? What if there were cards that used time as a mechanic? This would encourage faster play without someone having to be a jerk and ask others to get on with it. :) I also think fast and concise play is the mark of a good player. This may get newer players into the mindset of only buying and playing what they need to win.
I can think of two ways of tracking time:
(1) With a Stopwatch app on a phone. Easy to use and very accessible.
(2) With a series of hourglasses that increase in time. Requires a lot of hourglasses, may not be as accurate at tracking time, may not even have hourglasses that track lower times like 10 and 20 seconds, allows for more complex time mechanics.
Here are some basic cards to highlight the concept (using hourglasses):
Factory: A Lost City or Village depending on how fast you are. Will always be a LC on first play so having just one in your deck is good.
(https://i.imgur.com/xGAXo0Z.jpg)
Clocktower: A way to apply a little pressure on others to take fast turns. You basically gamble on how long you think they will take. I'm not sure what time denominations should be available, but I think 10, 20, and 30 seconds is a good place to start. So gambling 30 seconds will reward you with 3 cards, but will give them a lot of time to take their turn. If they finish their turn before the 30 seconds is out, you get no cards.
(https://i.imgur.com/xKxmSoS.jpg)
Any thoughts? I get that this is a wonky idea. It kind of started out as a joke, but now I think it has some potential. 8)
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it's an interesting direction to go, for sure - i think phone app is the way to go on these; idk if you keep up with other board games at all but Kitchen Rush (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/223953/kitchen-rush) had problems standardizing their hourglasses - some would be drastically longer/shorter than others. I think it'd be interesting to put together the equivalent of a mtg Un-set for Dominion, and timed cards would be really interesting avenue to go down.
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I can say right away that Factory is too good. It doesn't take much thought to play a string of Lost Cities.
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I can say right away that Factory is too good. It doesn't take much thought to play a string of Lost Cities.
I agree. In addition to that it might lead to sloppy play, like not playing a gainer before a reshuffle and playing a Factory instead due to being in time trouble. Perhaps that's the chess player in me talking but superquick play simply cannot be as good as thoughtful play. I think that there are better ways to handle analysis paralysis, like implicit social norms in a playing group (e.g. I always try to play quickly and apologize whenever I take a bit of a think).
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Messing around with ideas to add consistency to Dominion games. My idea:
Leaders: Players in turn order may choose any one Leader at the start of the game. There are no limits on Leaders so players could possibly all choose the same leader. Leaders add benefits, but they also come at a cost.
Here are some rough concepts:
(https://i.imgur.com/HQnopNh.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/5s63LUR.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/zeAT0Fe.jpg)
Feedback is always appreciated. Devout probably will have the most issues, but I think it could be fun. Anyone else have any ideas for Leaders?
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I think that this is a cool idea. I'd make the selection of it in turn order such that the starting player advantage is very mildly mitigated (choosing later is always better, but not by much).
Devout is indeed crazy, e.g. with Warehouse, but I don't think that it has any rule issues.
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Lovely cards! A few questions:
- Gambling Hall: When are the tokens removed? Also how does this handle throne rooming? (The way I read it, you could put some tokens the first time, then add some more the second time, then presumably remove them all the first time you resolve?)
- Apparition: do these go at the bottom of all Supply piles (incuding Provinces) or just Kingdom piles?
- Shaman: what happens if it's a draw? Both? Neither? What if there's nothing in the trash (so again a draw, but with 0)?
- Bannerman: Do players all get the same Banner cards or can they be different? Also, any reason not to make Bannerman a Command type and leave the Banner cards on the mat when played? (as it is, a Duration Banner card would currently be discarded into the discard pile as normal the following turn I think)
- Astronomer: I assume there are 10 of these?
- Metropolis: What happens if you've not previously played any +Action cards? Do you get $0? So "Metropolis-Smithy-Metropolis" would give $0 for the first Metropolis and $2 for the second?
Also Sunken City should probably say "discard an Action card". And Refuge currently allows infinite loops: 2 Refuges each selecting "Night" phase on alternating turns.
As I said, lovely cards. Looking forward to playing with some of them!
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Any updates to these cards?
I like draw Bridge, Moon shrine, Consulate, Astrolab, Wonder, and Great Forest.
Draw Bridge: Without some coin cost seems a little too strong at D8. Maybe some thing like: $3 & D5
Moon Shrine: Maybe restrict the Victory-token to only Victories types costing less than $8
Astrolab: Maybe modify to only one Debt per Treasure?
Great Forest: Maybe modify to only 2 Victory and increase cost to $4. You could reword to "Next turn, +$1 per Great Forest other players have in play."
Nice art on all these cards.