Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: silvern on July 17, 2018, 09:23:59 pm

Title: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: silvern on July 17, 2018, 09:23:59 pm
Here goes, folks.

Humble Village
$2  -  Action
+2 Actions
You may gain a card costing up to 3.

Tyrant
$4 - Action-Attack
+2 cards
+1 buy
Name a card. Each other player reveals the top four cards of their deck,
discards any copies of the named card, and puts the rest back in any order they choose.

Contract
$3 - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Trash a card from your hand.
You may gain a curse. If you do, trash up to two more cards from your hand.

Split: Deal/Negotiation
TOP:  Deal
$5 - Action/Victory
+1 Buy
+$2
------
2 VP
BOTTOM: Negotiations
$6 - Action
+2 Cards
+1 VP
Each player reveals their hand. If nobody revealed a victory card, the game ends after this turn.

N.B.: This pile always has 10 cards, 5 of each


Wealthy Uncle
$3 - Action
If more the half of the Provinces remain in the supply pile, gain a Duchy.
If half or fewer of the Provinces remain in the supply pile, gain an action card costing up to $5.


Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: Commodore Chuckles on July 17, 2018, 11:58:01 pm
Contract
$3 - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Trash a card from your hand.
You may gain a curse. If you do, trash up to two more cards from your hand.

I can tell you right now that a cantrip trasher is way too good for $3. This would probably be balanced at $5.

Wealthy Uncle
$3 - Action
If more the half of the Provinces remain in the supply pile, gain a Duchy.
If half or fewer of the Provinces remain in the supply pile, gain an action card costing up to $5.

This also seems way too good for $3. It's hard to think of a reason not to open with it. Gaining a Duchy might hurt, but if half the Provinces are already gone, it will likely help just as much. If you really don't want the Duchy you can just not play it, which is a small price to pay for all of 5s you got earlier on.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: faust on July 18, 2018, 03:22:18 am
Wealthy Uncle
$3 - Action
If more the half of the Provinces remain in the supply pile, gain a Duchy.
If half or fewer of the Provinces remain in the supply pile, gain an action card costing up to $5.

This also seems way too good for $3. It's hard to think of a reason not to open with it. Gaining a Duchy might hurt, but if half the Provinces are already gone, it will likely help just as much. If you really don't want the Duchy you can just not play it, which is a small price to pay for all of 5s you got earlier on.
I think you read this the wrong way around. If you open with it, it will only gain Duchies.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: faust on July 18, 2018, 03:39:31 am
Humble Village - is kind of interesting. Overall I think it is balanced, since you need draw cards with it and most good draw cards cost more than $3. It's probably crazy with Watchtower, but then, so is Villa, so that shouldn't keep you.

Tyrant - there are probably quite a few boards on which know the top something cards of their deck will help your opponent more than it hurt to discard that power $5. And when it is good, then it's probably a sloggish game (or a Traveller game), and whether you discard something or not will make this swingy. I don't like it very much.

Contract - as stated, it is way too good.

Deal/Negotiations - Deal is boring. I mean the world doesn't need a Woodcutter-Harem. I reckon it's just something on top to make Negotiations work. Unfortunately, they do not work. First, a lot of the time it will not be revealed, because Deal is a bad card and will not be gained. Second, its game-ending condition doesn't scale well with multiplayer. Third, I only ever want to buy this when I am sufficiently far ahead, to pressure my opponent into greening or when I can gain and play it on the same turn. If I buy it when I am far ahead, then it doesn't really add to the game since my opponent may as well have resigned. If I am getting it to pressure my opponent, or to prematurely end the game, then it's not really much different from 3-piling, and well that already exists and is less swingy.

Wealthy Uncle - It is somewhat like Leprechaun in that it is a gainer that you only want to get relatively late in the game. Or if you can use Duchies, but even with TfB that is rarely the best way to use an action. It is neat that there is a point (exactly half of the Provinces remain) where I get both bonuses. It is probably quite useless on Colony boards, not sure how much of an issue that is.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: Holunder9 on July 20, 2018, 03:36:36 pm
Tyrant's deck order attack looks interesting but if suffers from a problem:

Quote
Famine started out discarding the $3-$6 cards. "Action" is simpler. Originally the other cards went back on top, but letting you order the top ends up helping you too often.

What DXV did, shuffling the rest into the deck, is far too weak. Letting the defender choose the order is too weak, letting the attacker choose the order might be too strong so the only remaining thing to do that could be OK power-level wise is: shuffle the remaining cards and then topdeck them.
Kinda hard to shuffle 2 or 3 cards and also quite game-delaying but this is where I would go. You could also in addition consider increasing the amount of cards to 5
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: silvern on July 20, 2018, 06:50:28 pm
thanks for all the input, all!

Re: Tyrant, yes, it does seem a little weak as is. Increasing to 5 might make it better? Though only playtesting will tell, and perhaps it will just be scrapped?

@Faust, yes, as you might tell Deal/Negotiations were cards sort of reversely-designed. I wanted to make something that altered game-ending conditions (why haven't we had more of those, huh??), but obviously something like that shouldn't be just a normal supply pile. So what you see is the result. But as you say, there are.....a lotta problems.

Contract--would bumping the price to $4 make it better? I don't mind having a pretty strong card; the nice thing about a $4 is that anyone can open with it, etc. And compared with, say, Junk Dealer....this seems weaker.

Humble Village still seems fine. And Wealthy Uncle seems a little weak, but also fine.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: Violet CLM on July 20, 2018, 08:54:27 pm
Tyrant might feel too targeted in >2 player games. If one opponent has a lot of gold and the other opponent has a lot of Artificers, you're intentionally choosing one of them to hurt.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: crj on July 20, 2018, 09:24:24 pm
Contract
$3 - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Trash a card from your hand.
You may gain a curse. If you do, trash up to two more cards from your hand.
I can tell you right now that a cantrip trasher is way too good for $3. This would probably be balanced at $5.
Ratcatcher? And Monastery isn't a cantrip, but is at least a Night card and lets you both spend and trash Copper. Loan is a $3 Treasure giving $1 which can trash your treasures without needing to draw them, and most people think it's weak.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: Holunder9 on July 21, 2018, 03:28:14 am
Contract
$3 - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Trash a card from your hand.
You may gain a curse. If you do, trash up to two more cards from your hand.
I can tell you right now that a cantrip trasher is way too good for $3. This would probably be balanced at $5.
Ratcatcher? And Monastery isn't a cantrip, but is at least a Night card and lets you both spend and trash Copper. Loan is a $3 Treasure giving $1 which can trash your treasures without needing to draw them, and most people think it's weak.
Ratcatcher is slow. Missing that one turn matters.
Loan and Lookout do not trash from your hand so you could argue that like a cantrip trasher they reduce handsize by 1. But both are weaker than a cantrip trasher as one cannot trash Estates and as the other only trashers out of 3 unknown instead of 5 (or more) known cards.
Spice Merchant, being a Laboratory trasher for Copper, is brilliant but not being able to trash Estates is quite a liability.

This is why a cantrip trasher cannot cost less than $4 (just imagine when you would not open Cantrip Trasher - Cantrip Trasher).

About Contract, being able to net trash 2 (taking into account that you have to later get rid of the Curse) cards is perhaps even stronger than Sentry and Junk Dealer.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: greybirdofprey on July 21, 2018, 10:34:37 am
Humble Village is simple and neat.

Tyrant may be too punishing/swingy in the opening. It's easy to remember everyone's opening cards, so whoever draws Tyrant on turn 3 gets to impair the other player's turn 4, which matters greatly. I don't know how it plays in the remainder of the game.

Contract may be too strong for the reasons stated, although I like the Curse-gaining for extra trashing.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: crj on July 21, 2018, 11:31:23 am
This is why a cantrip trasher cannot cost less than $4 (just imagine when you would not open Cantrip Trasher - Cantrip Trasher).
If there was some hypothetical "Foo: +1 Card, +1 Action, Trash a card from hand" I feel opening Foo/Foo is worth comparing with opening something like Steward/Silver. It's not clear the Foo/Foo option is better at all (on T3/T4 the extra +Action from Foo/Foo is useless, and +$2 is better than +2 Cards). Even if it does turn out to be slightly stronger on some boards, it doesn't feel like a game-breaking no-brainer.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: Gazbag on July 21, 2018, 11:39:16 am
Junk Dealer and Upgrade are considered to be top $5's. Having the ability to effectively optionally trash an extra card is arguably stronger than +$1 or the gaining, the optionally is super important here.

A cantrip trasher is undoubtedly too good for anything below $5 (worse than junk Dealer at $5 though of course). So we get cheaper cantrip trashers with a drawback e.g. Ratcatcher, or the $5 trashers with a bonus.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: GendoIkari on July 21, 2018, 11:51:14 am
Long discussion about the strength of a cantrip trasher here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=12374.0.

Worth noting that this discussion was before Ratcatcher.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: crj on July 21, 2018, 12:48:27 pm
Junk Dealer and Upgrade are considered to be top $5's. Having the ability to effectively optionally trash an extra card is arguably stronger than +$1 or the gaining, the optionally is super important here.
Poacher has demonstrated that +1 Card +1 Action +$1 costs >$4 even without a buff. I understand, of course, that you can't just sum up notional values for each part of a card to reach a right price for it, but even so it feels like you'd have to discount the price of Junk Dealer quite a lot for omitting the +$1.

Also, "You may gain a curse. If you do, trash up to two more cards from your hand." is nothing like as strong as "You may trash a card from your hand." Early game, you'll in effect be swapping Coppers for Curses. And if both players opened Contract/Contract, pretty soon that clause would be neutralised by the Curses running out, leaving you to spend subsequent Contract plays on trashing your residual Curses.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: Gazbag on July 21, 2018, 02:33:22 pm
Junk Dealer and Upgrade are considered to be top $5's. Having the ability to effectively optionally trash an extra card is arguably stronger than +$1 or the gaining, the optionally is super important here.
Poacher has demonstrated that +1 Card +1 Action +$1 costs >$4 even without a buff. I understand, of course, that you can't just sum up notional values for each part of a card to reach a right price for it, but even so it feels like you'd have to discount the price of Junk Dealer quite a lot for omitting the +$1.

This is not exactly correct, here's what Donald X says on Poacher in the secret history:
Quote
This is in a player interaction slot, vacated by Spy. I thought of having some vanilla bonuses with the penalty of discarding a card per empty pile. The vanilla bonuses had to be essentially fair at the price of the card, since you might never empty a pile until the game was over. So really it required a vanilla card I hadn't made yet. Well there was one of those, and it was +1 Card +1 Action +$1 for $4. So there it is. Avoiding making that card all these years finally paid off.

What I understand from this is that Poacher would be fine without the discard clause, but that makes it more interesting/interactive so there it is.

The Curse being worse than a Copper doesn't matter so much given that there's a cantrip trasher in your deck so the Copper would likely just be getting trashed the next time you draw it anyway. The main way it's worse than just trashing an extra card is because you're removing 3 cards from your hand instead of 2, this is why it's so good that it's optional. If you have enough then you can buy that key card, otherwise you can get in some extra trashing.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: crj on July 21, 2018, 04:16:12 pm
The Curse being worse than a Copper doesn't matter so much given that there's a cantrip trasher in your deck so the Copper would likely just be getting trashed the next time you draw it anyway.
That's not a given.

Firstly, you need to get the Curse and the trasher to collide. And until then you're down $1 spending money each time you draw the Curse instead of a Copper.

Secondly, every time you trash a Curse, you're forgoing the opportunity to trash something else. Granted, you'll try to prioritise trashing your starting Estates and the Curses you've given yourself over trashing Copper, but my intuition is that you'll find yourself inconveniently at the mercy of shuffle luck.

Thirdly, given the Curses are going to run out quite quickly, you do need to be a little careful the game doesn't end on piles before you've managed to trash them.


As an afterthought, hasn't Chapel demonstrated that it's pretty hard to wreck the game by having too much trashing available, too cheaply? This card is only a cantrip trasher/Curse gainer.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: Gazbag on July 21, 2018, 07:59:18 pm
The Curse being worse than a Copper doesn't matter so much given that there's a cantrip trasher in your deck so the Copper would likely just be getting trashed the next time you draw it anyway.
That's not a given.

Firstly, you need to get the Curse and the trasher to collide. And until then you're down $1 spending money each time you draw the Curse instead of a Copper.

Secondly, every time you trash a Curse, you're forgoing the opportunity to trash something else. Granted, you'll try to prioritise trashing your starting Estates and the Curses you've given yourself over trashing Copper, but my intuition is that you'll find yourself inconveniently at the mercy of shuffle luck.

Thirdly, given the Curses are going to run out quite quickly, you do need to be a little careful the game doesn't end on piles before you've managed to trash them.


As an afterthought, hasn't Chapel demonstrated that it's pretty hard to wreck the game by having too much trashing available, too cheaply? This card is only a cantrip trasher/Curse gainer.

1. I know that you have to collide them. With this costing $3 you can open with two. Due to their cantrip nature the only way you don't play them both on turns 3/4 is when one is the bottom card of the deck (or they're both bottom 2 cards but that's terrible no matter what you open), and if you draw them in the same hand then the 2nd won't get the full trash. Lets assume that you draw one turn 3 and the other turn 4. You're effectively trashing 4 cards from your deck (-6 Coppers/Estates+2 Curses) and going into the new shuffle on turn 5 with an 8 card deck (unless there's a $2 you can buy on the turns you trash). In this situation you are also guaranteed to trash all 3 Estates as you see every card in the deck. I realise that this is the best case scenario, but do you seriously think you're going to struggle to connect the Curses with the Contracts in this deck? If you draw them both on the same turn you're only trashing 1 fewer net card so things shouldn't look too different, although admittedly how the Estates line up is a little more important here. You should still be able to grab a Silver and get your deck off the ground though.

2. Yes, I'm equating it to trashing 2 cards as you're trashing 3 and gaining a Curse so net 2 cards removed from deck. That argument doesn't really work here because you're gaining the Curse in order to trash 2 cards, you've already trashed that something else.

3. I don't see how Curses are running out quickly? Both players would have to use the Curse gaining ability 5 times each in a 2 player game, and more in a 3 player. I can't envision realistically using this more than 3 times, you have to stop trashing your hand every turn eventually. The only way this would happen is if someone starts using this specifically to empty the Curses, if this is happening we can surely assume that the -VP is a non-issue as otherwise they just wouldn't gain the Curse.

For the record I don't particularly enjoy Chapel these days and think it makes games less interesting, but it is nice that it exists so people can have the experience of a game with crazy trashing. I think we only need one Chapel though (Donate why???) and using it as an example is just an excuse to not balance your trashing card properly. It's like comparing your draw card to Wharf or your attack to Mountebank, also note that these are all from early expansions. Not that I'm saying anyone is doing anything like that, just my two cents.

Err well that was more than I intended to write.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: silvern on July 21, 2018, 09:11:38 pm
I might test the card at $5, and if it is too weak, well there you go, if not, hey, we did it!
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: Holunder9 on July 22, 2018, 03:58:19 am
This card is only a cantrip trasher/Curse gainer.
I guess that's the crux of the discussion, you seriously undervalue the strength of cantrip trashing. Junk Dealer isn't brilliant because it is a Peddler variant, it is brilliant because, as Gazbag has pointed out, it would have to cost $5 even if it did not provide a Coin (and if Upgrade did not exist).

Contract is even better than that, it can net trash 2 cards. You can only achieve that with Sentry very early in the game (with Sentry having the additional advantage that it doesn't trash out of hand). Curses running out is no issue, if anything it is an asset as it hedges a bit against Cursers (when you self-Curse the size of the junking pool becomes smaller for the player with the Curser so that Curser becomes weaker). It is kind of like Cursed Gold that is played a few times, it also makes Cursers a bit weaker.

Another comparison is Cemetery. Just because you get a dead card doesn't mean that you should not gain Cemetery when you can "only" trash 3 cards with it. That's also just net 2 cards but it is pretty good.
Title: Re: Obligatory Floating-Some-Fan-Cards Post, from me, silvern.
Post by: Gazbag on July 22, 2018, 06:42:44 am
I might test the card at $5, and if it is too weak, well there you go, if not, hey, we did it!

Just because a card is too weak for $5 doesn't mean it's appropriate for $4, if that's what you're implying. It's pretty well documented that Fugitive was just a little too good at $4 but of course too weak for $5 because of Lab.

Thinking on Humble Village. I think it's a sweet card, like a mini-university, but I'd be careful with it. It can gain itself and Estates which I could see leading to pretty degenerate pileouts, especially with this being non-terminal even when gaining Estates. Being a Necropolis means that there will be times when you add them to your deck even ignoring the gaining, which is what sets it apart from other gainers. I think a price of $4 would be a fine fix if my intuition is right. I mean comparing that to Ironworks is like, you're getting an extra action at the cost of only gaining up to $3, so it's not like it compares poorly with Ironworks even at a price of $4 right?