Here are my thoughts on the cards, ordered alphabetically by designer. I tried to give constructive criticism where I can, as even good designs usually still have room for improvement.
(https://i.imgur.com/LTWgrVL.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/InsUYNU.png) | Scarecrow - 4est
I'm not 100% sure the text on the mat works, as you will always be the only player having Curses on "this" (=your mat). But I get the intent. This seems on the weak side of Cursers, but then, a lot of Cursers are very strong, and this at least provides some kind of protection against its cousins. Let us now try to figure out if the pieces work together... so when Cursing is good, you probably want to attack with this when you can. Then the player who loses the Cursing war gets a little bit of a catch-up mechanic, which is sort of neat. It is probably a bit slow for that to matter much. In games where Cursing is not so great... I'm not convinced you would get this just for the VP gains, it's a bit too weak for that - sort of like a "+$1, +1 buy, +1VP" Monument variant, but worse. You might get it if you're starved for +1 buy, I suppose, but then you won't usually have the luxury to buy Curses either.
I quite like the concept, but feel that the mat needs a bit more impact. Maybe you get +1 VP per Curse that you're ahead?
| Night ($4)
Banshee: For each differently named card you’ve gained this turn, +1 Card at the end of this turn.
—
This is gained to your hand (instead of your discard pile).
| Banshee - AJL828
This one is just too strong. The basic comparison is Den of Sin, and this only needs 2 gains to be as good as Den of Sin, at $4. There is a question of is it better to draw at the end of the turn as opposed to at the start of the next - I would say end of turn is better. Yes, it sucks with discard attacks, but getting to play the card twice as often is just so good on boards without those attacks.
It's a shame because I think it could be an interesting card. Maybe just drop the gaining to hand and try it that way? I think it might still be too strong, but that would be a more reasonable starting point for balancing.
| | (https://trello-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/5f5a8e8e7ed38b522f25641a/60e8a6b0b6b38c331dfa8246/3108fcc5ae4fca1cdb95390a2d5e93b1/Pawnbroker.png) | Pawnbroker - Aquila
Alright, so we have a multiple effects sort of thing. First of all, we get a Vault/Storeroom discard for $, but nonterminal, and then a Haven. It's neat that while the pieces of this seem a bit disjointed at first, they actually all play into each other. The Villager is good because oftentimes you'll want to play this as your last card in a turn, and the discarding makes sure there's someting for you to set aside.
Power-level wise, it is for the most part fine, but I worry about draw-to-X engines. Having nonterminal discarding available there is just incredibly good, and this may be a bit too good in those cases.
There are also timing issues. I don't think the looking through the discard should happen at the end of the Buy phase; that's a classic cleanup effect, and it would be unintuitive to have a Night phase after it. And then there is a separate effect that happens at the end of the turn, so there are 2 specific times this makes you care about, which is a bit much. I would try to clean this up by just setting the card aside as an on-play ability (yes this makes it weaker), and then do it as a Duration and put the card in hand at the start of the next turn, that makes it less crazy with draw-to-X as it has to stay out for a turn.
| | (https://i.imgur.com/w3s7xUb.png) | Heist - Chappy7
I knew I would read that sentence, "end your turn", when I posted the challenge. I did not foresee all the issues with that, I guess neither did you. With some rewording this card could be very fun and interesting. But would it still fit this challenge? I guess if you really wanted to you could make it say "If it's your Action phase, end your Action phase. If it's your Buy phase, end your Buy phase." Not the most elegant phrasing ever.
| Port of Call
Landmark
At the end of your action phase, if you have at least 2 unspent actions, take 2VP from here.
Setup: Put 6VP here per player.
| Port of Call - Doom_Shark
Here we have the flip side of Arena. It seems a very natural path to take for a Landmark. One criticism is that there will be games where it is impossible to activate this. The same could be said for e.g. Tomb (technically also Arena if you end up with a board without Actions), but Tomb at least is very impactful when it can be activated, whereas this is just kind of there. It doesn't impact your strategy much either, maybe you get some Villages a bit sooner but you already want to get them pretty early especially if there's only one pile of them.
I think it's solid and it certainly does more than some existing Landmarks (I'm looking at you, Baths), but it doesn't quite excite me.
| | (https://i.imgur.com/8ainLiBh.png) | Midnight Emissary - emtzalex
The play effect is neat, it feels a bit like Temple in that you will aim to remove a Copper and an Estate per play early on. It is quite strong in that regard, Temple is a very decent trasher and this does all of Temple's work and is nonterminal on top. Oh, and you can get your money from the Copper. And it removes itself from your deck once no longer needed. And it can get rid of your Victory cards late-game. So I would say, it's a bit too powerful at this price point.
Then there's the VP stuff. I feel that the scaling is a bit unnecessary because it's just too weak. This scales at a rate slower than Fairgrounds, and for Fairgrounds it's enough to get the cards in your deck rather than in on your Exile mat. I get that of course Fairgrounds is more expensive, but it feels like if you put in scaling you'd want people to play around with that, and it just doesn't feel like that would be worth it to do here.
There's two routes this can go: Either make it more expensive and ramp up the scaling, or drop the scaling VP, nerf it and leave it at $4.
| | (https://i.imgur.com/7Ncrwgt.png) | Meditate - Gubump (Finalist)
I love me some extra turns! This serves a dual purpose of potentially allowing you to trash some Coppers early on while also enabling a big double turn in the late game, at the cost of ruining your deck. The grand double-turn sendoff for your deck may cause things to swing a bit too much though. I worry that this would amplify first-player advantage. But maybe it's not that big of a deal.
I wonder about a variant of this, where the cleanup effect happens during the current turn's cleanup rather than the next turn's. That seems like it could offer some interesting choices, whereas buying Meditate early on is more of a gambling move. But I guess it depends on your playstyle what you prefer there.
| | (https://i.ibb.co/vJMw76m/image.png) | Judgement Day - grep
This had to be here in some form or another I suppose. I am not 100% sold on this implementation of the "end the game" idea. Judgement Day does not offer an interesting choice of whether to buy it since you will definitely know when it's the right thing to do. The choice it offers is more along the lines of "is it worth it to build towards this?". Which is fine, but there are plenty of games where you already naturally want to build towards $15+, and then this doesn't offer interesting decisions, but it does potentially cut the game short in a not-so-fun way. It's not the clever and sneaky 3-pile ending, but more in-your-face.
I would like some more drama for this concept. Make it a multi-stage process. Maybe by having a card with "end your turn" as its on-play, and then you buy it and everyone at the table is like "uh oh" and scrambles for points.
| Squirrel Park
$4 - Action
+2 cards at the end of this turn.
You may discard a non-Victory card for +2 cards.
| Squirrel Park - JW
This seems decent. It's like a mini-Wharf. The only thing I have an issue with is using the end of turn draw from Squirrel; I think this would be better as a Duration card. The original post pointed out that this is more vulnerable to discard attacks, which is true, but misses that this is much stronger otherwise because it can be played every turn as opposed to every other turn. But I have a more general issue with this breaking the design philosophy of duration cards. It was good to track those effects, and the only reason Squirrel works differently is because a Way can't turn a card into a Duration. This has no reason to break the Duration philosophy, and adds another point in the game where you have to keep track of things.
| Helper Knight
cost $3 - Project
When you end your turn without having played an Action card, +1 Card.
| Helper Knight - majiponi (Finalist)
At first glance this seemed a bit weak, but as I think about it more that isn't really the case. If you get it early on a turn where you just have 3 Coppers, you're guaranteed +1 card immediately, which is already half an Expedition, and you are quite likely to run into that situation again. So I think it's a solid card in terms of power level. You'll never not play an Action just to activate this, but its presence might push you towards building a different deck than you might otherwise, so it can certainly have some strategic impact.
It's a very solid entry, and due to its simplicity there's not really anything for me to criticize. It might be nice for it to have a bit of a bigger impact, but I don't think you can achieve that while keeping it simple and not making it lead to boring strategies.
| Compound (Project, $5)
At the end of the game, take an extra turn per Estate you have.
| Compund - mandioca15
It has been pointed out that this is too powerful, and I agree with that assessment. There is also some rules confusion about the order in which these turns are played out if multiple players have multiple Estates each. It is also unclear whether you take extra turns for Estates that you gain during Compound turns. And final rules issue, it may be nontrivial to track how many Estates each player has, that is not public information (especially in games including Masquerade), so what do you do if people don't agree on the numbers?
I think the rules issues are enough to make this non-viable regardless of power level. You could potentially add some tracking mechanism each time you gain an Estate, but that leads to potentially unlimited turns.
| | (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/685147225470271508/865476252332064768/Pot_of_Gold_1.png) | Pot of Gold - MochaMoko
The effects of this are pretty decent and quite interesting. It think it has a pricing issue though. +1 buy, +$3 is a $5 effect (see Sacred Grove). Pot of Gold has something that you might call a downside, except it's not necessarily one. The majority of games I think I'd rather not have a free Gold+Curse package, but there are definitely games where this is different, and overall it's not a terrible thing to happen. Some people play Leprechaun without 6 cards in play (or so I've heard). So I think the main problem for this card is that it is too good for $4, but then at $5 it is slightly underwhelming. Not sure what the best way of fixing that would be, there aren't any vanilla tweaks I can think of that put this in a good spot for pricing.
| | (https://i.imgur.com/fPsFULa.png) | Second Chance - mxdata (Finalist)
This is a decent effect to have and it fits very well as a Project. I think the cost might well drop, others have pointed out the this is basically Way of the Frog (it is better than that because it works with Actions drawn dead).
I wonder whether the timing is the best it could be. This might also work at the start of cleanup. You pointed out that this way it combos with Ghost, which is fun. However it anti-combos with Venture, and it has a complicated relationship with Loan. There might be some playtesting needed to determine the best (read: most fun) time to have the effect happen. You could even go crazy and let it happen at any time of your choosing.
| | (https://www.zupimages.net/up/21/28/9qzh.png) | Street Vendor - Shael (Finalist)
I like the implementation of this, being able to use your buys the same turn is a pretty cool effect. I worry that the way this card exists right now, it is a bit too exploitable - being a cantrip, you can easily spam it, and with the right setup skipping back and forth between phases could be very profitable. I would try to limit the amount of phase hopping by either making this not a cantrip (so it becomes more costly to do) or by changing the text to "at the end of your first Buy phase this turn", so you can only do it once. Otherwise, it's pretty neat.
| | (https://trello-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/5d34c84e360a440d0d16278b/60e8a2c625e88b268d6ca046/b94e94615018708faebb5f2cb57b6b83/image.png) | Pin - spineflu
I think the wording could be more concise here. If you reduce the setup clause to "Secretly write down a number." then this can fit into 3 lines which would make it more readable. Now for actual gameplay criticism... I think the decision this offers is very interesting, so this is cool. However I worry that this interesting decision comes at the expense of making other decisions in the game way less interesting. You lock yourself into a strategy very early on, and you either rob yourself of the ability to make a 3-pile ending work or put yourself in a position where it is impossible to get any more VP past a certain point. That is the worst part really - once you reached your bet value, there is no way to get any more VP, and hence, potentially no way to win the game. But if this is a 3-player game you will still be forced to continue playing.
This would be better if it was less punishing, maybe just giving you some extra VP for getting close to your guess but not subtracting.
| | (https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/797106542360002570/865712935727923220/hXDSVgYOPtAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg.png) | Scribe - The Alchemist
This sits at an awkward spot. The deck archetype that most wants draw is an engine, but this is clearly terrible as an engine's main draw. It works - maybe - if you have some targeted discarding and can draw a bunch of Treasures with Scribe at the end.
On the other hand, it is clearly extremely good with Big Money or what's sometimes called "good stuff" decks. Drawing 4 and being able to play an Actiond drawn dead? Yes please!
Overall, I feel this is too good when it's good and too bad when it's bad. I'd try a more muted version of the maybe, like "+3 cards. You may play an Action from your hand. If you did, end your Action phase." This provides less bonkers draw in BM and works in engines.
| (https://i.postimg.cc/L2xTwNFQ/Spelunker-v2-1.png)
(https://i.postimg.cc/R42m71py/Ruby-v2.png) | Spelunker - X-Tra (Finalist)
So first of all I'll evaluate this without regard for the Ruby shenanigans. Then this best compares to Priest - it gives $1 less but instead lets you gain a $3. This will often, but not always, be preferable to Priest, so right of the gate the card is pretty strong. I think it's fine still, but definitely on the upper end of the power ratings for $4 cards.
Now let's discuss Ruby. First of all, it does things with Curses, so how does it interact with Cursers? The question is a somewhat disappointing "it doesn't". In games with junking, you want to use Spelunker to trash incoming Curses, and turning those Curses into Estate will not make them desirable, so you'll trash them regardless. Then when the game ends, there are no Curses left in the supply and likely not in your deck either, so Ruby does nothing.
That said, in non-junking games, Ruby still offers something interesting. Getting the Ruby will often be something that you need to set up a turn in advance, first gaining the Curse and trashing it the next turn. That allows for some neat back and forth in the endgame, especially since you need to lower your score temporarily, and also because Ruby gets less valuable the more often it changes hands. So I like that. It might raise some kind of weird rules questions to gain cards at the end of the game, but nothing that cannot be handled within the current ruleset I think.
So what is my verdict? I think the card is pretty cool. I think it could still be improved if it used Ruins rather than Curses as they are a bit more desirable to keep around and less likely to be handed out in other ways.
| Finale
$10 - Event
If there are two empty supply piles, end the game after this turn. | Finale - xyz123
Here we have the other "end the game" Event. I think it's good to add some condition to prevent early ends, but I'm not convinced this is the best one. It is parallel to an already existing endgame condition; if two piles are empty, and you have $10 to spare, chances are you will be able to empty a third pile, so I don't see too many scenarios where this ends up mattering. I think it would work better if it added another dimension to the endgame criteria, maybe based on the number of cards in your deck or a turn counter or something similar.
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