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1

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan expansion: Pandemonium

« on: September 02, 2017, 04:08:27 pm »

Hi guys! Thanks all for commenting! After some rigorous 8+ hrs playtesting today, in which I particulary took in consideration your opinions, as well as trying different solutions to certain cards my suggestion for some of them I will post here. Please tell me what you think.

Imposter - Cost $2
Action: +1 Buy, gain a copy of a non-victory card that the player to your right gained on their last turn
___________
When you buy this, gain a Hell card from the Hell pile.

A significant buff from before. It was as terrifying to play with as smugglers are. The hell card is sometimes avoided due to that you actually have to buy it, and sometimes it can motor things in your deck or serve as a block. The +1 Buy proved to be very significant also, although I don't quite understand why.

Desolation - Cost $3
Action: +2 cards
Duration: Same as before i.e. +2 cards when opponent gains VC during his/hers turn.

This worked really well. It was also a pain to play against because it interacts with a lot of cards in the set.

Reanimation - Cost $5
Action: No idea how to properly word this, but basically. Take two cards out of the discard. Play them or not, trash them if they're discarded during clean-up.
_________
When you gain this put it ontop of your deck.

This proved to be a lot of fun. Borderline too strong but it was still comparable to Devil and Fallen Angel. It removed the boring situation of being unplayable after not having action cards left as well as optimizing the deck nicely.

Siniter Plot - Cost $2
Action: +1 action
Duration: Same as before.

I give up you vultures , it was borderline to weak, now it's borderline too strong but much more fun to play...

Siege - Cost $4
I'll fix the wording of it but basically: During action phase (doesn't have to be the turn you actually play it), put an action card on it. That card is played this turn, and the next turn.

I've seen what you wrote about the experiments with a delayed Throne Room and that it eventually got removed for reasons. The difference with this card is that it somewhat neutralizes the randomness, it's very valueable even when it's delayed. I'd say it definitely was on par with a normal throne room.

Exile - Cost $4
Action: $1, increase prize on a card in the supply by 1.
Duration: $1 every round in play.
__________
Discards when you buy a card costing 6 or more.

We only lightly got to test this. It was good, probably it has the potential of being broken.

Other:

Angel

Removed the attack part, it was and is indeed redundant and boring.

Betrayal

I got pinned this time, so I see what you mean. I didn't lose because of it but it wasn't particulary fun. I'll probably go with the advice of removing the +2 card part and replacing it for +$2.

Forsaken Village

We removed the "during your turn" part of it and changed it to when you buy it instead of gain. It didn't change the game particulary for us except from one moment when my friend started mass gaining them from Imposters. But that seemed fair, he pretty much won that game because of it but I liked it. It was fun.

Although, I like the part of changing the wording, suggested by navical. It could just be: "When you gain this, draw 4 cards during your next clean-up phase." That'd be a good solution

Unsolved:

Church

We still didn't find this card particulary weak but probably it is because we indeed did play it in this set. And in the set there are a couple of ways of making the long action sacrifice for +2VP go rather smoothly. But I have no idea how to make it more viable in other sets. It was a while since I playtested it in other sets.

That said, I do really like the suggestion from navical to drop the self-trashing part of it as well as the revealing. That might just do the trick. Sadly I didn't test it today like that.

Raid

(Will be renamed to Raiding Party)
I could remove the discard from deck part of it. It is a fun card to play with, believe it or not, but it is indeed tricky to balance when you're playing with 3+ players. I don't know how to solve that issue.

Annihilation

It's a very fair card in a sense. I don't really see an issue with it other than that the pile will never deplete, probably not even when you play 4 people. That I find a problem. Maybe it would be possible to word it something like "You may trash down to 2 cards, every other player discards down to the same amount of cards you have in your hand to a minimum of 3 (or 2)." It would probably be a strict buff but maybe then it would be more attractive to buy more than one or two copies of.

If I missed anything I'm terribly sorry, and please let me hear your opinions of these corrections. I changed the fluff in the main post Asper, now it should be fine.

2

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan expansion: Pandemonium

« on: September 01, 2017, 06:45:10 pm »

If you don't mind a jaded eye, here are my thoughts:

I love a jaded eye!

Angel looks too good with a lab+2 for . The attack part will do nothing most games and will be killer in others.

We didn't particulary find that it was too good. It's a great card, on par with gold. But to rid yourself of the heaven costs some actions so what we found was that in the end it did even out. You're 100% right about the attack part of it though.

Annihilation just looks badly designed. Seems obnoxious to play and frustrating for your opponents.

It's special, I'll give you that. It is limited by the fact that it trashes a lot, like a church, so you can't really play it too much. We didn't find it boring though, I must say!

Demon seems weird. I guess I'm just not used to Estate junking. You need to word it as "Each other player may reveal a Hell. Each player that didn't gains a Hell

I'll change that ASAP.

Exile, I have no idea. It seems weird.

This card has been a subject to a lot of changes. At first, when it didn't give the gold it was hugely situational. It could be absolutely marvellous in some games and pointless in others. However when we added the +1 gold part, it started see play, still not completely, but it was good i.e. for an underdog, trying to regain position.

Heretic seems like it might be too good for . It's basically a non-terminal Sea Hag, that might misses a bit more. The best way to start reigning it in would be to not discard the top 2 cards so it triggers less.

We've seen this card a little bit underwhelming actually. Seeing as it doesn't profit you in anyway, and you can't chain it with itself...

Raid seems really bad. Generally, you'll give free cycling to your opponents and get a herbalist. Also, Adventures has an event called Raid.

What would you think of it if I removed the cycling part? This has been one of the most fun cards to play, we named it the "peer pressure card" since - it's good 1v1 but its hilarious in 3+.

Sinister Plot is too much like Haven.

It's, in my opinion, way more fun than Haven. You invest a terminal for it and you can make some nice plays with it. It negates the randomness that is innate with card games.

Betrayal falls for the classic pin problem; if you play 5 your opponents have no cards in hand.

I'll have to review this card.

Forsaken Village probably isn't worth the slot.

It's a nice card to combine with other cards primarily. Also, if you're willing to sacrifice your next hand you can with some extra buys easily pick up enough to never worry about actions again.

I think both Heaven and Hell are too weak for what they do. Having to gain an Estate (that doesn't even work for regular tfb cards) for a card like Demon or Imposter is horrible, and Heaven is worse than Island. I'd never buy Church and spend an Action on it just to get a worse Island.

Hm. We didn't find this. Demon gives an "estate", just for clarification. In some games Church really comes in handy though. Either as a deterrent with the security of getting rid of itself (in comparision to Moat) closing in on endgame and giving valuable VP instead.

Succubus is not limited in how many cards you can remove from one player's hand (Betrayal has the same issue) and is also a targeted attack.

I will have to review both of them.

Sorry for making so many different replies instead of gathering my thoughts in one place.

No problem! Thanks for taking your time to look the cards through!

Sinister Plot needs to be compared to Haven. You should update the wording a bit to match; it needs to specify that the card comes from your hand (assuming that was your intention). Considering that Haven comes with +1 card, +1 action, for the same cost, Sinister Plot looks very weak. The one advantage it has over Haven is that you can get that card on a turn later than your next turn... but I'd think more often than not next turn is when you'll want it anyway. That slight advantage can't nearly be worth being a terminal stop card instead of a cantrip.

The intresting thing about it is that you also can put away cards permanently with it. It just gives so many more options than a Haven does.

Fallen Angel seems really cool. I have no idea about the balance of it; but I feel like it's probably a bit stronger than Laboratory, which might make it too strong.

Indeed. This one have been hard to balance. I played with the thought of reducing next hand by two, but I think that will be too strong. It is actually OK as it is. Borderline too strong.

Betrayal leads to infinite pins; it needs to limit itself to only hitting players who have enough cards in some way. See Urchin.

I'll have to review these cards.

Forsaken Village is probably very weak. isn't very different in cost at all from ; and the drawback is huge compared to Village.

I wrote a counterargument on the other guys post

About Siege, isn't it just a very complex Throne Room for attacks only? I mean, yes, it can replay the card the next turn instead of now, but that really doesn't feel like it's worth using tokens and a complex Duration wording.

It is very complex indeed. I haven't figured out to make the wording clearer also... However it is not as a Throne Room since it lets you wait with your move and play it at a better situation. Also it makes it very easy to play a card when it fits you. The flexibility is very strong... I do however agree that it is too complex in its wording.

3

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan expansion: Pandemonium

« on: September 01, 2017, 06:11:11 pm »

Blurb needs to be more Dominion-y:

You always figured this would happen some day: Your kingdom is coming to an end. Sure, you didn't really expect an apocalypse, full with angels and demons, and more like a revolution or a slow process of democratization, but then again you're not the only one surprised. You want to ask your trusted advisor for help, but the smell of sulfur in his room tells you he has already left, and you can't bring yourself to trust the new guy with the red horns and the flame on his head. How does he keep that on, even? You're slowly starting to worry whether you'll pass the test of heavenly judgement, and also it's been raining ash for days, just when you were going to mow the lawn. On the other hand, the lawn has turned into an abyss into the lower circles of hell, so perhaps there's a silver horizon there. Just as you're packing your stuff for your travel into oblivion, you hear the preacher at the corner shouting: "The end is near!". Really, you hardly noticed.

Shit this is gold, mind if I use it instead of the blurb I actually wrote? I'll credit you for it of course.

Chappy7, I think you're misunderstanding Desolation: my reading of it is that you play it (spending an Action, and getting nothing immediately), and then it stays in play until another player gains a Victory card during their turn, at which point you discard it and get +2 Cards. Which is still I think too weak - compare to Enchantress, which for the same price gives you +2 Cards next turn whatever, and has a potentially damaging attack - but not as bad as it seems to you.

There are a bunch of these where the wording could be better, particularly the Durations. For example, for Desolation I would maybe say:

Desolation Action-Duration $3
This stays in play until another player next gains a Victory card on their turn. When that happens, discard this and +2 Cards.

Or, alternatively, and more cleanly, you could do it as a Reserve:

Desolation Action-Reserve $3
Put this on your Tavern mat.
---
When another player gains a Victory card on their turn, you may call this, for +2 Cards.

I agree that Desolation would be much cleaner as a Reserve card than a Duration. That being said, it is still extremely weak. As in, the effect is a weaker version of Moat's on-play effect, and it doesn't protect you from attacks, and it costs instead of .

Note how Caravan is a cheaper version of Laboratory, and Caravan Guard is a cheaper version of Poacher. This is because getting an effect right now is stronger than getting that same effect on a later turn. A flat +2 cards is going to be better than a reserve that lets you call it for +2 cards later.

The same effect might be balanced at that cost if it had +1 card +1 action when you play it.

I will have to look over this card one extra time. When we playtested we didn't experience any particular weakness in the card, it was in some situations, weak but most often it made a strong investment into the next hand; almost guaranteeing you to get a particular gain in the hand when you start with 7. Not to mention that these cards are stackable... But I'll keep an extra eye on Desolation when I play it next time, I might have to reevaluate. Also, I really appriciate your effort in hunting bad wording. I've tried to pay attention to it but it is very easy to slip in mistakes, also, seeing as english isn't my first language.

4

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan expansion: Pandemonium

« on: September 01, 2017, 05:59:00 pm »

Some minor wording notes...

You use the phrase "Heaven victory card" and "Hell victory card" which is excessive, and makes it hard to read. Look at Bureaucrat, Hermit, Pillage, etc; to see the wording used for gaining another specific card. All you need is the card name. And because Heaven and Hell are not in the supply, you need to specify that you gain a Heaven from the Heaven pile. Simply "Gain a Heaven" means "Gain a Heaven from the supply", which is impossible to do.

Nice catch! Completely missed it, I'll fix it right away.

5

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan expansion: Pandemonium

« on: September 01, 2017, 05:54:48 pm »

Hey man! Thanks for commenting! When we've been playtesting Succubus have indeed been a matter of discussion. Often it proves not as good as it seem, sometimes it is really good. It's probably the most swaying card in the set but mostly it saw decent play at $4, sometimes even being a dead card. It's very dependant on what other action cards there is in the set. Combination with Devil or Reanimation for instance is really good while combination with Vanguard is close to useless...

But I like the discussion! The problem with our playtesting is that we've been a solid gang of 5 people and maybe 10 more only. It would need to be tested on a bigger scale.

For example, Desolation seems pretty bad.

Chappy7, I think you're misunderstanding Desolation: my reading of it is that you play it (spending an Action, and getting nothing immediately), and then it stays in play until another player gains a Victory card during their turn, at which point you discard it and get +2 Cards. Which is still I think too weak - compare to Enchantress, which for the same price gives you +2 Cards next turn whatever, and has a potentially damaging attack - but not as bad as it seems to you.

This guy understands it. It counts for when someone gains a victory card, and, that could come in handy (in this expansion) at a lot of different situations. Maybe you play Imposter or Devil, or maybe you bought an Angel or, maybe you tried to get rid of your VC's with Salvation, maybe you rush Churches, or you just plainly go for Provinces. There are many ways, and it might seem underpowered and, sometimes it is indeed! Sometimes however it's a game changer. My friend crushed me once by setting up these and combining them with Reanimation. It was beautiful to see. That said, it is a difficult one to balance though.

Desolation Action-Reserve $3
Put this on your Tavern mat.
---
When another player gains a Victory card on their turn, you may call this, for +2 Cards.

I really like this, it looks very clean and just straight up. I'll probably change that for a later version. Thanks for commenting!

To give the same advice I've given on multiple fan expansion set threads... as cool as the full cards with art and such is; it's way easier to give feedback on cards, and to read feedback from other posters, if you post the text of the cards as text, instead of just posting images.

I could've done both! I've seen others comment the opposite so I tried this instead! Hope it's still graspable.

6

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan expansion: Pandemonium

« on: September 01, 2017, 04:50:37 pm »

Hi guys! I'm new to this forum but have been playing Dominion for quite some years... Last summer I decided to try and develop my own expansion. I've been somewhat nervous about posting it here, but after a year of playtesting and tweaking I think it's fair to say that it's a pretty good expansion. Me and my friends had a lot of fun creating it as well as playing it.

DOMINION: PANDEMONIUM

You always figured this would happen some day: Your kingdom is coming to an end. Sure, you didn't really expect an apocalypse, full with angels and demons, and more like a revolution or a slow process of democratization, but then again you're not the only one surprised. You want to ask your trusted advisor for help, but the smell of sulfur in his room tells you he has already left, and you can't bring yourself to trust the new guy with the red horns and the flame on his head. How does he keep that on, even? You're slowly starting to worry whether you'll pass the test of heavenly judgement, and also it's been raining ash for days, just when you were going to mow the lawn. On the other hand, the lawn has turned into an abyss into the lower circles of hell, so perhaps there's a silver horizon there. Just as you're packing your stuff for your travel into oblivion, you hear the preacher at the corner shouting: "The end is near!". Really, you hardly noticed.. Credit to Asper for this great introduction text!

The concept was to make an attack heavy set with a dark undertone primarily based on the function of conditional duration cards.  It's partly reflected in the fact of that the most of the cards could be considered evil. The art is also rather gritty. Some pictures are references to stories of the Bible such as the expelling of Lucifer or the adoration of the golden calf. Some are references to generic evil beasts and creatures. I've been trying to appropriately reference the actual artists of the pictures but sometimes they're really diffcult to find.

Gameplaywise, me and my playtesting buddies wanted to achieve some "new" main functions of the set. The biggest one is the conditional duration cards. These cards are primarily what makes the set fun to play. Take Sinister Plot for an example. At a cost of 2 gold and a terminal action you can put away a card for a later time. Extremely useful if your deck is cluttered or if you just want that devilish combination after. It comes with the terminal action which sometimes really makes a difficult decision for you wether to play it or not. We tried just rushing gold and only buying this card but it lost to some more nuanced play. Many of the duration cards are created with the thought of battling the natural random elements of the game.

The second one was a function of a lesser curse card. I wanted to implement an untrashable curse card or a -VP card that was different than the normal one and experimented quite some with them. However it was EXTREMELY boring to play with and we swayed to an solution that is more nuanced, and slightly weaker so that it could be used either as an attack or tactical card. The solution was Hell and Heaven victory cards. Heaven cards are straight forward, they're a bit slow, but you'd generally want them. Hell on the other hand is a lot more intresting. Either you may use it as an attack on the opponents, rather quickly cluttering their hands but also giving them those delicious extra VP's. Or, cluttering your own hand but giving you those extra VP's... However theres always a risk of playing to greedy... A really fun way of playing! I should mention that purgatory is an exemplaric addition to these cards, and also when we've mixed it into other sets. It's basically an Island but faster to play.

What we ended up with was this set of cards. In the end a rather aggressive, psychological and tactical set with a really nice dark feeling to it. Absolutely amazing to play +3 players on, because of the feeling that you constantly are under attack (even though you aren't). But enough talking here are the full card sheets.

http://i.imgur.com/25xWA8v.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/BVHxE1j.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/FpUy79g.jpg

I hope those of you who try it out will have as fun playing it as we've had and if you have opinions on balance or questions, feel free to write! Critisism is very welcome!

Raw facts: Consists of 286 cards. (We solved this by sleeving coppers and silvers. Not ideal...)
(10 of each); Angel, Annihilation, Betrayal, Church, Demon, Desolation, Devil, Exile, Fallen Angel, Forsaken Village, Heretic, Idol, Imp, Imposter, Raid, Rally Point, Reanimation, Salvation, Siege, Sinister Plot, Soul Market, Succubus and Vanguard
(12); Purgatory
(16); Heaven
(30); Hell

7 attack cards, 2 reaction cards, 3 victory cards, 4 duration cards, 1 treasure card and 10 normal action cards.

15 (17* counting Rally Point and Vanguard) Terminal actions, 1 (3* counting Vanguard and Rally Point) cards granting +2 actions, 6 (7* counting Idol) cards that grants extra gold, 7 (9* counting Desolation and Soul Market) granting extra cards and 3 cards giving + Buy.

Disclaimers: The function of the conditional duration cards was a bitch to balance, firstly most of them had a way of being cancelled by other players, which made them situationally too powerful. We also had WAY too many attack cards from the beginning, up to 13 individual cards, we had to massively reduce them to make the game playable. Sadly this means that the card "Siege" might be useless in certain lineups since it requires at least one attack card. So far I haven't found a nice solution to this but it also haven't disturbed me so much until now.

I am aware of that the text on the cost of the cards aren't the ones used in the original set. I didn't find the font sadly but I took a similar enough one for it. I also didn't find a template for a pure treasure card, so I did a weird solution of turning an action treasure card into one. I did also not find a template for reaction-victory which made me create this abomination of it...

I do not own any art presented in these cards and no intellectual copyright for the game Dominion.

Edit 1: Removed the old flavour text and used Aspers one instead!
Edit 2: Made the sheets optional to view, saving some space. Reduced text size at certain points for the same reason.