Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

1

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: Today at 06:49:09 pm »

That is not the solution I have in mind, although of course it's difficult to promise you'll find mine more satisfying or unpedantic.
"No Goons left in the supply" was intended to mean that there is an empty supply pile for Goons, I don't care to argue to what extent those English words should mean exactly that, but it will be nice if someone can solve the puzzle for an empty Goons pile in the supply.

I actually almost designed a similar puzzle involving Black Market so I was thinking about an empty Goons supply pile to preclude Black Market Goons presence.

Fair enough. I didn't think that was the solution you had in mind, but it's the only thing I could come up with (for now).

I'm actually happy to hear there's something that doesn't involve BM.

2

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: Today at 03:38:22 pm »

While my opponent decides what this turn's purchase will be, I realized that the synergy Goons and Worker's Village is probably key to winning this game, but I don't have any Goons, there are no Goons left in the supply, no Goons in the trash, and all of my opponent's Goons are on his Island Mat.  But by the time my opponent is done deciding, I've already realized that's A-OK.  A dozen turns later, I play four Goons in a turn and pile out the Estates for a win.

What happened?

All those factors would be technically true if Goons was not in the Supply, so:

Goons is available in the Black Market deck.

You buy the only one, then KC the Goons for 3 plays, while calling RC for the fourth.

3

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: Today at 11:50:22 am »

Stockpile by scolapasta
Self-cursing to nerf a card wasn't the idea of the challenge but this is a great implementation of a "reloadable" Gold.
In my opinion the latest version is the best. The second version does on average yield as much as Silver while gaining a Curse at third play. This seems pretty bad but averages aren't everything; if you open Stockpile you have a near fail-safe chance (Stockpile,Copper,Estate,Estate,Estate) to hit $5 after the first shuffle.
And the third version comes with a pyramid-scheme like reloading which we know from Lackeys.

Self-junking as a straightforward nerf/downside like with Cursed Gold is not in the spirit of the contest whereas a card that would sometimes junk the opponents and sometimes you would. Junkin on-gain or on-buy or conditional upon the presence of a token are fine whereas a choice-junker like Torturer would be rather borderline.

I don't want to make the parameters too tight, if you have a good idea just roll with it.

D'oh! I misread this initial "rule" as only straightforward junking / nerfing was not in the spirit, so thought this would qualify since it was conditional self junking. Reading it again, I can see why it's not what was meant - self junking would be ok if there was also some sort of opponent junking.

(on the other hand, it did get some positive votes, so maybe I wasn't the only one who misread...

Oh well, I'm glad the card got decent reviews, and I can at least plan to use again in a future, more appropriate, challenge.

4

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 17, 2019, 09:52:11 pm »

Stockpile
Types: Treasure
Cost: $4
When you play this, choose one: Remove a Coin token from your Stockpile mat for +$3; or gain a Curse to put 2 Coin tokens on your Stockpile mat.When you buy this, put 2 Coin tokens on your Stockpile mat.

A marked improvement over the version that also self-junked you with Restock cards. Getting 2 +$3 for a Curse is probably not enough though, I'd go with 3 Coin tokens for gaining a Curse (but still 2 for buying a Stockpile). I'm mostly worried about play patterns that could possibly trick players into buying Stockpiles to refill Stockpiles.

I guess I thought of the buying Stockpiles to refill Stockpiles as an interesting aspect to manage. (for example, it's worth doing if you have Remodel where you Tfb the extra Stockpile). Similar to how you have to strategically manage Rats.

I'm not against changing the numbers, of course, but would love to understand better the reasoning for it.

When I was first deciding, I compared this with Cursed Gold (though of course you can't buy more of those).


One Stockpile gives you either +$6 over two turns; or $12 and 1 curse over 5 turns (and so on).

Cursed Gold, you get +$6 and 2 curses over 2 turns; or $15 and 5 curses over 5 turns.

That seemed to me reasonable as a comparison (if not stronger).

If I do need to improve it some, what if the number of tokens gotten from gaining a curse was based on how many stockpiles in play. (e.g. gain a curse to put 2 Coin tokens per Stockpile in play on your Stockpile mat).

5

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 17, 2019, 01:15:42 pm »

I decided to try a card that junks itself.

Stockpile is a cheap Gold, but after you use it a couple of times, it's empty and worth $0. Luckily, it comes with a Restock, which allows you to replenish it, but at the cost of a Curse.



Changelog:
0.1 Stockpile, Restock - initial


Secret History:

I went through several iterations to get to this "initial" version. First it was just a one treasure card, earning tokens via overpay - it started weak and tokens made it stronger; or you could remove tokens to make it weak again, but with a strong one time bonus. But the text got very tiny, so I tried a split pile. It was not clear to me, however, if it was ever worth buying the 2nd card to trigger the bonus. So it came back to one card again, until I realized I could reverse the token effect - start strong and get weaker. That allowed me to add the dependent card since now you get it for free and you have more incentive to do it.


Questions:

• The main questions I have are all about the numbers: is the cost right? is giving a Gold effective? (I tried +$2 at a cost of $2, but usually you do have $3 and would just get the silver.) Does working twice before being spent seem like the right amount of times?

• Should restock provide some positive when you call it to provide some incentive over just trashing stockpiles? (originally, Stockpile was worth $1 when it spent, but I changed it to $0 to further encourage usage of Restock.

• Is there a better name than "Spent token"? I did think about just using the Coin tokens, since that's what I'll probably do in practice.

• Just a comment, but I'm hoping to find better images that work with each other. Finding even these was harder than previous searches.

If you read the secret history, you saw that this has gone from 1 pile to a split pile, back to 1, and then to 2. Well, it's now back to 1 pile!

I was bothered by the fact that Restock did nothing other than "restock" the stockpile and was trying to figure out something else to give it, when I had a DUH! moment and of course, it's not even needed. Stockpile itself can provide itself the restock option.



I also decided to try a version that removes instead of adds the tokens (since that's more intuitive). This one is ends up being stronger, so I'm not sure if enough to up the cost (especially as part of my design choice was to have the opportunity to get a pseudo-Gold before your first shuffle.

Note that you only get the initial tokens on buy - gaining them gets you empty Stockpiles.



Thoughts?

6

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: scolapasta's cards: 100th post!

« on: July 17, 2019, 12:37:44 pm »

Hi all,

I recently noticed that I was approaching 100 posts, so decided I'd save it for a quick thank you to everyone on this forum.

It's been fun being more active and trying to come up with good custom cards. I've even branched out recently and starting opining on other cards! (which feels intimidating, because I'm not nearly as experienced a player as most of you, and often don't see the connections you guys immediately do).

All the feedback has been great, and I think my cards are all in definitely better states than their 0.1 version. (interestingly enough, my one card that did best and finished runner up one week is still at its 0.1 version!)

Anyway, I do plan on adding a new update for some of the Worshipper cards, plus revisiting the recent Challenge cards, as I'd like to finalize* Cabal and Coven, soon, plus I have some new ideas for my first custom card, Student.

So stay tuned!

* will any of these cards ever actually be final?

Bonus: a picture of some of my sleeved custom cards and the Worshipper mats, ready for playtesting:

7

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 13, 2019, 04:37:35 pm »

I decided to try a card that junks itself.

Stockpile is a cheap Gold, but after you use it a couple of times, it's empty and worth $0. Luckily, it can "restock" itself, but at the cost of a Curse.



Changelog:
0.1 Stockpile, Restock - initial
0.2 Stockpile - can now "restock" itself (Restock card removed)


Secret History:

I went through several iterations to get to this "initial" version. First it was just a one treasure card, earning tokens via overpay - it started weak and tokens made it stronger; or you could remove tokens to make it weak again, but with a strong one time bonus. But the text got very tiny, so I tried a split pile. It was not clear to me, however, if it was ever worth buying the 2nd card to trigger the bonus. So it came back to one card again, until I realized I could reverse the token effect - start strong and get weaker. I first tried that with a dependent card to restock it, until I realized how silly that was, and it could just have the option to restock itself.


Questions:

• The main questions I have are all about the numbers: is the cost right? is giving a Gold effective? (I tried +$2 at a cost of $2, but usually you do have $3 and would just get the silver.) Does working twice before being spent seem like the right amount of times?

[this question applied to v0.1]
• Should restock provide some positive when you call it to provide some incentive over just trashing stockpiles? (originally, Stockpile was worth $1 when it spent, but I changed it to $0 to further encourage usage of Restock.

[this question applied to v0.1; v0.2 just uses the Coin tokens]
• Is there a better name than "Spent token"? I did think about just using the Coin tokens, since that's what I'll probably do in practice.

8

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 12, 2019, 12:33:40 pm »

Red Tide
Event - $5
Gain a card costing up to $4 onto your deck. Put a Barnacle from its pile onto an Action supply pile of your choice.

Barnacle
Action - $1
Place this on top of an Action supply pile of your choice.
-
When you gain this, +1 Buy

(There are 10 Barnacles, and you can't buy/gain the card below a Barnacle)

Can you buy Barnacles? I assume not and this is a "dependent" pile (for set up purposes). If so, you should add: "This is not in the Supply."

How would this look if when you played Red Tide, the Barnacle went on the pile from which you gained a card?

I'm not suggesting this for balance reasons (which is why I'm not sure if this idea is even worth it), just for thematic reasons and to make the Barnacle effect be different if you play Red Tide vs Barnacle.

9

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 11, 2019, 04:56:09 pm »

Shyster (Action-Attack) [$5]

+$2
Reveal a card from your hand. For each copy they have in their hand, each other player gains 1 debt and a Copper.

A couple of wording suggestions, for accountability and "take debt" which is what official cards use:
"Each other player reveals their hand. For each copy they reveal, they take 1 Debt and gain a Copper."

This could be very harsh. If you can get this early and catch an opponent with 4 coppers in their hand, they'd get +4 Debt and gain 4 Coppers. That seems like way too much junking from one play. (and imagine if you TRed this)

10

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 11, 2019, 02:12:13 pm »

Can we submit cards we've worked on before? I never finished working on my Plague Doctor/Plague cards and they would be perfect for this contest. I have never submitted them to design contests before.

Sure, as I said I don't want any tight rules.

Are we allowed to submit cards we’ve previously submitted, but haven’t won?

I think we should establish a base rule for all challenges and any individual challenge can of course specify something different.

Something like:

Unless otherwise specified, cards that have been entered in previous challenges that did not win or get runner up* can be entered again.

* basically, allow cards that don't make it into the hall of fame thread (though that thread is becoming outdated)

11

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 11, 2019, 11:03:00 am »

Thanks, anordinaryman!

The new contest is about doing a non-conventional junker, i.e. it should not distribute Curses or Ruins unconditionally. You could do a Copper junker or come up with a new type of junk. Landscape cards are also OK.
Examples among official cards that would be good are Ambassador and Jester. Mountebank is also OK but something like Young Witch would be a bit borderline (lacking the third, Copper-junking option of Mountebank).

Does self-junking count as non-conventional (probably ruins)? What about something like IGG?

If IGG works, I could just reuse one of my Coven versions!

(just kidding, of course)

Other cards I'd wonder about in that same vein are Embargo or even Torturer, since it's a choice. (my guess is Embargo would be, bot Torturer wouldn't)

Since there is a subjective fine line in what qualifies, would you be willing to do something similar to what Fragasnap did with the no vanilla bonus challenge and +1 submissions that qualify? (or otherwise just let us know if something doesn't)

12

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 10, 2019, 05:02:20 pm »

Coven
Types: Event
Cost: $6
Move your Cursing token to a non-Attack Action Supply pile. (Once per turn, when you play a card from that pile, that card is also an Attack and each other player first gains a Curse.)

I wanted to say that this Attack transformation has the most potential, but I think the "non-Attack" portion will not change the card. The Adventures-tokens usually get tossed onto whatever spam-friendly card you happen to need a bunch of in your deck, which not many Attack type cards are Adventures-token targets. A more meaningful change would definitely be to make it only apply to Attack cards or to implement some type of Seaway limitation so you can only put it on expensive cards.

I had considered having cost restrictions (on any of the variants, actually), but preferred to try without due to the fact that I was already at 3 lines of text on the card. If I need to do for balance I could see adding it (especially since it would remove text if it allows me to remove things like "non-Attack" or "Once per turn".)

About the non attacks, my other reason for that was to avoid any possible confusion of what does it mean to add the attack type to an already attack card (I had different wording originally). With the current wording of "is also an attack" - which is similar to Capitalism - I think there is no confusion.

(though I did also consider for this version not adding the attack type, with the concept being that the Coven would be producing a curser so strong it could not be blocked - I used that in the $2 one-shot instead, but could see moving that to here, maybe)

I still like that it avoids supercharging an attack, but you are probably right, that people probably wouldn't move it to those piles anyway.

We're past the 24 hour cut off now, so I'll leave it as is, but would appreciate if you want to continue brainstorming in my dedicated thread when I post it there after the contest.

13

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 10, 2019, 04:00:18 pm »

OK, so this is the version I'm going with for the challenge:



In the end I decided to go with the Witch variant, due to in fitting the "Coven" concept best. I'm hopeful the once per turn slows it down enough to make games with it fun.

(I was very close to the 2 cost one -shot but thematically, none of the other Adventures "token on piles" Events do that, so this one seemed to fit better)
 
After the challenge, I'll probably revisit the discussion in my dedicated thread, as I'd love to get this just right (and I do think there's room for a player specific "cursing" token).

14

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 10, 2019, 11:53:59 am »

I like this one the best.

The problem with this version is that it gives an advantage to the first player. The first player can curse others before their first shuffle, but can't be cursed before his first shuffle. A curse in the first shuffle can hurt alot.

That's a good point. Possible fix could be to make it cost $5 (which of course would still benefit the first player is they drew 5/2) or maybe even $6 (may be worth switching to on gain then).

Any thoughts on the last two?

Thematically (and not meaning mechanics, but meaning relating to concept of a "Coven"), I prefer the ones that work on play more. i.e a Witch allows you to Curse a player when you play a card (Witch), but get a gathering of Witches together to do the same thing but in a stronger way.

I think I'm favoring the last one, because it's a cheap way of giving a curse, hopefully on your next turn, if you can plan it well. In a 2 player game, a regular witch costs 5 and will typically hand out 5 curses (assuming your opponent also bought a witch). This coven would cost you 10 to hand out 5 curses, but:
1) it doesn't have to be attached to a terminal play
2) by costing 2, you can spread out the purchase more easily
3) it can't be defended

I'm sure I'm missing something though.

15

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 09, 2019, 02:10:11 pm »

I'll decide on one, make some final tweaks, if necessary, and update my original post before contest end.

You can edit the original if you want, but it will make it easier for me if you also make a new post. I would really appreciate that!

Definitely. I'll always do both, just to avoid any confusion.

How much time left for us to make our final decisions?

16

Feedback / Re: Familiar cards setting not working for me when I use Automatch

« on: July 09, 2019, 02:08:33 pm »

Ah. Is there any way to play rated games with just the base deck?

I don't see how that could work, because you would have different people playing a completely different thing, and yet being rated against each other. For base-only games to be rated, they would need to be rated separately, with their own leaderboard and their own rankings.

Well, if you don't have a subscription and you play another unsubscribed player, those base card only games are rated.

17

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 08, 2019, 11:33:54 pm »

Hi all, back from the long weekend! As I suspected, I wasn't able to post any, but have been following along and we have some great cards this week!

I've also had a plenty of time to think how I can improve Coven.

Coven
Types: Event
Cost: $6
Move your Cursed token to an Action Supply pile with no other Cursed token on it. (When any player plays a card from that pile, they first gain a Curse.)

The feedback I've gotten so far really helped frame my thoughts (thanks!):

I just had an idea (you can take it or leave it). What if there was a single cursed token that was shared by all players. Buying the event would move it to the pile of your liking. This would mean in 4 player games it wouldn't get too crazy with 4 cursed tokens.

Also, it would appear you have a typo on the card (playa)

The immediate and obvious problem of Coven is how often it will push big-money strategies to the forefront, because one can always avoid Coven completely by having no Action cards. You could possibly have it move the Cursing token to a Supply pile costing at least $2 (to exclude Coppers).

I really liked Naitchman's method of posting several different versions, so I hope no one minds, but I'm going to post several different versions I've been considering. Since no one else has done an Adventures' "place token on a pile" Event, these will be a more varied; if that's an issue, let me know and I can move this to my dedicated thread.

The way I see it there are basically 4 general options here:
• Cursed token - curse a player when they play a card (Cursed Gold variant; the current version)
• Cursed token - curse a player when they buy or gain or a card (Embargo variant)
• Cursing token - curse other players when you buy or gain a card (Ill gotten gains variant)
• Cursing token - curse other players when you play a card (Witch variant)


One of the issues with the Cursed token is the difference between 2 and 4 player games; ideally the token would only work on other players, which is fine in two player games, but not really fair in 4 (the first player to play a token on a pile affects 3 others players; the second player's token on the pile, only one - the first player). Like I said in my original post I got around that by affecting all players, but I don't love that. Also having 4 piles that are cursed is a lot.

naitchman's idea of a single Cursed token could work, but it'd be less on theme (since Adventure tokens are per player). I'm already having it be a little different in that the token's effect affect everyone.

The second issue is Fragasnap's point that big money gets pushed to the forefront. I think this can be helped by slowing down the cursing. So the first variant is that: only the first card you play is cursed. (another idea I had to slow it down is to use the Journey token to make it curse every other play; or even combine both, so it curses every other turn that you play the cursed card).

(Fragasnap's suggestion of moving the token to a Supply pile costing at least $2 is also good, but I still think might still be too much of a slog compared to just once per turn)




The second variant is the Embargo variant. Since embargo already exists, I tried making this different by being on gain. That, and the fact that you don't have to wait to place the token, of course, makes it stronger (though that is balanced some by only being Action Supply piles).




Overall, I am now leaning towards switching this to a Cursing token. That seems to fit better with the "this token helps only you" theme of the other Adventures tokens.

Variant 3 is therefore the ill gotten gains variant. I made it on buy instead of on gain so I could price it low enough to buy early.




The last, the Witch variant, is obviously the strongest. If it worked always and you could convert any cantrip into a Familiar: . Fortunately, it also can be slowed down to only once a turn. I decided to also weaken a little more by limiting to non attacks.




I do have one bonus variant - of the last type, but it's a little different by being one-shot. It also doesn't make the card into an Attack, so it can't be reacted to.




So if you've made it this far, thanks for bearing with all my thinking. Please let me know what you think - which one generally do you like best? I'll decide on one, make some final tweaks, if necessary, and update my original post before contest end.
 

18

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 03, 2019, 05:24:20 pm »

I would call it a Cursed token rather than Cursing. Cursing makes it sound like it gives other players curses rather than cursing yourself.

It does give other players curses though... I mean it can curse yourself also, but you'd be putting it on an action that your opponents are playing more than you.

But also cursed sounds cooler.

I agree Cursed sounds better and I think more accurate. The pile itself is cursed. Cursing works better if the token allowed you to do the cursing when you played the card (which could be a variant, if this way is too un-fun, though would have to be priced higher for sure).

I'll make this change for v0.2.

Other changes / tweaks I'm considering if it's too strong or slows games down too much:
• Adding "once per turn" for the token's effect: "Once per turn, when any player plays a card from that pile, they first gain a curse."
• Gain the curse to your hand, so you can plan to deal with it immediately.

For now, though I still like this version.

19

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 03, 2019, 01:57:20 pm »

Coven



Change log:
v0.1 - initial
v0.2 - changed to make your cards into Cursers


Theme: Adventures
• Events
• Card-shaped things that put player specific tokens on piles

Secret History:
This started out as a "cursed" token that hurt everyone equally; but to be more in line with the other Adventurers tokens (putting them on a card makes that card better for you than for other players), it is now a "cursing token" that changes your cards from that pile into cursers.


Thematically (and not meaning mechanics, but meaning relating to concept of a "Coven"), having this work on play seemed to fit best, i.e a Witch allows you to Curse a player when you play a card (Witch), but get a gathering of Witches together to place that same power on another card.

[the below applies to v0.1 of Coven]

I started out having it only curse other players and unlimited tokens (1 per player) per pile. But that didn't scale well in a 3-4 player game: if you were the only player following a particular strategy, all your opponents placing curse tokens on a pile would "pile" up on you (hehe). So then I limited to only 1 Cursing token per pile. The problem now, of course, it could be too big advantage to whoever bought it first. So now it curses everyone.

I'm not really sure if it works, but I like its simplicity.

I'm thinking it would either make a player buy more of a variety of cards*, so they could skip playing the cards from a cursed pile, or they would need TfB in order to get rid of them. Or Watchtower.

* it definitely hurts engines that expect playing multiples copies of a card

And it may still not work great in a 4 player game, as you could have 4 cursed piles (i.e. it may just slow the game down way too much)

One thing that could make it interesting in a 2 player game, is the sense of (I'm not sure how to express it) give and take. i.e. you don't buy this too early, as you want to wait and see what your opponent is doing, and then you also want to do something different from them, but they may switch gears once they see what you are doing.

Please let me know if you think it could be tweaked to make it better (should it cost different?) or just scrapped completely.

(I also am not sure how much time I'll have this (USA) holiday weekend, so wanted to at least get something in early for feedback)

20

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 29, 2019, 06:22:57 pm »

I've decided make a minor update to Cabal, making it a little stronger (and with simpler wording):



Now, it is never drawn dead (though you may still be wary of putting more than 1 on top of your deck) and you can still put it on top when you have another Night card you don't want to play.

21

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 29, 2019, 06:19:22 pm »

Maybe it's the mathematician in me being too pedantic, but I think this new wording doesn't work.

I would simply first, i,e if I trashed 6 cards, I would read this as "Gain a non-Victory card costing up to -$1 (but not less than $0)" and think I couldn't gain a card since I can't gain anything that both costs up to -$1 and not less than $0.

Maybe use Poor House's wording: "(You can't go below $0.)"? Still doesn't work exactly, but it's better.

Like I said, probably too pedantic.

I think the wording is fine; even if you want to be pedantic, you could easily read the "not less than $0" part as a modifier on the cost, not a prohibition on gaining cards costing less than $0.  That reading puts mental parentheses around "costing up to ($5 minus $1 per card you trashed (but not less than $0))", which is both an acceptably pedantic way to read it and the normal, non-pedantic way that it was intended.

Mentioning "going below $0" would be more confusing for me, since the card doesn't give you money or take away any money, and that wording would seem to be saying something about your coin total rather than the cost of the gained card.

Ultimately all these would just be clarified in the FAQ, and most people would assume the correct play and not need to check the rulebook.

OK, sure, with the parenthesis I see how it can be read that way. And I agree, you don't actually need them; just explain in FAQ is enough.

22

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: scolapasta's cards

« on: June 29, 2019, 06:08:45 pm »

A couple of minor tweaks while I continue to figure out Archbishop / Chalice, Blessing, and Cloister. (I've made some changes that I'm letting simmer, while also pondering a much more radical change).

Worshippers mat: wording changed to a) be more like the other mats and also now requires you to trash if you "spend" the Worshipper. Will only matter if I add a negative aspect to Worshippers, like "at most X Worshippers" for Archbishop, but I like it better anyway.

Convent: dropped cost even more to $2. Still may not be very useful, until I get rid of it completely might as well price it at a cost that makes it more attractive.

23

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 27, 2019, 11:32:00 pm »

Sanctuary
Action - $6
Trash any number of cards from your hand. Gain a non-Victory card costing up to $5 minus $1 per card you trashed (but not less than $0).

Here's my card. Good for trashing and gaining. If you only trash one card, it's strictly worse than Altar, but Sanctuary can trash a lot more and can be used once you're out of trash fodder.

Version 2: Updated the wording and made it non-Victory gaining to prevent easy double duchies in the endgame.

Maybe it's the mathematician in me being too pedantic, but I think this new wording doesn't work.

I would simplify first, i,e if I trashed 6 cards, I would read this as "Gain a non-Victory card costing up to -$1 (but not less than $0)" and think I couldn't gain a card since I can't gain anything that both costs up to -$1 and not less than $0.

Maybe use Poor House's wording: "(You can't go below $0.)"? Still doesn't work exactly, but it's better.

Like I said, probably too pedantic.

24

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 27, 2019, 05:37:32 pm »

Returned Adventurer
cost $5 - Action
Name a type. Reveal 5 cards from your deck. Put 2 cards with that type into your hand, and discard the rest.

Cool idea but strictly worse than Embassy. I'd make the card dig for 2 cards of the named type and consider a price of $4 or consider another buff.

That would be strictly better than Adventurer.

And? Adventurer is a) removed and is b) underpowered like Mandarin, i.e. it sucks at any price.

Even though it's small, the fact that Embassy gives your opponents a Silver on-gain is intended to act as a drawback; which means that Returned Adventurer having a strictly worse effect for the same price is ok. Though I agree it's probably much weaker than Embassy.

Removed or not; no official second edition cards are strictly stronger or weaker than first edition cards. Even if it's a really minor drawback (like hey, maybe your opponents gain a Silver when you gain it!), I think it should have something to prevent it from being strictly stronger than Adventurer.

Technically, it is not strictly better. If you have 5 victory cards on the top of your deck, adventurer is better since it continues to search. I know that's small but that's enough to make it not strictly better. It's pretty much better but not strictly better, and pretty much better is okay (Noble brigand is pretty much better than Thief).

The strictly better was to the suggested modification of "I'd make the card dig for 2 cards of the named type", not the original.

25

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: scolapasta's cards: Congregation / Blessing

« on: June 27, 2019, 04:43:49 pm »

I think Villagers should work though, although I don't think the top half of Developing Village is a viable card. Having a $2 cantrip that gains a card every time you play it is just going to burn through piles really fast.

You may be right that Developing Village is not the right card for overpay for actions (though I'm not completely sure). I do think the card otherwise has potential. It will burn through piles fast - I just think that would make games with it a different beast and you'd have to alter your strategy to account for it. Similar to when someone goes Workshop / Gardens.

Actually, how about these tweaks to Developing Village:



I added the " If you do, +1 Action; if you don't, +1 Card." tweaks. But more importantly, two simple words: differently named, so you can't trash for the same card.

So it's a cantrip that can become a village if:
• you do trade for a different card
• overpay to get villagers

Or you could still save those villagers for something else.