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1
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: January 04, 2021, 12:42:36 am »
Posted this in the Dominion Discord, mostly to get the wording right:



I think it is far too easy to get wishes here, not to mention allows a feedback loop.  Open Silver/Eerie Lands.  Use wishes to acquire more Eerie Lands until you have as many as you care to.  Play them immediately because wishes don't stay in play.  Fill your deck with $5 treasures.

2
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: November 30, 2020, 09:44:46 am »
This idea just popped into my head.



Quote
Silverfish $3
Night
Trash a card you have in hand or in play.  Gain a cheaper card.  If you can't, gain a Silverfish.

It's the Night version of Rats.  Notably, instead of drawing a card, you get a replacement.  Also, it can trash itself once no longer useful, though you better actually want that $2 card.

I think the cost should be lower.  It's not as useful for trashing Estates as other cards out there IMO. 

Also, if you don't have anything you want to trash, couldn't you choose not to play the card in order to avoid gaining another Silverfish?
Yes, but that clause is there for if you trash a Copper or Curse.

It is kind of a bad trasher early, but it actually becomes surprisingly dangerous late.  A hand of Gold, Gold, Silver, Silverfish, Silverfish can be worth twelve points if you suspect the game will end soon.

3
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: November 29, 2020, 10:41:57 pm »


This is strictly better than Feast and by a lot.  I know Feast isn't completely relevant anymore, but it was removed for being boring, not weak.  This fixes why Feast is boring in a way that makes it much stronger, especially at a lower price.  I think it needs more restrictions.

It also compares very favorably to Improve.

4
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: November 29, 2020, 07:25:57 pm »
This idea just popped into my head.



Quote
Silverfish $3
Night
Trash a card you have in hand or in play.  Gain a cheaper card.  If you can't, gain a Silverfish.

It's the Night version of Rats.  Notably, instead of drawing a card, you get a replacement.  Also, it can trash itself once no longer useful, though you better actually want that $2 card.

5
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: November 15, 2020, 08:29:04 pm »
My Submission:



Atlantis
$4 – Action
Quote
+2 Cards
+2 Actions
The player to your right
gains this.
----------------------------
When you buy this and
when scoring, +1VP.

In case anyone is wondering, the shield icons in the top corners serve as visual aids and as a reminder that Atlantis in the players decks scores VP at the end of the game.

This card would be much more straightforward as an action/victory worth 1 VP.

6
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: November 15, 2020, 08:32:38 am »


Quote
Extortionist - $5
Action - Attack

The player to your left chooses one of the following for you:
+3 cards, and each other player takes @1; or +$3, and each other player with 4 or more cards in hand discards a card.
Bringing this concept back since fixing it made it ineligible for the last contest I used it in.

Also, why is the font different?  I don't see any option to change the font on the card generator.

7
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: October 19, 2020, 08:07:06 pm »

Quote
Monk • $2
Action - Reaction
+2 cards
---
Whenever you trash a card, you may play this from your hand.
Perhaps this should be some kind of dog.

8
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: October 18, 2020, 11:30:15 am »
Quote
Extortionist • $5
Action - Attack
The player to your left chooses one of the following for you:
+2 cards, and each other player gains <1>; or +$2, and each other player with 4 or more cards in hand discards a card
In the spirit of Torturer, this attack lets your opponent decide how hard he wants to get hit.  The weaker attack is paired with the stronger benefit.

Isn't this strictly worse than Militia?
Yes, yes it is.  I need to reconsider this card.

I think it may not qualify for the contest if I use my first idea, because then it would be +3 cards/+$3 to be more in line with Torturer's power.

9
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: October 18, 2020, 10:43:15 am »

Quote
Extortionist • $5
Action - Attack
The player to your left chooses one of the following for you:
+2 cards, and each other player gains <1>; or +$2, and each other player with 4 or more cards in hand discards a card
In the spirit of Torturer, this attack lets your opponent decide how hard he wants to get hit.  The weaker attack is paired with the stronger benefit.

EDIT: This card is bad; don't judge it.  Replacement below.

10
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: September 29, 2020, 08:34:57 am »

Quote
Weird Sisters $5
Action - Attack
Reveal the top four cards of your deck.  Put three differently named cards from among them into your hand and discard the rest.  Each other player gains a curse.

Edited

11
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: September 28, 2020, 08:38:17 pm »

Quote
Weird Sisters $6
Action Attack
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal 3 differently named cards.  Put one of each of those into your hand and discard the rest.  Each other player gains a curse.

I'm not really sure whether this is good enough to cost $6.  It's better than Witch, but I'm not sure if by enough.

Another possibility is to reveal a set number like 4 and pick up one of each name.

EDIT: new version below

12
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: September 19, 2020, 01:42:05 am »
Agistor by Fragasnap
This is more like Research than Apprentice, and I treated it accordingly.  The major advantage over Research is that Agistor does not dud if you have already drawn your deck.  You also get the interesting self synergy of trashing a Horse to Agistor and netting two Horses.  Animal Fair plays very well with it, offering a compelling benefit no matter which trashes the other.  In fact, you will probably do both during the game.

Angel by anordinaryman
A very interesting design space but also a highly centralizing specific card.  The most important effect that I noticed is that many $3 cards are not appealing anymore after opening Angel/Angel/Angel, so I would usually find myself gaining Silver.  I think the strength of the trashing needs to be cut back.  Please explore this card type more.

Animate by Grep
This one gets wild with self-trashing cards, promoting Pixie or Raze rushes, which, incidentally, is a good reason that it doesn't hand out Imps.  The smaller number of Ghosts compared to typical piles makes a good limiting factor.  Still, it can't go completely off the rails because you have to buy other actions so that you don't end up in a Village Idiot type situation where your Ghosts have no good targets.

Attendant by Marpharos
The on-trash effect is very useful to complement other trashers, but the on play is too inconsistent and minor to justify putting in the deck.  If you can regularly trigger two of the effects, you are probably choking on victory or curse cards.

Charity by spineflu
This is another $5 Gold with drawback like Cache or Contraband, but the drawback here is especially painful.  You might spike to a useful price point, but you are also making it much easier for your opponent to do the same.  It does not seem worth it.  Other cards in the same design space (Governor, Council Room) have much greater disparities between the benefit to your and to your opponent.  On top of that, $4<4> is a very high price to get the card into your deck while not playing nice with TfB cards, and buying it specifically to gain the Wish later seems like a wasted opportunity to buy the card you want now.

Curator by Aquila
I apologize, I never got around to testing this one.  It like that the money it can generate gets high for its cost but is necessarily limited by the turn count.  The synergy with draw-to-x is also very nice.  Keeping track of the cost in irl games seems like a chore, and the "set it aside" clause is overkill.  The gain is already rather strong.

Dandelion Field by Xen3k
Similar pile-out math to Rubber Duchy below.  The noteworthy differences are that it is not an eternal junk card in your deck and thus safer to buy earlier and that the payoff conditions may be met over multiple turns.  Appeals to the Distant Lands enthusiast who wants to get away with not spending actions.

Glade (Lost Book) by Rhodos
This pair offers very strong trashing once and weaker trashing otherwise.  It doesn't lend itself to over-trashing and is much better on the 3/4 split than other Woodcutter variants because of getting an Estate out of your deck, though then you have to calculate when it is worth it to have two Woodcutters in your deck in order to get rid of 4 Coppers--too early and you risk terminal collision.  Glade plays well with TfB cards by getting rid of the cards that are poor targets while supplying a nice $4 if necessary, especially if you want to risk buying that extra Glade specifically to trash one more junk card.

Grindstone (Scraps) by alion8me
Grindstone is certainly too powerful.  Five cards for $5 is more than the more expensive Hunting Grounds even if it does have a drawback.  On the other hand, Scraps is very fun.  It makes for a nice Ruins-like card with a hidden advantage.  I would like to see other cards that make use of it, though it needs a different name after Menagerie in order to prevent confusion.

Insurance by majiponi
This one sees its best work in kingdoms with trashing attacks or self-trashing cards and a little less good with Remodel Variants.  It can pick up Golds that were Remodeled into Provinces, but, by the point in the game when that is happening, you may not have time to take advantage of it.  Being cavalier about trashing engine pieces will be more safe with this.

Junkyard by mail-mi
Junkyard is like a Shepherd that provides its own fuel.  It has the potential to choke your deck, but this is reduced by pairing it with other sources of draw.  The calculus surrounding megaturns is very interesting: not only do you have to weigh trashing the Junkyard for that small bit of extra draw, but you may have already emptied the Ruins by that point in the game, making every Junkyard harder to activate.  Be careful that you have not helped your opponent three-pile you.

Marshland by faust
Marshland plays very differently in different kingdoms.  Ample gainers and you have a Gardens rush.  No buys or gains and you have a sort of overpay chicken.  There are bizarre interactions with Rogue and Graverobber since you can actually make the value go down instead of up.  Is it really a benefit to trash my copy when my opponent is holding his?  I would have to play this many more times before I really understand it.

Reconstruct by silverspawn
This card reminds me of a cross between Feast and Treasure Map.  The set up is hard, and the pay off is not very interesting.  Managing to play two in one turn and trash a third on the second play is enough for a Province, but that is three buys, good village support, and plenty of draw/sifting to get it to happen.  It is a better card in games with Desperation or Pooka as a way to lessen the blow of cursing yourself (also giving Pooka more to churn) or if there are especially good $2 cards for burning your estates.

Refinery by Jonatan Djurachkovitch
This card also plays differently in different kingdoms.  It reminds me of the bimodal Nocturne cards like Tragic Hero that could work for different strategies but have to be manipulated carefully to make it happen.  It plays especially well with other gainers.

Rubber Duchy by LibraryAdventurer
A very amusing card.  It has certain qualities in common with Feodum: a TfB target that leaves behind more targets.  The major difference in that respect is that Feodum gives you payload after you crack it, whereas Rubber Duchy is the payload itself, but only if you can trash it twice in one turn.  The set-up rules also make Duchy-dancing less effective but simultaneously easier if you have the buys or gains.  I did not play enough games to tell, but I expect pile outs are a big deal.

Silver Ore by lompeluiten
Silver Ore spikes really hard due to the coffers.  It might be par without trashing, but with trashing, the extra coffers get you into a runaway loop.  Spices is already pretty strong, and Spices BM relies on the coffers to run smoothly.  Silver Ore, at $3, is a lot easier to get a larger pile of coffers out of (even if you are missing out on the buys).  I feel like it ought to cost more or cost less with reduced effect.

Snake Oil/Charlatan by D782802859
Snake Oil makes an interesting comparison with Mill.  Effectively having fewer Estates and more Coppers in your deck improves the average cost of cards you are buying early, though it is less impressive than Mill for that purpose unless you have support like cheap extra buys.  The on-trash effect is very nice for giving one last boost at the point when it has outlived its usefulness. 
Charlatan, on the other hand, is overtly powerful.  If it was its own pile, it would be wildly overpowered.  In one of my games, I used it to gain or buy a total of 5 Provinces and a Duchy in one turn.  That is definitely a split you can not afford to lose.  I would still price it higher because playing three actions total with the option to play treasures instead is all the best parts of Crown and Procession simultaneously.

Strategic Village by NoMoreFun
I played a game with this and Bishop which went sideways.  My opponents took advantage of my Bishop plays to get their own Hirelings on the board.  One did not even get his own trashers.  Speaking of Hireling, I think this is overpowered at $4.  It is far to easy to get that permanent +1 card.  The consideration of needing the bonus action could give pause on the decision to trash but not when other villages are present.  I find the balance on that decision very lopsided.

Valkyrie by gambit05
It looks balanced on its own, but it spirals out of hand with the right trasher or exiler.  Catapult, for example, is not especially fast, but it does easily get 6 different cards into the trash by itself.  Valkyrie handles the exiling side and then gets trashed at the right time for a giant pile of tokens (plus a Curse to your opponent for good measure).  I am not sure how to balance it because it seems either grindingly slow or bananas with no middle ground.

Wand by mandioca15
If you trash the card by the end of the game, there is no drawback, and you don't even lose buying power for doing so.  Far too powerful.

Way of the Tardigrade by grrgrrgrr
Absolutely bonkers.  Village+Death Cart is $10 without much effort.  Hermit makes an entire functional deck out of cards that cost 3 or less.  Urchin draws your entire deck.  The concept is a lot of fun, but it requires some sort of limiting factor, perhaps setting aside the card to be discarded at clean-up.


Winner: Marshland by faust  (7-3i points out of 10, would get confused again)
Runners-up: Junkyard by mail-mi, Dandelion Field by Zen3k and Rubber Duchy by LibraryAdventurer

13
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: September 18, 2020, 08:41:00 am »
I am in the last stages of testing and will announce results later today.

14
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: September 14, 2020, 02:36:51 pm »
Quote
Curator - Action, $2* cost.
+1 Action
Play any number of differently named Treasures from your hand for + $1 each.
-
This costs $1 more per differently named card you have in play. When you trash this, gain a card costing up to this cost; if it's an Action or Treasure, set it aside, and if you do, play it.
Put simply, an investment card; get it early, and it pays off late. If you don't like the money it gives, change it for what else you need, including Victories (even another Curator, if you need more Actions). In the absence of trashing, there are a couple of other niche uses.
I've been fumbling around with balance tweaks for a while, and thought in the end that different names scale into the late game but conveniently cap so tfb can't go completely crazy.

Edit: name and wording changes.
I'm not sure I understand what happens when you play this.  If I lay down a Copper, a Silver, and a Gold; do I get 1+2+3+3 = $9?

15
There are many existing cards that aren't fully active without other classes of cards in the kingdom, e.g. Moat, Courtier, Tunnel, Fortress, Hunting Grounds, Mission, Labyrinth, Changeling, Patron, Falconer.

Considering full random can be useful because it gives a metric for whether a card is too narrow.  If the circumstances are too rare, then most of the hand-picked games with that card will feel the same.  I know that's how I feel when I try to make Crossroads really effective.

I think that both random and constructed games must be considered because both are played, but not all cards are required to appeal to both play styles.

Also, I hesitate to say this because I don't want to taint peoples design choices, but self synergy is not required for my challenge (and neither is it discouraged).  The stipulation was that the card can't have trashing itself be the benefit.  The card could trash other copies, or it could just not have inherent trashing ability.  Catapult/Rocks is acceptable; so is Catacombs.

16
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: September 10, 2020, 08:46:33 pm »
Here is my submission:

   

Somehow I am into Heirlooms lately.

Glade together with its Heirloom Lost Book can provide a pretty fast thining boost early on. However, you have to hit $5 and pass on a 5 cost card in order to do so. Nevertheless, I think it is a strong card and I think it is fine to design strong cards. :)

The heirloom needs a cost too.

17
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: September 10, 2020, 08:07:20 am »
Thank you Something_Smart.  To quote Sheev Palpatine: "A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one."  I'll look at the card some more and try to come up with a better balance that doesn't make it even wordier.

Congratulations to xyz123.

I know that I can be a bit trash-happy so this is my challenge:


Contest #87: Worth More Dead Than Alive

Design a card that gives some additional benefit when trashed (by a separate card).  Existing examples include Rats (+1 Card), Haunted Mirror (gain a Ghost), Fortress (all the "fB" without the "T"), or even Peddler (buy low, trash high).  Cards that don't count include Death Cart, Raze, and Tragic Hero because they trash themselves.

18
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: September 02, 2020, 09:03:17 pm »

Quote
Glamour - $3
Action - Attack
+$2
Each other player discards a Lure card (or reveals a hand with no Lure cards).
-
Setup: Add an extra Kingdom card pile costing $5 or more to the Supply.  Cards from that pile are Lure cards and cost $1 less during the Buy phase.
This is my reverse Young Witch.  I'm not sure whether it meets the criteria, but it can cause 3/5 or 2/6 splits for one card at a time.

19
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: September 02, 2020, 11:53:59 am »
Does Ferry count as a way to change the split since it lets you go 3/6 or 4/5 but for only a specific card?  I have a similar idea that could cause 3/5 or 2/6 splits but only for one card per kingdom.


(You're allowed to immediately gain the phoenix back after it trashes itself)
So with phoenix you can make a Poor House cost P$2? Maybe specify a 4$-5$ cost card? And why is it a fate card, when it doesn't give boons?

In general I like the cost change of an additional Kingdom card, but it should be in a more narrowed range.

I think the top corners of Gunpowder should have a "?" symbol instead of $1P.

Thematically (flavor wise), the two cards don't fit very well, or do I miss something? It looks a bit like you have combined two largely unrelated cards to fit for this contest.

I am not sure how often I would buy Gunpowder. It doesn't seem to accelerate buying Potion cost cards, if that was the intention.
The Phoenix recovery seems to be too trivial, especially in the opening, i.e. trash it - gain it.
Nobody can buy Gunpowder because it's an heirloom.

I agree that the added pile should have a lower bound just to be worth buying in more games.

Phoenix seems like a very lame chapel in games without a good TfB

20
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: August 20, 2020, 09:15:38 pm »


Quote
Sextant $2
Treasure - Heirloom
$1
-
When you discard this other than during clean-up, you may reveal it to look through your discard pile and put a card from it onto your deck.

A consolation prize for not liking your next hand.  I had an idea for Merchant Ship, but parsing the text to make it do what I intend is a nightmare.

21
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: August 14, 2020, 07:46:57 pm »
My submission:



This seems much, much more powerful than Imp.  It is relatively easy to acquire at $4, combos off of itself, and can be powered by a single cantrip pile, none of which are true of Imp.

22
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: August 13, 2020, 11:29:38 am »


Quote
Wee Folk - $3
Action
Discard any number of cards.
For each card discarded, if that card is an...
Action card, +$2
Treasure card, +1 Card
Victory card, +2 Actions
Not tested in this format, but now it can serve as a village more easily, so I increased the price.



You'll probably need to specify whether you can end up with negative money.  Poor House, for example, doesn't allow that.  Personally, I would say gain debt instead of -money.

23
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: August 12, 2020, 10:08:21 pm »
EDIT: replacement card in later post


Quote
Wee Folk - $2
Action
Discard any number of cards.
For each card discarded, if that card is an...
Action card, +$1
Treasure card, +1 card
Victory card, +1 action

I think the optimum case for this card is after you green while still having coppers in your deck, though it is still useful in other circumstances.  I tried it at $3, but it seemed awfully underwhelming and probably comparable to Crossroads and Cellar.

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