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1

Variants and Fan Cards / Cathedral: mashup of Embassy and Lookout

« on: May 22, 2014, 11:45:47 am »

Hey everyone, here's another custom I designed a while back; I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Cathedral
Action
Cost: $5
Reveal the top six cards of your deck. You may discard any revealed victory cards. Place two of the revealed cards into your hand. Trash the rest.

It's a relatively simple card that has an interesting change in usefulness throughout the game. I think it would be a fantastic card to open with, possible strictly better than Embassy as it doesn't give your opponent a silver and cycles your deck faster while trashing coppers and estates like nobody's business. However, it becomes MUCH less useful in the mid game as you'll probably have three cards out of the six revealed that you'd like to keep, potentially forcing you to trash valuable action cards. This is especially likely if you've been using it religiously (no pun intended  ) early on in the game to make a slim deck. However, I think it's most interesting use comes in the late game when you can use it as a super-sifter, searching through the top six cards of your deck for the ones you really need, discarding upcoming green, and not really worrying too much about the possibility of having to trash action cards because at that point in the game you might not see them in the next reshuffle anyway. It basically gives you the ability to gamble crippling your long-term economy so that you can search for the cards you really need this turn.

One change I've considered is making it force the player to discard all revealed victory cards, so that it couldn't be used to trash estates in the early game.

Anyway, any and all feedback would be appreciated, thanks in advance!

2

Variants and Fan Cards / Siege Engine: an "attack" (but not really) that targets reaction cards

« on: March 07, 2014, 02:48:43 pm »

Hey everyone, here's another card idea I've been thinking about.

Siege Engines
Action
Cost: $4
+1 Action
Each other player must discard a reaction card or reveal a hand with no reaction cards.
If no player discarded a card, +2 cards, then discard one card from your hand.

The first thing to notice about this card is that it is NOT an attack. Like masquerade, it feels like an attack in that it forces your opponents to discard reaction cards, but it can't be defended against with cards like moat or horse traders because it itself isn't an attack card.

The next thing to notice is that it will play quite differently depending on what other action cards are in the kingdom. A lot of the time it will show up in kingdoms without any reaction cards. In this case its a relatively vanilla sifter, somewhat comparable to warehouse or oasis. I think its certainly powerful at $4 since its basically a laboratory as long as you have a victory card in hand to discard, but I don't think it would be too strong for its price point.

I originally designed this card however thinking of its use in kingdoms with good attack cards and reaction cards which effectively block the present attack cards. In this case Siege Engine serves as an enabler for your attack cards, allowing you to play the Siege Engine first, discard your opponent's moat, and then have an action to play your attack card on your defenseless opponents! If you have the bad luck to draw multiple Siege Engines but no attack cards, your Siege Engines' sifting ability gives you a chance to draw your missing attack cards to complete the combo.

All in all I think its a neat card that opens up some unique possibilities for reacting to the way your opponent is building his or her deck in games with reaction cards.

It also has a really weird/hilarious interaction with Tunnel.

3

Variants and Fan Cards / Crazy Alt-VP Card: Gives less points the more victory points you have

« on: February 27, 2014, 05:05:51 pm »

Hey all, I'm back with another card idea that's been bouncing around in my head. Here it is:

Palace
Cost: $5,
Victory
10 Victory Points
At the end of the game, after counting your initial victory points, this card is worth 1 victory point less for every ten victory points you have.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In games using Palace, whenever a player gains a victory card that is not a Palace, trash the top two Palace cards from the supply.

Pretty weird, huh? The idea was to make a very powerful rush card that allowed a player to amass a lot of victory points quickly, but at some point capped and is unable to help you any further. Lets analyze how this card would actually play.

The first Palace you buy gives you ten victory points for $5, AMAZING! However, its not as good as it would first appear. In reality, your first palace only supplies nine victory points, since you add up your initial points (3 from estates + 10 from palace) and then reduce all your Palaces' value by 1. Each additional palace you buy is worth two points less than the previous Palace. Observe the following chart: 1 palace = 10 initial vp; 9 total points. 2 palaces = 20 initial vp; 16 total points. 3 palaces = 30 initial vp; 21 total points. 4 palaces = 40 initial vp; 24 actual points. 5 palaces = 50 initial vp; 25 actual points. Any palaces bought beyond the fifth one will actually decrease your total vps, as 6 palaces = 60 initial vp but each palace is now worth only 4 vp, for a total of 24 again. This creates a situation where a player who commits heavily to palaces will jump into the lead very quickly, but then has to end the game because the more palaces he or she has the lower their maximum vp cap is going to be.

I thought this card was interesting, but I don't really know what the optimum strategy for its use would be since it actually discourages you from amassing huge amounts of victory points. Any insights?

4

Variants and Fan Cards / Interdict: A spinoff embargo and peddler

« on: February 07, 2014, 07:22:33 pm »

Hey everyone, I've been thinking of cards for a custom set I'm making, and this is one of the more interesting cards I've made. It hasn't been playtested at all, so I'd appreciate any criticism or comments! Here's the card text:

Interdict
Action
Cost: $0*
+$2 or trash one card from your hand and gain a card costing up to $1 more than the trashed card.

When you play this, place it on top of one supply pile of kingdom cards. This must be the next card bought or gained from that pile.
--------------------------
This costs $2 more per remaining buy you have, but not more than $6.

The idea behind this is that as long as it is the last card you buy on your turn, it will only cost $2.   Then when you play it, in addition to the small benefit you receive, you get to place it on top of a supply pile you don't want your opponent to gain cards from next turn. Then, on their turn, if your opponent wants to have a chance to buy a card from that supply pile, he or she will have to spend $4 to first buy the interdict since they will have to have saved an extra buy for the card they actually want. The more cards they want to have the opportunity to buy from that pile on their turn, the more interdict is going to cost them.

It's also interesting to note that interdict, like peddler, combos very well with trash for benefit cards. As long as you play several +buy cards before your TFB card, you can turn an interdict into a gold or powerful action card.

And playing interdict gives you an option to trash for benefit, would you look at that!

As I said, any comments are welcome! Should I make its max cost higher, or is $6 a good cap? Are there any crazy combos I haven't noticed? Or is it just too weird mechanically? Also, I'm sure the wording could be cleaned up some. Overall though, I think it's a neat card and offers some interesting tactical choices and possibilities.

5

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan card: Fruit Market

« on: July 18, 2013, 08:43:29 am »

Hey everyone, I had an idea for a kingdom card pile whose intended effect would be to allow players to kind of build their own market/grand market/bazaar card. You'll see what I mean when I explain it. It's like the knights deck in that there are several different cards in the deck and they are shuffled together and the topmost one is the only card available for purchase. So here are the cards, they all cost $2.

Apple Merchant
Action, Merchant

+2 cards

You may play a Merchant card from your hand.

Pear Merchant
Action, Merchant

+1 card
+1 action

You may play a Merchant card from your hand.

Orange Merchant
Action, Merchant

+1 card
+$1

You may play a Merchant card from your hand.

Strawberry Merchant
Action, Merchant

+1 card
+1 buy

You may play a Merchant card from your hand.


I'm thinking that the deck would contain three apple and pear merchants and two orange and strawberry merchants. Also, I considered changing the wording of the special ability to be something like "Until the end of your turn, Merchants cost no actions to play." but thought that would probably be too strong. Any thoughts?

6

Variants and Fan Cards / Another way to break the -1 buy rule.

« on: October 06, 2012, 08:17:37 pm »

(modified to reflect lack of +1 Action)
So, I saw the other thread about breaking the -1 buy rule, so I figured I'd post my card that has -1 buy

KING'S ROAD, action, $6 (maybe 7?)
-1 buy
-------
While this card is in play, all cards cost -$3.

My defense for this card having -1 buy comes from Highway. Without a source of +buy or cards that care about the cost of other cards, market is strictly superior (I know that saying that phrase in this community is dangerous ) to highway. In fact, under those circumstances, highway becomes almost brokenly underpowered, basically becoming a peddler, which Donald has confirmed is worth around $4. Almost never will you want to buy a $4 cost card over a $5 cost card, although granted it could occur. Just as without a source of +buy or gain a card up to X card highway is grossly underpowered, King's Road relies on one of those two cards as well. However, with one of those two relatively common types of cards, I think King's Road would be fun and powerful, but not overly so. Again, this card has not been tested so I'd love to hear everyone else's opinions!

7

Variants and Fan Cards / King of the Slums

« on: October 06, 2012, 03:18:36 pm »

Hello everyone, I've had several custom cards bouncing around in my head for a while now, and I'll probably post a whole custom set on here eventually. For now though, I'd love to hear feedback regarding a card I recently came up with. It hasn't been playtested at all, so I'd be interested to hear how balanced you think it is, as well as any ways to make it better. Also, I'm not that experienced with typing up mock cards, so I'm sorry if the wording is a little rough.

King of the Slums
Action-Looter $5
You may gain up to three ruins, putting them into your hand. Choose up to three ruins from your hand. Play the first one three times, the second one twice, and the third one once.

My main concerns were that I wasn't sure how high to price it, since the cost of gaining ruins is pretty steep, but it can be a terrific card to play. Also, I worried that it might prove to be too strong of a counter to cultist/marauder attacks. Any thoughts?

8

Introductions / Greetings and Thanks!

« on: October 06, 2012, 02:19:02 pm »

Hello everyone,

Captain Stupendous here. I've been a long-time lurker on here but I decided to finally make an account. I just wanted to introduce myself to everyone on the forums and say thank you to everyone who has enhanced my enjoyment of Dominion over the past few years.

To begin with, I'm a college student studying at a small, Christian liberal arts school. I love playing board games, and got started on games such as Risk and Axis & Allies, but after discovering Board Game Geek and the Dicetower quickly branched out in my choice of games. I first played Dominion at my cousin's house shortly after it first came out, and I immediately fell in love with it. I have since bought all the expansions and consider Dominion to be the best game ever created, elegantly combining depth of strategy with easy to learn rules and short play time. Some of my other favorite games are War of the Ring, Empires of the Void, Neuroshima Hex, Duel of Ages, and Heroscape, to name a few. I'm an English major and enjoy reading just about anything that's written well.

Now that you know a little bit about me, I'd like to thank everyone on this forum for making it the vibrant, intelligent, and (mostly) civil place for Dominin discussion that it is. I've learned so much about the game here, and enjoyed reading the thoughts of Theory, rrenaud, Rinkworks, Geronimoo, WanderingWinder, and everyone else who has contributed to the discussions! You've all helped me to appreciate and enjoy the beauty of Dominin so much more, so here's a hearty thanks to you!