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1

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: February 18, 2020, 01:09:17 am »

1) Not sure how villa makes a difference. Could you explain in more detail.
2) if coppers and curses are gone (which almost never happens) and you have no coins you can end your buy phase because of the part at the end "or you cannot buy any cards in the supply".
3) i thought of using something like that, however, first i feel it's a little clunky. Second this would have differences when stacking multiples. If you play 5 bulk orders and buy 5 cards, my version forces you to buy one copper, your version gains you 5 coppers.

1 & 2) Ah, there was a miscommunication here. As written, the clause, "or you cannot buy any cards in the supply," presents an alternative to "you can't end your buy phase," rather than "you've gained x cards." That is, it says: "if you can't use all the necessary buys, you can't buy anything at all," rather than: "if you can't buy anything, the game is allowed to continue." You seem to be intending the latter, which makes a lot more sense  . Technically, you can fix this by removing the comma before "or you cannot buy any cards"; however, this would leave the sense ambiguous rather than clarifying your intended meaning, so I would still try something else.

3) As I understand it, once you've gained one copper, the rider, "unless you've gained more cards this turn than you have Bulk Orders in play" should block the other four triggers in your scenario. Is this not the case?

2

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: February 18, 2020, 12:34:47 am »

Entry for the week, Shopper, a terminal copper that lets you save a buy for when you need it.



This idea for this card started with me thinking about +Buy tokens. It occurred to me that a) they might be too powerful to have them on a card as just +1 Buy token (I called them Shoppers), and b) clearly you can't have then be on buy, because then you could just buy the whole pile (with Bridges in play). So why not reserve buys?

I'm very curious what people think of this card. As a terminal copper*, you really don't want it, but that reserve buy can be very powerful. And once you play it and goes onto the tavern mat, it's out of your deck (until you need that buy, of course).

* there's a reason that there are only a handful of official terminal coppers

I also liked the idea of my +1 Buy card costing just $1, since you might often have an extra $1 to buy a 2nd card - so the non reserve part needs to be weak. And it makes it interesting to Upgrade your coppers to this...

So what do you think?

Some (not mutually exclusive) possible tweaks:
• forget the $1 cost and make it $2
• add +1 Action, or alternatively make it a treasure
• make it +$2 (though this would have to cost $4 to copper to woodcutter)
• give an additional +$1 when you call it

Lastly, official (all $2) cards to compare this to:
• Coin of the realm - it's a treasure that reserves +2 Actions
• Peasant - $1, and +1 Buy (though not reserve) - of course it's real strength is that it travels
• Herbalist - $1, and +1 Buy (though not reserve) - it's extra is saving a treasure
• Squire - one of the options is +2 Buys

This is a cool idea but needs some work. Costing $1 is a little awkward because if you want this there probably isn't regular +Buy on the board, so you have to waste a bunch of coins on it even if you're responsible and pick it up early.

Honestly I think you could just make this give +$2 and have it cost $3. As far as I'm concerned Woodcutter lost its right to complain about being strictly worse than anything when it got excommunicated from the game.

But let's say you're an empathetic stickler. In that case, I'd make this cost $3 and either be a treasure or else give +2 Buys.

3

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: February 17, 2020, 11:50:24 pm »

It's a gold with a +buy. The Catch? You must use the buy. This means using this to spike high points doesn't work as well (you can do it, it will just come with a copper).

It took a long time to get the wording right but here's what I got. I wanted only the buys from this and your orginal buy to be mandatory (or else worker's villages/ Market Sqaures would really mess with this). If anyone has a better way of saying it please feel free to say so.

This doesn't really work as-is, mostly thanks to the fact that Villa can provide an uncertain future to your turn, which can prevent you from saying for sure whether it's possible for you to use all the necessary Buys if, say, the Coppers and Curses are gone.

I came up with the following: "At the end of your Buy phase, if this is in play, gain a Copper unless you've gained more cards this turn than you have Bulk Orders in play."

Since people were just going to take Coppers with their spare Buys anyway, this is mostly the same but uses less text and is easier to parse.

4

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: February 17, 2020, 04:07:37 pm »

5

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 15, 2019, 04:35:29 pm »

I can explain the flavour of all the abilities if you need.

This probably needs at least +1 Action to be viable, considering it does nothing every other time you play it. Ranger and Giant at least give small benefits whenever you play them and don't benefit your opponents in the process. Granted, Pilgrimage does nothing every other time, but it has a much higher ceiling than this card, doesn't cost an Action to use, and again, it doesn't benefit your opponents.

6

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 14, 2019, 10:31:40 pm »

Midnight Ride, Night, $3
Choose a non-Victory card. Starting with the player on your left, each player (including you) gains a copy of that card, putting it on top of their deck.

Even though you're the last to receive a card, you're still the first to get to use it, which I figure is reasonable given you're spending a buy to probably help everyone, which is really bad for tempo.

7

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 12, 2019, 01:13:32 pm »

Cats
$4 Action
+2 Cards
Choose one: Gain a Cats; or +1 Action and return this to the Supply.

Hopefully the name isn't too similar to Rats and Bats.

Huh. I wonder how this compares to Experiment. I like that you can choose whether to earn or spend a Cat after you see what you draw.

8

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 11, 2019, 11:15:26 am »

@anordinaryman is that the 24 hour warning?

To allow people to play with all previous and winners, I'd rather you not use names of previous winners or runner-ups. To that end, I'd like to remind @Grep know that "Rabbits" was the name of a previous runner up in contest 45 (plural is hardly a difference), so I hope you feel comforting using a new name.

This is good praxis but also we've had two different Cozeners win (challenges 23 + 52) and Rabbits was a pretty well known fan card in Kru5h's card ideas prior to contest 45 so idk how enforceable this'd be.

I mean, it's enforceable at least this time around inasmuch as the judging criteria are up to the judge, but I agree it's a little bit silly as a rule rather than a guideline.

9

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 06, 2019, 05:34:15 pm »

Censure
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+1 Card, +1 Action. The player to your left may reveal a Censure from their hand. If they don't, +1 Card and then discard a card.

I wouldn't make this a cantrip. Buying a handful of these doesn't affect your deck all that much so what's likely to end up happening is everybody wastes a few turns buying these to prevent their opponents getting the full effect and the game state goes nowhere. If this were terminal, it would be a more interesting decision whether or not to clog your own deck to hurt your opponent.

10

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 06, 2019, 12:33:47 pm »

Refugee Camp, Action, $2
+1 Card
+2 Actions
Discard a card.
-
In games using this, when you gain a more expensive card, you may gain a Refugee Camp.

Interesting concept, but as worded it might be broken with Trader?

Buy Silver, gain Refugee Camp, reveal Trader to gain Silver instead, gain Refugee Camp, reveal Trader to gain Silver instead, etc.

You might need to change "when you gain a more expensive card" to "when you buy a more expensive card." Or just rephrase the wording somehow to make this not allowed.

Ooh, nice catch. As much as my Johnnie sensibilities love the idea of emptying the Silvers on T3, I'll switch it to when you buy 

Great, let's see if we can fix up Raven:

Raven - Action Reserve, $3 cost.
+1 Card
+1 Action
You may discard a Treasure to gain a Raven. Put this on your Tavern mat.
-
When you gain a Province, you may discard this from your Tavern mat. If you do, each other player gains a Curse.

I've changed the way of gaining another Raven to discarding a Treasure, and lowered the cost to $3. So it's initially a very low opportunity cost but it gradually builds up over time if you increase your flock. Possibly it's too low and everyone rushes to empty the ravens out first, but the provinces are delayed in the process.

This is cool. Rushing Ravens puts you way behind anybody building an actual deck, but then you can slam the opponent with like 8 curses out of nowhere. This probably isn't worth it if any normal Curser is on the board, but I like it!

11

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 06, 2019, 12:37:57 am »

Refugee Camp, Action, $2
+1 Card
+2 Actions
Discard a card.
-
In games using this, when you buy a more expensive card, you may gain a Refugee Camp.

Simple, but elegance was stated as a judging factor…

Neat challenge!

12

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 04, 2019, 08:27:27 pm »

All good stuff, but how is "at once" meaningfully different from "simultaneously" as an explicit contradiction of the turn-order rule?

13

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 04, 2019, 01:53:42 pm »

Simultaneously doesn't exist in Dominion. Things happen one at a time, always.

Not true. Masquerade occurs "at once," so anything that happens simultaneously should be described that way (Each player discards a card at once)

Not on the online implementation, if you look at the game log - it's still in turn order, it's just broken into discrete steps. First, each player chooses a card to pass, then in turn order, each player passes the card they selected. There's no "instants" or "interrupts" that make it matter in this case though.

The official FAQ states "At the same time." The online engine might not support simultaneous action, but such a limitation needn't influence the generic rules.

14

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 04, 2019, 01:39:38 pm »

Simultaneously doesn't exist in Dominion. Things happen one at a time, always. Even attacks like Spy are technically supposed to go in turn order, usually irl it doesn't matter and so they do them all at the same time, but here it very much matters. So unfortunately, first setting the cards aside face-down is necessary.

Also, there isn't always a "least," because of Potion and Debt costs. Transmute doesn't cost more or less than Silver, for instance.

As for making ties lose, that's probably too brutal in a 3-player game, especially early on. There's still that element of fear in discarding a Copper because your opponents might be discarding Estates.

Simultaneously exists if you say it does. That's how LCGs work. Also see Masquerade. If there's no least, nobody gains a Curse: simple. The balance point is fair.

15

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 04, 2019, 12:25:50 pm »

All as in each; they're only cursed if it costs less than each other card, considered individually.

The wording's already nasty, I'll see if I can clarify that without making it worse.

Does this help?

"Each other player draws until they have 4 cards in hand, then each other player simultaneously discards a card. The player who discarded the card costing the least gains a Curse. (Ties don't count.)"

Honestly, I would make ties lose: as it is, as long as two people discard a Copper this is mostly a weak Militia. That might be worded something like "…Each player who discarded a card costing the least gains a Curse (including ties)."

16

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 02, 2019, 11:52:05 pm »

Flight of Fancy, Action, $4
+1 Card
+1 Action
The player to your left names a card, then the player to your right names a card. Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a card without those names. Put that card into your hand and discard the rest.

Cheaper Lab with the drawback that it won't always draw your good stuff. I suppose this technically works in two-player, but the 3+ spirit is there 

17

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 29, 2019, 10:28:27 pm »

The "lose, then win" aspect of Story Points is interesting, but man it looks like a lot to keep track of. Especially given that (1) the History setup makes it impossible to use a counting aid, and (2) all your cards are worth a variable amount of SP. I'm sorry, but I'm not playing a game where I need to mentally track the number of unique actions in four different decks on top of tracking VP. And even if I do track all that successfully, I can still lose to something I couldn't account for at all (History count).

Then again, I always use a VP counter irl, so maybe that's just me.

To be a bit more constructive, I would suggest having Story cards be worth a static amount of SP, and limit the initial History gamble to something like 3 instead of 6 so that known quantities can more easily insure against the hidden variance. (The hidden variance will remain relevant since it will still be detrimental to excessively focus SP.)

18

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 21, 2019, 11:44:07 pm »

I mean the issue is if one person has Goons and is playing it with Sleepwalker every turn and the other person can't get to $6 to even get a Goons in the first place.

But honestly I think there are attacks that are more degenerate than Goons to be playing every turn, such as Mountebank or the Knights. While I don't think those games would necessarily be unbalanced they would probably not be very fun.

Yeah, that kind of lock is the main problem. Mountebank doesn't have immediate impact and loses effectiveness eventually. Goons, Militia, Ghost Ship, Knights, etc. are strong all game. I remember a game where I managed to streamline pretty early down to a deck mostly composed of a lot of Fishing Villages and Pirate Ships. My opponent couldn't really do anything for the rest of the game. Not all that enjoyable.

19

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 21, 2019, 07:57:11 pm »

That was the intention, yes. There are probably some Dream cards that make this abusable but I don't expect it to get that bad. Even in the Goons case, you're gonna run out of Sleepwalkers to buy before too long, and you're gonna be drawing them dead, and spamming Sleepwalkers is probably beatable by one method or another.

If you think there are some actions that are a bit nuts for this (KC comes to mind, though I'm fairly sure a dream-KC game would be super fun), I could put a cost and/or non-attack restriction on it. I definitely want to allow $5's but maybe I could ban $6's and higher.

It also just occurred to me how funny it would be to have Sleepwalkers and Golems constantly finding each other. I don't think that's a bad thing, though.

I think the thing to do is probably specify non-attack. In the case of Goons (or even weaker things like Militia), the first player to land an attack is going to hardcore snowball since your opponent is basically playing with three-card hands from then on.

20

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Contest #52: Varying effect per-game

« on: November 21, 2019, 12:40:20 am »

FAQ:
- During a turn in which a Travelling Shop was played, all cards in the Item piles are considered to be in the Supply, and as a result can be gained by cards like Workshop and Altar (provided they fit all other restrictions, e.g. cost), not just bought.
- Items with "return this to the Supply" will be returned from the pile if and only if you also played a Travelling Shop earlier in the turn.
- You can use Teacher to move your tokens to an Item pile as long as you played a Travelling Shop (with e.g. Prince) before calling it. Likewise, you can also use Events to move your tokens to Item piles as long as you played a Travelling Shop before buying said Event. You can move Adventures tokens off of Item piles even if they are not in the Supply.
- Item piles do not count towards the game end conditions, even during a turn in which a Travelling Shop was played.

This is neat: being able to shell out for access to a bigger kingdom sounds fun. However, I wonder (a) whether this is all that different from Black Market, (b) why the cost restriction is necessary, and (c) whether this might work better as a Project, which would also address question (a).

21

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 20, 2019, 01:40:57 pm »

Would the trashed pile count toward endgame conditions?

It's not supposed to. I thought replacing the pile before end of turn covered that but I suppose the old pile is still an empty pile in a larger kingdom. I'll have to reword somehow.

Probably better to just go with a new keyword like "replace" rather than trying to work with the existing trash mechanic. Trashing a whole pile is a new thing anyway.

The tricky thing is if you completely obliterate a pile what happens when you need to return one of its cards to the supply? That I supposed could be answered in FAQ, but I think I have a simpler solution:

22

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 20, 2019, 01:16:30 pm »

Would the trashed pile count toward endgame conditions?

It's not supposed to. I thought replacing the pile before end of turn covered that but I suppose the old pile is still an empty pile in a larger kingdom. I'll have to reword somehow.

23

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 20, 2019, 11:49:00 am »

This is a little wack but what the hey, I think it fits the challenge



Errata/FAQ (subject to correction):

- You can't trash an empty pile.
- If no appropriate Kingdom card exists, the first pile gets trashed with no replacement.
- Regardless of how many cards were in the trashed pile, the new pile comes with all 8/10/12 cards.
- A split pile can replace a trashed pile that costs the same as the top card of the split. (For example, Swindler can turn into Gladiator/Fortune.)
- A split pile is replaced by a card that costs the same as the topmost trashed card. (For example, Gladiator can turn into Swindler, but Fortune can turn into Peddler.)
- This totally ignores potions and debt. University can turn into Embargo and vice versa; same with Vineyard and Overlord.
- This takes cost adjustments into account. However, global adjustments like those from Bridge are usually moot. (For example, Laboratory with your Ferry token on it can turn into Village, but not Market.)

24

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 19, 2019, 01:14:39 pm »

However, I was thinking of this with a greater focus on the alt-VP.

There is no viable alt-VP strategy:

- An even split, i.e. 5 Curses and 4 Demons, would be 15VPs spread over 9 cards. Less than 2VP per (semi-)dead card in your deck is not feasible (compare this with Shepherd-Pasture, you gotta make these 2VP cards quasi-cantrip-Lab-hybrids to make it viable)
- Let's make this more extreme, 7 Curses and 7 Demons. Extremely unrealistic as a smart opponent would buy more Curses once he realizes that you go for Demons. That's 42 VPs spread over 14 cards, i.e. they are all Duchies. Even if half of them come for free, not all that impressive (and, as already mentioned, not realistic).

Perhaps there is something there with 2VPs/Curse. No idea. But the current alt-VP idea is simply too weak.

Hm, fair. I think 2VP/Curse should help.

In that case, your example of 5 Curses and 4 Demons gives 35 points over 9 cards: that's a much better rate than Duchies, Demons aren't dead in hand, and you've probably handed out a few Curses to your opponent in the meantime.

However, your opponent will probably take a Demon out from under you if they can. 3 Demons and 5 Curses gives 25 points over 8 cards, which isn't as good, but still better than Duchies. If your opponent wants to steal your Curses, that's their own deck they're junking while speeding up your three-pile.

No matter what, I think the speed of the rush shouldn't be underestimated. All of the above seems feasible by turn 10 or so, and should be very resistant to attacks. However, it should be made fair by the fact that draining a third pile will be much more difficult than the first two.

2VP/Curse it is. I've updated my entry above.

25

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: November 19, 2019, 12:25:33 pm »

My entry is a 5/5 split pile:



This is supposed to work such that you can't gain Demons until all the Dark Rituals are gone. If this wording doesn't accomplish this, please let me know how to fix it 

P.S. The images from the shardofhonor tool are huge. Is there a way to make them show up smaller on the forum without manually resizing the files?

I like this but it has some obvious issues.

In the presence of other Cursers and with few players, it is unlikely that somebody will go for Dark Rituals (i.e. either buy them or take a Dark Ritual instead of a Curse). It is simply too slow.

Without other Cursers and in 3P games (2P game situation: if Alice goes for Dark Rituals, Bob can simply not go for them and Alice having 5 dead cards in her deck before she converts them into junkers is simply harmful for her and not for Bob) this is interesting.

One solution is to make this a parallel pile, i.e. both cards are always available.

You're probably right that if your goal is to junk your opponent's deck, Demon absolutely works better in larger games, and Mountebank probably works better in general. However, I was thinking of this with a greater focus on the alt-VP. The junking was supposed to be more of a bonus to go along with buying out the Curses, which are free VP with two or more Demons.

That said, you may still be right that this strategy is on the slow side. I'll drop Dark Ritual to -1VP so Demons are more valuable and whiffing is less painful.

This replaces the normal Curses?
The numbers on this being a 5/5 split might not be great - you might want to do something like 2 of each per player (4/4 for two player, scaling up to 12/12 for six)

This is a kingdom pile. Witch etc. still give out regular Curses, never Dark Rituals. However, Demon counts both. I'm wary of scaling up to 12/12, or even 8/8, since such large quantities require many players to attempt the strategy (or a good source of +Buy) if the Demons are ever going to show up. However, I think you're right to question the flat 5/5. Maybe a more standard alt-VP count makes sense: 4/4 for two-player and 6/6 for multiplayer.


To summarize then, my entry is now as follows:



This is a kingdom pile that does not replace the regular Curses. Cursers such as Witch hand out Curses, not Dark Rituals; however, Demon counts both Curses and Dark Rituals. With two players, this is a 4/4 split; with three or more players, it's a 6/6 split.

Thanks for the feedback!

Edit: Demon now gives 2VP per Curse.