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1

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #185: It Takes A Village

« on: May 03, 2023, 01:45:15 pm »

These is kind of posts that ""show"" how strong/overpowered new cards are is one of the few comments you see on these forms. They all seem to be patterned after the a kingdom has X or Y this card would be too strong or comparing the card to many official cards that share DNA.

Not sure if this is supposed to be a criticism, but if so, I have to wonder what other way you suggest for judging the power level of a card? That is always relative to other cards.

You sometimes get comments here like "this interacts badly with some specific other card", and I agree that that's not generally a big problem unless the interaction is completely game-breaking, since it comes up quite rarely.

So I had to rework that first section a few time to not come off as hostile as I am become frustrated at this forms as it seems like many users here submit cards and get little to no helpful feedback. Most times posts just get met with silence or a mention on grammar issues. The other feedback I tend to see is usually a "This is too op" and not much data showing why? Very few posts comment on how exciting it would be to play that card or oh that is interesting but under-costed compared to these official cards or based on this writing from the designer that core design has been playtested found to be problematic. But as a commenter maybe I am wrong, you as the creator should playtest your card and get back to us at the forms with your findings. I know we all don't have too much time to commit to other people's creative efforts but isn't that the point of these forms, right?

Your comment that a +2 Favor terminal was a playable card felt to me like you were out of touch with the balance of the game. As you are a mod who does post quite a bit, I did initially doubt myself and had to reconsider my submission. So I spent a couple hours investigating how crazy my card was. Starting with you claim a terminal +2 Favor card at $2 would be see play at all.

This is my analysis for the ($2cost Terminal +2 Favor) not PP
  Plateau Shepherds - players can do an alt VP deck but it still takes time/actions, many buys/gains, and clutters their deck a lot with $2s. This would mostly see play to 3 pile rushes or an engine deck would try to use it to recoup the lead a Big money deck would have over them after taking time to build an engine. Now this is only playable in my mind if players have access to +Buys or workshops and there are no other better Alt VP cards in the kingdom. Still the best Ally for this +2 Favor terminal card.
  Crafters' Guild - this just turns it into a limited Armory that can be purchased alongside another $4/$5 on the first two turns. Decent but should not be too game warping. I see it similar to when a card is targeted by a trait and it is considered strong but really it is fine.
  Peaceful Cult - this would be like a double rat catcher but much worse as the +2 Favor card itself does not replace either the Action nor the Card. Still it would see play if other trash options were limited.
  League of Shopkeepers - this is after enough play it becomes a +$1, +1 Action, +1 Buy. Is this good enough no except when no other +buy options are on board or players need a non-Treasure payload for Library decks. as it is still worse than Candlestick Maker.

Please check my work as I am human and make errors. These are the only allies I would expect to even consider making the above card playable. So really 2/23 is 9% and if you were stretching 17% if all four cases were considered playable.

Now overall I do think my card Penny Pincher is overpowered and might need some tuning. I have found for my initial playtests of new designs it is far better to be overpowered by being undercosted for example then get ignored by players. So I am going to try out as is and get back to the form with my findings and I hope you can be okay with that. I am really excited to see if “too much Favor” can supercharge a very bad core into playability.

However, it's different for the interaction of a Liaison with an Ally. The chance of a Liaison being paired with a specific Ally is significantly bigger than the chance of it appearing in the same kingdom as some specific other card, and that won't change unless there's an expansion coming that revisits Allys.

After looking at all the official Allies again I noticed a trend that the biggest powerful combos or break cases for PP were gains, +$, or +Cards which is the biggest downside PP has as it lack them. But the ratio of Allies that do that vs total allies is 7/23 so ~30% .Many of the other allies seem to be focused on providing extra +Buys, +Actions, or Shifting which are much less useful for PP. As breaking the cardis turning PP into a constant payoff source vs the decent enabler that I want it to be.

Yeah it's "not all Allys" but if the card is OP 30% of the time it's still not a good design.

Now what level of OP%  is considered ok? like many of the official cards are over tuned and played well over 30% of kingdoms they appear in, right? Like Chapel, OG Witch, Gardens and Wharf either reshape how the game is played significantly or are on their face just a wrong number somewhere but they are still very core to Dominion and its play experience. Also with the inclusion of trait cards in the game, how balanced any card is in any given kingdom is really thrown out the window. Like half or more of the skill in the game of Dominion if finding the OP effects in the current kingdom and taking advantage of them. So personally a card being strong/OP in only 30% games is great, if its in more than half that maybe time to reconsider. Maybe I am way off base and would love to hear from others how much OP% they are okay in this community.

2

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #185: It Takes A Village

« on: May 02, 2023, 03:53:24 pm »

Penny Pincher
Action - Liason
+2 Actions
+2 Buys
+2 Favor

I notice not many cards give multiple favor in official dominion so I thought might be nice to have cheap card do that. I went rather simple as the complexity will mostly come for the Ally. If the ally sucks well at least this card gives players a cheap but bad +2 Actions effect or +Buy effect as most engine decks really needed both.

This is just way too strong. Favors are generally good enough that a card doing nothing but terminally gaining +2 Favors would probably be fine at $2. Just some combinations with Allies for Penny Pincher (PP) would be:
Crafter's Guild: PP becomes a Village Workshop (though limited to 1 gain per turn, still extremely powerful).
Island Folk: If you can play just 2 PPs reliably, you get an extra turn each round.
Circle of Witches: PP is a nonterminal 2/3-Curser.
Fellowship of Scribes: Basically turns PP into a Village with 2 Buys attached.
Plateau Shepherds: Every PP is now also worth 2 VP.

An obvious comparison is Bauble, which effectively just gives +1 for each of the +2s that PP gives (with a bit more flexibility, but still).

These is kind of posts that ""show"" how strong/overpowered new cards are is one of the few comments you see on these forms. They all seem to be patterned after the a kingdom has X or Y this card would be too strong or comparing the card to many official cards that share DNA. Much of the ""gameplay"" of dominion is recognizing these power cases and if the board has enough support for the interaction without giving up other strong opportunities. So I wanted to go more into detail and compare PP to many other Dominion effects. Some combo are just strait too much such as autopileing, or infinite combos, or effects that generate mass value for too cheap. I don't believe PP has any of those issues assuming only using official Dominion cards.

The flat power level of +2 Actions with no +$ or +Cards  is pretty low as the Way of the Ox shows. The +2 Buys was added because to me PP still felt far too narrow to purchase this card if the Ally is middle power level and there was already another source of +Actions in the kingdom. But if the power level is too high I am willing to cut the +2 Buys as they are les core to PP's identify. The reason I did +2 vs +1 was it looked pretty mentally flows better with 2,2, vs 2,1,2 and +Buys to fall off in usefulness past the first unless Bridge effects are in the kingdom which typically break any decent card.

By the very nature of a Liaison its power level is highly dependent on the ally. Each of these ""break"" cases seems strong but not as centralizing as it first appears as many core official cards do better in similar situations already. Your statement that a terminally +2 Favor would be strong enough to see play feels silly to me. It would only see play on boards with plentiful +Actions from other sources and only if is is paired with the most strong Allies. Even then there are probably much better things players could be doing on that board. Now to focusing on the individual mentioned ""break"" cases.

Plateau Shepherds: Every PP is now also worth 2 VP.
If a board had a the basic village (+1 Card +2 Actions) would a player rather have more deck velocity with the +1 Card or flat 2VP? I am leaning toward early game the +1 Card as building as strong typically outdoes flat VP. If somebody had the $5$2 split then yes PP feels free and might lead to some feels bad, but so does most $5$2 split differences on like 30%+ boards. Now, in the mid to late game PP does provide some interesting options for amassing alt VP as the PP are worth 2VP but also Estates (which are easier to get with +2 Buys) can be worth 3VP. Gaining a PP card too late can easily lead to missing out on play it for favor meaning it is not worth 2VP and the more low velocity cards like PP and Estates players add to there deck the more often that will happen; which is common in alt VP strategies. This play pattern is very similar to distant lands, a bit easier as future plays of PP can prepay for late $2s, but also PP does self trash and has to remain in decks increase player's deck size while still providing very little value to players +$ or +cards engines. Feels like great deck to try out but not too dominate.

Fellowship of Scribes: Basically turns PP into a Village with 2 Buys attached. Now with this ally PP is very strong no doubt about that. PP is even more powerful as some decks PP becomes a Lost City with +2 favor can becoming +2 Cards if the hand is played right. But PP does get a bit clunky vs the official card listed as if a player gets a hand of 6 cards or above PP does a lot less. If PP is the only source source of draw they are limit to a 5 card hand with limits trashing opportunities and mega turn. This would be pretty common if VP card can't be trashed, Junkers or the payload in the kingdom are Treasure cards. Also if PP is paired with a more traditional draw effect the ability to get under 5 card can limit PP's ability to mimic Official Village or Lost City. A similar ally is League of Shopkeepers        with less of a hand management minigame it provides a lot value to the weak core of PP. Oddly enough though the +1 Action +1 Buy from the upgraded ally is much less relevant PP already does that. So not sure if scaling down the Flavor fixes this much vs just being decent. Also much like Merchant Camp the lack of +cards does make it much weaker then Market effects.

Circle of Witches: PP is a nonterminal 2/3-Curser. As I have learning in my experiences with Native Village the +1/2 Card +2 Actions tends to not work out as well as +1 Card + 2 Actions bit quite a huge margin. Some of the difference I suppose comes from the 1st play is doing basically nothing delaying the power spike by quite a bit. Other reasons is by doubling down on a faction effect much like journey token card Player maybe be trying to force a card vs play the reliable constant effects in the kingdom. This is doubly so when the combo faction effect miss shuffle and super delay the power spikes. So to me the 2/3 Curser seems slow enough to be nonterminal and not generate too many issues unless there is no trash and/or no shifting. Which in that case any half decent Junker would be too overcentralizing.

Island Folk: If you can play just 2 PPs reliably, you get an extra turn each round. It costs 5 favor not 4 favor right? so it take 3 plays of PP to get the 1st extra turn. Now given that players can pool favor on those extra turns PP could be quite overcentralizing. But still there are a few counters as Junker will slow down a low velocity card like PP a lot crippling there ability to loop there deck during the extra turn for much value or constancy. Mountain Folk has similar issues to Island Folk but as with both the ceiling of double turn much like ""Double Tactician"" decks. So good combo but more limit then first appears.

Crafter's Guild: PP becomes a Village Workshop (though limited to 1 gain per turn, still extremely powerful). I agree powerful but oddly limited as players pooling many tons of favor due to PP having +2 favor vs +1 would fall off. Architects' Guild seems to me to be the bigger gain focused break case as it can combo into its self to spend 4 or 6 favor in a turn.

League of Bankers seems to be the biggest break case as there is no ceiling for favor in a very direct +$ way. I have tried many game to break League of Bankers and have come up short more often then not, so having a custom card break that would be fun to me.

Peaceful Cult jumped out to be but official dominion puts strong trash at $2 pretty often and PP combining with it is quite comparable Rat Catcher a strong card but has awkward moments as that last curse is just never in the opening hand.

After looking at all the official Allies again I noticed a trend that the biggest powerful combos or break cases for PP were gains, +$, or +Cards which is the biggest downside PP has as it lack them. But the ratio of Allies that do that vs total allies is 7/23 so ~30% .Many of the other allies seem to be focused on providing extra +Buys, +Actions, or Shifting which are much less useful for PP. As breaking the cardis turning PP into a constant payoff source vs the decent enabler that I want it to be.

oh lastly comparison to Bauble is fair but doubling the favor output but losing the +$1 is big. As early PPs will very much cripple players ability to hit $5 on the early turns. Also being an action the generates +action vs Treasure is relevant often as most of us are aware, using our last action on a terminal draw hoping for treasure and getting villages. The timing is very different some allies don't care at all when the liaison is played some care a lot when the liaison is played.

3

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #185: It Takes A Village

« on: May 01, 2023, 06:50:20 pm »

Penny Pincher
Action - Liason
+2 Actions
+2 Buys
+2 Favor

I notice not many cards give multiple favor in official dominion so I thought might be nice to have cheap card do that. I went rather simple as the complexity will mostly come for the Ally. If the ally sucks well at least this card gives players a cheap but bad +2 Actions effect or +Buy effect as most engine decks really needed both.

4

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #184: Spring is in the Air

« on: April 22, 2023, 11:11:37 am »

Here is my entry it kind of like a budget hireling that requires finding a Gold each turn. It represents planting a seed each year and getting the reward later

Sprig
$4
Project
The first time you play a Gold on each of your turns, Set it aside. If you did, then at the start of your next turn, discard it for +1 Card.

5

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #183: I'll Have The Vanilla Please

« on: April 03, 2023, 12:58:01 pm »

Would this card like this qualify as a "choice"? as players would choice to opt in on receiving the bonus(es) and even more if they had limited cards they cards they could easily discard they would need to choose which bonus they prefer

Way of the Platypus
Way
+1 Action and +1 Buy
You may discard a card for +1 Action.
You may discard a card for +$1.

"Well, he is a platypus, they don't do much."

6

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #182: I Choose Nothing

« on: March 25, 2023, 01:59:36 pm »

Kale Cliffs
$5
Treasure - Duration
$2
+1 Buy
At the start of your next Buy phase, you may discard your hand for +$4.

My entry is inspired by Tactician, where if a player builds a deck focused on non-treasure based money sources this card grants a huge payoff. Unlike Tactician, 2 copies of this new card cannot be staggered to be played every turn, also unlike Tactician this just grant money so no ability to hunt additional copies or overall deck control. Also unlike Tactician when a player can play multiple in one turn they can grant a guaranteed $8+ money next turn. When using effects that play treasures during action phase or use a buy phase reset, this card can do some crazy combos. Overall this card can be used as a basic Silver with a +Buy though it can only be played every other turn and I bet many decks will be okay with the bottom text doing nothing half the time they play this.

7

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #181: Building a Better Harem

« on: March 16, 2023, 02:41:19 pm »

My entry this week is a very simple version of double harem cost a particular cost

Seraglio
$7@7
Treasure - Victory
$4
-
4%

Not too much to mention here but should be nice for players who get an early $7 or more but don't want a province slowing their deck down too much. Also should be great late game when a player hits $7 vs $8 and the can get this vs a duchy. The trade off is if they get another turn they have to deal with the debt which might stop them from getting $8or even back to $7 which sucks. The cost is quite high but I find that anything that increases deck strength and grants VP need to be limited or costed quite highly as it goes against core tenant of the game.
I was going to go with $6@6 but compared to Harem and many other gold like treasures it seems like it was too much value. To me it seem like only taking only 1 slot in a deck but granting the equivalent of two real cards (mega gold & mega duchy) is strong and it only takes 1 buy.

8

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #180: Pay the Iron Price

« on: March 03, 2023, 05:07:46 pm »

Omnibus $4 Action Reveal your hand. If the revealed cards all have different names, gain a Loot to your hand. Otherwise, you may trash up to 2 cards from your hand.

If you are doing something "up to" a certain number of times, you don't need "you may" because "up to X" includes 0. So this can just say "trash up to 2 cards from your hand." See Bat, Chapel, Cemetery, Secluded Shrine, and Souk.

Thanks I will update

9

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #180: Pay the Iron Price

« on: March 03, 2023, 02:48:20 pm »

Here is my entry

	Omnibus $4 Action Reveal your hand. If the revealed cards all have different names, gain a Loot to your hand. Otherwise, trash up to 2 cards from your hand.	This card is decent trasher comparable to steward. The biggest upside to me is the option to trash either 1 or 2 cards not always just 2 cards. Other things that make this card weaker then Steward are this new card can never draw cards, it can not trash card when only unique cards are left in hand; so if players are down to 1 Copper and 1 Estate then tough luck. The huge upside vs steward comes with the first clause, a flat +$2 compared to gain a loot to hand. This card is less flexible then steward as players don't make the choice directly but more indirectly by and sculpting like Menagerie requires. Unlike Menagerie this card helps set it self up via trashing, also when played in multiples it shouldn't mess it self up like Menagerie's increased hand size tends to do. Overall the unique name theme seemed appropriate given loot's diversity of names. It am trying this card out a $4 to limit opening two of them, as might it be too fast. Also after a few play test I could see this increase the amount it trashes to 3 cards but trashers that do other things late game can be quite powerful.
	Endless Horde $7* Treasure - Loot $3 +1 Buy - When you trash this, you may play it.	This card is a bit narrow for a Loot as not all boards have trash so I considered expanding the trigger like Trail but the clean simplicity is too nice. It should pairs well with mine and remodel effects. It does a few strange things to Thief effects, mostly dodging them with not much other benefit beyond that, unless player can spend money during other players' turns via other custom cards.

10

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #173: New Year's Resolutions

« on: January 03, 2023, 01:35:44 pm »

Mansion
$5 - Action Victory
+2 Actions
You may discard an Action card for +2 Cards.
2
 
Notes: Intended to replace Harem. A Village that gave 2 VP for $5 would be a bit too obvious to buy at a time when you’d consider buying Duchy for $5.
 
My Dominion resolution is to teach someone new to play the game. And for new players starting with simple cards is best. The second editions of Base and Intrigue are great for that, with a few cards as exceptions.
 
Harem is simple but it is weak and many people (myself included) dislike the flavor. And Intrigue could use another source of +Actions, due to the weakness or conditionality of most of the current sources. (Base is also light on +Actions relative to later expansions, but the sources of +Actions are stronger).

I love your goal to make a card designed to help new players learn and enjoy dominion. I disagree that a new player would enjoy your current design. Discarding the cool interesting looking action cards is something newer players would shy away from. In my experience newer players try to sample too many unique cards and do not value deck constancy cards like, trashes, shifters, and +Actions cards. Though they tend to quickly learn to love +actions cards. Though your card does have the its green and does something part which newer players overvalue (imo) as they see VP which they know is important but they never grab Duchies very often. Maybe if it your are replacing Harem try to make a simple but decent Treasure Victory card.

11

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #173: New Year's Resolutions

« on: January 02, 2023, 01:47:12 pm »

If I were to make a resolution to improve my Dominion, it would have to involve the 4-player IRL games I nearly always play. There are plenty of flaws and fixes to these games this forum has already covered: they're too short to make satisfying decks; three-pile endings are unpleasantly common; certain cards like Cursing Attacks get unpleasantly strong.
I thought of which fix to focus on, and ended up grouping the lot together in one mechanic:

Continents

Landscape cards that enlarge the kingdom to a continent, and make the game longer. When a Continent is added to the game:

• Add 1 more of each base Victory card to the Supply per player (including Colonies if in the game)
• Add an extra Kingdom pile
• One more pile will need to empty for the game to end (typically 4)

The recommended rules for inclusion: if there are 4 or more players in a game, after setup, add a Continent; this can be random selection, or chosen to suit the game and/or players' mood. It could be a 3rd landscape card.
They could alternatively be included in just the same way as TWELPs, even in 2- or 3-player, if players want a randomly decided big long game.
I designed these assuming one Continent per game, but...they could stack up in multiples?

Individual Continents can fix specific issues, or just add fun passive effects like Edicts.



Paradisaic limits Attacks to one hit on each player between their turns, but in exchange gives them an extra ability to be trashed for draw when discarded from play (whoever's turn in the case of Black Cat). Hopefully this addresses repeatable Attacks like junking or Knights. Cultist though...
Cavernous sorts out opening turns when they're crucial, giving each player two shots of +5 Cards then put 5 cards onto deck at start of turn.
Volcanic is a crazy thing that a lengthened game might get away with; when you gain a card, trash a card from hand, mandatory.

The flavour and convenience of these might help motivate me to try them someday.

I have found doing 4 extra Provinces for (12+4=16) is great for 4 player games as each player only getting 3 is quite lacking. I haven't felt the need to increase the Duchy or Colony piles. The extra supply pile feels fine but only necessary at 5 or 6 player games too me. I really wish each pile was like Green piles and 2 player games had 8 copies and 3+ player games had 12 copies personally it make the math feel more even out better. Also spilt pile would unlock at four copies for 2 players game which seems nice. I understand owning 2 extra copies of each card would be unnecessary and make setup even more annoying so I don't change my personal copy. It would be nice as a online only variant as it would not cost much to do that.

12

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #173: New Year's Resolutions

« on: December 31, 2022, 12:41:06 pm »

My entry this week is a Prophecy, these landscape cards always trigger around the 8th turn, (ignoring extra turns). These cards effect everyone, similar to Edicts but due to the distinct timing element it felt like best to make them a new type. The 8th turn was chosen as the point where the early game ends and the game's tempo either shifts into a long game or quickly starts the end game. Expect to see more of these from me.

Balance
Prophecy
After each player has had eight turns, reverse the game’s turn order. (For example, if play had proceeded clockwise around the table, it now goes counterclockwise.)

One of my many issues as a Dominion player and really player of most games is complaining about apparent uneven starts. This card is my way of addressing the well documented inherent unbalance of Dominion where the start player gets 1st cracks at piles, is less effected by early attack cards, and most importantly always get more total turns then player late in turn order. This Prophecy aim to fix this with the 1st player get the early advantages but later last player gets that powerful extra/final turn advantage come late game. I hope that with the "Balanced" achieved I can focus on game skill over just saying to my opponents "You only won because you ended the game and I didn't get a chance to buy a Province during my last turn like you did."

Rules clarification: The last player in turn order will "Trigger "this card and start the new turn order, so this card effectively means the last player will take two turns in a row.

13

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #172: Trait Me Right

« on: December 23, 2022, 10:40:32 pm »

My Entry is a Linked Trait pair
Romeo & Juliet
These are temporary flavor I will likely replace them latter if this plays well. I thought it best to use an iconic pair to show how these are linked. Suggestions welcome.

Romeo Trait When you gain a Romeo card, gain a Juliet card. After playing a Romeo card on your turn, you may play a Juliet from your hand.	Juliet Trait When you gain a Juliet card, gain a Romeo card. After playing a Juliet card on your turn, you may play a Romeo from your hand.

These need to say something like "When you gain a Juliet card, gain a Romeo card (that doesn't come with another Juliet card)". Otherwise, gaining either one will pile out both (unless they aren't the same size; in that case, it'll pile out the smaller one, and give that many copies of the larger). (See Experiment).

Good catch i will update

14

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #172: Trait Me Right

« on: December 23, 2022, 04:18:23 pm »

My Entry is a Linked Trait pair
*one more time trying to get it somewhat balanced this time*

Romeo & Juliet
These are temporary flavor I will likely replace them latter if this plays well. I thought it best to use an iconic pair to show how these are linked. Suggestions welcome.

Romeo Trait After playing a Romeo card from your hand, you may play a Juliet card from the Supply, leaving it there. When discarding one from play, return it to its pile. - Setup: Add Juliet to another non-Command Action or Treasure pile in the Supply.	Juliet Trait After playing a Juliet card from your hand, you may play a Romeo card from the Supply, leaving it there. When discarding one from play, return it to its pile.

V2

Romeo Trait When you buy a Romeo card, gain a Juliet card. After playing a Romeo card on your turn, you may play a Juliet from your hand.	Juliet Trait When you buy a Juliet card, gain a Romeo card. After playing a Juliet card on your turn, you may play a Romeo from your hand.

V1

Romeo Trait When you gain a Romeo card, gain a Juliet card. After playing a Romeo card on your turn, you may play a Juliet from your hand.	Juliet Trait When you gain a Juliet card, gain a Romeo card. After playing a Juliet card on your turn, you may play a Romeo from your hand.

15

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #171: Gains Upon Gains

« on: December 16, 2022, 04:00:19 pm »

Here is my entry, it gains lots of cards and they are super useful once, then it might feel like too much of a good thing

Inundate
$3
Event
Once per turn: Gain 5 Coppers. Set them aside. If you did, then at the start of your next turn, play them.

16

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #170: 2/7 Offsuit

« on: December 02, 2022, 01:34:22 pm »

This is my entry this week

Eternal Struggle
$7
Action - Duration - Attack
Discard the top card of your deck. Look through your discard pile; you may play a Treasure from it. Each other player draws a card, then each other player with 5 or more cards in hand puts cards from their hand onto their deck until they have 4 cards in hand.
At the start of your next turn, replay this.

This card should be a weak attack but a constant one. If opponents but one for them selves they mitigate the attack by a bit. Unlike Hireling this new card replays itself forever and I did this so other players can use a reaction card each time to help with memory issues.

17

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #169: I Am Not Throwing Away My [One-]Shot

« on: November 25, 2022, 04:28:06 pm »

My entry this week is a project but should act some what like a repurchasable one shot card

Infrastructure
@5
Project
Directly after you finish playing an Action or Treasure card, if it's still in play, you may return your purchase token from here, to replay that card twice..

I am quite uncertain on the price and wording of this card. $5 felt like too much vs just buying a good high drop card and $4 felt too little so I am test out @5 as a middle ground. I know Debt combos with +Buys effects a bit. Though given tempo negative of buying a 1 shot effect, most a boards without a +Buys will probably ignore this card no matter the cost. Which I am okay with as many landscape cards are best when they are useful on some boards and ignore on board others, identify which is which part of player skill.

I am want players to be able to buy this project then use it then buy this project again if they want to. Players should NOT be able to buy multiple "charges" of this to use in the same turn, barring entering and exiting the buy phase some how.
Overall I hope players are excited to use this King's Court like tripling effect. Though this card is much more limited in scope as it can not chain combo with itself and each use costs money. Though it should be quite strong as players can now target Treasure cards and the upfront cost is not as high as King's court. The other comparison point would be Royal Carriage as they are both copy effects that wait patiently for the perfect target. This new card is stronger as it does not take a draw to set it up, and copies an additional time. This new card is weaker as players have to repurchase this for each use. The last comparison I would like to point out is Citadel, which tends to copy less desirable cards, 1st actions played in most turns tend to be villages and such. The $8 upfront cost is a lot compared to @5 but is payed only once vs the repeated nature of this new card. So overall I hope this card effect can find a home, even if the numbers need some tweaking.

18

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #168: Turkey Time

« on: November 16, 2022, 07:15:09 pm »

My entry this week is a split pile

Dough
$2
Night - Duration
Set aside any number of cards from your hand face down. At the start of your next turn, put them into your hand.

Yeast
$6
Action - Duration
At the start of your next turn, +$1 per card in your hand.

Dough should be a somewhat useful card at storing extra cards for a mega turn, it might help Estates dodge shuffle, help synchronize combo pieces together, or help catch a few terminals trapped in hand. Dough should also help players spike up to $6 to buy a Yeast. It is a Night card so when drawn after all actions had been used it is still useful. Also the best bakers make their Dough at Night so it has chance to proof and be ready in the Morning.

Yeast is the Powerhouse of the set. If generate +$5 money or more, which is a lot. This card is limited by its high cost of $6, it being at the bottom of a spilt pile, it is terminal, its reward is delayed, and it can only be used every other turn. Yeast also combos with the Dough for even higher numbers but without adding a source of +Buys their is not too much of a point in doing that. This effect is also countered by a few attack cards like Militia and the sort.

i think it could be hard to uncover yeast, because who would want more than a single dough? giving it +1 card for the next turn could already be fixing that maybe? So its a cantrip

So one thing I am thinking players could do with 2 or 3 Doughs is they can play 1 each turn which keeps all there starting junk card "trapped" in the Dough loop. This would give massive deck control as any future green cards could also get swallowed up in the chain. The Dough loop also deals with unnecessary copiers of itself as they keep just being relooped with the rest of the junk until needed helping guarantee a Dough loop on future turns. So I hesitate to give Dough any more rewards then just comboing with Yeast. Now believe it would be rare for players to want to get all 5 copies of Dough but that is one core issue each Split pile much deal with. One player purchasing all 5 copies of Dough without a decent source of buys would likely be too time consuming and I think I am okay with that.

19

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #168: Turkey Time

« on: November 14, 2022, 02:08:09 pm »

My entry this week is a split pile

Dough
$2
Night - Duration
Set aside any number of cards from your hand face down. At the start of your next turn, put them into your hand.

Yeast
$6
Action - Duration
At the start of your next turn, +$1 per card in your hand.

Dough should be a somewhat useful card at storing extra cards for a mega turn, it might help Estates dodge shuffle, help synchronize combo pieces together, or help catch a few terminals trapped in hand. Dough should also help players spike up to $6 to buy a Yeast. It is a Night card so when drawn after all actions had been used it is still useful. Also the best bakers make their Dough at Night so it has chance to proof and be ready in the Morning.

Yeast is the Powerhouse of the set. If generate +$5 money or more, which is a lot. This card is limited by its high cost of $6, it being at the bottom of a spilt pile, it is terminal, its reward is delayed, and it can only be used every other turn. Yeast also combos with the Dough for even higher numbers but without adding a source of +Buys their is not too much of a point in doing that. This effect is also countered by a few attack cards like Militia and the sort.

20

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #167: Monster Mash

« on: October 31, 2022, 11:22:13 pm »

I had forgotten about Sinister Plot, thank you for pointing that out. In comparison to that, I have altered Treat to spice it up a bit.

Halloween Town -$5
Project - Ally - Liaison

At the start of your turn, +1 Favor.
-
At the start of your Buy phase, you may spend 2 Favors to gain a Treat.

Treat- $3
Action - Attack
+3 Cards
+2 Coffers
+1 Villager

Each other player takes Trick.
Return this to its pile.
(This is not in the Supply).

Trick
State
At the start of your Action Phase, return this, and the first action you play this turn gets +1 Card and +1 Action instead of following it's instructions.

You might have gone a bit too far. Now every other turn it’s a net +2 Cards and +2 Coffers (roughly x4 the value), plus convert an Action to a Villager.  Still delayed via Treat, but that doesn’t matter that much.

With designs that have this many numbers/moving parts it becomes super difficult to judge the balance. In my opinion, it is probably better to playtest this and other complicated complicated designs when they are overtuned. It is easy enough to scale numbers back after learning if the overall play pattern is fun and worth balancing. What I find is way worse is when a play tester tries out a complicated card which looks fun to them and it does nothing. It is harder to tell if the play pattern was the problem or just bad numbers. The designer may consider delaying the project's source of favor by pushing the cost up to $6 so players will not get it on a luck 5/2 split on turn 1. Though players may still get some early favor using other liaisons and get a Treat or two quickly that way, which sounds fun enough.

Side note: I personally love the aesthetic choice of using +3, +2, +1.

21

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #167: Monster Mash

« on: October 31, 2022, 12:34:26 pm »

Here is my entry

Monster Mash
$8
Way - Event
Play the two cards you have set-aside, in any order, leaving them there.
-
Setup: Make a Monster deck out of different unused Attack cards.
-
Once per game: Reveal the top 5 cards of the Monster deck. Set-aside 2 of the revealed cards. Put the rest on the bottom of the Monster deck in any order.

This way does nothing for players until they purchase the Event. This does cost a lot at $8 but giving players access to a Powerful Way should probably cost quite a bit. I don't love the 2 dividing lines but as more most of the designs I brainstormed this week, it was hard to fit two text boxes into 1 card. Also it feel like landscape textboxes have much less space then portrait cards. Also I am not sure if it is allowed to name my card the Title of this week's contest but the themed seemed like a good match.

22

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #167: Monster Mash

« on: October 25, 2022, 04:00:05 pm »

Devil's Gift
Boon - Hex
Choose one: discard down to 4 cards in hand; or gain a Curse.  Each other player does the unchosen one.

How are players supposed to receive this? Is there a copy in the boon and a copy in the hex deck or just a copy in one deck?

23

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #166: Who still cares about buying?

« on: October 20, 2022, 03:16:53 pm »

Here is my entry

Tycoon
$5
Action
If this is the first time you played a Tycoon this turn, +3 Buys
At the end of your Buy phase this turn, +1 Coffers per unused Buy you have.

I intend this card to give +3 Coffers if the player does not use any of the extra +3 Buys and +4 Coffers if they don't buy anything. The bottom text should stack with future copies, so if a player used four of theses in one turn and bought only 1 Card that turn they would have +3 Buys leftover and they would gain +12 Coffers = +3buys*4copies. This card's Coffers are delayed so the card should be a bit weaker then most cards that give Coffers which can be used right away.

24

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #165: More Favorites, More Fun

« on: October 12, 2022, 01:14:16 pm »

So Judge, I am legitimately confused on quite a few points here.

You posted the second runner up as the card Sepulcher by the user MrHiTech which is a mismatch, I see that MrHiTech commented/quote Sepulcher but it was authored originally by Gubump. Or did you mean that MrHiTech's Portcullis.

Based on your feedback which was mostly positive for Gubump's card I would assume they got runner up vs your feedback on MrHiTech's which tend toward the negative.

Also on your feedback for Gubump's card seemed you misunderstood the card, as it clearly says gain a non-Victory card and you mentioned gaining a province out from under a player.

25

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #165: More Favorites, More Fun

« on: October 08, 2022, 01:20:48 pm »

"Here is my entry

Indulgence $3 Action +1 Card +1 Action +1 Buy At the start of your Buy phase, you may trash this from play for +$2.

This is a low cost source of +1 Buy both in price and deck space since its a cantrip. The trash effect works as stored money which can help players save up to to get a large surge of purchasing power. This card isn't as simple as a strange Event that grants +2 Coffers, as players will not have complete control of when they can spent this. Also also this card can be gained in the late game by workshops which have acquired the needed engine pieces and are looking to transition to the late game payoffs. The card is based on Mining Village with the minor rewording to match what Donald suggested for tracking purposes. The updated text also is a bit stronger as players will know more at the start of Buy phase then at the start or middle of players action chain and can cash this in only when its best. This card isn't a Village, which maybe be a good thing as most players I have meet lament removing such coveted card from there deck, so players may be more willing actually spend these card for quick high costed purchase of a good $6 or $7 costed card.

"