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Messages - Fragasnap

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1
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #132: All Hallow's Eve
« on: October 25, 2021, 06:38:08 am »
Maybe I'm crazy.

Haunted Village | Action - Attack - Night | $4
If it is your night phase, each other player with 4 or more cards in hand puts a card from their hand onto their deck.
Otherwise, +1 Card and +2 Actions.
It's the Village brother of Werewolf, except it is always the quite effective Haunting Hex, which does stack once.
It is probably a devastating win to win-more sort of effect, as extra Villages provide decent smoothing and the extras are giving a powerful Ghost Ship effect.  The benefit of Werewolf's middling Hexing comes attached to a $5-cost that does nothing for you when you Hex, which is a lot less than Haunted Village's consistency.

Fairy Ring | Night - Victory | $4
+1 Coffers
Draw until you have 5 Cards in hand.
-----
Worth 1VP per 2 Night cards you have (rounded down).
Compares too well to Silk Road, which gives a mere 1/4 per Victory (which is another Victory card that counts itself) and is an actual trash card (even setting aside how weak Silk Road is in the average Kingdom).  If uncontested in a 2-player game, Fairy Ring gives 32VP.  The fact that Fairy Ring offers so many points while also giving delayed Coffers, making the Province split 6/2 against still gives the game to Fairy Ring--and that's without any additional support.  With a +Buy and any Night cards in the Kingdom there will be little else to do.
I'm not sure the VP ratio can be balanced properly just because of how few Night cards there are.  I'd probably prefer it just be a solid number of Victory points (2VP in this case).

Sarcophagus | Night - Victory | $3
Choose one: Exile a non-Duration card you have in play; or gain a copy of a non-Victory card you have in Exile.
Worth 1VP for each differently named card costing at least $3 that you have in Exile.
EDIT: Missed an appropriate non-Victory clause, sorry!
Because you get to play the card you Exile, even with only the Exiling option, Sarcophagus is a ludicrous source of VP.  There are often enough targets it can Exile on its own that will make it worth 10VP.  The primary gating factor is that Sarcophagus is also an incredibly fast non-terminal Workshop variant, so a Sarcophagus can gain more Sarcophagi to run piles very quickly.
All that is ignoring interaction with other Exiling options that would permit Sarcophagus to be a $3-cost better-than-Province Province-gainer.  Consider Exiling Duchies and Provinces with Bounty Hunter or playing with Transport.
If you reeled this in to only Exiling cards from play and not counting Victory cards you have in Exile (with no card gaining), then maybe it could work at $3.  With those changes and the gaining appropriately bounded to non-Victory cards, If you still want this to gain cards, this should cost at least $5.

Warding Mask | Night - Duration - Fate | $3
Take a boon. Receive it now or at the start of your next turn.
At the start of your next turn, you may put a card from your discard pile into your hand, then draw up to 6 cards in hand.
Donald X. said that Guardian used to give a Boon at the start of your next turn and that it made the game take too long with all the Boon flipping.  And he said that while playing Nocturne games.
For their inconsistency, I'm not sold that Boons were ever a good idea anyway, though maybe scholopasta (the only opinion that matters right now) feels differently.

Ouija Board | Treasure - Night | $2
+1 Buy
If it's not your Night phase, +1 Coffers.
Otherwise, you may remove 2 tokens from your Coffers. If you do, buy a Spirit from one of the Spirit piles for its cost. If it costs more than this, trash this.
Your update has made Ouija Board significantly weaker as you now must play 3 Ouija Boards to gain a single Will-O'-Wisp.
Considering how generally bad a Ouija Board is in and of itself (even aside the big nerf), the fact that it trashes itself when you buy a Ghost sounds more like a benefit than a limiter.  I'd probably prefer to be stuck with the Ouija Board.  Buying another when you actually want one would be trivial anyway as you would be setting aside the Coffers on one Buy phase to get a Spirit later.

Haunted Basement | Action - Night | $2
+2 Cards
Put any number of cards from your hand on top of your deck in any order.
-
This is gained to your hand (instead of your discard pile).
This is incredibly powerful in games where you draw your deck: You get to immediately draw and tuck your new buys into your next hand.  I think it does not need to be gained to hand as a $2-cost, as it still has that ability once it is in your deck.  If you want it to go to hand it should probably cost $3.

Chantry | Action - Night | $2
If it is your Night phase, trash a card from your hand. Otherwise, +2 Cards.
This is simple and cute.  The two abilities don't touch at all.  It's probably similar to Monastery on average, making it a weaker trasher.  It's fine, but it's not very exciting.

Goblin | Night - Reserve | $4
Put this on your Tavern mat. Trash a Treasure have in play. Gain a Treasure costing up to $3 more than it, setting the gained card aside.
At the start of your Buy phase, you may call this, to put the set aside card into your hand.
The fact that it trashes the Treasure from play means you still get the production of the Treasure.  This seems like the strongest Mine variant, as its Reserve effect is functionally a better version of Merchant Ship (as you can wait a turn to pop its $, and further chain that $ with a second Goblin to upgrade to Gold quite fast).  It is not necessarily a problem because both Mine and Merchant Ship are pretty weak, but these comparisons make me want it to cost $5.

Asylum | Action - Night | $4
If its your Night phase, you may discard your hand. Otherwise, +2 Cards, +1 Action and at the start of your Clean-Up phase, reveal your hand and put all non-Action cards on top of your deck.
Any wording issues aside, in many, many Kingdoms the drawback won't even matter, as you can use Asylums to help to draw your trashers with the only 3 non-Action non-Treasure cards in your hand.  You probably need a catch to make dumping Treasures in the Buy phase harder, something like "At the start of your Clean-Up, if you have at least $1 unspent, trash this, otherwise reveal your hand..."  It starts getting wordy, though.

2
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion Card Image Generator
« on: October 25, 2021, 06:37:46 am »
Hi. I'm very grateful for the awesome image create tool provided!

Now, for the first time in a few months, I have resumed making cards that I was considering by using this generator.
However, the font of cost or the numbers displayed on the icon are thinner than when I used it before. It seems that the fonts on the cards are loaded correctly, but only the weight of those letters is different. Repeated reloading and tried various things, but it was not going well.

...

The previous font is more similar to the original, so I would like to create using the bolder font. Is there a solution?
I am also having this issue with incorrect coin font on my Windows machine, regardless of browser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer), where I was not previously.  I have the Minion Pro font that is used officially.
I believe my Android phone loads the coin font correctly (maybe it is simply cached), but it does not load "Times New Roman" for the body text.

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Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #105: Attack with Choices
« on: February 16, 2021, 05:10:17 pm »
Warlock
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $5
+3 Cards.  Choose a card in the Supply or reveal a card from your hand costing at most $3: Each other player with at least 5 cards in hand discards a copy of it, or reveals they can't.  Each other player who didn't discard a copy of it gains a copy of it.
I'd appreciate help wording this to be clearer and more succinct, if it isn't sufficiently so already.
Code: [Select]
+3 Cards
Choose a card in the Supply or reveal a card from your hand costing at most $3: Each other player discards a copy of it if they have 5 or more cards in hand, or reveals they can't and gains a copy of it.
changes the functionality a little in that you get to see hands with <5 cards, but is more succinct with the gain clause. should mostly only matter for patron (a benefit for the person revealing) and maybe masquerade (a benefit to see if it's worth it to masq)
Hm.  It is shorter, but I'm not feeling that it's clear a player with 4 cards gains a copy of it.  Adding additional clauses to it makes it even harder to read.

Here's how I would word it
Code: [Select]
+3 Cards
Choose a card from the Supply or reveal a card from your hand costing up to $3. Each other player discards a copy of it (or reveals they can't). If they can't, they gain a copy of it.
"Costing up to $3" is fine change.  I don't like "or reveals they can't" being a parenthetical (even though it is on Bad Omens, Bureaucrat, and Cutpurse) because parenthetical phrases in game rules are typically reminders of rules rather than rules themselves.  Your wording lets Warlock discard a player's entire hand if they are all cards costing up to $3 where the original card can only discard from hands with 5 cards.

Would the following wording make it sufficiently clear that a player with 4 cards in hand reveals their hand and gains a copy of the chosen card?  Is allowing the player of Warlock to reveal a card from hand even worth the additional words just to enable hitting cards from empty piles?  (I originally had Warlock as "name a card," but that isn't really how the phrase works in Dominion.)
Code: [Select]
+3 Cards
Choose a card from the Supply or reveal a card from your hand costing up to $3. Each other player discards a copy of it from a hand of at least 5 cards or reveals they can't. If they can't, they gain a copy of it.

Thank you for the assistance.

Warlock is a drawing Curser with extra abilities.  I've actually played with this thing before, and it tends to begin by hitting Coppers to try to hold down other players' decks before shifting to Cursing.
Really? That seems counterintuitive. Wouldn't you want to start handing out Curses right away? It's a much stronger attack, after all, and there are a limited number of Curses to hand out.
I was playing in games with little trashing per my recollection.  Early decks really need $5 turns, and you don't get them when you're discarding Coppers.  You have to respond to the game state, but it often seemed to perform better by choosing Copper for the first 1 or 2 plays.  Perhaps because a brainlessly Cursing Warlock in the latter portion of the game limits its own Cursing by players discarding Curses, which, as Villain shows us by discarding our Estates, is pretty awful.
I imagine it is similar to Catapult, where you want to trash an Estate (I want to give a Curse), but tracking other players to opportunistically trash a Copper can hold other players down more effectively than the trashing otherwise nets you.




For these cards with player decisions, especially if the receiver is making the decision, it is worth noting
  • Resolution time of the card balloons with the number of players.  Even Militia pauses the game, and longer in 3-player than 2-player.
  • Stacking effects are more troublesome in multiplayer games because it is much more likely to occur with 3 and 4 players than with 2, and occurs less predictably.  When the only other player plays a terminal Torturer, you typically know its whole effect, but when another player is going next, you often can't be sure if another Torturer is coming or not.
  • Further, if the stacking of an effect changes the decisions of the player of a card, it becomes inherently political.  LastFootnote mentioned at one point a "discard any number of cards to make other players discard" effect that died on the vine due to scaling issues: Discarding will hurt the player to my right who has 5 cards in hand, but the player to my left already has 3 cards.
Brazier • $5 • Action - Attack - Duration
Until the start of your next turn, when another player buys a card, they choose: they gain a Copper, or each player that isn't them gets +1 Coffers.

During your next turn, +1 Buy and Copper makes $1 more.
I messed around a bit with a card that can give other players Coffers, and it is bad news in multiplayer.  The coins get out of control.  By contrast, Bargain's Horses are not simply harmless until used, making its scaling issues less notable, on top of occurring less frequently than an Attack that gives benefits to all other players.  If giving out Coffers is the right move, a 3-player game has Coffers fly 2/1/1 for merely one player using one Brazier, let alone more Braziers and let alone games with more players; that's even more than the cards I've used that directly give Coffers to other players.

Boggart - $5
Action - Attack - Fate - Doom
+1 Card. Reveal the top 2 Hexes and 2 Boons. Pair each Hex with a Boon. Each other player chooses and receives one of the Hexes. Then, receive each Boon paired with a chosen Hex. Discard all revealed Hexes and Boons.
This card has poor scaling (you're much more likely to get the 1 Boon you want if there are multiple players choosing the Hexes, and it creates a weird weight on the second player to choose the same Hex to avoid improving the Boon selection) and absolutely monstrous resolution time.  +Cards are an especially bothersome benefit on Fate/Doom cards: The only Fates/Dooms that aren't stop cards only give Boons/Hexes once because the resolution speed of Boons/Hexes themselves are already slow enough.

Sacked Town
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $4
+1 Card, +1 Action. Choose one: Each other player with 4 or more cards in hand discards a card; or each other player draw until they have 5 cards in hand, gaining a Curse per card drawn.
Being able to combine it with something like Militia could work out (possibly more for the fun of the theme than actual balance), but it is probably worthwhile to make Sacked Town on its own give out 1 Curse at most.  3 Sacked Towns giving 2 Curses sounds tough.
Ultimately, I don't think this should be a choice to avoid politics in 3-player games.

Dowry
Types: Treasure, Attack
Cost: $3
$1, +1 Buy. Each other player discards a card or pays 1VP to you, their choice. (They may pick an option they can't do.)
Setup: Each player gains 3VP.
...utterly insane 4-6 player...
Slightly harsh but I agree that you need to be slightly insane if you play Dominion with more than 4 players.
Frankly, you have to be a little soft in the head to play in 4-player.  The game is at least functional in 4-player, so I agree with BBobb that a card not working at that count is a major problem.

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Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #105: Attack with Choices
« on: February 15, 2021, 08:01:34 am »
Quote
Warlock
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $5
+3 Cards.  Choose a card in the Supply or reveal a card from your hand costing at most $3: Each other player with at least 5 cards in hand discards a copy of it, or reveals they can't.  Each other player who didn't discard a copy of it gains a copy of it.
Warlock is a drawing Curser with extra abilities.  I've actually played with this thing before, and it tends to begin by hitting Coppers to try to hold down other players' decks before shifting to Cursing.

You select a card and each other player with 5 cards in hand discards a copy of it, so you can slap Coppers, Silvers, and Villages out of players' hands.  If a player either doesn't have a copy of it to discard, or has 4 or fewer cards in hand, they gain a copy of the chosen card.  When hitting multiple players, You can't so easily target a player in 3+player games because it gives copies of cards to players that don't have them: You hit a Village out of one player's hand, but give another player a Village.
It is limited to cards costing at most $3 so you can't try to hand Provinces to players to force a game-end, nor unduly target players with Golds.

I'd appreciate help wording this to be clearer and more succinct, if it isn't sufficiently so already.

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Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #104: Raise the Ceiling
« on: February 06, 2021, 04:37:38 pm »

Quote
Toady
Types: Action
Cost: $3P
Name a card. Reveal the top 2 cards of your deck and then put them into your hand. If either was the named card or a Potion, play this again. Otherwise, +1 Buy.
A variation on +2 Cards and +1 Buy.  You get more cards if you find a Potion or can name one of the two cards you draw.  Its cost has you buying Toadies when your deck has a bit more variety than just Coppers and Estates.

6
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New Weekly Contest: Fan Card Mechanics
« on: February 04, 2021, 05:59:07 pm »
(With apologies to Gubump for its similiarites, as I made this yesterday and only got around to uploading it today)

Quote
Saint
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+1 Buy, +$2
When you gain or trash this, +1 Worshipper for each differently named card you have in play costing at least $3.
Saint is a $4-cost Woodcutter that comes and goes with some Worshippers based on the variety of your better cards.  Cards need to cost at least $3 to minimize games in which opening with a Worshipper is possible.  You can still do it with Pooka (a wash anyway), Nomad Camp (getting 2 Woodcutters to trash 1 Estate), and Fool.  If you get multiple Worshippers, one can be spent trashing the Saint to double-dip its ability.

Buy a Saint turn 3 or 4 for +1 Worshipper to trash an Estate.  Buy it turn 5 or 6 for at least +2 Worshippers to trash an Estate and then the Saint later for +3 Worshippers or more.

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Ice Cutter
Types: Action
Cost: $3
Gain a card costing up to $6. If it cost at least $5, gain a Snow. If you haven't played a Snow this turn, gain a Snow.
Isn't the opening Ice Cutter, Ice Cutter too overpowered? Because you basically get two Gold, for the cost of 4 Snows. I'd change the cost to 4$, because that way you can't have that opening, and 4$ isn't much more expensive than 3$.
Double Ice Cutter doesn't sound great for the number of cards you lose persistently: Even Soothsayer and Bandit get in the way of your money density in a really meaningful way, and they only cost 1 card per shuffle rather than Ice Cutter's ~2.6 cards.  You would have to have good engine cards at $5, at which point managing Ice Cutter and its Snow sounds interesting enough to be worth the card being strong.  I want players to be able to open with Ice Cutter and a $4-cost, especially because a lot of good trash-for-benefits like Remodel, Salvager, and Remake cost $4.  Then players will more often have Snows and trash-for-benefits with them.

If it is all too much, would it be worthwhile to disallow Ice Cutter from gaining Victory cards to make it worse in the end-game?  Does that not really address any problem it might present with being a strong early-game Workshop variant?



Builder
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $5
Play a non-Command Action or Treasure card from the Supply costing up to $5. Gain 2 Snows.
I think it is worth making players "Gain and then set aside" the card for clarity.
Back before Command cards were invented, Overlord and cards like it were discussed as gaining and playing the card in question, which was never eliminated for being too strong, but always for running the piles too fast.  I imagine Builder will have big problems piling out multiplayer games, but maybe the Snow gaining will throttle it well enough.

Avalanche $5 Action - Duration
Now and at the start of each of your turns while this is in play, +2 Cards and set aside a Snow from its pile (under this).
At the start of Clean-Up, if you gained a Victory card this turn, or the Snow pile is empty, discard this and the set-aside Snow.
It's a thematically cute idea, but I don't think it works very well due to big scaling issues in multiplayer.  There are always 30 Snows, regardless of player count, which means its self-discard will be more or less relevant based on the number of players.  It is likely much too costly when you can't megaturn, especially because in the worst-case it is +2 Cards and gain a Snow (if you're gaining a Victory card on the turn you play it).

Hearth
+4 Cards, +1 Buy.
Instead of paying this card's cost, you may gain 3 Snows.
$7 - Action
Losing 3 cards in a shuffle seems a paltry drawback to a Council Room that doesn't give other players a Laboratory every time you play it.

Mountaineer
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+$7. -$1 per card in your hand. (You can't go below $0.)
When you gian this, each player gains 2 Snows.
It's fun to put +$7 on a card.  It's cute that it turns Snow into Coppers.  It's a big problem that Throne Room + Mountaineer gets you a Province.  Even from a basic hand Mountaineer nets you +$3.  With good sifting like Cellar or Warehouse, getting to a Mountaineer with a Silver in hand is $8.  Further, Snow hurts less if you have Mountaineers (because reducing your hand is not as bad), so once one players starts buying Mountaineers, the best thing to do is to follow, exacerbating the problem.
Mountaineer as written could easily cost $6.

Arctic Castle - $4, Action - Victory - Arctic
Each player reveals their hand, then gains a Snow for every 2 cards revealed that are not Snow (rounded down).
Worth the greater of 2VP or 1VP per 3 Snow cards you have (round down).
When you buy this, you may discard an Action card to gain a card from the Snow Gear pile. If you discarded Snow, +1VP.
This could be totally fine, but has run afoul of a high amount of complexity that makes it very difficult to read and evaluate as a judge.  I highly recommend simplifying through eliminating the Snow Gear cards.  I also have a remark to make about distributing Snow.

Ice Mage
Choose one: Play an action card (except for Ice Mage) form your hand twice; or +3 Cards +1 Buy; or +2$ and each other player gains 2 Snows.
When you gain a card, you may discard this card from your hand, to instead gain a card that costs exactly 2$ more than it.
7$  Action - Reaction - Attack
The "instead gain" wording typically goes with "would gain," but due to a variety of complications, that wording is abrogated.  If you use the modern "when gain"/"exchange" wording, you aren't required to discard the card to make it function correctly, which is neat.  I have issues with giving out Snow as an Attack, though.

On Attacking with Snow:
I believe that using Snow as a junk card dealt to other players via an Attack is a bad idea because there are always 30 Snow cards in the Snow pile.  It is much easier to bury players in Snow forever because the amount doesn't vary the way Curses do.  The junking is weaker than Curses, but it never really relents because players can continuously redistribute the snow.  Even if you don't lose the Snow "split" so bad, a winning player can return the Snow cards and dole them out again faster than you can under all that Snow.
Snow Queen
Types: Action, Duration, Attack
Cost: $4
You may trash a card from your hand to gain a card costing exactly $1 more than it. Each other player gains a Snow. At the start of your next turn, if this is still in play, each other player gains a Snow.
While this is in play, when another player plays a Snow, you may draw a card. If you did, discard this.
Abominable Snowman - $4 - Action - Attack
+$2. Each other player discards the top card of their deck, then gains a Snow on top of their deck.
Wintery Woods • $5 • Action - Attack - Duration
At the start of your next turn, +3 Cards. Until then, when another player plays an Action card that says +2 Actions, they gain a Snow.
With that in mind, Carline's Snow Queen, emtzalex's Arctic Castle, LibraryAdventurer's Abominable Snowman, Meta's Ice Mage, and spineflu's Wintery Woods run afoul of this.  Wintery Woods and Ice Mage even multiply the number of Snows being given.  This is doubly bad if the card in question help the player handle the Snow like Ice Mage, Snow Queen, and Arctic Castle, as it pushes players to buy the card if anyone buys one.
I've played with Cursers that can resupply the Curse pile: While being buried under junk forever is an interesting experience in one game, it is not an experience that needs much repeating.  These cards may make the experience too common.  Of course, Snow is easier to handle than Curses, so my read may be off, but I am wary just the same.

Ice Castle | Action | $5
After playing your next card this turn, trash it. If it's a Treasure, +$2. If it's not, +2 Cards and gain a card costing up to $1 more.
When you gain or trash this, each player gains a Snow.
Snowdrift - Action Attack Duration, $4 cost.
At the start of your next turn, +$2. Until then, when another player trashes a card other than a Snow, they gain a Snow.
When you gain this, you may play it.
anordinaryman's Ice Castle, Aquila's Snowdrift, and Something_Smart's Mountaineer brush against this, but are reasonable by only triggering on-gain/on-trash of cards, significantly limiting the ability to bury other players in Snow.

8

Quote
Ice Cutter
Types: Action
Cost: $3
Gain a card costing up to $6. If it costs at least $5, gain a Snow. If you haven't played a Snow this turn, gain a Snow.
Ice Cutter is a super-Workshop at the same price that gives you Snow for the privilege.
You can dodge the first Snow by gaining a card at Workshop's normal price range.
You can dodge the second Snow by aligning Ice Cutter with a Snow.

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2: Second, decide if you want to judge or not
Contest #33 ended and the winner was silent for a time.  Users expected the runner-up (me, in that case, which is why I remember) to take over without any correspondence from the winner.  Should we instantiate formalized guidelines to a runner-up judging without the winner's consent?  How long is reasonable to wait if the winner doesn't respond?  How fast is unreasonable to move?

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Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Wilderness
« on: January 29, 2021, 09:24:07 pm »
Most of my forays into card design have been looking at the strategy side, aiming for high skill. Then I was seeing low skill, less serious cards, my mind opened up to their appeal and I thought, how would I go about making them? I took some mechanics that seemed to fit, gelled them together, and now they've almost turned into an expansion.
As an initial impression, Resources remind me a lot of Boons in that it is a random effect, which sounds fun and exciting for less skilled players, but ends up complicated enough that said players are unhappy trying to use them.

Quote
Refuge - Action Resource, $2 cost.
+1 Card, +2 Actions. Discard a card.
Quote
Water Source - Action Resource, $2 cost.
+1 Card, +1 Action. If you have exactly 4 cards in hand, trash one of them.
Quote
Ore - Action Resource, $2 cost.
+$2. If you have a Gatherer or another Resource in play, +1 Action.
Quote
Wood - Action Resource, $2 cost.
+1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Buy
Quote
Fruit - Action Resource, $2 cost.
+2 Cards. You may discard a card. Draw until you have 5 cards in hand. You may put a card from your hand onto your deck for +1 Action.
Refuge and Wood are nice.
Water Source is fine, but very luck-based.  Its trashing ability is challenging to activate at the best of times.  Disallowing trashing Victory cards could be a better way to keep it in check.
Ore and Fruit are too complicated and weak compared to the others.

Display Case - Treasure Gatherer, $4 cost.
+1 Buy. +$1 per differently named Trinket you have in play.
Display Case becomes a Gold with a Buy for having the 3 cantrip Resources (Fruit, Water Source, and Wood) in play, so it will probably be incredibly good whenever you can get +Buys to feed it the good Resources.  Getting the first move with Wood on top might be a big deal.

Craft - Action Gatherer, $3 cost.
+1 Action. Trash a card from your hand. If it's a... Fruit, gain an Action; Ore, gain a Treasure; Refuge, +4 Cards; Water Source, +4VP; Wood, +$4; none of these, gain a Resource.
Craft is a mess.  The idea is surely to trash Resources for different benefits than they ordinarily produce (otherwise you'd rather play the Resource), but that makes the list incredibly difficult to internalize.  In terms of the list itself: Fruit and Ore are awful, so trashing them for such gains is fantastic; Water Source is a silly number of VP (especially when it doesn't split); and Refuge and Wood make sense (+Cards because you don't need +Actions, +$ because you don't need +Buy).  Trashing Coppers and Estates for a Resource is fun, though.

11
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #102: Unspent
« on: January 28, 2021, 12:53:08 pm »
My favorites (besides mine) are 1) Goods, 2) Spiv, and 3) Sisterhood. Now that I'm looking at them again, I think Sisterhood could cost $2 (compare to Squire which always gives +$1 and has the Silver option, but Sisterhood is more flexible between actions and buys).

I think Dilemma is too strong. Eating an extra action or two is not enough of a drawback for +4 cards and +1 Action IMO, and it doesn't always eat an extra action.
mandioca15's Spiv was definitely on my shortlist.

Dilemma could be too strong.  It offers a nice variation on non-terminal draw that is not as brainless as that of Den of Sin, Stables, and Laboratory without becoming difficult to resolve, which is why it has received my utmost vote.  If testing proves it to be overwhelming or monolithic, either increasing its cost to $6 (shout out to Chappy7 for the then similarity of Dilemma to Freight Ship) or dropping its draw to +3 Cards instead of +4 Cards would each be perfectly reasonable balancing attempts considering the ability to weave extra Actions into it with its own +4 Actions or to feed its draw with cheaper sources of +Actions.

Thanks a lot Fragasnap! Feels a little unreal to have won. I have a flight today that i need to take in about 2 hours, but after that i should be available. Could someone Message me with the step by steps for what your supposed to do when you win a week? In the meantime, i'll try to think of a good theme for next week.
All you need to do is post a new thread in this forum with a theme of any sort and then choose a winner and 1 or 2 runner-ups (in case the winner can't or doesn't want to run the next contest) after a week.
Just give the thread a title
Code: [Select]
Weekly Design Contest #103: Xand replace X with a snappy description of your contest theme.

Doing a write-up on all the cards is not technically required, but users appreciate it.  I recommend doing some write-ups throughout the week (and just keep them in a document somewhere) instead of trying to write them all at once.  It makes it easier to ensure you catch all of them and makes it easier to keep to the schedule.
It is expected to post a warning somewhere from 36 to 12 hours prior to your final judgment as well.

If it's all too much pressure, you can just let us know and Something_Smart, as runner up, will take the reigns.

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Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #102: Unspent
« on: January 27, 2021, 02:17:55 pm »
ENTRY
COMMENT


Quote
Buying Power
Types: Event
Cost: $0
If you do not already have it, take the State called Bull Market or Bear Market; whether or not you took it, flip it over.
Quote
Bear Market
Types: State
Setup: In games using Buying Power, place one copy of this on the table with this side up.
Quote
Bull Market
Types: State
When you flip this over to this side, +$1.
+Buys are a strange resource as players can rarely use 3 Buys and 4 rarer still.  An effect like this is largely a buff to Market Squares and their ilk as producing large number of Buys is somewhat uncommon.  Grand Market and Worker's Village hardly need the boost, but Market Square and Market will be happy to see it.
The biggest issue I have is its implementation.  Because it uses a shared State and the first buy of Buying Power nets that +$1 where the second buy (regardless of who buys it) will flip back to Bear Market for no effect.  This is a large first player advantage.  Further than that, in many games the first player to produce an extra Buy will take Buying Power even if the coin isn't needed simply because it disables the other player(s) flipping to Bull Market.

I'd much prefer it lean into its Artifact-like nature and be reworded to something like "If you don't have Bull Market, take it. Otherwise, return it." And Bull Market be an Artifact that reads "When you take this, +$1." Then in low-Buy games, +Buys can still turn into +$1, but each player gets that opportunity back only when someone takes Bull Market from them or they set aside time to rid themselves of it.


Con Artist
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $3
+$2. You may spend a buy. If you do, each other player reveals the top two cards of their deck, trashes a revealed Treasure other than Copper, and discards the rest. If a treasure was trashed by this, +$1.
Con Artist is a Bandit payload if you can feed it a Buy.  The Bandit Attack is a somewhat frustrating trashing effect because of how regularly it misses, so you can really only afford to spend a +Buy if you have more than you can possibly use anyway and you can't proc the ability with expectation of getting that +$1.  Without really easy sources of +Buy, you probably will just skip Con Artist.

I'd really prefer the card have more consistency, especially for spending a +Buy which is often an expensive cost.


Crooked Quarter
Types: Action
Cost: $6
+2 Cards, +2 Actions, +$2. If your hand size is even, discard a card. If your remaining Actions are even, -1 Action. If your $ is even, -$1.
Crooked Quarter is in its ideal a Lost City + double Peddler, but will typically be most used as a Fugitive + double Peddler.  As a $6-cost card, the amount of processing time this card demands might be okay.  At the same time, I think on the games in which the Grand Market pile is emptied (which will be much more common as Grand Market games are guaranteed to have +Buy), and how much more annoying those games would be to play if I had to think about each Grand Market I played.

Any one of these three conditions would be fine, but all three of them is overwhelming.


Dilemma
Types: Action
Cost: $5
If you have more than one Action, you may spend all Actions for +4 Cards and +1 Action. If you didn't, +4 Actions.
Dilemma is a big draw that eats all but 1 of your Actions, and a minimum of 2 Actions to be used.  In order to be sure it always has use, you can always produce +4 Actions with it.  2 Dilemmas produce a hand of 7 cards just like 2 Laboratories would.  Smartly, rather than giving a mere +3 Actions to activate itself, Dilemma gives +4 Actions to allow the player to play an extra card in the middle.  With other sources of +Action, you can theoretically increase your hand a lot.

I don't think the card presents much of a dilemma, but it is a compelling Laboratory/Lost City sort of thing.


Freight Ship
Types: Action
Cost: $6
+3 Actions. You may spend up to 4 actions to draw that many cards.
Paying $6 to get a Village is pretty bad compared to Border Village.  Using Nobles as a more similar rubric, $6-cost splitters are usually pretty bad at splitting. If the game has some ludicrous form of +Actions otherwise, you can also play this as a Hunting Grounds, but then you're spending +1 Action on a timely Moat, which is a pretty small benefit.  This looks mostly to me like a super expensive Smithy that you can play as a Laboratory if you draw it at the wrong time. 

It looks perfectly balanced but not very interesting.


Goods
Types: Treasure
Cost: $4
$1, +1 Buy. If at the end of your Buy phase you have no Buys left, +2 Coffers.
In games using this, all Events cost $1 more and when you buy an Event, +1 Buy.
Uncertainties regarding buying events aside, Goods is immensely similar to a non-terminal Merchant Guild, where its condition makes it less explosive in multiple.  (1 Goods buying 2 cards nets +2 Coffers, which is the same as Merchant Guild; 2 Goods buying 3 cards nets +4 Coffers, which is 2 less than Merchant Guild.)  The in-games-using-this effect has become a major annoyance trying to address certain combos: While those combos should probably be addressed, the way it serves as a bandage to the card makes it distracting.

I quite like triggering on using all buys.  If it had a more unique the function I might be more forgiving of its clumsy in-games-using-this effect.


Illicit Workshop
Types: Night
Cost: $4
If you have no $ and no cards in hand, gain a card costing up to $5. Otherwise, trash a card from your hand.
Illicit Workshop is a super-Workshop or an awful trasher depending on whether or not you are able to empty your hand and spend all your coins.  This is neat because it encourages you to spend all of your coins in a way you might not normally.  Further, it doesn't need to worry about emptying the Supply because you can only use one in a turn.

It is unique as a bad trasher that turns into a good card in a fashion more meaningful than a card like Trade Route.  I am worried that the whims of a money spike or poorly timed Estate will give the card a lot of frustration on second shuffles.


Merchant Quarter
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+3 Cards, +1 Buy. At the start of Clean-up, you may pay $2 for +2 Coffers.
+3 Cards and +1 Buy is a powerful effect evidenced by Margrave's overbearing strength and the comparative reigning in of Tragic Hero and Barge.  Merchant Quarter gives a double Pageant instead, which seems better than Barge (you get the draw and Buy first and decide to lose resources later), but not unreasonably so, as paying $2 is similar to discarding 2 cards.  Funny Wine Merchant combo.

This seems pretty alright.  I'd like something more unique.
By the bye, if you're trying to touch up Sanitarium's wording, consider "at the start of your Buy phase, if you have no unused Actions, you may..."


Pawnbroker
Types: Night
Cost: $5
Trash a card from your hand. If you have any Actions remaining (Actions, not Action cards), gain a card costing up to $3 more. Otherwise, gain a card costing up to $2 more.
Unless I'm misreading this, Pawnbroker is just wildly better Expand.  If you have an +Action, it is Expand (and, because it does not consume your Action for so doing, any other Pawnbrokers in your hand are also Expands), if you don't have an +Action, it is a Night Remodel.  Doing anything other than turning everything into Pawnbrokers and then Provinces is surely a losing move.

Non-terminal Remodels are pretty strong, so with a smaller bonus for having an Action, this could be good fun.


Promote
Types: Event
Cost: $3+
You may overpay for this, to trash a card you would discard from play this turn. Then gain a card costing the amount you overpaid more than it.
Promote is Enhance from play.  The ability to both play a card and trash it makes it a fair bit better than Enhance, which explains the cost hike.  You can also throw more coins into it to get more value from it.  Promoting Coppers requires $5 to get to a $2-cost card and $6 for a $3-cost which is a fairly poor comparison to Trade.  Promoting Silvers has to spending $5 to lose a Silver and get the $5-cost you could've bought anyway.

Outside of another nice way to trash Actions that have aged out or tossing $4 to turn a $4-cost into a Duchy in the end-game, Promote doesn't seem to have a lot of use cases to keep it sufficiently differentiated from similar Events.


Shipping Village
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+1 Card, +3 Buys. Ignore any further +Buys you get this turn.
While this is in play, you may spend 1 Buy for +1 Action.
Only your first 2 Buys are of high value, so being able to generate a few and then start trading them for much more valuable +Actions sounds interesting on the face of it, but in practice it seems like one will struggle to use Shipping Village as a lone source of +Action.  Much like Snowy Village, it generates a lot of "+Actions" in itself, but then disables all others, causing other Shipping Villages to be Ruined Libraries.

In thinking about it, it bears more than superficial similarities to Snowy Village, and I find it hard to get excited for that reason.


Sisterhood
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+3 Actions. At the start of your Buy phase, you may convert each of your unused Actions into +1 Buy.
Sisterhood is a variation of the splitter with a Buy, where it gives anywhere from +3 Actions to +3 Buys (or more) on the player's choice.  Shades of Squire, which can also give +Actions or the same number of +Buys.  Donald X. has gone on record before that cards that produce a large number of +Buys are trouble for the typically precipitous drop in value of your fourth Buy in a turn, making such cards either expensive when you don't need the +Buys or silly when you can use them.  This generally avoids that problem by being able to act as a major splitter in opposite parts to the +Buys it otherwise provides.

I personally won't like it because of how small its benefit is for the frustration that +3 Actions beget on a stop-card.  I've played with a fair number of such cards and I always end up unhappy for having far too many +Actions when they clump and then far too many terminals because of a shuffle.


Souk
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Buy. You may spend 3 Buys to gain a Gold.
Souk is a Market Square at $4 where its extra ability is to trade 3 Buys for a Gold, as opposed to Worker's Village which just gives +2 Actions.  Compared to Worker's Village, it is a small benefit, but it will be bought often enough as a smooth source of +Buy.  Proccing its extra ability requires that you generate at least 1 Buy prior to playing the Souk (often playing 2 Souks will be the easiest way to do that), but unless you're getting a fourth +Buy, you're trading your ~5 card hand for that Gold, which is a middling trade.  Buying 3 Souks in an attempt to regularly trigger its ability and then actually buy something sounds frustrating.  A Souk flood is sure to be weak (5 $4-cost cantrips in a turn to gain 2 Golds),

It seems fine.  It think it would end up feeling frustrating when betting on whether or not one can generate an Buy to do something with the Golds that earlier turns generated.


Spiv
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card other than Spiv costing up to $4. You may use a Buy. If you do, play it.
A Workshop with a benefit that permits spending a +Buy to immediately gain an play the gained card (A +Buy for a Lost City, effectively).  With a good source of +Buy, this is sure to be a top tier Workshop.  It definitely powers up any available cantrip to the nth degree moreso than most Workshops, which makes me worry about piles in games with the likes of Worker's Village or Market Square.  With a less consistent source of Buys, it will be a niche effect that could result in frustrating 0 Buy turns.  Its ability to play Night cards mid-turn is probably not worth the confusion of being able to "play" Victory cards.

Deceptively simple with room for a fair number of tricks and traps.


Spree
Types: Event
Cost: $0
Set aside a Copper. If you do, +1 Buy next turn. (and discard the set aside Copper at the end of your next turn)
Spree is permits you to transfer a Buy which you couldn't make use of a Buy into another turn.  In that way, it reminds me of Tactician, but without having its more exciting combos.

I think I'd like it better if it played the Copper to help along the deferred Buy, or even provided extra Buys proper with +2 Buys.


Spyglass
Types: Treasure, Duration
Cost: $5
$2. If you have no Actions left, at the start of your next turn, +1 Card, +1 Action.
Spyglass is a Silver that gives you a Lost City next turn so long as you are actually consuming those +Actions.  A smart design, as the effect naturally encourages building around terminal Actions, and if you ever miss you're left with a bunch of Treasures you can play anyway.

Looks like fun.


Taxidermy
Types: Project
Cost: $3
Once per turn: You may spend an Action for +1 Card.
A Faithful Hound you have every turn if you want it.  Its timing is inspecific, so I assume I can do it at any point during the turn.  You can use a leftover Action to get a 6-card hand at Clean-Up or you can use Caravan Guard on another player's turn to draw an extra card.

It is so esoteric, it sounds like a mistake, but as I think about it, I kind of like the effect.


Tomb Robbers
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+1 Card, +1 Action. Choose one: +1 Coffers per 4 Coffers token you have; or at the end of your Buy phase, you may pay $1 for +1 Coffers.
When you buy this, you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpaid, +1 Coffers.
Tomb Robbers is a cantrip that can be powered up into a super-Baker or else is a Pageant.  It has an immediately dangerous overpay for Coffers.  Donald X. has gone on record that getting lots of Coffers is dangerous, and overpay-for-Coffers is itself really strong.  Each Tomb Robbers helps you get to that dangerous threshold where all your Tomb Robbers become Coffers generators that buff each other up.

I am immediately leery of such a scaling effect, especially in buffing itself so much.  I would like to see how much trouble this is as a near mono-strategy (as it obviously needs +Buys to be able to use the Coffers it generates).  For now, I am too scared of the card to okay it.


Tough Customer
Types: Night, Attack
Cost: $4
You may spend a Buy to have each other player gain a Curse. You may spend an Action for +1 Villager. You may spend $1 for +1 Coffer.
Tough Customer lets you buy a Curse for other players, trade an Action for a Villager ala Patron, and Pageant.  An Event that gives out Curses would be bad news, and this edges close to that, but it consumes a card and is timely, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.  The loss of a Buy will often mean doing little else, which possibly encourages trading your unused resources for Coffers and Villagers.

It is a nice low-cost Curser. I might want it to do a little more for the player of it. As it stands, it looks kind of Young Witch levels of bad.


Wandering Beggar (top 5)
Types: Action, Duration
+2 Cards. The player to your right reveals their hand prior to their Clean-Up.
At the start of your next turn: Per Treasure revealed by the player to your right: +$1. +$X equal to the unspent $X the player to your right.
Quote
Tradesman (bottom 5)
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+1 Buy, +$1.
At the start of your Clean-Up, spend each $3 unspent $ for +2 Coffers.
Wandering Beggar is a complex Duration draw that later gives coins if the preceding player cannot use all of theirs.  No tracking issues here as the Wandering Beggar is sitting on the table.  If that number ends up regularly being $2 or more, stacking Wandering Beggars will be crazy.  If Tradesman is successfully dug out of the pile, it is likely that Wandering Beggar is generating a fair number of coins which will make Tradesman's Buy and poor Coin-to-Coffers conversion more useful.  If that were to occur however, I can't imagine that the game isn't accelerated to a degree that will render Tradesman's appearance too late anyway.

Wandering Beggar is a cool idea, but its value is primarily derived by one player getting unlucky between spiking coins or wanting buys, when I would prefer it care more about players doing things they want to do anyway.  Tradesman is a largely needless complication.


Quote
Woodsman
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+1 Buy, +$2
In games using this, during your Buy phase you may spend 1 Buy to gain a Secluded Village, 2 Buys to gain an Enchanted Forest, or 3 Buys to gain a Magic Axe.
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Secluded Village
Types: Action
Cost: $2*
+2 Actions. Reveal your hand. If you have no Action cards in hand, +2 Buys.
(This is not in the Supply.)
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Enchanted Forest
Types: Action
Cost: $4*
+1 Card, +1 Action, +$1
At the start of Clean-Up, if you have any unused Buys, you may put this onto your deck.
(This is not in the Supply.)
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Magic Axe
Types: Treasure
Cost: $5*
$2, +1 Buy. At the start of Clean-Up, you may trash a card you would discard from play this turn to gain a card costing up to $1 more than it.
(This is not in the Supply.)
Woodsman is just Woodcutter.  It comes with an In-games-using-this that adds three whole piles of extra cards in the form of an awful splitter, a repeatable Peddler, and a Treasure Improve.  Buying a Woodsman in order to access Enchanted Forest is frankly a possibility, and a nice buff for Woodcutter.  Often you're trading a $5-cost buy, but you're occasionally getting a better deal than that.

I have only mild issues with a card that is simply an upgrade of an existing card, even if that card is cut.  I have bigger issues with the amount of complexity, table space, and card space this consumes with the large number of extra cards it employs.  I quite like Enchanted Forest: A lovely Peddler variation which works so easily as a non-Supply pile card, and I'd love to see a set leverage such a non-Supply pile card across multiple Kingdom cards (similarly to Horses).  It looks like a great evergreen card that multiple cards could gain, even moreso than the comparatively messy Spirit pile.  I would look more favorably upon a $4-cost Woodsman that itself gave permission to grab an Enchanted Forest (rather than an in-games-using-this effect).


Quote
Workhouse
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+$2. You may take Exhausted. If you do, +1 Coffers.
When you gain this, play any number of Treasures from your hand, and spend any amount of Coffers for +$1 each. Then pay any amount of $; +1 Villager per $1 paid.
Quote
Exhausted
Types: State
When you next have unused Actions during your Action phase (Actions, not Action cards), immediately return this and -1 Action.
Workhouse is a terminal Silver or a super-terminal Gold that can be "overpaid" for Villagers.  The wording to permit overpaying for an on-gain effect is beleaguered: I'd just turn the thing into a proper overpay.  Other comparable cards would be Embargo and Duchess as terminal payload at $2, which are weak and this is stronger mostly for its on-gain, or Lackeys as a one-time source of Villagers, but this being nothing but coins is probably weaker.

I really love your Exhausted state as a mechanism for a set.  It is simple and compelling.  Workhouse itself I don't like as much.  Terminal Silvers are very expensive in terms of +Actions, so unless you're paying at least $3 for its on-gain effect, you're probably not getting much value out of those Villagers other than feeding the Workhouse itself, and even +$2 and +1 Coffers seems bad for $5.



Show: LibraryAdventurer's Taxidermy
Taxidermy
Types: Project
Cost: $3
Once per turn: You may spend an Action for +1 Card.
Place: Something_Smart's Illicit Workshop
Illicit Workshop
Types: Night
Cost: $4
If you have no $ and no cards in hand, gain a card costing up to $5. Otherwise, trash a card from your hand.
Win: fika monster's Dilemma
Dilemma
Types: Action
Cost: $5
If you have more than one Action, you may spend all Actions for +4 Cards and +1 Action. If you didn't, +4 Actions.

13
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #102: Unspent
« on: January 26, 2021, 10:03:05 pm »
Judgment is coming very soon.
Please ensure your entry is at the top of the thread.

14
Surveyor doesn't have a very strong interaction with Astrolabe. It has a complicated relationship with Astrolabe. Yes, obviously Surveyor would be too powerful by itself. So would Plunder. So would Fortune. But it's not on its own, it sits at the bottom of a split pile, so that's not an argument against it. Surveyor only ever enters the game when enough Astrolabes were bought, and if you're using Astrolabe to its full potential you cannot use Surveyor to its full potential, and vice versa.
It seems to me that Astrolabe as a Splitter+Coppersmith into Surveyor to refill your hand into a second Astrolabe as a Coppersmith that sets up next turn looks pretty strong in a monolithic fashion.  Playing a third Astrolabe to return to your Action phase a second time seems bad, but you're already getting at least 1 Province from a hand of "Silvers" refilled to 6 which can have the same "Silvers" in it again.
Something that generally keeps most draw-to-X cards in check is that they don't come with baked-in productive hand reduction.  Minion is a top tier $5-cost card for doing that in a fashion arguably weaker than Astrolabe/Surveyor.

I think [Curio Merchant] is too much of a must buy, at any price. If you get Curio Merchants and your opponent doesn't, the game's already been decided. +Villagers are so much stronger than +Actions that the fact that you have to discard a card doesn't make up for that gap, and as a result, I'd say Automaton is arguably stronger than Champion (other than Champion's Attack immunity, of course), even ignoring the fact that you can start getting Coffers instead once you have enough Villagers.
I agree that Curio Merchant's +3 Cards and +1 Buy is such a strong effect that the Artifact is a shocking addition.  I disagree that Automaton is so comparable to Champion, as discarding a card for a Villager is an appreciable cost when you will so regularly spend that Villager immediately.  Automaton attached to a simple Smithy could be given a balanced cost, I think.  I might want Curio Merchant to check the token before flipping it to make acquiring the Automaton a little harder.

[The way Reactions work] is indeed problematic, and I'm not sure if the wording you suggested earlier would fix it since you could just reveal the same Maudlin Witch even if it says "reveal a Maudlin Witch".

I did want it to allow you to trash more than one card from your hand with multiple gains, but I don't really see a way around it other than discarding/setting it aside.
Maudlin Witch is my favorite entry for its potential, even if its implementation could use work.  I'd recommend changing its Reaction to
Code: [Select]
If your Journey token is face up: When you gain a card, you may reveal this from a hand of at least 5 cards to trash a non-Action from your hand. This deflates its trashing function (unless you're massively increasing your hand size) and makes its Attack more effective (as those "blocking" it will sometimes lose a Copper).  I stand by wanting its Attack to gain a Silver, though.  Silver is junk slightly less often than Copper is junk.

15
Weekly Design Contest / Weekly Design Contest #102: Unspent
« on: January 20, 2021, 12:30:12 pm »
Previous judgments I ran: Contest #23: Curses, Contest #35: No-Vanilla, Contest #69: Pseudo-Terminal

Weekly Design Contest #102: Unspent
Make a Kingdom card or WELP that cares about the +Actions, Buys, or Coins that you have.  Consider using the resource as a condition or a reference, or perhaps directly spending it in some unusual way.  Be wary of tracking issues with these invisible resources.

Current examples include but are not necessarily limited to: Basilica, Diadem, Pageant, Storyteller, and Wine Merchant.  Overpay effects count, which adds Doctor, Herald, Masterpiece, and Stonemason to the list.  Free "terminal" Events that can be bought multiple times like Delay are a unique way to "spend" your Buys.  Donald X. once talked about an old Diadem variant that was a terminal Action that jumped back up into your hand, which could definitely be counted as "caring about the +Actions you have."  I'll do my best not to discredit any entries.

All submissions:
Find Judgment here!

16
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: On Elegance
« on: January 19, 2021, 06:28:06 pm »
The Attack on Scrying Pool is bad because the Spy-Attack inherently bogs the pace of the game down on a non-terminal card, much less affecting the Elegance of the card.  The problem is not its Elegance so much as its Sleekness.
I agree that the way it resolves is also a problem (and even the bigger problem), but I think it would be bad due to Elegance reasons even if it resolves flawlessly.
I concur.  My complex sentence made unclear my agreement.

I think your explanation shows that balance is not a fundamental value. Both 8 debt Donate and 8$ Donate are strong, but one is a bad design and the other arguably a good one. There just isn't a straight line from strength to quality.
The value of balance is perhaps more obvious at the lower end of the spectrum.  Explorer being an unbalanced card—for being much too weak—makes it a bad design regardless of any of its other qualities.

To expand: While elegance, novelty, sleekness, stability, and even balance are all values in card design, not every card excels in all areas. (In fact, one naturally sacrifices elegance when moving towards novelty.  Consider Butcher, Inheritance, Mountain Pass, or Travellers generally.)  In this particular case, $8-cost Donate is worse because of how much stability the Event loses (as acquiring a card or Event should be considered part of its function).  Even in its published 8-debt form, Donate is a worse design because it is too strong which crushes out variety of supplemental trashers in Kingdoms with it.  It is, however, highly novel, incredibly stable, and reasonably sleek.  If it did not have those latter qualities, the poor balance would be of much more concern for invalidating other cards.

As a thought experiment: If Donate was limited to trashing "up to X" cards instead of "any number," is there a number X that would it make it more balanced? Further, would sacrificing Elegance be worth the exchange? (As faust points out, the simplicity and modality that begets remembering an effect is a part of Elegance, and "any number" is easier to remember than a specific number.)

17
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: On Elegance
« on: January 19, 2021, 06:33:06 am »
I'm afraid you're correct; the description length metric doesn't work in this case. I also wouldn't describe bard as elegant.

I guess description length is probably a necessary criterion, and often tracks elegance closely, but it's not exactly the same thing.
For the most part, I concur on your discussion of Elegance and further expansion of Elegance being a compilation of several things.  We, as a forum, have discussed this sort of thing before that cards have three elements when it comes to evaluating them, which are Elegance, Novelty, and Balance, but to expand on this I'd like to propose the following five elements:
  • Elegance, as described above, which can possibly be expanded into several elements (such as Clarity, Simplicity, and Holism)
  • Novelty, or "excitement" as listed above.
  • Balance, which seems self-explanatory.
  • Sleekness
  • Stability
This is why the attack on Scrying Pool is bad. Without it, it would be "a card that draws until it hits a non-Action card". Not bad. But now it's "a card that draws until it hits a non-action card and also Spy-attacks everyone". Why does it spy attack everyone?
The Attack on Scrying Pool is bad because the Spy-Attack inherently bogs the pace of the game down on a non-terminal card, much less affecting the Elegance of the card.  The problem is not its Elegance so much as its Sleekness.
Sleekness is the function of the card with respect to the physical mechanics of the game.  Scrying Pool lacks Sleekness because the Spy-Attack requires one player make a decision with respect to each player, which damages the speed of the game's resolution.  Vault and Bishop similarly lack Sleekness, to a lesser extent as the individual players make their own decisions and the cards in question are terminal.  Some other cards like Apothecary and Cartographer lack Sleekness because of the sheer amount of time it takes to look at 4 cards separate from your hand and then organize them.
Bard, as segura points out, has the Fate-card setup that many consider cumbersome. While that setup possibly detracts from its Elegance, it most certainly detracts more from its Sleekness.
Cards like Border Guard and Seer are straining against Sleekness in a way that cards like Apprentice and Merchant and don't.

However, neither elegance nor excitement imply being fun to play. They're at best necessary; they're definitely not sufficient. I think smuggerls is wonderfully simple and sounds exciting, but I happen to hate the way it actually plays. Similarly for Goatherd, Masquerade, and Possession. Turns out I don't like things that punish you for doing good things with your deck. I wouldn't have known that without playing.
Stability what the card does in its ideal circumstance in contrast to the opposite.
Smugglers is frustrating, not because it is a powerful gainer restricted by other players' gains, but because Smugglers's function is between "Gain a spammable $5-cost Action" and "Does literally nothing."  Goatherd is frustrating because one random player they gets cantrip trasher, but then another has super-Laboratories, down to chance.  Bard is an economic card with low stability because it will sometimes be a non-terminal Gold, but other times is practically Explorer.
These cards have low Stability, where draw and trashing cards like Smithy or Steward have middling stability, and payload like Scavenger and Monument tend to have high stability.

18
Village of the Dead
+1 Card, +1 Action. If u play this card the first time this turn, you may turn your Journey token over (it starts face up).
If your Journey token is facing up: +1$
Otherwise:+1 Action +1 Buy
Cost: 5   Action
Heirloom: Pumpkin Patch
$1
If your Journey token is facing up: +1$ +1 VP
Turn over your Journey token (it starts face up).
Cost: 4   Treasure Heirloom
Is it your intention that Pumpkin Patch produces $2 in your first shuffle?  I'm not a fan of such a change to the opening.  Is Pumpkin Patch's instruction "If your Journey token is face up: +$1 and +1VP and turn your token face down" or is it "If your Journey token is face up: +$1 and +1VP" and then either way "turn your Journey token over"?  I recommend maintaining consistency with other Journey token cards where turning the token face up is its stronger effect.

Snake Oil - $4
Treasure - Night
If it's your Buy phase: If your Journey token is face down (it starts face up), you may turn it over for +1 Buy and +$3. If you don't, +$2. If it's your Night phase, you may turn your Journey token over.
You could improve the wording by taking the +2$ out of the conditional, like so (with additional removal of some conditionals):
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+2$
If your Journey token is face down (it starts face up) or it's your Night phase, you may turn it over for +1 Buy, +1$.
(it technically now gives coins and Buys even in the Night phase, but that should not matter.)
Producing $ during the Night phase can technically matter for Wine Merchant, but that's just a fun coincidence.  The change is worth the simplicity (though I often prefer combining identical resource production as Giant does).
Either way, Snake Oil still looks amazingly worse than Fool's Gold.  3 Snake Oils ($12 in 3 Buys) with setup produce +1 Buy and +$7 or otherwise produce +$6 where 3 Fool's Golds ($6 in 3 Buys) always produce +$9.  +Buys are nice, but stop cards are expensive in their own right.

Maudlin Witch
Types: Action, Attack, Reaction
Cost: $4
+$2. You may turn your Journey token over. If it's face down, gain a Copper and each other player gains a Curse.
If your Journey token is face up: When you gain a card, you may reveal this from your hand to trash it.
This ought to take a wording from Watchtower, as its current wording is ambiguous as to whether you are trashing the gained card or the Maudlin Witch.
Code: [Select]
If your Journey token is face up: When you gain a card, you may reveal this from your hand, to trash that card.I'm not all too excited to see more really bad $4-cost Cursers, considering gaining a Copper is nearly as bad and moreover frustrating if a player blocks it with their own Maudlin Witch (which you'll have to commit to gaining a Copper before other players gain, and therefore trash, that Curse).
I might rather the benefit be +$1 so it can gain a Silver.  That would make it worse at blocking Curses and make it marginally less bad when other players do block them.

Quay - Action Duration, $4 cost.
You may discard 2 cards to turn your Journey token over. Then, if it's face up, +4 Cards.
At the start of your next turn, if it's face down, +3 Cards.
I think something ought to be written on this to make it more clear that it stays in play even if your Journey token is face up.  The fact that it stays in play is a somewhat esoteric nerf to an otherwise-superior Smithy at cost.  And that aside this reads so similarly to Ranger being a draw card that uses your Journey token.
I might like it better if you had the option to feed it for each draw, because as is you will likely just set your token one way and then never turn it again.

Pilgrim
Types: Action
Cost: $5
If your Journey token is face up, +3 Cards. You may turn your Journey token over. If you do, +1 Action.
Whatever it is worth, being able to draw cards before you decide to turn your token makes it a lot stronger.  I think the benefit is pretty marginal in engines: If you need to flip your token, you're paying big for it later, so I imagine this will mostly be an expensive Smithy.

19

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Homestead
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+1 Card, +2 Actions. If your Journey token is face down, you may turn it face up for +2 Cards.
When you discard this from play, if you have at least $2 unspent, you may turn over your Journey token.
Homestead is a $4-cost Village that gives you +3 Cards and +2 Actions once each turn provided you "pay" for it with a Wine Merchant-like condition.  It only gives you the strong effect when turning face up, so it should play nice with other Journey token effects.  You can also use it as a Village and simply hold back the $2 to activate other Journey token effects each turn.

Should the amount of $ held back to flip be greater? I thought matching Wine Merchant made it simpler and it sounds nice with Giant and Ranger, but Pilgrimage for $6 is pretty bonkers (buying it twice for $8 would often be the right move if it wasn't "once per turn").  Making it cost $4 to flip your token sounds pretty bad on its own.  It seems like Journey token effects will just have to stomach sometimes making each other really strong, Pilgrimage more than most.

20
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: December 31, 2020, 05:07:43 pm »
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Corral
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+2 Actions. You may discard a card. If you do, gain a Horse. You may discard 2 cards or a Horse. If you do, gain a Horse.
Echoes of Hamlet.  Non-terminal Horsers apparently made the game too slow, so this one has a limited scaling discard at the benefit of being a splitter.
You can put a Horse into your Corral (as in discard it) to keep it and get another Horse.

21
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: December 22, 2020, 08:01:27 pm »

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Worker
Types: Action
Cost: $2
Choose one: +2 Cards and then discard 2 cards; or +1 Action; or gain a Horse.
Choose one: +1 Action; or +$1; or trash a card from your hand.
Worker is a low-cost tempo-trasher that can be used as a strong Silver-flooder weak horser (even pseudo-cantrip), weak sifter, or weak splitter once its done trashing. It offers you two choices that amount to 9 options:
  • +2 Cards, +1 Action. Discard 2 cards.
  • +2 Cards, +$1. Discard 2 cards.
  • +2 Cards. Discard 2 cards, and then trash a card from your hand.
  • +2 Actions.
  • +1 Action, +$1.
  • +1 Action. Trash a card from your hand.
  • +1 Action. Gain a Horse.
  • +$1. Gain a Horse.
  • Gain a Horse, and then trash a card from your hand.
But what is particularly neat about Worker is that the two choices allow you to first draw and discard before you choose the second option.

I considered making it draw and discard 1 card, but that seems pretty bad compared to the other options.

HISTORY:
Original gained a Silver instead of a Horse, but that permanent boost seemed too much on a good $2-cost tempo-trasher.

22
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: December 10, 2020, 06:06:13 pm »

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Trade Union
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+2 Villagers. Once per game: You may remove 7 tokens from your Villagers. If you do, move your +1 Action, +1 Buy, or +$1 token to an Action Supply pile. (When you play a card from that pile, you first get that bonus.)
Wording per Butcher ("...remove tokens from your...") and Teacher ("...you first get that bonus.")
Spend your villagers to upgrade an Action once per game representing the trade secrets of your union.  It takes 3.5 terminal plays of Trade Union to get to the token (barring spending Villagers or other sources of Villagers) which makes it easier and less flexible than Teacher but harder and more flexible than respective events.  The +Card token is omitted because it is too much better than the others.  You can also just use Trade Union as a repeatable source of Villagers.

Is +2 Villagers good at $2?  I'd probably rather players be able to open with it even on a $5/$2 even if it is a little strong so that token access isn't too big a problem.
Is a 7 token cost enough?

23
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: November 30, 2020, 07:11:53 am »

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King's Tent
Types: Action, Reaction
Cost: $2
You may play an Action from your hand twice, and then when you would discard it, trash it or this.
When another player plays an Attack card, you may discard this. If you do, gain a copy of the Attack, putting it into your hand.
King's Tent is a one-shot Throne Room at $2.  It pops either the thing you played or itself.  You can also use its Reaction to gain a copy of another player's Attack.  A part of the idea being that King's Tent can tear up the commonly-terminal Attack cards that it gains.
It edges towards the "reflect Attack" concept, but since you have to gain the Attack card and spend the action to play it, it both pushes game piles and often risks your terminal density.

24
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: November 15, 2020, 11:25:51 am »
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Draper
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+1 Buy, +$1. If the player to your right gained exactly 1 card on their previous turn: +2 Coffers.
It is true that Draper is much weaker than Candlestick Maker if the player to your right gains 0 or multiple cards on their turn, but opening with Draper is strong because chances are high to get its Coffers.  How many times does Draper need to proc to be worth opening with an Herbalist?

25
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: November 07, 2020, 03:13:20 pm »
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City State
Types: Victory
Cost: $4
Worth 1VP for every 4 +Actions in the text of cards in your deck (round down).
Clarification: City State has 0 +Actions in its text.  Teacher has 1 +Action in its text. Villa has 3 +Actions in its text.
An equal Village split leaves your City States worth 2VP each for your +10 Actions.  Get 2 Merchants and City States bump up to 3VP each.

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