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51

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: October 18, 2020, 11:21:32 am »

Extortionist • $5
Action - Attack
The player to your left chooses one of the following for you:
+2 cards, and each other player gains <1>; or +$2, and each other player with 4 or more cards in hand discards a card

In the spirit of Torturer, this attack lets your opponent decide how hard he wants to get hit.  The weaker attack is paired with the stronger benefit.

Isn't this strictly worse than Militia?

52

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Action-Treasures

« on: October 14, 2020, 09:51:07 pm »

I understand what you're saying now. The way I had been thinking about is was like a Smithy with a plus and a minus: the plus is that it has some flexibility and can be played even when drawn dead, the minus is that you need an extra action to actually use the draw. But I now see that the buy phase option is basically a worse Caravan, since you get the draw sometime next shuffle, rather than on play. Although it isn't a duration so you can still play it every turn when drawing your deck.

Actually, it's kind of interesting that the only case where it's not a Smithy+ is when you have exactly 1 action. With 2 or more you can play it as a Smithy or a Caravan minus, and with 0 actions you can play it as a Caravan minus (whereas a Smithy would be unplayable). With 1 action you are forced to play it as the Caravan minus.

I don't know what the best fix is. I think it compares too favorably to Smithy at $4. Would +1 buy be enough to justify $5? Or what if both horses are gained to hand? I think this is what I originally had, but I thought that would be too good compared to Hunting Grounds.

53

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Territories: New Landscape Mechanic

« on: October 13, 2020, 07:43:37 pm »

Territories have no fixed cost. Instead, the first player to ever buy a particular Territory pays at least $1 for it
Some ideas I came up with (none tested):

At the start of each of your turns, +1 Card.

Quite a lot of text to fully grasp the idea. I more or less stopped just at the first option.

I think the first player in the opening who has $5, buys this for $5 and gets an instant Hireling. Other players may have a hard time to catch up.

Edit: I thought a bit more about this. How about you have a specific Supply card that allows, when played, to buy one of the available Territories in the same way as you proposed?

Yeah, I think there may be a bit of a problem with catching up to the first player who hits $5. Having a specific supply card that allows it seems like a pretty clever way to delay how early you have access, I'll have to think about that some more.

54

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Action-Treasures

« on: October 13, 2020, 07:39:20 pm »

Bribe is crazy strong compared to Acting Troupe.
Trinket and Quicksilver are only useful in the action phase. Trinket would be a decent money card if it weren't for the detrimental secondary effect.
Bauble is nice.
Scrying Venture is honestly just slightly better Scrying Pool but harder to have in multiples.
Horse Trainer is extremely underpowered compared to Caravan.

Thanks for the feedback!

You might be right about Bribe.

I disagree about Trinket and Quicksilver. Trinket is probably better as an action, but I suspect it can work in the buy phase in a money deck too. At least the first Trinket is like a double-lab for money, and then each subsequent is more likely to draw green cards, so they get worse in multiples and as the game progresses, but on non-terminal draw I think there needs to be a pretty harsh downside. As for Quicksilver, I think you want to play them in the buy phase early on to trash Coppers, and then in the action phase later. But I could be wrong.

Could you explain the comparison between Horse Trainer and Caravan? I was thinking of it more like a Smithy variant.

What other ideas can you come up with?

Maybe something like:

Choose one: +3 Cards; or +$3

This is pretty nice, though it would have to cost at least $7 to keep from being better than Gold.

55

Variants and Fan Cards / Territories: New Landscape Mechanic

« on: October 12, 2020, 03:42:47 pm »

This is an idea I came up with in the shower yesterday, for a new landscape card-shaped thing. The idea is to use a self-balancing mechanic to create player interaction, and lead to more unique things that can happen in games. The mechanics can also be combined with existing Projects, Landmarks, and Events (though it doesn't work well with a lot of events).

Basically, Territories are like Projects, in that they (usually) give the owner some ongoing ability that they can use, with the following differences:

• Only one player may have their cube on a particular Territory at any given time.
• Territories have no fixed cost. Instead, the first player to ever buy a particular Territory pays at least $1 for it, and then each subsequent player must pay at least $1 more than the current owner. When they do, the current owner is kicked off and the new player takes over ("claims" the Territory).

So when another player out-bids you, they take over the effect and you no longer get it. There is nothing about the nature of partial orderings that prevents the mechanic from working with potion- and debt-costs in addition to coin-costs, but I think that feels a little wonky and gets hard to track (I imagine the way you track it with coin costs is by simply putting 1 token on the card per $ you paid), so I recommend just using $ costs.

Some ideas I came up with (none tested):

At the start of each of your turns, +1 Card.

At the start of each of your turns, +$1.

At the start of each of your turns, each other player gains a Curse.

At the start of each of your turns, gain a card costing up to $5.

At the start of each of your turns, each other player discards down to 3 cards in hand.

At the start of each of your clean-up phases, gain a copy of every card you have in play.

Whenever you play an action card, +$1.

Whenever you play an action card you do not have a copy of in play, +1 Action.

Cards cost $2 less on your turn (but not less than $0).

Copper produces $1 extra on your turns.

Whenever you gain a card, you may trash it, exile it, or put it on top of your deck.

Whenever you play a Horse, +2 cards. When you claim this, gain 2 Horses.

Whenever you trash a card, put it into your hand.

When you claim this, trash up to 2 cards from your hand or play area.

At the start of each of your clean-up phases, put up to 2 cards from play onto your deck.

Whenever you play the Special card from your hand, play it again.
Set-up: Choose a random Action card in the supply to be the Special card.

At the end of each of your clean-up phases, draw an extra card per $1 you left unspent.

As mentioned above, existing Projects, Landmarks, and Events can also be turned into Territories. For Projects, the conversion is trivial: ignore the printed cost and follow the rules above. For Events, the conversion is also straightforward: you are basically just changing the rules for how much the Event costs. For Landmarks, it's a little more complicated, based on several cases:

• Landmarks that hand out VP throughout the game: Only the current owner of the Landmark can receive the VP.
• Landmarks that score positive VP at the end of the game: Only the owner of the Landmark at the end of the game gets the VP.
• Landmarks that score negative VP at the end of the game (e.g. Wolf Den, Bandit Fort): Everyone except the owner of the Landmark gets the VP.

You could even use this mechanic for buying cards, but I don't think that works well for most cards. The way I originally came up with the mechanic was by thinking about a Flag Bearer variant that would cost $1 on top, and then each subsequent Flag Bearer costs $1 more than the previous. Maybe something similar works for certain cards.

Additionally, you can have negative Territories. These introduce a new rule that applies for the game (if the Territory is chosen), which usually hurts players, but the owner of the Territory can ignore the effect. A few examples:

At the start of each of your turns, gain a Copper, putting it into your hand.

Whenever you buy a card, take 1 debt per copy of that card you have in play.

At the start of each of your turns, discard down to 4 cards in hand.

You cannot buy victory cards. When you claim this, +1 buy.

That last one might be a terrible idea.


Anyway, what are people's thoughts on this mechanic? The intent is to add some self-balancing to the game to enable more variety of crazy effects, but maybe it causes problems with sunk costs in multi-player games, or maybe it can lead to un-ending games, or other problems I haven't considered.

56

Variants and Fan Cards / Action-Treasures

« on: October 12, 2020, 03:17:54 pm »

It has always sort of bothered me that Crown, and a lot of fan action-treasures, have a separate effect for the action phase and the buy phase. There's nothing wrong with that, but it just seems like it would be really elegant to have an Action-Treasure that has the exact same effect in both phases, but has some inherent advantage/disadvantage in each phase, just based on the timing of when it is played. Since Treasures have the inherent advantage of being non-terminal, that means you usually want to come up with an effect that is inherently stronger in the Action phase to compensate. Here are some ideas I came up with (disclaimer: I'm not sure about the balance on some of these):

Name: Bribe
Cost: $3
Types: Action, Treasure
+3 Villagers

(credit to NoMoreFun for the analogous idea for an action-night card that produces coffers)

Name: Trinket
Cost: $5
Types: Action, Treasure
+3 Cards
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Discard the revealed Treasures and put the rest back on top in any order.

Name: Quicksilver
Cost: $5
Types: Action, Treasure
+3 Cards
+3 Actions
Trash a card you have in play.

Name: Bauble
Cost: $5
Types: Action, Treasure
For the rest of your turn, when you play a card costing $5 or more, +$1.

Name: Scrying Venture
Cost: $5
Types: Action, Treasure
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Treasure. Put the revealed cards into your hand.

Name: Horse Trainer
Cost: $5 $4
Types: Action, Treasure
Gain 2 Horses, putting one into your hand and one on top of your deck.

The loose categories I was able to think of for ways to distinguish the action and buy phase from each other were:

• +cards are more useful in the action phase, and in particular, you only care about drawing treasures in the buy phase
• +actions are only useful in the action phase, villagers are more useful in the action phase but still good in any phase
• In your action phase, you've played fewer cards (quicksilver), but you have more cards yet to play (bauble)

What other ideas can you come up with?

57

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: September 19, 2020, 12:16:34 pm »

Name: Shaman Village
Cost: $4
Types: Action, Attack
+1 card
+2 actions
Reveal your hand. Each other player gains a Curse per Shaman Village revealed.
When you shuffle, the player to your left puts this anywhere in your deck.

Like a reverse Stash, it goes wherever you don't want it to go in your deck. I have no idea whether $4 is a fair cost.

The concept of the card was the bottom half. I went through a lot of different ideas for the top half before settling on this one. I wanted a card like Treasure Map that wanted you to collide them, because that creates interesting decisions for the opponent in where to place it: put them all on the bottom to make them miss the shuffle, but then they all collide and get a huge benefit. I thought about a payload card that would give you +$ or +VP or "gain a card costing up to $x" based on the number revealed, but that seems to just reward you for drawing your deck. Handing out a Curse per copy revealed makes it so the collision effect matters early, but not after the curses run out, when you're more likely to be drawing your deck anyway. And being a Village makes it so you want to play it at the start of your hand, which makes it harder to have more copies of it in your hand when you play it.

58

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Tales & Stories: Some "simple" cards

« on: September 17, 2020, 12:17:38 pm »

I think it is misleading to talk about individual hands where you might use Gatehouse's ability. It is possible to construct a particular hand where Gatehouse is preferable to Village. But the problem is it's hard to imagine a deck that will give you those hands with any kind of consistency. In particular, the challenge is to imagine a deck where (2 average)+(3 worst of 4) is consistently better than/at least as good as (5 average). If no such deck exists, then you will never buy Gatehouse over Village.

The only way I can imagine that (2 average)+(3 worst of 4) will consistently be better than (5 average) is if either 1. you are manipulating bad cards into your hand, or 2. you are manipulating good cards into your draw pile. (1) sounds silly, though maybe you could argue that's what advisor, or getting hit by pillages, does. More plausibly, maybe your deck is loaded with non-terminals, so that you can play them all before your Gatehouse, then play your Gatehouse to discard terminal payload and draw more non-terminals. Then you are "manipulating" your good cards out of your hand by playing them. This is probably the strongest use case for Gatehouse. (2) could happen with things like Inn, Cartographer, Apothecary, etc.

I think I've convinced myself that Gatehouse is actually not strictly worse than Village as I had originally thought; I could imagine preferring it to Village on a board that is constructed to make me prefer it to Village. I still think it is very weak though, but I'm open to being proven wrong.

59

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Tales & Stories: Some "simple" cards

« on: September 16, 2020, 11:48:52 pm »

I think Gatehouse is a cool concept, but agree with others that you would never buy it over village. With village, you walk away with 5 average cards. With Gatehouse, you get (2 average)+(3 worst of 4), which is just worse than 5 average. Saying "but you can also use it as a Necro" doesn't address the problem, because both cases are worse than Village. It would be like if you had a card that cost $3 and said "choose one: +2 actions, or +1 card, +1 action", and then cited the flexibility as a reason to prefer it over Village.

If it drew 3 instead of 2 it would probably work, though it might have to cost more then. At that point it would be like a more extreme version of advisor, but also a village.

60

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Zendo Questions 2

« on: September 16, 2020, 11:02:03 am »

Guess: Yes <=> Contains a word which contains a letter whose position in the alphabet equals the word length

Correct!

61

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 04, 2020, 04:29:06 pm »

I think this could get away with costing $6 (or $7 but certainly not $8) as it is unable to chain which is arguably the strongest part of King's Court.

Royal Carriage costs more than Throne Room. The situation is the same here, except that this costs more than King's Court. That's the benchmark I'll base my pricing on.

But the comparison is very different, because King's Courting a King's Court nets you an extra play of King's Court (as compared to just playing them both separately) whereas Throne Rooming a Throne Room does not net you an extra play of Throne Room. So losing that functionality when going from Throne Room to Royal Carriage isn't a huge loss, but losing the analogous functionality when going from King's Court to Master Plan is a pretty significant loss (in exchange for the Royal Carriage-like flexibility).

If both KC and Master Plan cost $7 and they were both on the board, I'd probably take one Master Plan for consistency but otherwise take King's Courts. So $7 seems like a fair price, and $6 might even be reasonable.

62

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 04, 2020, 04:21:15 pm »

Maybe too crazy/situational:

Name: Committee
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $5
Turn your Journey token over (it starts face up). Then if it's face up, the player to your left chooses a non-Command action card in the supply for you to play 5 times, leaving it there.

63

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: August 03, 2020, 09:41:36 am »

Tragic hero?

Edit: Never mind, there's also Sea Hag...

64

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: August 02, 2020, 05:51:15 pm »

MORE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE CARD* NAME TRIVIA:

The chemical element whose name appears in the names of the most Dominion cards has a symbol on the periodic table that appears in the name of only one Dominion card.

From memory, (no looking it up on the periodic table or Dominion card lists) name that card.

*Or card-shaped things, as always.

Festival?

65

General Discussion / Re: A joke thread

« on: July 25, 2020, 12:34:39 pm »

Billy, Frank, Tim, and Joe are best friends, and have been playing bridge together every Thursday night for the past 28 years, without missing a week. Suddenly Joe dies of a heart attack. The three friends, devastated, travel back to Wisconsin to attend his funeral. Joe's mother, a sweet, elderly woman, insists that the three of them, if comfortable, stay with her, rather than spending money for a hotel.

When the three friends arrive, Joe's mother is very happy to greet them. They talk for a bit, and eventually Tim asks her if she has any hobbies. She is very excited to tell them about her love of flying drones, and the three friends, intrigued by this hobby, ask if she can show them one. "One?" she asks. "I can show you my whole collection!"

The old lady very excitedly leads them downstairs into a basement, where sure enough, the whole room, wall to wall, is filled with various types of drones. As she is rambling on and on about her obsession, Frank notices a bird very calmly perched in a corner of the room. "Would you like us to help you shoo this bird out of the house?" he asked.

"Oh no, please don't!" she responded. "That's my pet, Belle."

"Oh," replied Frank, somewhat embarrassed. "I assumed she didn't belong here, because there's no cage or anything. She seems very well trained! What kind of bird is she?"

"She's a common tern," the woman replied. "But she's common in name only. You see, this is no ordinary tern, she can talk!"

The three friends, skeptical but excited, approached the bird. "Hi Belle, I'm Tim," said Tim.

"Hi Tim, I'm Belle," she replied. "I'm very sorry for your loss," she added.

The three friends couldn't believe it! Amazed, they continued asking it questions, while Joe's mother received a phone call and slipped out of the room for privacy. As they continued chatting with the bird, the conversation turned to bridge. "You know," said the bird, "I've never played before, but I know it was very important to the three of you, and to Joe, and I'd be interested to learn. I know I could never replace Joe, but if you ever need a fourth player, I'd be happy to play. There's a card table over there in the corner," she said, flying to the other side of the room.

The three friends, marveling at the thought of playing bridge with a talking bird, pulled out the table, sat down and began teaching the bird the rules and some basic strategy tips. She seemed to grasp everything quickly, and she fit right in with the three of them. Since Frank and Tim were always partners, they decided that Belle should be Billy's partner. She was certainly no expert, but the three were impressed by how quickly she learned.

But a few minutes into it, Billy started talking about politics. The friends have always had their disagreements, but Billy, a big supporter of Donald Trump, did not want to be partners with someone who couldn't see eye-to-eye with him. So he began questioning the bird's political views, asking her if she supported Trump, etc. Belle clearly felt uncomfortable, like she was being singled out by this, and pressured to say things she didn't agree with.

Eventually, Billy offered an ultimatum, saying, "You know, I can't force you to change your beliefs, but I'd just feel a little bit better if you would wear this 'Make America Great Again' hat, if we're gonna be partners, so I can really feel like we're on the same side."

The bird put the cap on, but was clearly very uncomfortable.

"Should we do something about this?" Frank asked Tim.

"I wouldn't worry about it," Tim replied. "He's just trying to set up a drone room bridge MAGA tern."

66

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Zendo Questions 2

« on: July 14, 2020, 07:12:53 pm »

Mobile No
Only No
Is No
Very No
Sad. No

Jelly Yes
Elope Yes
Track No
Wait No
Zephyr No
Mango No
Nurture No
Pain No
Help me No

67

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Zendo Questions 2

« on: July 14, 2020, 06:26:01 pm »

Has everyone given up on this game? Yes
 

68

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 10, 2020, 04:05:06 pm »

The net effect of the card is not +2 Actions on turn 2, because you don't have to draw it or the card you used it with, that's why I made the Lost City comparison.

I tried to illustrate with my last post why it is unwise to seperate the net effects of Durations. If you view the second turn stuff isolated from the first turn stuff, the card looks far better than it is:

Haunted Woods is a next turn triple Lab! And I thought even Double Labs are overpowered!
Well, yeah, but it is dead on the first turn and the net effect of the card is the same as that of Smithy, -1 Action and +2 Cards.

Captain's Quarters has gross effects of +2 Actions on the first turn and +1 Card and +1 Action on the second turn. That's a net effect of +2 Actions which is Double Village, which does no exist officially, which makes it tricky to evaluate while taking similar stuff like Port and Bustling Village as rough benchmarks.

OK, now we saw that the card is basically a splitter that also Schemes and delays the "draw". Delaying the draw sucks, providing the Actions spread over 2 turns like Fishing Village and the quasi-Scheming is brilliant for consistency.

Lost City on the other hand is net +1 Card and +1 Action and has very little to do with Captain's Quarters. The former net draws, the latter does not.

Net effects are only the first step, the subtleties of a card are much more interesting (and IMO very hard when it comes to Durations which is why I have no idea whether this is a $4 or a $5). But getting net effects right is important because it makes it less likely that you miscategorize and thus misevaluate a card (not saying you did!).

I agree with a lot of the things you said here, especially the first two sentences. I've perhaps not been explicit enough in how the fact that the 1st turn effect is often passable (if Shanty Town is the only Village, you will probably buy it given good terminals, even if it is more often than not a Necropolis) combined with the strong second turn effect (it is not just a scheme combined with a village; this effectively gives you an extra draw ahead of the Scheme too).

Captain's Quarters can be said to net draw, if you're comparing it to Village. If I play Village, I get net +0 Cards. The first turn of Captain's Quarters, I get net -1 Cards, but on the second turn, I get net "+2 cards" where the two cards that I draw are Necropolis and whatever Action I set aside. The "+2 cards" are also stronger than any ordinary +2 cards because one of the two cards is going to be something I really want it to be.

By the same reasoning, isn't a Village really like Laboratory that draws you a Necropolis and something else? That just seems like a really convoluted way of thinking about it. Captain's Quarter loses a card the turn you play it (like Necro) and gets you a card the next turn (like Lost City). It's as if you played a Village this turn and next turn, except that the draw from this turn gets pushed back to next turn.

69

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Zendo Questions 2

« on: July 10, 2020, 01:25:27 pm »

Guess: Everything returns no except "green beans" Yes

jk No

I'm hilarious Yes
here are some more words No
so we can get a better handle on the rule Yes
la la la la No
Star Wars No

70

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Zendo Questions 2

« on: July 10, 2020, 01:09:27 pm »

Guess: It's just always no

Incorrect, here is a counterexample:

green beans Yes

71

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Zendo Questions 2

« on: July 10, 2020, 01:30:12 am »

Guessing time No
avocado No
brussels sprouts No
cauliflower No
donut No

72

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Zendo Questions 2

« on: July 09, 2020, 10:49:08 pm »

Guess: Return yes iff. the sum of the ASCII values of all characters is even.

Correct!  I felt bad after your first guess.

Haha, no worries, I got there eventually.

I have a rule.

73

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Zendo Questions 2

« on: July 09, 2020, 09:42:10 pm »

Guess: Return yes iff. the sum of the ASCII values of all characters is even.

74

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Zendo Questions 2

« on: July 09, 2020, 08:03:36 pm »

Guess: If the most frequently occurring letter occurs an even  number of times, yes. If it appears an odd number of times no.

I thought the same thing, but:

pineapple Yes

75

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Zendo Questions 2

« on: July 09, 2020, 12:48:51 pm »

Guess: Taking a=1, b=2, ..., z=26, summing the value of letters in the question, return yes iff. the total value is even.