Dominion: Tributary is a teeny tiny not-really-expansion I made. It's my first crack at designing cards. I think you guys will be able to figure out the theme/idea behind it. Probably by the third card? The fourth? Definitely the fifth.
Here we are play-testing a couple of the cards. We're nerds. We're also not great at Dominion, so I don't make any promises re: card balance. I think they're pretty close, though.
I have higher-res versions suitable for printing if anyone likes these enough to do so.
The Dignitary moves a little faster than that Bureaucrat jerk who's always slowing everyone else down. She's so fast, in fact, she even lets other people get to work after she's done.
Your neighbors are sending their cronies into your kingdom. Maybe you should head to the Outskirts of town and recruit some cronies of your own.
Leave enough Messages in Bottles, and they're bound to wind up on shore together sooner or later. If you plan ahead just right, you'll know exactly what's on the horizon.
You've been to the Market. You've been to the Grand Market. You've even been to the Black Market (shhh... don't tell anyone). The Potion Market is a mixture of all three. After all, mixing is what potions are all about.
Like any good Endowment, yours keeps on giving. After a certain point though, money is just money. Perhaps you can reinvest it into some land.
Sometimes it takes a Hero to vanquish evil. And when they succeed, prizes should be awarded. What's that? There was no evil in your kingdom before the Hero arrived? You're right, that is a little suspicious.
You've found a Copper Vein on the border. Sure, it'll help your neighbors, but it will help you more. Tap into it when you're short on money, but don't go overboard... after all, this is Copper we're talking about.
Dominion Tributary FAQCopper Vein: Treasure, $2, worth $1
$1 [large coin]
+1 Buy
When you buy a card, you may gain a Copper, putting it in play immediately.
----------
When you gain this, each other player may gain a Copper, putting it in his hand.
Copper Vein FAQ: You may gain a Copper for each card you purchase in your Buy phase. If you have multiple Copper Veins in play, you may gain one Copper per Copper Vein you have in play per card you purchase (i.e. if you buy four cards on your turn with two Copper Veins in play, you may choose to put up to eight Coppers into play immediately). If you reveal a Trader while playing a Copper Vein to gain a Copper, you will gain a Silver instead, but it goes to your discard pile, not immediately into play. Similarly, if an opponent chooses to gain a Copper and reveals a Trader while doing so to gain a Silver instead, the gained Silver does not go into their hand, but rather the discard pile.
========================================
Dignitary: Action, $3
+1 Action
Gain a Silver card; put it on top of your deck.
Dignitary FAQ: If you have no cards left in your Deck when you play this card, the Silver you gain will become the only card in your Deck.
========================================
Endowment: Treasure, $6, worth $2
$2 [large coin]
+1 VP token
If you trash this, you may return 2VP tokens to the Supply. If you do, gain a Province.
Endowment FAQ: You may not simply trash Endowment, you must play a card which allows you to trash a card (such as Remodel from Dominion), or your opponent must play a card which forces or allows you to trash a card (such as Saboteur from Dominion: Intrigue or Bishop from Dominion: Prosperity, respectively).
========================================
Hero: Action, $5
+1 Card
+1 Action
+$1
Trash two Curses. If you do, gain a Prize (from the Prize pile) or a Duchy, putting it into your hand.
Hero FAQ: You may trash a single Curse when playing Hero, however you will not gain a Prize or a Duchy. You can opt to take a Duchy even if the Duchy pile is empty, or a Prize even if no Prizes are left; in these cases you gain nothing.
========================================
Message in a Bottle: Action - Duration, $2
During your Clean-up phase this and all subsequent turns, you may put one of your cards from play on the bottom of your deck.
You may discard Message in a Bottle during any of your Clean-up phases. If you do, you may choose a card you have in play and put it on top of your deck.
Message in a Bottle FAQ: While Message in a Bottle remains in play, you may put a card in play at the bottom of your Deck during your Clean-up phase— this includes Message in a Bottle itself, as it is in play. When you discard Message in a Bottle from play, you may also optionally put another card in play on the top of your Deck. When using a card that lets you play a card multiple times (like Throne Room in Dominion) in conjunction with Message in a Bottle, that card remains in play as long as Message in a Bottle remains in play.
========================================
Potion Market: Action, $5◉
+1 Card
+1 Action
+$1
+◉
+1 Buy
You may discard a Potion. If you do, +2 Cards, +$2
Potion Market FAQ: When playing multiple Potion Markets, you must discard one Potion for each Potion Market to gain its "+2 Cards, +2 Coins" bonus. Potion Market's +◉ is not "a Potion" so its effect cannot be used to put an Alchemist on top of your Deck.
========================================
Outskirts: Victory - Reaction, $4
Worth 1VP for every 3 cards with more than one type in your deck (rounded down).
----------
When another player plays an Attack card, you may reveal and then discard this card
from your hand. If you do, gain a copy of the Attack card, putting it in your discard pile, on top of your deck, or in your hand.
Outskirts FAQ: This is both a Victory card and a Reaction. During the game, if you reveal and discard Outskirts to gain an Attack card in response to an Attack, your discarding of Outskirts and gaining of the Action card occur before the Attack resolves. This is important to note for discard Attacks such as Torturer. At the end of the game, Outskirts is worth 1 Victory Point per 3 cards with more than one type in your Deck. Round down; if you have 11 cards with more than one type, each Outskirts you have is worth 3 Victory Points. Any card with more than one type listed at the bottom of the card (i.e. "Action - Attack" or "Treasure - Victory" or "Action - Duration" et cetera) has more than one type.
Dominion Tributary Design NotesIf you haven't figured it out already, each of these cards corresponds to a different expansion. What follows is a little more information about my thought process while designing the cards.
Dignitary:Now that we're six expansions in, making a card that would fit into the Base set is actually kind of tough. All the good vanilla +1 combinations have been taken, and even the newer simple cards in Hinterlands are remixes of old favorites (or old not-so-favorites in the case of Woodcutter's and Thief's descendants).
So I thought back to when I only had the base set, and what I wished it had more of, and two things came to mind: more $3 Kingdom options, and some more n00b training wheels.
Enter, the Dignitary. She costs $3, she gains Silver, and in all likelihood you're gonna draw that Silver right away with the four Villages you have in your hand. Because you're a n00b. Hopefully once that Silver is in your hand though, you'll realize there's better money out there... and that you should buy it instead of more Villages.
Fun fact: you'll notice Dignitary reads gain "a Silver card" instead of just "a Silver." I thought that would be cute. Back in 2008, that's what we called Silver! How quaint!
Outskirts:Intrigue has always been my least favorite expansion. It's the jerk uncle of the Dominion Family. Mostly due to the harsh Attacks and Masquerade (which even Donald has admitted he would have altered to prevent KC pins).
Anyway.
Point is, for Intrigue I wanted a Reaction that responded to the aforementioned jerk Attacks, and Outskirts is it. It's a specialized quasi-Smuggler that while adds to Intrigue's "choice" theme.
Just got Minioned? Reveal Outskirts, gain a Minion on top of your deck and discard Outskirts! That wasn't so bad. In the midst of a Torturer chain? Gain a Torturer in hand, discard a couple cards and watch your opponent squirm. Saboteur? Gain a Saboteur on top of your deck... well, you know the rest. It's versatile.
On the Victory side of things, I decided to make it a Reaction/Victory hybrid to augment Intrigue's "Victory cards that do stuff" sub-theme. (I remember the first time I saw the back of the Intrigue box in the store and I saw Harem and I was like "a Treasure that's ALSO a Victory card? Bwaaaaaaa?") And I made it a weird-mathy Victory card to give you a reason to buy Outskirts even when there are no Attacks out— although obviously with Attacks on the board Outskirts gets even stronger, both as a Reaction and as a Victory card.
Message in a Bottle:For Seaside, I knew I wanted a Duration that stayed out multiple turns to demonstrate that you don't have to create a new "Permanent" card type to do so.
I didn't want it to be showy, though. I didn't want it to totally break the game if you put it out with a King's Court and its effect tripled for the rest of the game. So probably a $2 card, then. Because Seaside doesn't have enough $2s already.
Looking at Seaside's other $2s, I've always thought Pearl Diver is one of the strangest cards in Dominion. It's Donald at his goofiest. Look at the bottom of the deck, really? So I thought, why not give Pearl Diver a friend... something to to complement him. And thus, Message in a Bottle was born.
During the game, Message in a Bottle is a good way to play those good Actions just a little more frequently. 20% moreish, if my maths are correct. And, if the drawing works out, you'll set yourself up with a custom, ready-made hand at the bottom of your deck.
At the end of the game, it's a quick way to top-deck a Platinum or two (you have multiple MiaBs in play, right?) to finish off that Colony stack.
Potion Market:The first thing I came up with for the Alchemy card was the price. I knew I wanted to fill the $5+Potion price gap. But what does a $5+Potion card look like?
Following Donald's own design notes, I knew it should be a card that worked well in multiples just in case it was the only Potion card on the board, so I figured it should at least be a cantrip. (Which also helps keep with the "cares about actions" sub-theme of Alchemy.)
So +1 Card, +1 Action. Done. I liked the idea of +1 Potion. No other card had that, and I just liked how it looked. So, +1 Potion. Done.
Hmmmm.... +1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Potion... costing $5... this is starting to look like a Market. So I slapped a +$1 on there. Looking good. And a +1 Buy. Looking better... but still overpriced at $5+P. We need some Zazz™!
After a few different attempts at Zazz™ing, I settled on "discard a Potion for +2 Cards, +$2." For two reasons. One, because I like the idea of giving Potions a secondary non-spendy purpose, ala Alchemist. Two, because the standard argument against Alchemy cards is "well, if you had bought a Silver instead of that Potion, blah blah blah." Well bam, +$2, there's a Silver instead of that Potion. (Plus a little Lab/Alchemist effect to boot... because, well, Alchemy!)
As far as synergies go, obviously Potion Market is huge with Vineyards. Like HUGE. Apothecaries like them too, though. Apprentices find them quite tasty. Alchemist stacks hate them though, since you have to choose between discarding the Potion and not, but, well, if you discard the Potion it pays for a whole new Alchemist on its own. So there's that.
Most of all, like Grand Market, Potion Market synergizes with itself. Once you've got one, it's way easier to buy more. On its own, it's not quite the cash cow that Grand Market is, but with a decent draw engine (which it sort of is on its own), it may have a slight edge. I don't have the simulator skillz to test that theory, though.
Endowment:Donald said he would have experimented with more VP token-giving cards if they had been a part of Prosperity from the start. Endowment is my way of experimenting.
It seemed fitting to add to Prosperity's Treasure-that-do-stuff assortment, and I like the idea of gaining VP tokens without having to spend actions. And I also like the idea of "reverse Bishopping." That is, grinding tokens into cards. I also like the notion of potentially benefitting twice from a trash-for-benefits card. (Trash an Endowment when purchasing a Farmland to gain a Province, plus return two VP tokens for a second Province? Yes please.)
I originally had it costed at $5, but that was too close to Monument. Besides, $6 puts it in the cool "Silver with a Bonus" club along with Harem and Hoard. You might think $6 is too much to pay on a board with no means of trashing, but hey man, no one is forcing you to buy it.
Hero:So the winner of the Tournament gets Prizes, obviously. But who else would you reward with a Prize? Maybe a do-gooder. Maybe a Hero? And what do Heroes do? Vanquish evil. Curses!
Mostly I've just always wanted a card that gives a strategic reason to buy Curses. There's a stack of them sitting right there in every game, whether you want them or not. Sure, you can occasionally add them to your Fairgrounds, or buy them for Ambassadoring, but I like the idea of digging yourself into a hole only to emerge victorious later. It's the Hero's Journey.
For a while it was "Trash an Estate and a Curse," but that made it too easy to open 5/2 with Hero/Curse, and nail a Prize on Turn 3. I also liked that changing it to two Curses provides exactly enough Curses to nab all five Prizes in a two player game.
Copper Vein:Hinterlands central theme is on-gain effects, but to me there's also a "Small Money" sub-them. I decided Hinterlands had enough on-gain shenanigans, so I'd contribute to Small Money. (And wound up adding some on-gainness after all.)
As one of the few Contraband fans out there*, I've always liked the idea of money that provides additional buys. It just makes sense. Both thematically and functionally.
I also thought, "wouldn't it be fun to create a card that solves the '$7 with one buy' problem while simultaneously creating another problem all together?"
Hence the Copper Vein Conundrum: You're at 7 Coins and with an additional buy from the Copper Vein. Do you buy a Copper with your first buy to gain a Copper getting you to 8 Coin to buy a Province with your second buy? Is a Province worth two more Coppers in your deck? The choice is yours!
Essentially a non-cursey Ill-Gotten Gains, Copper Vein works wonders in Gardens decks, and helps the Coppersmith and the Counting House. Copper strategies are gonna be awesome any day now, guys, really!
(*I love the mind games that accompany Contraband, the Vizzini-like thought processes one can go through. "From what I know of your deck, I can clearly rule out you buying a Province, but you know that I know that, so clearly I should veto Provinces. But you knew that I would think that, so clearly I...")
