Hovel does not provide the tricky decision you mention. It is pretty much never a good idea to trash it to an Estate.I disagree as this decision is deck-dependent.
If strong trashing is available, you'll probably trash either way, just as you'd trash Estates. If no trashing is available, then it's moot. To that end, the "agonizing decision" you talk about doesn't really exist.Black and white? There is something between strong trashing and no trashing and there is also a second dimension, junking.
The actual strength of Lost Garden is in how much it weakens junking attacks, especially in the absence of sufficient trashing. At a 1:1 ratio, it does have a significant impact on cursers and looters.Ruins become Estates and Curses become plain dead cards. The latter is still junk and the former is only something you want in the endgame, in the presence of Silk Road / Gardens or if the deck leads to such heavy junking that nobody will be able to aim for Provinces. So in this case players now wonder whether they should buy all those junkers as they might backfire.
You may be overestimating how often the official Shelters make a difference.Not at all. The absence of Estates matters in some cases (Doctor, Ambassador and Baron come to mind) to a significant degree whereas the presence of Hovel or Overgrown Estate is negligible. Only Necro has a small effect upon the early game and in the absence of villages an effect upon the entire game.
Suit yourself, but I think it's poor design philosophy to not design as if it would be official.It is not official so I will not design it as if it were. This would entail a totally unnecessary FAQ, super-precise definition of "village" and the Necro pile nonsense. As I already said, I think pragmatically and as I a) suck compared to other fan card designers and b) do not provide fully designed cards with images the chance that anybody else will use my card is virtually zero.
If it's just going to be for your own group where you can personally explain away all the ambiguities, why share it publicly at all?To get feedback but certainly not in the vain hope that anybody but me will ever use it. There are technically and graphic-wise better and more experienced fan card designers here whose cards are probably used by some folks.
1VP more on top of thatLost Garden does not provide any benefits but VPs.
It doesn't help that the effect needs some awkward wording. Note that specifying Necropolis doesn't actually work as you intend. When a card says "gain", it means from the Supply by default. Otherwise, it has to specify -- e.g. Urchin says "from the Mercenary pile", Marauder says "from the Spoils pile". So how do you reference gaining a Necropolis? It's not in the Supply and it doesn't have a pile to reference. Either you'll have to be inconsistent with official wording or you'll have to do something awkward. The ambiguous definition of "village" doesn't help either.Totally right, I should add a line about a Necro pile and write "gain a Necro from the Necro pile", not clarify whether Throne Room counts as "village" (IMO it does not; other cards like Golem or Tribute are already excluded by the price cap at 4).
It's really not too strong. Again, Shelter should be compared to Estate, so a VP value of 3 is already too high.First of all, the card is only worth 3VP if the other Shelters are not trashed, i.e. each Shelter does actually indirectly provide 1VP.
This might be one for the RBCI thread, but Deadlock's post in the contest thread got me thinking (duck!):Hard to say. As far as I understand the card it hurts for a while as players still suffer from drawing dead cards. Sure, most of them might get trashed eventually but even if every Curse only cycles once through your deck and then gets trashed it is something like a delayed handsize attack.Do I win the contest?
Tailor
$0 Reaction
When another player plays an Attack Card, you may set this aside.
What if a curser let other players get rid of curses?
Kind Witch
?!?
Every other player gains a Curse and may trash a Curse from their hand.
What would you put as cost and additional effects to make the attack kinda balanced and fun?
The best I could conjure was Lab's effect (2cards 1action) at 5, but I'm not sure about how that would compare with Lab.
Would you ever stop playing it to avoid helping your opponent (after the curses are empty, but before they trash away their curses); or change significantly your buy pattern compared to Lab? Because I fear it's just too similar to Lab to be worth making.
How would you make such a card work, if it can work at all?
Ruins are Actions. All Shelters except Hovel (including yours) are Action or Victory cards.Thanks for pointing out another elementary mistake. So the card should read "Shelters, Ruins and Curse" instead of "non-...".
Lost Gardens basically reads "If you still own this at the end of the game, each Curse is worth 1 instead of -1 VP." Also Hovel, but only if Hovel isn't itself replaced. I think this would be more interesting as a whole-game-modifier, similarly to Events.About Lost Garden, sorry about the 1/2. It was not meant to stand for "one half" but for "either 1 or 2".
Couldn't you always trash the Crypt itself when you play it? And if your new Shelters replace the old ones, you could use Necropolis to replace the Crypt when you trash it.That is indeed the idea of the card, be able to exchange it for Necro (or a stronger village?).
You can never gain Necropolis, so mentioning it on Crypt is moot.In normal games you can indeed not gain a Necropolis but with Crypt you gain. Hell, if the village-conversion ability turns out to be too strong or too automatic (I think the price caps that make sense to test are 3 and 4) the only thing that Crypt will be able to exchange itself for will be Necropolis.
Crypt won't trash coppers unless you combo it with Storyteller or Black Market.Thanks for pointing that out. Kinda embarassing to mix up Action and Buy phase. I changed the phrasing to "At the end of your Buy phase, trash a card you have in play." I do not want a Shelter to be able to trash Estates or Curses.
- Ironsmelter - Action
- Townstreet (I scrapped my initial stupid Townstreet idea after having realized that DXV nixed a similiar card) - Action-Reserve-Shelter - Lost Garden - Victory-Shelter - Crypt - Action-Reaction-ShelterActions now, Cards later is boring, it's too automatic. Cards now, actions later combines the uncertainty of terminal draw with the flexibility of engines, that makes it interesting. Villages, labs, and terminal draw are all very saturated in terms of design space, so you gotta do something spicy if you're only working with these two vanilla bonuses.I do not disagree that actions now and cards later is an easier, more familiar and more boring card. But it is also a stronger one than yours which is probably balanced at 4. As I already said, the benefit of an additional action for the second turn is far larger than the benefit of getting a third action. The duration effect is probably weaker than that of Fishing Village (if you buy some Fishing Villages you can safely buy quite some terminal draws whereas District either needs a lot of itself or some terminal draws AND some villages for support).
Harvest Queen is super situational, and it's worse than "+1 Action for each unique Action you have in your hand".Committing yourself to play the set aside cards can be worse than merely getting the actions but it can also be better in the presence of Library or Watchtower.
The feedback for Harvest Queen was, to summarise, that it's pretty neat but probably a bit weak. While I don't disagree, I think that it has potential to be somewhat devastating in the right kind of engine. Unfortunately, I don't have a regular Dominion group so I have no chance to playtest it to tweak it. Does anyone have any thoughts on where this card sits, power-wise, and how it might be improved? Is it just a case of making it $4 or do there need to be some bonuses involved?As NoMoreFun said, +3 Actions is probably a good 2$ so 5$ is definitely too much for this card. Villages without the '+1 card' wanna be paired with terminal draws and in most decks there are 1 or 2 of them so you gotta buy several of them so Harvest Queen becomes weaker.
I just thought it was a bit odd to basically see replies along the lines of "this card is bad design, because Walled Village works. Now if it were a replacement for Walled Village, then that would be ok."Like you I do not worry much about cards being too similar to existing ones (just like I do not worry about fan cards with bold new ideas). But I failed to see the similarity of my card with Walled Village which is always bad so I think the criticism is justified.
I know the design principle and I happily violate it in this case as Walled Village is such a weak card. Despite lacking mechanical similarities I cannot imagine a board in which a player would pick Walled Village instead of Port and yet I think it is fine that DXV made Port after Walled Village.You should never design a card that is strictly better than another card at the same price point. Even though Settlement isn't strictly better than Walled Village, there would be little reason to pick up a Walled Village over a Settlement.I'd say that your version is better than Walled Village, and by that I mean that it's both stronger and probably a more fun/balanced card. But since Walled Village already exists, your new improved Walled Village shouldn't have the same cost.Well, it can hardly cost 3 as it is superior to Village and it can hardly cost 5 as it is definitely not that strong. So it has to remain at 4 and if it is thus a unintentional quasi-substitute for Walled Village I do not consider the violation of the "do not design cards which are superior to existing cards at the same price" as a serious crime in the case of Walled Village.
Despite not being mechanically as similar to Walled Village as Settlement Port is also virtually always superior to Walled Village.
I'd say that your version is better than Walled Village, and by that I mean that it's both stronger and probably a more fun/balanced card. But since Walled Village already exists, your new improved Walled Village shouldn't have the same cost.Well, it can hardly cost 3 as it is superior to Village and it can hardly cost 5 as it is definitely not that strong. So it has to remain at 4 and if it is thus a unintentional quasi-substitute for Walled Village I do not consider the violation of the "do not design cards which are superior to existing cards at the same price" as a serious crime in the case of Walled Village.
Well, you made the comparison between the two cards. If you say that it doesn't matter now how strong they are that is fine with me.Agreed. Also Settlement is almost strictly better than Walled Village.Walled Village is a pretty weak 4.
Yes, it is. And it's a damn shame. But that doesn't matter (unless you're just trying to replace Walled Village).
The idea is fine and something that I (and probably many others) thought of when Guilds' coin towns were revealed (along with Buy tokens, of course). I personally think that Coin of the Realm covers the same concept better (saved action for when you need it) in that it doesn't require extra tokens and works somewhat differently than coin tokens, thus being unique and more interesting.I totally agree that Coin of the Realm is more interesting as its trade-off is harsher: it is Village-ifying terminals at the cost of being a Copper whereas Settlement has weaker benefits (just one action) and weaker "costs" (at least in the middlegame you'd rather want a cantrip than a Copper).
- Settlement - Action-Reaction
.Agreed. Also Settlement is almost strictly better than Walled Village.Walled Village is a pretty weak 4.
The biggest issue is that it will be confusing to many people who will consider Bridge, Poor House, etc. and assume, not unreasonably, that it means you can never go below $0. Dominion doesn't have a concept of debt in the rules but it does say that you resolve the card as best you can when you play it. If a card tells me to discard and I have nothing left in hand, I just don't discard. It doesn't save the discard until I draw again later (e.g. in the same turn with Golem). So a reasonable interpretation of -$3 is to just pay $3 immediately if possible, but only down to flat broke 0 and ignore it otherwise.Concerning Bridge, I think one has to differentiate between prices and coins. Bridge reduces the price of cards and negative prices make no sense whereas negative coins make sense as they reduce current coins and future coins you get via playing Treasures. The card would be fairly pointless if it just reduced current coins down to zero as it'd then be a super-strong card for Big Money.
If you don't mind the potential for confusion and clarify all those interactions, I think it's fine to test. A close comparison would be Embassy.
- Settlement - ActionAs a general game design note, negative numbers are way harder for the average person to consistently correctly use than you would expect. It's one of the hurdles I personally had to overcome, understanding that. It's easy to forget that, by designing for the "average" person, that you're already excluding half of the population, and so you have to design for simpler than the "average" person to cast a wider net.One the one hand you are right, Dominion is a family game so its target group should include people who have issues with 6th grade maths. But on the other hand I seriouly doubt that I could not explain this card to my 11 year old cousin who is playing Dominion. Something like "it is just a negative Gold" or "you gotta add together all your coins as usual but then you gotta subtract Armada's 3 from them" is really not that complicated.
All cards that reduce the price of cards make sure they can't go negative; all cards that use the -$1 token make sure people can't go into negative money; Poor House, the only card to give negative coins, makes sure they can't go below 0; negative numbers are not seen on any card.Of course prices cannot be negative. But I fail to see why negative coins should be a problem.
On that note, welcome tristan! I hope that your experience in this thread doesn't turn you off from our board. I've found it to be one of the more friendly places on the internet, though perhaps that's not saying much!Thanks. I am well aware that I was not the friendliest guy in this thread but I do not think that it warranted the level of hostility leveled against me so I am definitely put off by this place.
I'm getting really tired of "this is too similar to official card to deserve existence" criticisms. Like, are we really even getting to the point where that criticism is considered valid on a card that reuses a mechanic that has only been explored one time, shares no vanilla bonuses in common, and triggers the unique mechanic off a totally different event?This.
Please, completely unfamiliar fan card creator, forgive me talKing.Oh, an argument from authority. Love it when people disqualify themselves so quickly with unscientific nonsense. Guess you must be the well reknown king of fan cards creators.
Being familiar with all the rules and card interactions in the game is fine but it has nothing to do with what I wanna do in the first place, analyze whether the cards works in GENERAL.Really wouldn't hurt the rule lawyer faction to get some mathematical [...] understanding.
Yes, that's right. I hope that once I finish my Master's degree in mathematics in 6 months time, I will finally have sufficient mathematical understanding to see that Poor House does in fact not work the way it is written on the card. I'm looking forward to that day.
If someone wants to ignore a single design standard, then fine. Tristan appears to be fine with cards without a clear consistent application of the rules. If he's fine with that weakness we can talk about the other traits of the card. Don't criticize things for not being what they weren't trying to be.Can you tell me where the design standard "no negative virtual coins" is actually written or implied? Thanks.
