FINAL BETA REPORTThe first beta is complete. I have some solid findings and a decent assessment of all cards in the set.
In the end, all the 100 games revealed was I need to alter the set and then conduct another round of tests (it will likely be my final set of tests though as I believe the set is pretty close). I will be discussing each card individually for peer review in a separate thread. The good news is most of the cards tested just fine, and most were quite fun and cool.
For now here are the final conclusions of the test run:
NOTE: Church Bell has been removed from the expansion entirely, as it testing revealed it was clearly far too strong. It will get nerfed in the second-wave of testing. The card will not appear in this report.Take these rating calculations with a grain of salt, it's a rather clumsy formula and based on a limited dataset. Still it is producing a reasonable report of the power of each card. Here are some of the card ratings after 100 games.
TOP RATED CARDS | LYCANTHROPE
VALUE: 1.35 +/- 0.11
This card isn't that great, against almost every 5-attack card in the real game it probably stacks up as rather weak. But since we tested almost entirely inter-set this card stood out as a useful, bona fide attack. If it has a strength, it's that it adds that 1$, while it often takes away a Silver, and so it provides a money edge in the early rounds. Of course, it sometimes even spawns a Curse (which is even better).
The damn card often took me from 8$ to 6$ in the later rounds. In the early rounds, I often watched as my opponent reach gold in the early rounds by getting +1$, +1 Card, while I had to rebuy my Silver I just lost as I went from 3$ to 5$ (which coincidentally delayed me getting my own Lycan).
The rating is skewed a little high, because I ran three solo games with this against Black Knight (to test the two 5$ curse attacks against one another). Lycanthrope beat the Black Knight three straight, so it juiced the rating a little.
Given the nature of the set, losing a Silver to this card is sometimes a big deal. The set caters exclusively to Province games and the set moves FAST (games often end before or at turn 18), so you must get ahead early and Lycanthrope can prevent your opponent from doing that.
It helps gimp an opponent's Silver Vein deck, it works well with Druid and works very well with Summon.
When I begin to assess the changes to the set, I may actually increase the power of the card slightly (despite its high rating), or I will solos with it against Witch and see how it fares (I suspect it will get clobbered).
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 | PAUPER'S FEAST
VALUE: 1.24 +/- 0.07
The strongest and most popular 2. So beloved that we won't touch it on the second-wave, the card is balanced and well-liked it. It turns out that a weaker Chapel is quite useful because it bumps you up a Copper and trashes itself. Is it as strong as Chapel? Heck no, but it can do the job in the early rounds.
I might tweak the name and look of the card a little, a card this popular deserves the best treatment I can give it. I am VERY happy with this card.
I should note the flaw in my rating system with this card. Really, this card performed better than Lycanthrope, but because it was often in the winning AND losing deck, the card didn't score as well. I adjusted for this slightly with some data fudging, but I can tell you, the card works well and can really stand quite well against a lot of real 2s in the Dominion kingdom.
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 | SILVER VEIN
VALUE: 1.24 +/- 0.08
Silver Vein is just a tad broken, the rating doesn't quite reflect this, because again, it wound up so often in both winner's and victor's hands. One thing this card commands is respect, you MUST purchase at least two or you will NOT win (assuming its an all Silver Lining game anyway). The card is just that strong.
It's much stronger than a Gardens deck, because the card itself feeds you the points and the thing you feed your points with acquires more Silver Veins (and even eventually a few Provinces). In other words it often doesn't need the kind of support a Gardens needs to win. You couple that with the fact the expansion caters to this victory path and we have a bit of a problem.
It's a FUN card to run. It's a FUN way to win. And it works. I just might need to governor the thing just a tad, so that it isn't so utterly commanding on a board. Right now, you can't ignore the card in an inter-set match.
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 | EXCURSION
VALUE: 1.23 +/- 0.11
This card's rating continues to decline. We got fooled by own numbers a little. We ran so few games, saw the "success" factor of the card and then bought it frequently in the early rounds. In fact, the card shines when there's an alternate-victory card that does something to enable your engine. When it doesn't have that, it's a weak cantrip with a weak trashing power (that's usually useless by turn 5 or 6 once your estates are out).
It's a perfectly balanced card though and has a little more utility than it appears at first glance. I call that a success and this card will stay as-is. One note however, is rink found a wording issue which I will address. The verbiage will now make sure the victory card from the discard pile is revealed before its trashed, so you are sure the card from the discard pile is the one that is trashed.
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 | EMPORIUM
VALUE: 1.2 +/- 0.1
This card is a streaky son-of-a. When it "lucks" out and pushes two cards to the side, you begin to soar, when it "craps out" and moves two useful cards to the discard pile, you curse the thing, (especially early in a shuffle and you know may not see those cards again for a few turns).
Actually, as we reached the end of the testing cycle, this card often stayed dead. It was one of those cards that frustrates you too much. It has too much of a luck factor. I actually expect this card's rating would diminish to a neutral 1.0 if we tested it more. We learned later, that Druid was MUCH better at doing what this card's primary purpose is.
Still, sometimes +2 Actions and a +Buy is really useful combo, and when it is, you don't mind spending the 5$.
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WORST CARDS | VALUE: 0.6 +/- 0.15
This card sucks. We hated it by the end of the test-run and it stayed dead on the board more often than any other card during the last 20 games. It will get a SERIOUS overhaul in the next version.
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 | VALUE: 0.77 +/- 0.23
This card is actually pretty bad. It's not as bad as the rating suggests though.
The story of this card, is my wife hates attack cards. She liked this one though, because it had a constructive element (she could possibly gain the discarded card). Also her favorite attack is Militia, and this seemed similar to her. Actually, I wager Militia kicks this card's ass one-on-one (something I need to test), because in fact, spamming Copper now and then doesn't really hurt (especially when certain other victory conditions are present in this set).
The thing is though, my wife doesn't attack aggressively. In other words, attack cards complement her overall engine, but they are never the focus of the deck. So she does not actively work to spam the attack as much as possible. I expect a very aggressive attack with this card might yield better results.
Still, usually get to spam a copper into your opponent's discard pile, or you get a lousy silver in your discard pile. In the end, that's simply not that exciting, nor does it really focus you onto a victory path.
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 | VALUE: 0.77 +/- 0.14
Just an AWFUL card, that doesn't get you anywhere. My poor wife tried to make this card work for in several games (she likes having a defense in any game where there's attacks), but really reaction cards can't compete with attacks and this particular reaction card, sucks.
This will get a serious face lift in the revision.
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COMBINATIONSDRUID / ARGENT |  | This actually is three-card combo. The combo also needs Pauper's Feast to really shine. It takes about 9 turns to get it going. You Pauper your junk a little, and buy a few Druids and an Argent and two Silver. Then you are off to the races. The Druids give you cards and actions, and then the next turn they help you put your land away.
I had 7 Provinces by turn 15 with this combination and best of all, my deck was still really tight, because most of those Provinces were off to the side. Is the combo broken? A little, but I don't consider it deleterious.
Still, I would say other than Church Bell (which we banned), Argent has the most danger of being really broken. Also, having a lot of Druids in your deck is a stupendous boost. When you start your turn with three of them on the Duration stack, that means you get +3 Cards and +3 Actions before you've even played a card. You couple that fact those same Druids are keeping your deck lean and mean, it's very, very strong.
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SPRITE / SILVER VEIN | | Sprite is a really dumb, but terribly addictive and fun card. It shines when you have lots of green. It wants to be green, it rewards you with cards and actions (and more Sprites). The thing I really like about Sprite from a design stand point is her allure is temporary. She WILL go away, she will almost pile-out in any game and the engine you build around her will eventually crumble.
She's a time bomb, albeit one whose spamming victory points along the way.
With Silver Vein, she can discard a Silver Vein in a hand that is close a Province, or she can discard the Province, to help you draw the Silver Veins you need. The two are compatible and this was a pretty common victory path in some of our games.
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AUCTION / BLACK KNIGHT |  | Auction is weird. It LOOKS cool. Actually, it doesn't even enable a Silver Vein strategy as well as Druid does (although it is still a great support for Silver Vein tactics). But with Black Knight it can be quite delightful. You essentially trash the Black Knight, spread a Curse, gain a Silver and another Black Knight. The silvers eventually assure you can rush the Black Knights even more and when they run out, the Auction turns Black Knights into Dutchies.
It's not a lethal combo, but you can rush Black Knight and Dutchy really quickly this way, you're only challenge is to find a third pile to deplete to win before your opponent hops on the Province-train. One solution is Auction itself, (which you can just Auction into Silver), but an even better solution is Land Grab, which also adds to the speed at which you deplete Black Knight (and spread curses).
We're pretty pleased with how complementary many of the cards are, and how it can produce alternate means of winning. I've only highlighted a few of the combinations in these reports.
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CONCLUSIONWe discovered some of the card's strengths late. Druid was something we experimented with, but never rushed, but when we realized it was an EXCELLENT card to have four or five of, it came to dominate the board. This was one of the flaws of our testing. You have so much to try, sample and test, that sometimes your discovery of power-problems come too late. Also, you have to FORCE yourself to test everything, so you sometimes are building decks just for testing purposes rather than winning.
This caused a lot of problems for us. It really skewed some of our ratings and at times, created some pretty awful games. When we shifted back to "just win baby", the games got better, faster and the exposure of dangerous combinations manifested themselves much more quickly.
I think some forced assessments are necessary. In other words, in some games my wife and I would discuss what cards we would try and make work, sometimes ensuring we would not test the same thing at the same time. But I would limit this much more than we initially did. It's useful, but only to a point.
Also I did about 18 solo games out of the 100. Most of the time solo games ran on VERY basic algorithms, or sometimes pitted one card exclusively against another (with BM). These produced interesting results, but far, far less interesting than a real game. Also the data from the games tended to skew my ratings. I don't think testing things against BM (or with BM) reveals too much, in the end. BM can't handle curses at all, for example, but that doesn't mean you have a well-balanced curse card.
One thing I noted was even a really weak curse card (like Lycanthrope or Shyster) can clobber Big Money+1 Card Draw card. So what do you really gain from testing this way?
In future, I will continue to "pit" similar cards against one another to assess their relative strength, but I will no longer fold those tests into my overall results, data or ratings.
Finally, I would say a vast majority of my designs and cards functioned really well. That is to say, they had some basic utility, weren't particularly broken and were costed fairly accurately. Most importantly, most of the games we played were REALLY fun.
Without tooting my horn too loudly I hope, I think this set is quite fun. It has a variety of paths to take to win, and it rewards greening early and greening via Silver/Dutchies and other victory cards. It has curse attacks, that are a little more cumbersome than the curse attacks in real sets, but they still function and they still have to be recognized (and used if you wish to win).
I wanted to thank you all again for your patience while I went through this exercise. I will start a new thread in a day or two, that will assess each card individually and offer revisions (if necessary).
Then I test it all over again.
