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« on: January 29, 2012, 06:49:19 pm »
Reply:
- Orchard works fine but I'm thinking of an additional action or reaction effect which generates fruit (without leaving your hand, so rancher/other cards can make use of it)
- Having playtested Goodwill a fair bit, it is a consistently strong purchase on many boards. Not convinced it should be bumped to 5 just yet. It has spiral out of control potential with +buys.
- City Planner, and some of the other cards, are designed to work well with spare (victory) cards in your deck. I agree with your point though, it probably should work on any card.
- Mulching Machine hasn't been tested much. The fact that multiple mulchers don't necessarily collide is probably a bigger problem. Regarding its effects, the first two can't occur together, limiting the total trashing you can achieve, and the third is quite difficult to pull off. Thinking of replacing the second effect with something similar to secret chamber (so you can rearrange the top cards of your deck and draw them using MM or cattle tokens)
- The others (Shepherd, Fruit Merchant, Cattle Farm, Plantation) have all been tested thoroughly and I'm happy with them as they are now.
Other thoughts:
- Rancher ranges from very strong to too expensive. Very often it will be too late in the game to buy one as the opponent is already working on provinces. Other times you can buy one and have 3+ cards in hand to gain another one.
-Refugee Camp strikes me as underpowered on many boards with niche strength vs discarding attacks.
- Predictably, the Botanical Gardens pile has a tendency to empty very fast. Not necessarily a bad thing.