Meadow
Type: Action
Cost: $2
Heirloom: Goat
Choose two different:
+1 Card; +1 Action; or gain a Meadow.
-
When you trash this, +3 Coffers
To me this is a very powerful card. The ability to terminally always gain more copies of itself to feed to your goat is spectacular and strong. And they *never* Hurt your deck you can always turn them into a cantrip. I think it needs to be priced much higher and I would rethink the "never hurt your deck" aspect of these, because buying them gaining them becomes a non-brainer. You just wait until your goat lines up. It becomes a lot more of an interesting decision if they are terminal or at least not can-trippable. You could turn the top part to simply "you may gain a Meadow." Then each one you gain clogs your deck and is probably better priced at 2.
Squire and Pawn were my inspiration for this card. Squire cannot be used as a cantrip (which may hurt your deck), but it also comes with +2 Buys, whereas Pawn can be used as a cantrip or "half" Woodcutter on demand. Meadow is not as powerful as it seems at the first glance. There are only three different options: Cantrip
or non-terminal self-gaining
or terminal self-gaining with +1 Card (very useful in big money or with stuff like Exorcist or Sauna).
Most trashers (including Goat) require to have Meadow it in your hand to trash it, which makes it much weaker (you could have a Silver instead, which can be gained by Squire, coincidentally). If this cost $3, it would be broken with trash-for-benefit cards like Salvager or Apprentice and useless without stronger trashers. The $2 also avoids trashing Meadow with Knights, Giant and Rogue. Rats cost $4, but may "hurt your deck", because their trashing is mandatory, which weakens their self-gaining effect. Magpie is a self-gaining cantrip and also "never hurts your deck", and is often better than a Peddler in a money-heavy deck. I tested this card and $2 seemed to be fine. Think about other $2 cards, which are powerful like Chapel, Fool’s Gold, Raze or Pixie (which also comes with Goat). There are only 10 Meadows and the pile is mowed very fast. I needed +3 Coffers instead of +$3, to be compatible with trashers like Farmlands or opponent’s Bishops. Having 2 Silvers usually has the same economical effect than Goat + Meadow, with the difference, that the Silver does not vanish or the same effect as Copper + Spoils to be more accurate.
However, your edge case does make me think of a different edge case... you trash a Band of Misfits, then player Lurker to gain it back. Then you draw some cards, making you shuffle. Then play a Band of Misfits as something. Play Modeller, choosing Band of Misfits. You now need to know what it cost. If it’s still somewhere in your deck, it cost $5. If it’s the one you played, it costs less.
So yeah, “name a card” could be a fix to that, because if you name Band of Misfits, that has a specific fixed cost in Dominion of $5; and that remains true even if there are no visible Band of Misfit cards to be found to check the price.
When BoM leaves play, it turns back into a BoM. So, if you trash it, it leaves play and costs $2. But you are right. If Modeller refers to an instance of a card and you shuffle your deck, it is not possible anymore to detect, which instance of BoM was the one you had trashed. Because BoM uses "This
is that card until it leaves play." and not "gains the abilities and types of that card", this causes more problems.
I also realized that Summon does not work for Night cards. Sorry.
