Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - Neirai the Forgiven

Filter to certain boards:

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6 7 ... 14
101
I'm interested to hear the discussion behind the wording of Experiment. It's really awkward, but I can't think of a better wording off the top of my head.

"You gain these in pairs." --> then explain this in the rulebook.

102
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 24, 2018, 10:12:11 am »
Looks like Moundbuilder Village just got clobbered. I'll have to try some variants on the design.

103
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 23, 2018, 10:34:14 pm »
Today I received the (unbranded) cover art image. This basically means that, once Renaissance launches and I assess the damage, I'll be releasing the final version.

So, like, one last chance to rip apart the cards :)

104
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 13, 2018, 05:14:40 pm »
I played Still evolving Mastermind last night, it seemed to be in a pretty good place; I played it in a kingdom with a number of other villages (Bustling, Blessed, and Cursed, as well as Conclave -- random kingdoms are fun) and it seemed to be a good contender -- not a card you'd never buy against those cards, nor one you'd always buy against those cards, but one you'd buy a few of as well as more standard villages.

The set didn't have a lot of good payload cards, though, and in either case one game does not an adequate test make. But for now I'm pretty happy with it.

Edit: this was Still evolving Mastermind that chooses cards at Clean-up, rather than the idea of choosing cards immediately and then moving them at Clean-up. This was the more powerful version, and I think it felt okay that way.

105
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 12, 2018, 06:15:10 pm »
Quote
Still evolving Mastermind - Action - $5
+1 Action
+1 Card
+1 Buy
At the start of Clean-up this turn, you may choose two cards you have in play. If you discard them from play this turn, put them on the bottom of your deck in any order.
-
Directly after resolving an Action, you may discard a card to play this.

This is pretty similar to

Quote
Still evolving Mastermind - Action - $5
+1 Action
+1 Card
+1 Buy
You may discard a card for +1 Action.
At the start of Clean-up this turn, you may choose two cards you have in play. If you discard them from play this turn, put them on the bottom of your deck in any order.

Not the same, but not all that different, either.

If I'm catching your meaning, it's true that the card is a lot like "Worker's Village +1 Buy but only if you discard a card, + double sort of bad scheme" so the pricing question really rests on how good the scheming part is.

Further musing: it's both worse than scheme, since scheme controls when you're going to get the card back, and better, since it's more persistent so you can combo it, and also better because this can target any card that's in play, not just actions.

I have played around with leaving the wording as is, so that you can move any card you played all turn, and changing it so that you can only move cards you already had in play when you play Mastermind. The latter is weaker but has fun highlights when you play Mastermind during a different phase, something that you can do.

Of course there's the danger of a card that only shines if you know and can replicate weird edge cases.

106
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 11, 2018, 10:39:48 am »
More blathering:

What I like about this is that it feels interesting as part of the same "Directly after resolving an Action" mechanical set as Coin of the Realm and Royal Carriage. But those cards are both Reserve cards, for a reason. Royal Carriage is entirely set up to be a card that you can only "play" as "Directly after resolving an Action" by having a top that is just +1 Action, put this on your Tavern mat.

I purposely chose not to include Durations and Reserves in Antiquities. Sometimes I realize I'm designing them anyhow.

I haven't had a chance to play with Still evolving Mastermind yet, I think it's probably overpowered (more like a $6 than a $5) but I'm not sure yet. Comparing it to Hamlet and Sauna are both rather enlightening.

107
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 11, 2018, 10:13:45 am »
Holunder9, you bring up a very good point. I should treat this card lightly given the upcoming expansion; it's possible that I think it has a cool gimmick now but it gets very lame when Renaissance comes out. Once Action tokens are in, the benefit of a discard-to-start-again card is questionable.

108
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 10, 2018, 06:06:13 pm »
Quote
I feel like Neirai is not really sure what he actually wants.
You're not wrong!

I mean, I'm in the discovery phase for this card. I feel like it accidentally became a restart village and I like it in that spot, but I also like the idea of it being the scheme thing. For the time being I'm probably posting too much about it in its nascent form, since it's still evolving a lot, but I'd like to know about the pitfalls in it before going too much further down that road.

Quote
it indicates that this card allows you to trash/discard a card to play it which would make it far too strong (cantrip trasher).
Good point, it shouldn't be a cantrip trasher.

The intention of the bottom half is to let you play it from a dead hand. I'm thinking it makes more sense to steal text from Royal Carriage to make it more straightforward (wait I used that word already.)

Quote
Still evolving Mastermind - Action - $5
+1 Action
+1 Card
+1 Buy
At the start of Clean-up this turn, you may choose two cards you have in play. If you discard them from play this turn, put them on the bottom of your deck in any order.
-
Directly after resolving an Action, you may discard a card to play this.

109
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 10, 2018, 12:50:10 pm »
Hehe, good point -- I somehow didn't notice that it was far more easy to accomplish the loop with Somewhat more Straightforward Mastermind than with Very Wacky Mastermind.

A solution, although less fun and glitzy, is to steal some lingo from Scheme:

Quote
Somewhat less Straightforward Mastermind - Action - $5
+1 Action
+1 Card
+1 Buy
At the start of Clean-up this turn, you may choose two cards you have in play. If you discard them from play this turn, put them on the bottom of your deck in any order.
-
You may play this by discarding or trashing another card from your hand.

This version can move non-Actions as well... which makes it more powerful.

110
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 10, 2018, 10:52:17 am »
In other news, I noticed that Tomb Raider becomes a very bad card if it is blocked by a Moat or Lighthouse, and so I'm thinking of buffing it a bit, like so:

Quote
Resilient Tomb Raider - Action - Attack - $3
+1 Action
Each other player discards an Attack card (or reveals they can't).
You may gain a copy of a Treasure revealed this way.
If you didn't, +1 Card.

This makes it a bit better if 1) it's blocked, or 2) your opponents are plebs and they only have Coppers, or 3) your opponents are warmongers (dammit, Gandhi!).

It still makes it a bad card (Cantrip nothing!) when blocked but not so bad that it's a risk to play it at all.

111
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 10, 2018, 10:29:58 am »
After playing with "Maybe not broken Mastermind", above, I came to the conclusion that it has an identity crisis: You either want to play it to restart dead hands, or to move cards from play onto the bottom of your deck or to restart your hand.
You often truly do not want to do both, although it's sort of nice when it happens.

So now I'm trying out this somewhat more straightforward Mastermind:
Quote
Somewhat more straightforward Mastermind - Action - $5
+1 Action
+1 Card
+1 Buy
You may put 2 non-Duration cards from play onto the bottom of your deck in any order.
-
You may play this by discarding or trashing another card from your hand.

It loses its minion-y element, which is sort of sad but also makes it a safer card to print.
The big part here is that if you play it straight from you hand and don't put cards on the bottom of your deck, it's a pretty bad card, roughly $2.

But if you use it at full power, say, trashing a crappy (or payoff) card, putting a payload and some sort of village on the bottom of your deck, and getting value for the +Buy, then I'm hoping it's in the $5 realm. Testing will be needed.

112
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: September 04, 2018, 12:26:19 am »
Unfortunately, it's still broken: there's an instant win combo if you have the following:

1 Mastermind
1 King's Court
1-2 of any card giving +Action, +$ (or Coffers), +Buy

and no other cards in your deck (I assume that the only reliable way to get here is Donate. But if Donate is in the game it's extremely reliable.

What you do is this: first, play your Market-like. Then, play King's Court, targeting Mastermind. With mastermind, do the following:
Put the Market-like or Market-likes on the bottom of your deck.
Put the Mastermind and King's Court on the bottom of your deck.
Choose to put your hand (which is now empty) on the bottom of your deck, and draw 4 cards.
Repeat.

Unless there is some sort of interaction with the "Lose track of" rule -- which if I understand it properly, there won't be -- you will now be able to gain unlimited money and buys, then pay off Donate, and buy everything on the table.
The winner of this is simply the first person to buy the requisite cards and use them, which with Donate isn't very hard.

I think the solution would be to gate the Mastermind on first play, like:

Quote
Maybe not broken Mastermind - Action -$5
+1 Action
If this is the first time you played a Mastermind this turn, choose one: put your hand on the bottom of your deck and +4 cards; or, put 2 non-Duration cards from play onto the bottom of your deck. Otherwise, +1 Card, +1 Buy.
-
You can play this by discarding another card from your hand.

For the record, +1 Card +1 Buy makes second+ Masterminds into slightly weirdly time-spliced Worker's Villages.
Well, only if you use them to restart dead turns. If not, then it's a slightly worse Market Square.

113
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 31, 2018, 03:51:43 pm »
Yep, it's the last clause that is very likely very broken; I'm actually thinking of dropping it altogether and leaving the card as a Minion/Schemer, since the Village part of the card is already very useful.

Edit: I probably need to make it so that it can't affect Duration cards, since I don't want to enable Hireling stacking.

114
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 31, 2018, 12:30:11 pm »
I've mentioned the Very Wacky Mastermind a few times, so here it is in its WIP glory. It may not last long enough to waste brain power on, and it likely should be posted on the "bad card ideas" thread, but here it is:

Quote
Mastermind - Action - $5
+1 Action
Choose one: put your hand on the bottom of your deck and +4 cards; or, put 2 cards from play onto the bottom of your deck; or, gain a copy of a non-Mastermind card in play to your hand.
-
You can play this by discarding another card from your hand.

In some ways it's a worse Minion; in some ways it's a different Scheme; in some ways it's a Village that you can play with a dead hand; in some ways it might just be a broken Action gainer.
I have not given much thought to the balance between the three options.

Or whether one or all of the three options are OP.

115
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 31, 2018, 10:30:23 am »
Yes, I should maybe clarify; I'm maybe planning to do it with a second card, that would be it. I'd argue that Pearl Diver isn't quite the same since it pulls cards from the bottom to the top.

At the same time, perhaps the mechanic is best kept to Shipwreck with the knowledge that Shipwreck gets pretty good if Throned.

I have a Very Wacky mastermind I'm trying that puts cards in play onto the bottom of the deck, among other choices. That would be as much as I'd ever want to do.

116
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 30, 2018, 07:04:57 pm »
I'm not really sure gaining to the bottom is that interesting. The discard pile already basically functions as the bottom of your deck. You're always drawing your payload before the green goes in your discard, so it doesn't matter whether your payload was in your discard or on the bottom. Also, IRL having to lift up your whole deck to put a card under it is a pain.

The major difference between bottom, top, and discard pile is that bottom lets you specify an order. It's sort of like doing that to the top of your deck but it saves between turns... at least until your deck runs out. So unlike "reorder the top of your deck" which is immediately consumed on your next turn/few draws, reordering the bottom of your deck is consumed a little while later, allowing you to do it more than once before consuming the cards, especially in a larger deck. In theory, it can allow you to create one or two really advantageous turns sometime in the future.

The nuance is small, but for instance even using Shipwreck, if you play 4 shipwrecks and gain or move 4 silvers to the bottom of your deck, that's a province when you get there. Assuming you draw all of those cards.

I played a game with a version of Mastermind that could put two of any card onto the bottom of your deck, and it was pretty good at setting up future turns.

117
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 29, 2018, 04:38:45 pm »
"Onto the bottom of your deck" is actually a mechanic I should try to do more of.
It's less powerful than "On the top of your deck" in small doses, but if you can do it enough times before your deck runs out, it lets you set up a super-turn, albeit with difficulty.

Right now the only card that does "onto the bottom of your deck" is Shipwreck. Maybe I need to think about revisiting a few of the weaker cards to give them this mechanic.

118
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 29, 2018, 04:00:16 pm »
I'm not dead yet, I swear!

While waiting on life to be unbusy enough to test Mastermind I've been playing around with a less crazy variant of Shipwreck:

Quote
Shipwreck - Action - $3:
+2 Cards
+1 Buy
Gain a card costing up to $3 onto the bottom of your deck.
-
When you trash this, gain a Treasure onto the bottom of your deck.

The problem here is I haven't tested it yet to know what power level the top half is. The bottom half is quite powerful, and may need to be capped at $6. But it should be noted that like Squire, it can't trash itself.

119
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 24, 2018, 12:09:17 pm »
I am quite concerned about the hyperflexibility, however I'm hoping that throwing the card down a well (okay, under 5 other cards) and then putting the gate of "also you need to have gained a treasure) will make it so that other strategies get a head start.

In practice, I'm not sure how real that expectation is.

120
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 21, 2018, 04:24:43 pm »
One other thing I noticed with Tomb Raider is that, if it gets blocked by a moat, it does absolutely nothing.
I'm not sure I that I like this. On the other hand I'm not sure how to fix this without making it more expensive (unless I make it terminal?).

121
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 15, 2018, 12:40:15 pm »
Tried out my Mastermind a few times over the last few days. It seems pretty good as a card underneath Tomb Raider that is the OP DoublePawn version but also requires you to have gained a Treasure before you can buy it.

The logic here is something like this:
If you spend $5 and two buys for Mastermind and a Copper, well, you just bought a Copper. Have fun with that; it should counterbalance Mastermind.
If you spend $8 and two buys for Mastermind and a Silver, well, you could have bought a Province. Did you really want to do that? (in practice, the answer may very well be yes, yes I did.)
If you spend $11 and two buys for Mastermind and a Gold, see above but substitute Colony for Province.
If you gained a Treasure using a gainer and buy Mastermind, then probably it's preeetty good.

Mastermind sits under Tomb Raider because there is an art link between the two and because this always means that there's a method that allows you to buy Mastermind.

I will be trying out Kru5h's version over the next few days. It looks incredibly solid, but I think I'll go with the version I find the most fun.
I'll also try out my modified version of Kru5h's Mastermind (add trashing, put it below Tomb Raider and/or make you have to gain a Treasure first) and see what's the best variant.


On a side note, I'm trying to decide whether Tomb Raider should be immune to other Tomb Raiders.

122
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 13, 2018, 01:55:37 pm »
I'm actually strongly considering simplifying the Mastermind into a doublePawn of sorts.
The question is whether 2x Pawn is a good $5 Action. I'd like to target it at $5 because I feel the set needs some more $5s.

Do you mean like:
Quote
Do this twice: Choose two: +1 Card; +1 Action; +1 Buy; +$1.
This would be strictly better than a bunch of stuff like Lab, Market, Lost City and such, so a lot more that $5. Kru5h's card is more in-line with existing $5s like Wild Hunt or Werewolf, Smithies with different options.

I was thinking along the lines of what you said, Choose two from the pawn list, then choose two from the pawn list again. The big headache is how to say "the first two choices must be different; the second two choices must be different as well but you can choose options that you picked the first time." I would then need to put a drawback of some sort on the card to bring it down to the $5 level.
That said, Kru5h's Mastermind is pretty good. I might add trash a card to the list to make it a bit more like Steward if I go that direction. It certainly would be easier to balance that a straight double-pawn (in fact, I think it's pretty balanced already.)

123
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 12, 2018, 10:16:12 pm »
I'm actually strongly considering simplifying the Mastermind into a doublePawn of sorts.
The question is whether 2x Pawn is a good $5 Action. I'd like to target it at $5 because I feel the set needs some more $5s.

124
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 11, 2018, 08:42:04 pm »
Warning: this will be a big post. I'm using it to think outside of my head (I'm an extrovert.)

What can Mastermind be? If so, how powerful is it?

Let me start with the extreme cases:

+4 Cards, +1 Buy: basically Council Room without the drawback. So probably about $6 or $7 worth.
+$4, +1 Buy: again, basically Wine Merchant with no drawback. So again in the $6 or $7 likely.
+4 Actions, +1 Buy: Maybe crazy but probably not. Without Actions to go with it, 4 Actions is iffy.

+3 Cards, +$1, +1 Buy: The most similar card is, I think, Tragic Hero. so this is probably actually very close to $5 since it replaces Tragic Hero's payoff with a standard +$1.
+3 Cards, +1 Action, +1 Buy: The most similar card is still Tragic Hero, but this is non-terminal so it's around that $6 or $7 mark if not higher.
+$3, +1 Action, +1 Buy: The most similar card is probably Countraband, more or less. $5? $6?
+$3, +1 Card, +1 Buy:
+3 Actions, +$1, +1 Buy
+3 Actions, +1 Card, +1 Buy

+2 Cards, +$2. +1 Buy
+2 Cards, +2 Actions, +1 Buy: almost a final-form city.
+2 Cards, +1 Action, +$1, +1 Buy: OP Laboratory?
+$2, +2 Actions, +1 Buy: Festival
+$2, +1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Buy: Hey look it's Grand Market.
+2 Actions, +1 Card, +$1, +1 Buy: Really Good Village

I got bored of this before I finished the list but I think we can agree that this card either needs to cost $6 or $7, or have an additional drawback, or lose the +1 Buy.

A fun little drawback if this is to go under Tomb Raider would be "at the end of your turn, if you didn't gain a Treasure this turn, trash this"; or maybe "You can't gain this if you didn't gain a Treasure this turn."
The card also has a baked-in drawback, which is that the first time you play it each turn, it's going to be random. But it's going to be a random really good card, most of the time.

For now I'm going to test it at no +1 Buy, with the "if you didn't gain a Treasure this turn, trash this" and it being underneath Tomb Raider. It may need to cost $4 at that point, in which case then maybe it'll get the +1 Buy back, or lose the additional drawback.

125
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: (Art Reveals within!) Dominion: Antiquities
« on: August 10, 2018, 05:12:52 pm »
Split piles in the set are either going to be interesting or uninteresting with Discoveries and Boulder Traps, I would call it uninteresting for the chance element it introduces to shuffle the piles but of course that's the intended spirit of those cards. Then suppose you go with it, would Tomb Raider be the best top? There isn't much synergy there.
Tomb Raider could make a good split pile though, to include an Attack or Treasure for it to target.

There's actually rules for that case; you treat the splits as separate piles. So if you have say, Patrician/Emporium, you shuffle into Patrician if there are any, and Emporium otherwise. It's not perfect but it doesn't "ruin" the split.

It totally ruins Castles. At one point I had a rule where any ordered pile was exempt, but it seemed weird not being able to use Discoveries properly.

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6 7 ... 14

Page created in 0.116 seconds with 18 queries.