Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

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.

226

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: March 20, 2018, 02:32:23 pm »

TL:DR: Card is too weak if you limit the discard to Treasures.

Okay, so here's some thought experimentation:

If Token draws you a card and discards you a treasure, then it performs in the following ways:

1) If you play it last, and it draws a non-night, non-Token card, it wastes that card (or removes it, in the case of Curse/Victory) and it's a Copper, possibly a slightly nicer Copper, possibly a much worse Copper, since it might have just thrown out a Gold or a good Action. Certainly not worth $3.
2) If you play it last, and it draws a Night card, then it's worth Copper and a Night card, since you don't discard the Night card. Probably Copper and a Night card is worth around $3 (more if you always drew one, but Copper and a night card with a large chance of failure is worth less than $3 for sure. The whole point of forcing you to discard a Treasure instead of allowing you to discard anything, by the way, is both to limit the power of the card (preventing you from drawing Gold and discarding estate, for example) but to make sure you can keep and play any Night cards.
3) If you play it first, and you draw a Copper and discard a Copper, it's worth Copper, but you paid $3 for it.
4) If you play it first, and you draw a Copper and discard another token, it's worth Silver, but you paid $3 for it and could have bought Silver which is always worth Silver, so why did you bother? Also, you could have played that Token (probably) for at least the $1 that you got from discarding it, maybe more, so why did you bother?
5) If you play it first, and you draw a Silver and discard a Copper, it's worth Silver, but you paid $3 for it and could have bought Silver which is always worth Silver, so why did you bother?
6) If you play it first, and you draw Gold and discard a Copper, it's worth Gold, and you paid $3 for it! That's good but not actually an upgrade from Gold, since you needed to buy that Gold and you need to have the Gold coming up, so what you did was just borrow a Gold from your next turn. You have it now, but you won't have it then (in most cases) so all you're getting is slightly better tempo.
7) If you play it first, and you draw Platinum and discard Copper, it's worth Platinum and you paid $3 for it but all the previous comments about tempo still stand.
8] If you play a totally unrelated card, and discard this, you do get money and that's quite good but somewhat unpredictable, but still rather good. Too good to cost anything less than #3.

Verdict: As currently designed, this card is way too weak played out of hand, but at least worth $3 discarded incidentally. This just means that anyone who actually PLAYS this card is doing it wrong; that's bad design.

Thanks for challenging the card, Holunder9!

If Token draws you a card and discards any card, then it performs in the following ways:

1) If you play it last, and it draws a non-Token card, it wastes that card (or removes it, in the case of Curse/Victory) and it's a Copper, possibly a slightly nicer Copper, possibly a much worse Copper, since it might have just thrown out a good treasure or a good Action. Certainly not worth $3.
2) If you play it last, and it draws an on-discard Reaction, then it's worth Copper and the discard effect (Gold? Two cards?) which isn't bad usually. Should point out that Antiquities contains discard effects but only the Agora's (put a Silver in your hand) can trigger from this. These are also super edge cases (you won't always be playing with Tunnel) so they can't really be taken into account for card power, only taken into account if you're worried that a card is broken strong. So this still makes this not worth $3.
3-7) The effects for "draw a Treasure, discard a treasure" scenarios are all the same.
8] If you play it first, draw a Copper, discard a dead card (very rarely do you not have these,) it's worth Silver, and cost $3. You could still just get Silver and make it always work this way but w/e.
9) If you play it first, draw a Silver, discard a dead card, it's worth Gold, and cost $3. Also, you no longer have to have bought a Gold to make this work, just a Silver.
10) If you play it first, draw a Gold, discard a dead card, it's worth $4, and cost $3. You have to have bought a Gold already, but at least you're getting something for your investment.
11) If you play it first, draw a Platinum, discard a dead card, it's worth $6, and cost $3. You have to have bought a Platinum already though, so it's not completely broken.
12) If you play a totally unrelated card, and discard this, you do get money and that's quite good but somewhat unpredictable, but still rather good. Too good to cost anything less than #3.

It's fascinating how much changing "Treasure" to "Card" changes the balance.

I'm going to try it at +1 Card, Discard a card, $1, Discarding brings $1 and see whether it needs to get nerfed to $2 or what.

227

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: March 16, 2018, 10:34:14 am »

Final Token rules:

Token - Treasure $3
+1 Card
Discard a Treasure (or reveal you can't.)
$1
-
When you discard this on your turn, if it's not Clean-up, reveal for + $1.

Sorry but this looks very bad. If you draw a Treasure you have to discard it so the card drawing is only good if you have lots of Night cards in your deck.
So this is only very rarely a Peddler, normally it is just a Copper. Even with discard for benefit around which can make the card again into a quasi-Peddler I doubt that you want it in your deck. Rather pick the safe option and buy Silver.

There could be something if you get rid of the discard a Treasure thing. Then chances are at least much higher that you draw something decent and the card would be more like a Venture that doesn't dig (but can miss).

The idea here is that you're drawing a higher-end treasure than the one you're discarding; so you draw a Gold, discard a Copper. Or discard a another Token, keep its value.
I originally had it as just "Discard a card" but then found that you just went big money and discarded green cards.
Arguably I could reverse the order of discard and draw, which would mean that you don't discard the treasure you drew right away if this is the last treasure you played this turn.

228

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: March 15, 2018, 06:32:24 pm »

Ill-Defined Gains
Treasure - $5
Worth $0
When you play this, you may gain a number of Coppers to your hand equal to the square root of your score, rounded down.
When you gain this, each other player gains a Curse.

What happens if my score drops below zero?
This might be the only card that makes me want to buy Curses.

229

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: March 15, 2018, 06:19:27 pm »

Undefined Gains
Victory - $4
Worth 12 VP divided by the number of cards remaining in the least full supply pile, rounded up.

230

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: March 15, 2018, 04:41:35 pm »

Final Token rules:

Token - Treasure $3
+1 Card
Discard a Treasure (or reveal you can't.)
$1
-
When you discard this on your turn, if it's not Clean-up, reveal for + $1.

Seems pretty balanced and interesting. It's still a decent gamble, sometime discarding it's best.
As a bonus, if you're playing a Night-heavy deck, there's a good chance that you can keep Night cards you drew.

231

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Addressing the first player advantage

« on: March 14, 2018, 11:19:48 pm »

I'd start small, like,
"First player draws 6 cards on their first hand."

This could, on rare occasions, give first player even more of a boost. He could play Goons on turn 2, (without any special stuff in the Kingdom that allows that in a regular game).

Err yes, apparently my brain misfired and went backwards. I meant draw 4 cards and thought 6 for some backwards reason.

232

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Addressing the first player advantage

« on: March 14, 2018, 06:47:00 pm »

I'd start small, like,
"First player draws 6 cards on their first hand."

233

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: March 09, 2018, 10:59:57 am »

Clue
Landmark

At any point in the game, a player may guess aloud the names of the 3 cards set aside by this Landmark, then look at them. If they guessed correctly, they reveal all 3 cards and take all of the VP from here. Otherwise, they put them back face down, gain 2 Curses and are not allowed to guess again.

Setup: Randomly select a single card from 3 kingdom piles; one depicting a person, one depicting an object, and one depicting a location. Set them aside face down. Put 15 VP here.

I love how the Setup rule (one depicting a person, one depicting an object, and one depicting a location) literally forces the player doing the setup to know what the answer is. Unless I guess you separate all your kingdom randomizer cards into three piles, shuffle them, and place them face down.

234

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Motley batch

« on: March 08, 2018, 07:38:23 pm »

Chemistry doesn't break anymore if you just add the word another or make it a potion cost event.  The card is kind of not awesome, but potion costs are fighting uphill you know.

Personally, I'd actually make Chemistry an Event that just plays an action or treasure from the Supply and then rats you with a Potion. Potions aren't necessarily useless (especially in a heavy-Alchemy kingdom) but if you get too many of them, they're less useful.
You might need to up the cost, then, however. I personally would make it cost PP.

235

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: March 06, 2018, 06:35:03 pm »

So, for those interested, a little timeline:

I'm waiting on 4 pieces of art from the 26 originally commissioned. I have the rest. They look gorgeous.
Teaser:

After that, I need to finish the rules up (roughly a week of work.)
Then I'm on to an official unofficial release and then I risk all my cash on printing a few copies.

I suspect that I'll be done by summer!

236

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Motley batch

« on: March 06, 2018, 02:36:04 pm »

There are some really interesting concepts here, but I think you'll need to iterate over these a lot to land them. Here are some suggestions:

Chemistry $0P Action - Treasure
+1 Buy.
Play an action or treasure from the supply.  Trash it when it would leave play.  Trash Chemistry.  You may gain a potion.

This should be an Event, since having to buy it then trash it slows it down to the point where I wouldn't spend a Potion on it.
Also, you might want to consider capping the targets so players don't just use it on Platinums. Or not.

Seasonal Commision
6$ Treasure - Duration
Worth 3$
When you play this, reveal your hand and trash all Actions in your hand or play area.  For each card trashed this way, gain a differently named Action of that cost or less.  At the start of your next turn, return Seasonal Commision and each card you trashed this way to the supply and gain a Gold.

I suggest:

Seasonal Commission - Treasure $6
$3
At the start of your Clean-up, exchange each Action you have in play for a differently named Action of equal or less cost, and exchange this for a Gold.

Warning: this still is a great way to make people spend 10 minutes deciding what to do with all their actions. Also, if they have more than one Seasonal Commission in play........

Brewer 3$ Action - Attack
Name a card.  If you have one copy of that card on your Tavern mat for each opponent, each opponent gains a copy from your mat.  Put any number of cards with that name from your hand onto your Tavern Mat.

My advice on this is totally different: I'd completely rework it to be a card that collects copies of the named card and then puts them into your hand. So something like "Name a card. Put any number of cards with that name from your hand onto your Tavern Mat. Reveal your hand. If your hand contains copies of the named card, put all the copies from your Tavern Mat into your hand." Then playtest it to death to determine what the cost of it should actually be.

Mayor 5$ Victory
Worth 4 VP
_____________
Your provinces are worth 4 VP

This is a fun idea but the problem (other than what other players say) is, why would I buy a Province, then? I guess to end the game? Although perhaps that is the point, to make is so that players buy Mayors and then tries to end the game before the players who buy no Mayors can get a lead. In which case, this is pretty decent, although testing will determine costings.

[Crucible 3$ Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 Buy
_______________________
While this is in play, Silver is worth 1$ more, but when you play a treasure, it's not worth $ if there are more Treasures in play than Crucibles.

I'd do this (warning: phase breaking!) like so:

Crucible - Action $3
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 Buy
Play a Treasure card
-
While this is in play, Silver is worth +$1, and you cannot play Treasures during your Buy phase.

Normal comment about testing.

237

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: March 05, 2018, 06:18:46 pm »

I'm back!
It's been a while since I've had progress, largely because my artist has been on hiatus.

After all that noise about changing cards, I've basically scrapped the Avatar of Greed and replaced it with:

Token - Treasure $4
+1 Card
Discard a card
$2
-
When you discard this on your turn, if it's not Clean-up, reveal it for + $1.

A little explanation:
At one point, I'd have said that Treasures that draw cards are a big no-no. For one thing, they can swing horribly (this card is worth $2. Or $7. Or maybe more.) On the other hand, they can burn Actions, which is bad.
I find that discarding a card balances the swing out a bit. Also, we live in the era of Nocturne... drawing a card might also draw you Night cards, which I think is cool. This set could use a little more Night card interaction.
The Reaction was built to have synergy with cards like Tactician. Because this is a board game piece!

Finally, the name's not final. It's a board game piece, and I've tried everything from Chessman to Draughtsman... suggest away!

I *think* it's balanced, but if you know it's not, let me know.

238

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: February 04, 2018, 12:07:23 pm »

Despite my repeated statements that I was not going to make any further large changes to card, I've been testing this Avatar of Greed since the sheer number of lines of text required to make the other Avatar of Greed 'rules-safe' is getting stupid:

Avatar of Greed - Treasure $4
+1 Buy
If you gained a Curse this turn, +$3. Otherwise, the next time you gain a Curse this turn, +$3.

I've tested it out and (in a Big Money-optimal game) it's maybe a wee bit underpowered. I might need to make it have $1 base and +$2 from the Curse. But I need to test it in more kingdoms, such as ones that draw a lot of cards, or where slog is optimal.

239

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Help with ideas?

« on: January 31, 2018, 10:31:35 am »

I mean, the solution i came up with is either to have a single kingdom card (like tournament) where the player has to accomplish a weird condition, where the prize is to gain a sin of their choice.
Thoughts?

I'd flip this on its head, and make it an attack where each player has to accomplish a condition, if they fail, they are given a sin.

You could still make sins useful, but perhaps giving negative VPs at the end of the game.

At one point I had a card idea that was "Inquisitor: Every player reveals their hand. If they have any cards in their hand that are not in your hand, they gain a Curse." (i.e., you are convicted of heresy for believing something I don't.

Anyhow, just food for thought, I'm not even sure that such an idea doesn't make the design worse.

240

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: January 15, 2018, 12:45:47 pm »

Funny, deciding to rewrite it works really well.

Artifact - Treasure $4
$1
When you play this, you may pay any amount of your $. If you do, gain a Treasure with a cost equal to the $ you paid, and play it.

The only "loss" here is that it won't allow you to use its power on cards with Debt or Potion costs.
Which I can live with.

(As a bonus, this solves Venture round trips.)

241

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: January 15, 2018, 10:06:11 am »

Does this work, does it even make sense?

While this is in play, immediately after you buy a Treasure, you may turn the last face up Artifact you played this turn face down. If you do, +1 Buy and play that Treasure.

I tell you, I'm sort of conflicted on Artifact. Artifact was the first card from this set that worked; it just worked fine out of the box, but this was largely based on a given interpretation of what Artifact does. That interpretation is really, really hard to convey in card text. Any help would be appreciated.

The interpretation is:
When you buy a Treasure, if you have any Artifacts in play, you can discard one of them to buy another card and you get the value of the Treasure, too.
If you have more than one Artifact, you can chain buying and playing Treasures, rather than Throning the Treasure and getting a pile of Buys.

As it turns out, as the card usually turns out when written as card rules, if you have 6 Artifacts in play and Buy a Gold, you can discard them all and get +$18 money and 6 Buys.

I might just need to rewrite the card altogether.

242

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: January 11, 2018, 11:37:18 pm »

Artifact - maybe, 'While this is in play, directly after you when you next buy a Treasure, you may discard this to play that Treasure and get +1 Buy.
Or to save confusion with Venture and potential tracking issues, you could set the Artifact aside (change 'discard this' to 'set this aside' and add 'Discard this at Clean-up' at the end). I can't really see a way to get one card to play one Treasure without implying Throning when you use several Artifacts, though.

I'm not too worried about Venture-Artifact round trips; they aren't infinite loops because you either run out of money or Ventures in the Supply.

I'm trying out this wording, though, to avoid some Throning issues:

"When you buy a Treasure, you may discard the last Artifact you played this turn to play it and +1 Buy."

I don't think this is the final wording but it's closer.

243

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: January 09, 2018, 06:18:20 pm »

I'm toying with making the bottom simply reflect the top (as a reaction, discard this to trash two cards from hand or discard pile.) Not entirely sure yet.

Of course, if I do that, since I'm saying you can trash from hand or discard pile, I'm essentially removing any reason for there to BE a reaction.

244

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: January 02, 2018, 11:51:22 pm »

Responses:

Discovery - I've rendered it a few times, normally it works out; if not, I can use a trick with Non-breaking spaces to make the $2 smaller, although that's not how Dominion Treasures usually look.
In the rules, I've specified how a player is supposed to "Shuffle In". You set aside the top card of the Supply pile, turn the remaining cards face down, and shuffle those in with the Boulder Trap or Discovery. Then you take the set aside card and put it on top. The end result is a face-down pile with one face-up card on top; for Castles, this means that you start with a Small Castle (or whatever was next when you used the Discovery) and then random remaining cards. Best solution? No. Agreeable? Depends on who's playing. But I think it's a better solution than "Castles are arbitrarily immune to Discoveries." For split piles, you only shuffle into one half of the split.

Artifact - Overall, I'm not worried too much about the implied Throning; however, I have been tossing around ways to reword this (maybe even using Necromancer-style flip mechanics) in order to avoid the unwanted results.

Avatar of Greed - Cards on the Avatar mat do not score points at end of game, something I will write on the card. It does mean you can treat it like a super-Island, except that if you don't get a Curse (which may run out) then you just screwed yourself out of the game.

Dig Site - Good eye. It does not need to be a Victory. I have contemplated adding a rule like "In games using this, the game ends if a player has 25 or more VP tokens." This would prevent unending games. That said, I have played games with Lurkers and Dig Sites, and they did not go on forever -- however, a player in those games was trying to win via Provinces instead of Dig Sites. I think if everyone went hardcore Dig Sites, this could become a real problem.

Stronghold - Ahh yes, the "you can actually reveal this unlimited times as a Reaction" thing. I forget that. I'm toying with making the bottom simply reflect the top (as a reaction, discard this to trash two cards from hand or discard pile.) Not entirely sure yet.

245

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Fool is a pity

« on: December 19, 2017, 06:54:38 pm »

But when we got it to the table, we all found Night far more fiddly to deal with than, say, Scheme. And it didn't just feel like the problem of getting to grips with a new mechanic: Reserve cards were a walk in the park by comparison.

Correct me if I'm wrong (because I'm pretending I know what you are talking about) but my experience was that what I found 'fiddly' with Night cards was how I kept doing my Clean-up before my Night phase. Like, I'd discard all my cards from play, then play might Night cards, then be like, sorry, I need those cards to reference with my Night cards, I need to get them back out.
I'd do this regardless of whether the Night cards were Duration cards or not.

In practice, though, this isn't something bad with Night cards. This is a nigh-Pavlovian response to buying cards. I play Actions, then drop my hand of Treasures, then dump everything into the discard pile, often with the whole maneuver taking < 2 seconds. Then I have Night cards and have to rethink things.

Plus, I did this thing that a lot of people on Reddit did, where they/I assumed that Night cards that look like Actions play like Actions and the strategies of playing them are precisely the same. Then you play Night Watchman as a-dumb-clone-of-Cartographer-that-I-play-last and suddenly your brain comes to a screeching halt because you don't play Night Watchman the same as Cartographer, it means differently.

Anyhow, forgive me if I'm totally on the wrong path, but I think that the fiddly side of Night cards all comes from it defying deeply-ingrained time-saving moves. I think the solution will be to learn new time-saving moves? I currently am pushing to always have a person who reads the Boons aloud, rather than handing the cards around the table (unless they say "keep until Clean-up" -- same with Hexes.)

246

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: December 19, 2017, 10:02:08 am »

The OP has been updated for final wording scrutiny!

(Tomb Guardian still might need a rename, due to Guardian. Tomb Raider stays, though.)

247

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: December 18, 2017, 04:20:27 pm »

I tested "put it whereever you want in the pile" instead of shuffling for the Discovery. I got an interesting result from a player psychology point of view.

With shuffling, players bought Discoveries and used them often. They seemed to believe that they will always win the Golds from subsequent buys, even if that's unlikely.

With intelligent placement, players rarely bought Discoveries, avoided using them when possible, and then placed them as far down the pile as possible in order to keep them out of enemy hands. They seemed to believe that the opponent would always win the Golds if not prevented from doing so.

Chances are, this is just inferior play -- a good player would be able to figure out exactly where to put the Discovery; but most of the testers were not willing to try figure it out.

This, combined with the additional time involved in players analyzing where to put the card leads me to say, screw it, shuffle it is.


Edit: and with that, the set is basically done. Watch this space for me to update the OP for final wording scrutiny.

248

Dominion: Nocturne Previews / Re: Has Nocturne Shipped?

« on: December 08, 2017, 01:02:40 pm »

I'm in Edmonton in Canada. One of the LGS's in the area finally got their copies last night.

249

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Antiquity (WIP! Please help!)

« on: December 07, 2017, 10:23:13 am »

I'm going to test the "put it however many levels down" wording as a gameplay option, see how it goes. It would solve #1.

250

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: December 05, 2017, 11:34:15 am »

Donald,
Once again, thanks for answering all these questions.

Onto: I'm curious about how you got your name plastered on the Dominion box. How does that happen? I mean, I know that once you've won two Spiel awards, any publisher would be dumb to not put your name on the box; But, when the first Dominion game came out, I understand your name was on the box. Is this just how RGG rolls? Is there a fun story here?