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401

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 17, 2018, 03:58:36 pm »

Heretic: I'm gonna need some explaining again. How is this a Lost City? The wording for Hunted is ambiguous and confusing;  "play all cards" seems to mean just play them as usual but put them on the mat, but the "at the start of your turn" part seems to mean it's forcing you to play everything, but without using up actions. What are these "tokens" it's talking about? Is it referring to VP chips?

Orphan: Why not just have it gain you a Curse? Less confusing, and makes the abilities of Witch Hunter and Mountain Witch useful more of the time.

Grand Witch: The cool thing about this is that you avoided the problem a lot of dual-type fan Curses have. This remains in play, so you can't just milk the benefit and then trash it at the end. Well, you can still do it with Bonfire, but that might be a neat little loophole that makes it more interesting. The actual ability of the card I'm not so hot on. From looking at it it seems very weak. VP-when-you-X cards like Goons and Groundskeeper are best when you have a whole bunch of them in play at once, but this is hard to get and each one is a freaking negative Province. I also feel that getting -VP when you get this and then slowly gaining +VP to make up for it just isn't all that interesting. I think it would be more interesting if it gave you some sort of a big engine boost, so that you can make up for the -VP at the very end with a megaturn.

Hunted - I think Holunder9 summed this one up nicely. It's basically Prince, but for a set amount of turns (how many tokens you have) and requires a Wine Merchant condition to get your cards back, otherwise you lose them. There is a lot of text to read through, but I think once a player understands the core concept, it's very easy to play/execute.

Orphan - Gaining a curse is an interesting idea that would be useful late game, but I think it would hurt too much early game. Making the Curse gain conditional kind of goes against my design for the card: Orphan shouldn't hurt early game, but should mid-late game if you're trying to pick up late Traveler components. I'll certainly keep it in mind though. Thanks for the suggestion!

Grand Witch - I'd argue this is pretty strong, but only with the other Traveler cards to support it. On it's own versus Champion and Teacher it is the weakest for sure. It doesn't give a big engine boast (Teacher and Champion do that well enough), but there is still room for big, end-game point swings using the Cursing mechanics in various ways. I talked about this to some length with Holunder9 in the above comments.

Bonfire - I'm glad someone caught this! I certainly didn't when designing these. Very thematic, but in a terrible way. A friend mentioned it though and I think it would be interesting. Perhaps too swingy, but some combos in Dominion will always be that way.

402

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 17, 2018, 03:00:56 pm »

I have my doubts about Grand Witch making your want to buy Curses but that's just because I am not used to the "good Curses" idea, with 2 Grand Witches and Mountain Hag / Witch Hunter as support this could work.
Really great conceptually overall and far more complex than the official Travellers (which I cannot stand because they are so overpowered and strategically mandatory).

Yeah, this probably only works if you're building for it (i.e. getting a lot of the Traveler cards). The Curse thing is usually going to be niche, but if you could build a reliable engine around 3-5 Curses, you can do a lot of cool things at that point like: (1) Gain Curses and get 2VP and then dish them out to other players with Mountain Hag resulting in a 3VP swing for each Curse. (2) Give Grand Witches to players with Mountain Hag for -6VP, but this has to be timed well with the end of the game.

I just ask that people don't focus too much on this aspect alone as it is only one side of this Traveller. Managing these scenarios is difficult and can be slow, so it will depend highly on the other Kingdom cards. Other than that, I think there is still enough going on to justify the purchases. And as with all well balanced Dominion cards, there should certainly be scenarios where Grand Witch is not the way to go.

403

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 17, 2018, 01:31:10 pm »

I like that you did a Traveller line. That's like the hardest thing to do. Also, while Curse-for-benefit is often frowned upon I don't think that it is a big issue. Mountain Hag is good enough without Ambassador-ing Curses and as second card Witch Hunter is supposed to be weak anyway.

But I don't understand some cards.
Orphan's 'give a VP token back' will not do anything unless there are other cards that provide VP tokens or unless you buy one after you have Grand Witch in play which seems extremly unlikely.
Grand Witch is unlikely to get VPs via Curses unless there is a Curser and no trasher in the Kingdom (so players are forced to play the Ambassador game with Mountain Hag).
These two cards are of course fine otherwise but they have elemets that are a bit too Kingdom-dependent for my taste.

My favourite here is Heretic. Normally you want to progress as fast as possible through a Traveller line but this trade-off between having a good engine piece for a turn longer vs. getting the payload of the 4th and 5th cards earlier is really nice and also mechanically well and clear implemented via the State.
Then again the card also punishes you for trying to exploit that strategy (this is probably very necessary, that Lost City looks more attractive to me than the Coin and VP tokens of the following cards) and use several Heretics as Lost Cities as no tokens are added to Haunted while at least one Heretic is on it.

Thanks for the feedback!

Orphan - In a way I set out to make the worst card in Dominion and still have it have a place in a game. I'll explain this more under Witch Hunter.

Witch Hunter - Glad to hear you're open to Curse-for-benefit cards, as most people are not. You probably know, but the big argument is that they are either too weak or too strong. Well I thought I'd try something that starts out very weak, but becomes quite strong with Grand Witch in play. I think Witch Hunters main late game strength is not it's ability to field Curses into draw/coin (it certainly helps), but it's +Buy that allows for Curse pile outs. In a way, they become like a Princess with Estate piling. Curse piling may not always be the best way to go, but it creates a tremendous amount of pile pressure on your opponent.

So hopefully this Curse/Estate piling addresses both concerns about Orphan and Grand Witch. Orphan's negative VP effect will do nothing early game, but if you wanna pick up late game Witch Hunters (when they shine most) you'll need to go through Orphan and possibly lose some VP. This effect isn't much, but in a tight game it might matter. Concurrently, Grand Witch won't do much to prevent Curse attacks, it's VP gain on Curses is mainly for Curse piling. Other than that, player's should focus on Victory cards.

Heretic - This is also my favorite card in the line so I'm happy to hear someone else both appreciates it and can see the full scope of it's play potential. The previous version of Heretic had all of it's current text and the text of the Hunted state all on one card. You can imagine all that text didn't go over well with people. It was a frustrating experience. I had what I thought was an amazing concept, but I couldn't get anyone to buy into all that reading despite it playing very straightforward. Well, states came out and saved the whole thing for me. On a side note, I'm planning other cards and Events centered around Hunted. I think there is a lot of design potential there. Really glad you like it!

One concern is that the Lost City effect is so good, player's will never exchange these into Mountain Hag's. This could easily break the line for other players going for Grand Witch. One fix would be to make the exchange mandatory for Heretic.

404

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 15, 2018, 08:58:49 pm »

Border Guard(v0.2) - Well you got me sucked into updating Border Guard. Now that mirror frame for my girlfriend is never going to get built! This is just a rough concept going off of Holunder9's idea of having the gained card be less than the top card of the Supply pile your token is on. This is a really cool concept, but as I see it as a nerf in a way, Border Guard's price (initially) is now $5 and now it's price can vary. It now must be able to gain a cheaper card in order to stop players from alternating between the Copper and Curse piles for $0 cost Border Guards. You can still put it on the Estate pile and gain Coppers/Curses, but hopefully that is just plain bad. Also, if you gain too many and deplete the Border Guard pile, your token no longer works (Hey I created a reason to keep the play from Supply bit!).

Well this all came together rather quickly so there might be some issues, but I think it's on the right track. I also like Holunder9's other suggestion of player's choosing the initial pile their token goes on, but I just don't think it will work for this card. There's already a lot going on with this. Maybe it could be worked into an Event or as was suggested an Edict? Would love to see it!

Thanks for all the feedback!

Edit - I can see one issue (albeit probably unlikely). If the Border Guard pile is empty and the last card of a pile your token is on is gained, you cannot move your token, so your Border Guards are now equal to the price of a card that is not there. An easy fix would be to mention in a manual that in this case Border Guard is equal to $0 Coin. This would essentially brick all Border Guards a player has, but I think this is easy enough to avoid.

405

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 15, 2018, 07:46:11 pm »

Sea Wall(v0.1) - I agree with removing the on-buy clause. It's nice on paper, but probably doesn't actually do much. Probably best used with another card. I also worry about the discrepancy between getting this turn 3 and getting it turn 5. I do think Sea Wall is less forgiving in this instance than say Chapel, but it is a lot more money. I guess there will always be a certain level of swinginess in Dominion that can't be designed around. Unless I make this a Night-Duration with a gain to hand clause. This would probobably make it too strong as you could trash turn 2 with it. Other than that, I think I already have too many Night - Duration cards and many more already in the pipeline!

Border Guard(v0.1) - Thanks for the praise Holunder9, but sorry Border Guard wasn't as cool as you originally thought! I made this one a few years ago and I've never quite felt 100% happy with it. It has played fine, but it always seemed like it could be just a tad better and/or more interesting. So I'm very happy to see these change recommendations. I think gaining a cheaper card than the pile your token is on opens up a lot of game-play potential and fixes some problems at the same time. I will have to think a little on any potential issues with this version, but barring that I think I will change it.

The choice of where to place your token at the start of the game is very interesting, but it needs some careful thought. My first fear is that there will never be a reason to buy Border Guard with this change. I'm sure there's a way to make it work though.

As for how to implement this I have some good options to think on. I'm not in love with playing it from the Supply, but I think I concluded on that not because of word choice, but because the token stops functioning once the Border Guard pile is empty. It's sort of a Band of Misfits/Overlord limiter. I don't see the Border Guard pile being empty most games, but for this reason I'm inclined to keep the playing from the Supply bit in. I will think on it though.

The Reaction suggestion by Commodore Chuckles is interesting, but my main hesitation is you'd have to have the Border Guard in hand to gain the card. But this would be a good fix if Border Guard ever needed a nerf.

Border Gourd - Where to even begin! Clearly Border Gourd's first issue is it's lack of a proper sword, shield and helmet. How can one guard anything so ill equipped? I've made the necessary changes.

406

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 14, 2018, 01:57:43 pm »

Seawall is interesting. It is to Junk Dealer as Hireling is to Laboratory until you decide to stop to use it. I fear though that it is a bit worse than Junk Dealer. Unless there are handsize attack you might have to stop relatively early with thinning lest this destroys a good hand. Obviously it is brilliant with junkers as you can then use it relatively long.

I really like it, one of the best Hireling variants / permanent Durations I have seen.

Yeah, I really like this one conceptually and thematically, but there are still some big, looming questions about how it will play. Junk Dealer and Donate were the main inspirations behind Sea Wall, but hopefully it plays differently enough to justify a new card. I think it's better than Junk Dealer early on, but the risk of playing it into mid-game becomes exponentially worse than Junk Dealer. Donate is better early game, but Sea Wall can take your trashing a little further into the game to deal with junk attacks and such.

I hadn't thought of how hand size attacks interact with this. Very cool catch!

[Edit] I'm also on the fence about the on buy clause. I was thinking of a way to reward player 2 advantage, but this might scale out of control with 3 or more players. 1st player could then buy a 2nd Sea Wall for very cheap, but the question then becomes would you ever want a 2nd one at any price. I guess the risk of having 2 versus 1 is not much greater.

The cost reduction may also mess with opening hands in an unforeseen way.

Any thoughts on this are greatly appreciated!

407

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Revolution

« on: June 12, 2018, 09:52:33 pm »

Back to Kudasai:
Power - why not indeed? Cards would be simpler to read, and just by thinking of Power tokens on a mat, there's a feeling straight away that a card or two could care for the amount of Power you have (like Gazbag's Barbarian/Warlord in Ice Age with Coffers, but it feels more fitting to me to do it with Action tokens, you can sacrifice playing Actions now for doing bigger things later). And that would give some reason for both Power and Villages in the same game.

Components' Silver gain being optional makes interesting choices with Mule whilst retaining its individual function. With your other suggestions I'm seeing how opening with 2 of them won't be so broken as with 2 Treasure Maps, which was my worry.

Actually using Prototype's self-discard as something you want to do rather than just because you can do self-discard safely makes so much sense. Honestly, that's all my thinking was here.

Your wording for Patent is definitely better, but I think it needs to 'be the card until it leaves play' like Overlord? It's going to be wordy, and I see no way round it. Short of putting the bottom instructions on the Patent mat itself or something.

You question Steam Engine's place in the series; I put it there for the contrast with Mule at first, then Patent joined in because some games would be a pretty sad race for the standout best Patent, and Steam Engine could be a fine consolation prize for the losers. Patent is a lot more flexible now than what it used to be though.
But, I put together your thoughts on Prototype and the idea of Power count and came up with this:

Steam Engine - Reveal a number of cards from the top of your deck equal to your Power. Discard the non-Actions, then play the Actions in any order.

Prototype would give +2 Power, which could either go to playing better Patents or be stored up for this. Is this an improvement?

Spinning Mule did have a Buy on it but it was dominating when you could get it early. So, taking the Buy off this and Patent I was toying with this new idea:

Replica - Action Duration Machine, 0* cost.
When you play your first Replica this turn, if you have 3 or more Power, gain a Machine from its pile.
At the start of each of your turns for the rest of the game: +1 Buy and + $1.
(This stays in play. This is not in the Supply.)

If you want Buys, wait a bit longer. I put the $ with it to make it feel more worthwhile, and last minute made it count Power to be a bit harder to continue.

Power - Well I am certainly glad you like the idea, and boy did you take it and make it something way more exciting then a simple wording choice! I really, really like the idea of cards caring about how much Power you have. This is a complex mechanic that probably would take careful planning, but I think it can be done. I think the first big question would be if the cards that care about Power have to use the Power to get the bonus, or if it just simply checks for it.

Patent - I don't actually think this needs "This is that card until it leaves play." In my opinion (and it is often wrong) all this does is rename the Patent when it's in play to whatever is on your patent mat. It does nothing to execute the patent mat card's instructions. Overlord renaming itself only matters for gainer cards like Disciple and Changeling, which care about name. Gaining a bunch of Overlords this way would be quite powerful, but with Patent it is a non-issue because it is not in the Supply and cannot be gained.

Steam Engine - Now this is an exciting card! I read it once and immediately had a good sense of what to do with it. Works a lot better with Prototype now as well. To me this now has a clear place in the Machine series. Spinning Mule is great Treasure draw, Patent makes one card very powerful, and now Steam Engine is great Action draw. Again, using Power to do cool stuff will likely need a lot of balancing, but it's such a cool idea.

Replica - I'll have to spend some more time thinking about this one to give worthwhile analysis, but I think you made the right call by making a Machine that gives +Buys and is not one of the already very powerful cards. This also makes your Prototyping stage more relevant. I also like how it's not trying to compete with Spinning Mule, Steam Engine and Patent; it's just there if a player needs +Buys.

I am a bit confused on the wording. Is it saying if this is your first Replica played this turn you can check your Power and gain a Machine? If so, you can use something like the Crossroads wording. I don't think there really needs to be a condition though seeing that these are permanent Duration cards. The chances of playing multiple Replica's is unlikely. Removing this text streamlines it quite a bit. Here is a quick mockup:



Really exciting stuff! Can't wait to see how it all comes together!

408

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: June 12, 2018, 08:14:44 pm »

With regards to Coffers - from what I understand the tokens are still Coin tokens and you put them on your Coffers? Butcher talks about removing tokens from your coffers. So saying to move tokens from the piles to your Coffers seemed a bit more concise than removing a token and then getting +1 Coffers. Maybe that's not how it actually works?

My Coffers inquiry was more an attempt at humor than anything else, but to answer your question, I think they are still completely interchangeable. I think it's just a matter of what makes the most sense on a case by case basis. As for Supply Post, I think it's worded perfectly in terms of token usage.

For me it is a mixture between being used to something, not wanting cards with old and new wording and above all language issues. I am German but play with the original cards and all the folks I play with are familiar with Coin tokens. Coffers on the other hand is a word that I have never heard before and I am pretty sure that the folks in my gaming group don't know it either.

Thanks for posting your cards in English!

409

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Asper's Cards

« on: June 12, 2018, 07:41:51 pm »

Hello Asper!

I was going through some old Dominion notebooks and found this Village concept. I thought I'd share in case you're still looking for possible alternatives for Cliffside Village. It slows the trashing down a bit so you might even be able to price it at $4 Coin.

410

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Ice Age

« on: June 11, 2018, 03:00:51 pm »

Supply Post - Adding a non-Victory Action instruction would clear up any interactions with Trade Route.

I'll give some more in depth analysis later. Really cool cards though! Excited to sit down and really take a close look at them. Also, why are you and Holunder9 so opposed to +Coffers!? It's simple and elegant and saves valuable card text space. You too are really missing out!

411

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 11, 2018, 02:40:26 pm »

I cannot judge Smelter because I am not good with cards like Develop and Dismantle but it looks decent.

I like Trade Ship but like all build-up cards you gotta be very careful about the power level. Take Miser, it has to be weak because it would otherwise become too good in too many games.
So what's the potential problem of Trade Ship? If there are decent trashers around you can gain 4 Estates and now have a Province gainer in your deck. Add a village and another Trade Ship and you make as much as any decent engine, 2 Provinces per turn.
I am not claiming that it is broken but any direct, i.e. non-Remodel, Province gainer potentially is which is why I would test it without the 2 tokens for a Victory card.

General is simple and brilliant. I have no idea about how balanced this is but I just love it on first sight.

Trade Ship(v0.1) - Trade Ship can only gain cards costing exactly the amount on your Trade Ship mat. So if you do have 2 tokens and gain an Estate, it bumps it up to 4 tokens no longer allowing Estates to be gained. Same applies for Duchies and Provinces; you can only gain 1 per game. The wording on this alludes to the card playing differently, but this is how Dominion has always handled these types of cards (i.e. Artificer). It's flawed, but I'm just going with the official print. Maybe they will fix this one day.

General(v0.1) - I am also very excited about this one. Can't wait to try it!

And would you look at that... three terminal Actions in a row! I didn't think I had it in me!

412

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 11, 2018, 02:33:31 pm »

I assume Sanctuary is an attempt to stop opening buys from missing the reshuffle?

Also it's worth pointing out that testing your cards vs big money isn't particularly useful. E.g. Scrying Pool is an incredibly strong card, but Scrying Pool big money is probably worse than pure big money. That's an extreme example obviously, but just because a card doesn't crush big money by itself doesn't prove that it's of an acceptable power-level. The only real use is making sure your card doesn't lead to an obscenely fast Province rush by itself, which isn't the worry with Border Wall.

Yes, Sanctuary/Monk is meant to be a reshuffle stabilizer. Maybe something like this isn't needed, but I like the concept. Your cards will now never miss the reshuffle, but it comes at the cost of slowing your reshuffles down. Other than that it can be used for pretty good payload.

In my opinion, testing against Big Money (not using the card with Big Money) is only meant to establish a basic baseline for a card. Big Money is just a baseline for the game correct? To me, playing against the game baseline seems like the logical first step. Of course you don't just stop there though. I would then play it with other cards I thought would either support it or counter it to see what it's potential is. If that all seems fair, I'd look at similar cards (if available) to try and make sure the pricing was correct. Then it would come down to actually playing with it and making sure it was actually fun.

Do you have a method you've found works best for you?

413

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 10, 2018, 03:50:40 pm »

I also think that your set could get away with more terminals, you only have 3 so far.

Fair point! These are not meant to be a cohesive set by any means, but you are correct, I should put more terminal cards on here. I'm just a bit more unsure about them, but I'll start posting more.

414

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 10, 2018, 02:59:20 pm »

Border Wall(v0.3)/Refugees(v0.2) - Refugees (v0.2) now produces $1 Coin instead of $2. Gazbag and Holunder9, you both bring up good and accurate points, but I simply see these as strengths and weaknesses that need to be considered on a board by board basis, not reasons to not have the cards. My limited baseline testing has shown no matter how Border Wall/Refugees are played solo (as an early game Curser or a late game VP gainer) they are about as good as Big Money. I believe their real strength will come from the other Kingdom cards that tip them to one end or the other of their playable spectrum.

There is a lot more testing to do to ensure this complicated interaction is fair and balanced, but at this initial point I'm happy with how these cards play with each other. The next step will be to see how it plays in various Kingdoms. As always thank you both for the feedback!

415

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Mechanic idea: tribes

« on: June 10, 2018, 02:12:11 pm »

Chief's "highest-costing" is ill-defined; what do I discard if I have a Possession, a Prince and a City Quarter in hand?

I don't know how fun the gaining stuff is. if it is basically never worth it to pay $8 for it (and the effect is rather that of a decent $5), then why make it a supply pile at all?

This could be made to discard the most expensive card in Coin. So Debt and Potion cards would actually be better with Chief.

416

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Holunder's cards

« on: June 10, 2018, 01:26:31 pm »

I also fear that trashing and yielding Coin tokens could be too good.
In a normal game, after the first play of Lich you will have between 1 and 2 cards on your Tavern mat but as has been pointed out, if there are Shelters, Heirlooms, Ruins, Reserve cards or if you later set aside a Silver, Lich can provide more. As I guess that a vanilla card that provides 3 Coin tokens would be roughly a $5 I fear that Lich could be situationally too good.

I agree with what Gazbag once said, "Dominion is a situational game", or something to that effect. I don't think these situations will come up often and maybe don't merit planning for, but if you wanna reign in the max power level of Lich you have options:
(1) Cap the amount of Coin tokens Lich can produce. Not very exciting though.
(2) Only count cards on your Tavern mat with one type. This removes Shelters, Ruins, Heirlooms, and Reserve cards in one fell swoop. This should play more or less the same, but if a player really wants to churn out Coin tokens they need to start removing more valuable cards like Silver and Action cards.

417

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Creating new cards for alchemy 8 to be exact.

« on: June 10, 2018, 02:54:52 am »

Now I have my alchemy cards in the template format. If I print them out onto paper and glue them on cards will they be the exact measurements of the real cards? If not how do I make them the exact measurements?

What program are you using to edit/print your cards? Photoshop has resizing options for printing. I'm sure most programs will too. But is gluing them onto blank cards really going to give you a great result? Probably not. I'd wait to see if someone on here can offer a better solution. Like maybe an online print shop that does this sort of thing.

418

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 10, 2018, 02:45:37 am »

Sanctuary(v0.1)/Monk(v0.1):
Draw Instructions: Yes, the "draw instructions" refers to anything the -1 Card token handles. So some "draw" cards like Advisor and Envoy are excluded. Catacombs is a tricky one as I'm inclined to say the first part is a reveal clause, which is not draw, but the second part is clearly draw. I'm sure Catacombs with the -1 Card token has been addressed somewhere. Good question Gazbag!

Golden Deck: Keep in mind you need a minimum of 6 cards in your deck for your Sanctuary cards to provide Monks. 5 or less cards and your deck will have 0 cards every time, which does not satisfy the 1 to 4 card requirement. So for the Golden deck strategy let's say you do have 6 cards and you have 5 Sanctuary cards out (Monks = $3 Coin). The play order will go as follows: 1 Card, 4 Monks = $12 = Province; No Monks = $?; 2 Cards, 3 Monks = $9 = Province; No Monks = $?; 3 Cards, 2 Monks = $6 = Not Province. You can see that as you add non-Cantrip cards (i.e. Provinces) you draw less and less Monks for less and less money. This is due to the fact that your overall deck size is increasing. So not a viable, straight-forward strategy, but maybe with some clever cantrip play and/or not using all of your Monk cards could work.

So What's The Point: Well I designed Sanctuary/Monk with a very specific goal in mind. To address a problem I'm sure every Dominion player has encountered and cursed the game as a result. Perhaps it didn't need fixing, but I wanted to give it a shot. So what is this problem? Well, I want to see if someone can figure it out. Not to be difficult, but this is a great opportunity to see how people interpret this. If no one can see what it's true purpose is, perhaps it's a bad concept. Besides this, opening a Silver and 3 Sanctuaries guarantees $8-$10 coin on turn 5. That may be helpful at times, right?

Border Wall(v0.3)/Refugees(v0.1): This has been quite a tough one to test, but so far it seems fair. Both cards have great potential, but keep each other in check in various ways. Perhaps this is a flawed concept, but I think it's worth looking into a bit more. I will of course keep everyone updated! I will likely drop the Refugee Treasure clause to +$1 and discard a card. +$2 is likely a bit much, even though it is conditional.

419

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 09, 2018, 08:14:52 pm »

Sanctuary/Monk: If there's good trashing and no handsize attacks, then with just 2 Sanctuaries you'll have a guaranteed Province every turn.

Sanctuary/Monk - I think you're thinking of 4 Sanctuary cards in play. 2 Sanctuaries would only give Monks +1 Coin each. Even with 4 Sanctuaries, with each Province you gain you have less and less control over how many Monks you gain on the reshuffle. In my chapel game tests, you're able to nab a few Provinces back to back once thin, but then the strategy grinds to a halt. You're forced to buy Treasure in order to get your reshuffles corrected and that takes 6-7 turns. I'm sure it's possible to make this into a golden deck, but I think it would be harder, more complicated and take longer than it appears.

420

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Revolution

« on: June 09, 2018, 01:53:10 pm »

[[[MACHINE SERIES]]]
Components - Cool concept. On a competitive level I'm not a big fan of cards that have to line themselves up (Urchin, Treasure Map) due to how swingy they can be, but they are fun. The top decking Silver could make for some interesting openings and with calculated play you can setup your Prototype cards nicely. I just wonder if the Silver gaining could be optional. Without sifting cards, the extra Silvers just hurt your chances of your Components hitting.

Prototype - This is a nice jumping off point that empowers both Action based strategies (Steam Engine/Patent) and Treasure based strategies (Spinning Mule). I like the option to keep a Prototype to get more plays out of it in order to better hone future Machine cards.

Spinning Mule - Seems pretty strong, but only with pure Treasure decks. Once you have just 1 Spinning Mule you can probably draw your deck every time it's in play. So the on play is pretty one dimensional, but there is a lot of subtly in how you get to that point. Do you trash down (if able) so your Components hit more frequently, but at the cost of Treasure drawing power later? Seems like a sound and fun decision making process. I would also add that this card is pretty worthless without a +Buys on the board, so maybe this needs a +Buy? It does after all take a while to get it and it would distinguish it even more from Patent, which is great, but also does not have a +Buy. Then again, if Spinning Mule is the only source of +Buys, it would probably be the only Machine a player would buy. Maybe both need a +Buy? In terms of formatting, there should be a line separating the above Coin and the lower text.

Steam Engine - I really enjoy the other cards in this "Traveler-like" line. They seem to fit in well with when you get them and their purpose seems clear. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for Steam Engine. The wording is a bit awkward and it doesn't seem to fit in with what the other cards are and are not doing. Components is a nice little colliding game; Prototype builds up either Spinning Mule or Patent nicely (nice thematic choice by the way!); Spinning Mule is good with Money; and Patent is good with Engines. Steam Engine gives Action tokens, so the Prototype phase seems less important and it's just kind of a hard to interpret Throne Room. I think it could be good on it's own, but I just wonder if it needs to be a part of this Machine series.

Patent - Really cool idea! Being the 1st player to get Patent will certainly be beneficial, but the additional choices are broad enough that even coming in 2nd or 3rd shouldn't be too much of a heart-ache. Seeing how getting this first is highly dependent on your Components colliding, I again think the Silver gaining should be optional. There are a few wording issues here though. As it's currently worded, the Patent card only becomes the card on your Patent mat in name only; it doesn't actually play it. I made a mockup of how it could be worded. I also cleaned up the bottom portion to be more in-line with official card wording. It plays exactly the same though!



[[[ACTION TOKENS]]]
Have you considered changing "Take an Action token" to something like "+1 Power"? Kind of how "Take a Coin token" was changed to "+1 Coffers". It could go a long way in terms of clearing the wording up. In your cards there's a lot going on with "Actions", "Action cards" and "Action Tokens". Personally my brain stops registering the difference if I see "Action" too much.

Also, has there every been a version where Action tokens could only be cashed in at the start of your Action phase? Would make for some hard, but interesting gameplay.

421

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Holunder's cards

« on: June 08, 2018, 07:59:25 pm »

Lich - The concept is really cool and exciting! In a glass box, the card alone seems to offer a lot of diverse play. I really like how the Curse cycling on your Tavern mat effects the Coin output on play. Throw in Reserve cards and this should make for interesting and fun choices. Hard to tell if the price and power level are correct as this is a tough one the theorize. If adjustments are needed, you have a lot to work with:
-The non-Victory clause could be dropped.
-You could remove the bottom half choice and get both the ability to place a card and get the Coin tokens. If you went this route, you could make the choice be to Curse or to Place/Take Coins. In this version you want to win the Curse split, but you also don't want to give your opponent an extra Coin token early.

Either way I think the core mechanics are very sound and this seems playtestable. I don't play so much in real life, but the next time I do I'll try and squeeze this one into a game. Also, thanks for the shout-out!



 

422

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 08, 2018, 07:05:28 pm »

Buying doesn't work, as you will cover them up with the cards in play. Hand-gainers just stay hand-gainers. It's good to gain a card to your hand, but it's not like a hand-gained Commander is any better than another hand-gained card. You gain an additional copy and get to use the card as if you had drawn it. That's something Artisan and Wish do, not something Commanders do.

I believe it's possible to get around this with Crypt. Very niche! Other than that, I'm trying to make some cost $4 Commanders so more mid-turn gaining options are available. Also very niche, but the more interactions the better.

423

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 08, 2018, 06:59:23 pm »

Border Wall(v0.3) - To further complicate the Border Wall discussion I've made it a split-pile along with Refugees. 5 Border Walls on top and 5 Refugees on the bottom. This goes against having cheaper split-pile cards on top, but hopefully that's more of a general rule and not a hard rule. I have no idea how this is going to work out, but I think everyone agrees Border Village on it's own needed a nerf. So what better way to nerf a card than to share it with it's anti-card? Oh boy, this could be a disaster!

424

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 07, 2018, 06:39:11 pm »

I can only speak to how I'd like Funeral and Border Wall to play as they are both untested currently.

Funeral (v0.1) - Gazbag summed this one elegently. I imagine during the early game in most cases a player will want to "bury their Copper" under Estates or Shelters. If not, welcome back Coppersmith; you've been missed! Even if this isn't used mid to late game, my hope is that it's a good enough one-shot trasher that people will still pick it up.

Mid to late game, I can't say much that hasn't already been said. Again I can only speculate how this will play. I just hope this entices players to diverge from normal strategies and play with cards that are seldom touched. +1 Card and +1 Action should make any Action fit into any strategy. You just can't rely on the bonus being around forever, unless you get the last Funeral play off.

So the hope is that funeral is very powerful with calculated play and a disaster for those who just buy a bunch of bridges and try to get a cantrip effect on them. Of course playtesting is needed!

Border Wall (v0.3) - Asper is correct that an Attack type shouldn't be too hard to resolve. Beyond that, there isn't much I can say about this card. It's a bit beyond my reasoning ability and may end up being unbalanceable, but I thought it was an interesting enough concept to share and get thoughts on. I'll try and get some playtesting in soon.

Commanders - I get the elegance of implying one passive effect with something there's only one of, a top discard pile card. But how reliable can it be in practice? Basically, I'm raising the thought: why aren't these using their own mat? Since you have multiple Commanders you seem to want to enable switching between different 'command modes' when there is more than one in a kingdom, and a mat would make this simpler, even if it is adding more components.
That Risen King giving a global effect on trash is well discussed. I firstly wonder when you'd choose to trash one and get an advantage out of it for yourself, and secondly if there is more than one in the trash, I think you'd gain a card per copy in the trash?

Commanders - A mat would be elegant, but playing from the discard opens up a lot of interactions with discarding cards and mid-turn gainers. The absence or inclusion of these cards will say a lot about how reliable Commanders will be. I'm also trying to implement various levels of reliability into each Commander. Marshal only hurts your hand when played, but it allows you to put another Commander in your discard, which I think should be quiet powerful. Osho has no reliability built in, but is very cheap. Risen King has some mid-turn gaining abilities and as you mentioned, has a global impact from the trash. And yes, multiple Risen Kings in the trash means multiple cards gained off of trashing. I haven't revealed General yet (the 4th Commander), but it's Commander effect will apply while in play and while in the discard, so it will be very reliable, but very expensive.

Honestly though, you raise some good questions. The Commander concept is all hypothetical at this point, but play-testing will come soon enough. As always, thanks for your thoughtful analysis Aquila! I really like some of your cards and will soon try my hand at returning the analysis favor, but be warned, my card analysis skills are sub par!

425

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Kudasai's Random Dominion Cards

« on: June 07, 2018, 12:36:36 pm »

Border Wall (v0.2) - Just a quick addition, Faust was commenting on a previous version (v0.1), which had an Attack type. Sorry for the quick switch.