Hi folks, been a lurker on this and the German forum and since Nocturne came out I worked on some cards, done with
herw's great template.
There are Night cards, Heirlooms, new States and new junk, cards based on offical outtakes (lame!) and cards based on ideas by other fan card designers:
Gazbag's freeze mechanic,
ThetaSigma12's Landforms and
Asper's Edicts:
Blackmail is a new junk card that should feature a different card back to prevent cheating.
Racketeer and
City Guard are probably gonna be part of either a split pile or a double pile with none covered up by the other and both being in the Supply all the time.
City Guard might be too good as it could easily net a lot of Coin tokens but I expect it to mostly shine in the late part of the game and in alt-VP.
Assassin also features 20 (I don't often play 4P so 20 suffice)
unique junk cards. They are supposed to be shuffled together (with the top card of the pile being visible like with Ruins) which might be too random, e.g. in a game without trashers Heretic is very nasty. In general the junk is on the weaker side, they are all cantrips and you can e.g. discard a Turncoat with a Turncoat.
Bribe is based on an outtake and perhaps it works here. The junk is not that bad such that to pass or not to pass the Bribe sometimes (hopefully!) becomes a real decision.
These are just "vanilla" states which, like Lost in the Woods, are singular and wander between player. The more interesting part of
Conjuration should be that kind of bidding game. The mechanic is directly taken from Runewars.
Royal Guard is pretty straightforward and actually came before Conjuration (see above for
Protected).
Glacier is a variation of
Gazbag's card, taking into account Cookielord's suggestion to make this pure green which could lead to more interesting alt-VP play.
Ordinary Night cards cannot feature vanilla stuff, hence all the Night-Durations. Tokens are another way and Nightmare and Spectre are shots at that.
Nightmare's attack is based on an outtake by DXV. Note that you can only be hit once during your turns which might partially compensate for the non-terminality of the attack. It could of course still be too strong.
Action tokens should function like Coin of the Realm, i.e. you spend them after having played an Action card to get +1 Action.
There are 3 cases with
Spectre:
no trashers - this only hexes.
trashers but no other junkers - this is a Copper/Estate junker
trashers and other junkers - universal junker
In my opinion only the last case is potentially problematic but I don't expect the trashing/junking ping-pong that could arise to be worse than multiplayer Ambassador (unlike with Ambassador you gotta play 2 cards).
But of course it has to be tested, increasing the size of the junk pool is a dubious idea.
Like Rats and Magpies those
Owls procreate but not that easily. I am not quite happy with the other parts of the card though. It probably has to cost 5 as you can easily make them behave like Bakers with, most likely, 2VPs stacked on top of it.
Key is there to make Owl decent in the opening. Putting Victory cards into your hand probably doesn't have many interactions, only Monastery and City Guard comes to mind, so that part could be deleted.
Evocation is another outtake.
Icelands is based on Gazbag's freeze mechanic and ThetaSigma12's Landmarks and might be too boring: you just automatically do it whenever you green and have Coins left. When you thaw the cards the Ice tokens are supposed to return to the Supply, not to Icelands; this rule should be on the card but I felt it was too wordy.
More overpaying with
Peace. The Edict mechanic is an invention of Asper and I tried to set the ratio such that there are no 'strictly better' cases but Tunnel-Duchy is the exception.
UPDATE:Chappy7 pointed out that
Spectre is bad if good stuff lands in the trash so I changed Spectre to only junk cards from the trash that cost up to 2.
Owl got nerfed (really?) a different Victory condition (from DXV's Secret History). It is in general a difficult condition to meet but Owl can be used as economy.
Azure Cove is new and might be too similar to Avanto. Avanto is only non-terminal if you draw into Sauna whereas this is always non-terminal but you have to pay for the Action later.
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Another double pile! Like Racketeer and City Guard Djinn and Efreet are constantly in the Supply with 5 per "half-pile" .
This is obviously a thematically inspired idea. Djinn came pretty natural (might be nearly as good as Artisan but it is trickier to gain) whereas Efreet was a card that I came up with some time ago but never liked as it felt too strong. I put it fairly randomly on Efreet as I thought that getting it later in the game would nerf it enough and only then I realized some interesting stuff: you can gain Efreet via Wishes as long as you have a Djinn in play. Efreet makes alt-VP better so wishing for Duchies might be a strategy.
I am still not sure whether Efreet is balanced (I will also test it with "draw 3 cards instead of 5") or any good though.
All of these are thematically or mechanically inspired by other fan card designers.
EDIT: The old Duration Phoenix was incredibly weak because it stayed out too long. My new attempt is at best roughly as good as Hunting Grounds (you non-terminally draw 5 cards but then have to play Ashes so the net effect is +4 Cards) but in addition to that it does some Island-ing. You can even Island a Curse, leave it on the mat for some turns and take it back when you have a trasher in hand.
I hope this isn't too good, as usual only playtesting will tell.
The lady asked for some Nightwatch cards after we first played with Night cards so here they are.
They are directly inspired by
Gazbag's freeze mechanism . The
Season mechanic is by Asper and Cookielord.
White Walker is a variant of Yeti, Builder is the first version of Frost Spirit and Steward is Cold Storage.
There are 3 of each Brother and 6 White Walkers, shuffled together such that 3 Brothers are on top so the entire thing could be too random. I tried to make all cards versatile and fairly strong for their price to avoid that a bad card will prevent that the cards beneath it will see the sunlight.
Dragonglass Dagger is more of an afterthought, it is a Venture variant that can change the opening a bit like Doctor.
About the actual cards, Builder is a temporary pseudo-trasher, Ranger makes all Action cards next turn additional Fugitives and defends against the Walkers, Steward gains 5s that come into your deck a bit later, White Walker is a never-missing pseudo-trashing attack with a Rogue-like gain-from-freeze-limbo option.
I also used pacovf's suggestion for freeze as new keyword:
Nothing fancy, just a one-shot that distributes Blackmail. Getting a boon seems like a natural thing for a one-shot.
I need a village for my set so here it is. Like Extortioners is another way to spread Blackmails this is another way to get Traitors into the game. It is a bit like Blessed Village and Ill-Gotten Gains.
I tried to make the village effect non-standard because $4 for a village that junks when you gain it seemed too strong. Now it is either a Necropolis or a village that can draw from the discard pile and in case the opponents play BM or don't play a Vice Town during their turns you get an auto-Village next turn via Commanding (like when it gets used with Conjuration there is only one Commanding in play).
It looks like this is a way to emulate conditional durations (that can never occur or endure for more than just 1 turn) with the vanilla States. Of course there is also similar stuff you could do, e.g. you could take Beguild, i.e. the +1 Card State, when you gain a card such that the on-gain bonus becomes something like a conditional half Exploration.
Here are some cards that play with with the Conjuration States. They are more conceptual than the other ones and more about finding out whether the basic idea works or not:
A Silver+ for $4 is always a dubious notion. I think it works here though because the price of
perhaps getting an extra Buy next turn (and with an even bigger perhaps, in future turns) is to play this as a Copper.
Kind of a reverse Relic. The buying of this will start something like a war of attrition: you don't really want that lousy Silver for $5 but you have to get it lest the other player gets a free Lab every turn.
Here we have something like an on-gain Treasury but this time you don't have to pay "too much" for a Silver but pay "too little" for a mere one-shot Fugitive to stop your opponent's Treasury for $2.
On-gain creates another mini-game though, under normal circumstances (i.e. no gainers and Remodel variants) you don't want to gain the 9th card (or 8th card in a 3P game) of the pile because then another player could empty the pile and get a safe Treasury for $2. No idea whether this is fun though.
This is unrelated to the Conjuration States and, once again, about Gazbag's great freezing mechanic.
The pile only contains 5 cards with Extinction being the 6th card underneath the 5 Mammoths. Like with Philosophers you don't want your opponent to get the last Mammoth.
About the duration effect, my
Nightwatch Ranger is to Fugitive what Mammoth is to
Asper's Scientist. Scientist is based on Storyteller's idea of converting coins into cards. With Storyteller you convert existing Coins whereas with Scientist you backload it.
The entire idea could be totally broken, it is a card which needs quite some playtesting.
A simple idea, related to Coin of the Realms, for callable infinite Buys. A nice feature is that you cannot call the card in the turn you played it so in an engine where you need the extra Buys to get components you need at least 2 in your deck.
The purpose of the wording is to prevent the emptying of Curses/Coppers as well as funky stuff with Peddlers and cost reduction.
This is based on an idea by
Seprix.
If you give it a fixed price it could be better than Province in some Kingdoms (e.g. if there are Attacks, Durations and Night cards this is better than Province as you can always buy a Curse to make Gate worth 7VPs). The variable/extra cost is a way to make the card a bit more interesting. Now you want to gain it when you have few different types in play yet your deck should have many different types.
Lich is inspiread by
Kudasai's Old Witch but will play quite differently. It is a half-Curser, meaning that the first time you play it everybody else gets the negative VP and the second time the junk lands in their decks. In addition to that it is mainly a Copper trasher (you can put Curses on the mat to delay the inevitable or put a Silver there just like you would trash a Silver to make Forager better) and provides some scalable payload.
Wanna sift through or trash some junk? Here is the guy for it. He can also set up a Province for your Tournament or dig for a Night card. Overall a versatile card that is obviously inspired by Settlers. It could be too strong for $2 yet too weak for $3.
A quick non-terminal draw idea that is related to Storyteller, Den of Sin and Expedition. The whole thing could be implemented via Card tokens or whatever but I prefer a card-shaped thing.
Slightly buffed via gaining Cursed Abbey to hand and via allowing Invocation to draw cards from the discard pile. The latter might make Invocation less automatic, i.e. don't use them immediately but wait until you have something nice in the discard pile at the start of your turn.
This is a card from one of the contests. I never did anything with positive stuff for the other players so here it is. Obviously the other way around, i.e. you get Coffers and they get Villagers, would be bonkers (not to mention that this design space is already more or less covered by Merchant Guild) and the card, like Monastery, wants to gain several cards per turn to be worthwhile.
As I expect the card to be fairly narrow due to the strength of Coffers I added the hand-gaining.
I tried to make the base version of this work for some time but I was never satisfied with the twists I gave it. This feels OK now.
Here are some nasty sideways cards that slow down play:
Renaissance has an on-shuffle trigger so this is a natural idea that punishes engine play.
Kinda like Tax but you get Ruins instead of Debt and if you cannot or do not want to get rid of them because your Scrying Pools love them so much or because they belong into a Museum you even get some points, set collection style.
First of all, this is in no way intended to be a substitute for
Fly-Eagles-Fly's great Winery/Wine design! I first wanted to do something with water, wheat and bread but we already have Mill and Baker.
Winery and
Grapes are part of a split pile with Winery above and Grapes below. Both cards are expensive for their vanilla effects but sometimes you might just use them as ordinary engine pieces.
There is a Cornucopia-like theme of variety and while the Coffers and Debt of Grapes are usually a liability you can make an asset out of them. Something like 5 Coffers and 6 Debt can be situationally good.
Wine is a recycling of the main idea of
Phoenix (Phoenix was superbad because it is so superslow, taking at least 3 turns to be played again).
Now what about those
Night Grapes and
Ice Wine? Obviously the source of the idea is thematically, you harvest frozen grapes at night to make sweet wine out of them but your workers are not happy about nearly freezing to death.
My first idea was to make Grapes an Action-Night but that's too wordy to be stuck on one card. So perhaps simply make a double pile of Grapes underneath the Winery, i.e. once the Wineries are gone you can always choose to gain either kind of Grapes? Or maintain the flexibility and implement it as an Action-Night via printing the Action part on one side and the Night part on the other which comes with the problem of having the card being visible in and above all on your deck? I have no idea how to physically implement it well.
I am not totally sure about the downside of the Night Grapes but it does nothing constructive on play and having one or more villages out of your deck for several turns should hurt some.
Ice Wine is controversial as it is something that DXV tested for Intrigue but didn't work: 3 vs 5 Provinces leads to a VP spread of 12 whereas 3 vs 5 Ice Wines leads to a VP spread of 16. Perhaps it can work as on a non-Supply card that is difficult to get?
It's Hobbit time!
The little ones love their Shire so some Victory card interaction it is. Could be that discarding Actions
and Treasures is too harsh but Pipe is pretty good (I used something similar on
Efreet). Then again Hobbit is just a buffed Scout that might be weaker than Seer.
EDIT: The Pipe trigger is now trashing something good from your hand or discard. Could be situationally even beneficial when you want to get rid of a Silver.
Where there are Hobbits, Wizards are not far:
Wizard is probably a good $4 / weak $5 so without the Artifact it would be an expensive engine piece. Like most Potion cards it has some self-synergy (play 4 Wizards, then take the Staff). If it is too weak I'll merge the card with
Settlement.
Staff is pretty crazy and defense strategies are similar to Possession (green earlier). The sifting option is there in case you don't want to gamble or want to exchange your bad hand with your own cards instead of an opponent's card (if he defends e.g. via playing money and greening early)
There are tricks like calling 2 Ratcatchers and then handing the other player a hand of 3 to get a hand of 5 or doing the same via leeching off handsize attacks.
EDIT: Staff only passes up to 3 cards instead of the entire hand.
EDIT2: Got a test game in and Wizard was too weak so I merged it with Settlement which is a slightly weakish $5 so it should be OK for this slot.
This is the Villager version of
Asper's Conserve with
a fix that LibraryAdventurer suggested.
I hope that this is not as broken as Conserve turned out to be, Villagers should be weaker.
Half in earnest, half in jest:
This idea is thematically inspired by the recent cards with an insanity theme by Kudasai and Fly-Eagles-Fly.
Whenever Bedlam is in the Kingdom Healing is a mandatory Event. Lunatic and Insane are two sides of the same card, like Miserable and Twice Miserable.
The key idea here is to do a harsh permanent Attack that you can defend against relatively easily via Potions which you want anyway to get the card. So while the Kingdom card doesn't directly defend against itself, when you choose to go down the Potion path you get both attack and defense.
Then I settled on the Potion card having to be relatively expensive such that you sometimes cannot afford it and take the Medicine en passant more often than you would if this costed $2P or $3P.
I already had the "Coffers into card draw" idea for some while but it was far too strong for a $5 (there is probably a good reason for why no official card produces more than 2 Coffers) so it was a natural match for the expensive Potion card.
I was a bit sad that overpay did not reappear in Renaissance, it is not a difficult mechanism and there is stuff you could do with it and the tokens.
Marketeer is simply another name for a Buy token (that you can spend at the start of your Buy phase for +1 Buy); overpaying for VP tokens obviously doesn't work (on a Victory card,
this card by Theta and AdrianHealey does work).
The anti-Copper clause is there to prevent endgame shenanigans with total Coin transfer; I don't like the enusing overall wordiness though.
Printing Press could be good enough to cost $5 and could be too similar to Academy, Guildhall and Spices.
EDIT: Costed at $5.
I always liked the recent Actions that want Silvers (Sauna, Merchant) or Golds (Encampment, Legionary) in your deck so this is my stab at doing something along these lines:
Both cards are part of a split pile with either 4 of each in a two player game respectively 6 of each in multiplayer.
Timber Raft could be good enough to cost $3. The base price of Riverlands is just a first shot, hard to determine this without playtesting. Riverlands could be in principle too strong. If you manage e.g. to play 3 Timber Rafts and 3 Treasures the first one costs only 1, the second one 2 and so on. Twitching the base price only gets you so far which is why Riverlands is then up for elimination. Its idea is mainly to make Timber Raft better but perhaps this is already good enough on its own.
EDIT: Timber Raft costs $3 now.
This is nothing original but a variation of
Gazbag's Artefact. Instead of topdecking green it freezes itself though, so the card is mainly good for buildup. No idea about the best numbers, I wouldn't want to make it cheaper due to quick piling via Workshop variants so if this is too weak/strong the length of freezing are the variables that can be changed.
EDIT: Finally found a decent, albeit wordy, formulation that prevents stacking.
The vanilla stuff is from Tokenmonger aka
Wizard. The attack is fairly mild and when you are hit the second time it is actually beneficial as you get a Fugitive effect, kind of like with Margrave. The entire thing could be too similar to Villain (discard one card, if the guy to your left always discard Copper/Silver you get 2 Coffers).
I first tried to do a discard Attack with
Mutineers, the great Militia token concept by Violet CLM, but I didn't come up with something.
Here is the basic idea that is flawed for an obvious reason: nobody wants to ever discard Victory cards to spend Mutineers while somebody else has a Corsair Ship in play. Marketeers (Buy Tokens) are an alternative token that could be coupled to Victory cards but as they are weaker than the other 3 tokens this would lead to the opposite problem: everybody always discards green to spend Mutineers.
$5
Action - Duration - Attack
Each other player gets +1 Mutineer.
Until your next turn, when another player spend a Mutineer, if the discarded card is an...
Action card, +1 Villager
Treasure card, +1 Coffers
Victory card, +1 
At the start of your next turn: +2 Cards.
Here are some quick ideas for an alternative set of Shelters. I guess you could also mix them with the original Shelters and randomly choose one from each of the three sub-categories.
Lodge is a small house so only one
dude villager is living there! While the card is superficially similar to Necropolis it will play differently. For example in games without villages it degenerates into a Ruined Village whereas Necropolis can be used as non-drawing village (this being the only situation in which you want to keep Necro). So I guess you will only use Lodge 1-3 times and then try to get rid of it.
Not much to say about
Acolyte's Abode, it is my least favourite of the 3. Like Lodge it is also not something you really want to keep around but it can change the opening if somebody opens with 2-5/5-2. This is why it is perhaps too luck-dependent.
Swamp Cabin is remotely inspired by Pasture (a singular non-Supply card changing the worth of basic green). First it had 3VPs per set but got buffed to 4VPs to make it a real alt-VP kick-off card more often.
