Okay, time to get to this. I was able to playtest some of the cards last week, but unfortunately I was busy over the weekend and today so I was not able to playtest the later entries. I'll try to keep things fair despite this.
Inquisition by pubbyThis feels surprisingly balanced for how potentially nutty it looks. Its closest relative is Camel Train, which is way easier to get ahold of, but more costly to use. The condition of having no cards in Exile makes it a bit of a gamble; you can spring for expensive cards but it's going to be a long time before you can use it again, or you can grab some cheaper cards and be able to get Inquisition again in a few turns. A comparison to Pilgrimage can also be drawn; Pilgrimage is essentially $8 and 2 buys for whatever 3 non-Victory cards you want, whereas this is $6 and 1 buy for the same with the added requirement that you have to gain a copy of each before you get it from this. I like it.
Colorburst by NoMoreFunSo this is nuts. I sure did bring it on myself with this prompt, but oh boy does this make potions into a powerful payload. It certainly biases towards engines, which is interesting, but it also just makes building big really really easy, like if you have a good enough engine you can just add potions until you can buy out everything. It's fun to play with, but it might be frustrating if your opponent collides potions while building and you don't. There's skill to colliding them of course, like Treasure Map, but unlike Treasure Map it does something you actually want in the early and midgame.
Stronghold by silverspawnIn playtesting I never bought this, but admittedly I was playtesting against a not-particularly-strong bot and usually Provinces were enough to win with. Stronghold is, well, it's a victory card. It's almost always another Province pile, and usually better. In fact it pretty much seems like another Colony pile to me. Assuming the decks get big enough, winning the Stronghold split should decide the game. Given that the price tag is so high, it seems pretty unlikely that you would play this that differently than you would play Colonies, except for obviously not getting it if you don't expect your deck to reach at least 30 cards-- like I wouldn't skip trashing probably. I might load up on cheap cantrips I suppose. But a lot of the time I feel like this has a similar flaw to Fairgrounds where specifically building to maximize the score from it is not worth it so you just pick it up when you want some VP and whatever it's worth it's worth.
Sorceror by spinefluThis is brokenly powerful. The price of $4P makes it worse because it's easy to build to hit $4P on your third shuffle and then still miss it, and if your opponent hit it then you just lose. Being able to gain four good cards (Gold is a good card if you're not buying it) while thinning an Estate is absolutely centralizing, it's like Populate but you don't have to build to it. And god help you if there's a $7 in the kingdom... sure I'll take a King's Court and a Province on top of all the other goodies I'm getting.
Uprising by JimJammerWhile I was playtesting this I forgot about having 20 in a pile and I only remembered it after I no longer had the time, but it doesn't seem to make a huge difference. This just does nothing unless it does everything, and I think the type of deck where you actually have use for it is like no thinning, no draw, no fast money strategy, good villages, and a particular reason to want your whole deck in your hand. And even then you need to waste enough turns getting Uprisings so that you can actually have one at the bottom of your shuffle. Like... maybe I can use this for a Bridge or Horn of Plenty megaturn? But that's still quite slow, and outside of the specific situation mentioned it seems pretty useless.
Bequest by mandioca15Pretty interesting given the question of whether to use it in the opening or not. It has a similar vibe to Seize the Day where you use it to pounce on something important, but less impactful. (Unless there's no +Buy in which case Seize is just sad.) I don't have a ton to say about this; it's nice, but a little dull, and it does feel kinda bad to use this for just +$1 to open with a $5, though there are surely situations where that's right. I do like stuff that gives more opening options though.
Warband by Xen3kTop part is pretty cool, though it could probably benefit from the Sea Hag restriction to keep Ruins from stacking up in multiplayer. I don't really get why the bottom half can give you free Provinces, though. Like doesn't that seem a little unbalanced to you? Gaining free Provinces is pretty good.
Bank Teller by MarpharosThis might be me being dumb, but I really don't see the appeal of this card. I'm paying $5 for a terminal stop card that lets me save a little bit of my money for later in return for... taking on a bunch of debt? It lets you go crazy with coffers but the cost of doing so is so high, I really struggle to see when this would be helpful. It's obviously better when playing bigger treasures, but the more you're able to collide it with big treasures, the more deck control you have and the less useful the coffers are anyway. I bought this a few times for playtesting purposes, but I felt like I was hurting myself each time I played it, rather than helping.
Committee by scott_pilgrimThis is too crazy/situational. I like the idea, but this just becomes bad as soon as there's one bad card on the board. Non-stacking actions like Counting House and Watchtower, forced trashers like Trader and Remake, drivel like Beggar, not to mention that if you play this as the payload for an engine your opponent can just name a draw card which doesn't help you much. I get that some cards are bad on certain boards. But this is bad if any other action in the kingdom is bad, which is just too common.
The Round Table by gambit05Flexibility is nice. Balance seems pretty off. Wishes are, like, insanely good. There are very few actions that it would be worth giving the opponent a Wish to play a second time, unless I'm trying to end the game (like sure, The Round Table/Bridge can megaturn just like KC/Bridge can, but only a few cards are like that).
Pumpkin King by seguraI would like this more if it could find some way to be useful on money boards. As it is, it pretty much exclusively exists as an engine payload, and a pretty strong one at that although you need to basically already have the engine so it will be frustrating to build with. It seems pretty narrow in its use cases; you need to have at least two cards played before it for it to really be useful at all, and really at least three for it to be good, so you need to reliably be able to play that many actions. And, like, it's fine when you are? I wouldn't go out of my way to add more uniques like I would for Horn of Plenty or maybe Menagerie. And it's terrible when you aren't.
Investor by faustThis is quite a cool card. It reminds me of stuff like Rats in how it can wreck your deck if you're not really careful, but it can be pretty strong when played right. I tried playing an engine with Investor payload, and it was not overpowered or anything, but it was pretty inconsistent, and you really have to take care to add the Investor(s) late enough that you can just stop building (unless you have gainers). Quite an interesting card, and close enough in the realm of balanced to make me not hate it.
Fountain of Tears by grepYou know what the problem with Beggar is? That it doesn't give you enough Coppers. I'm sure if Beggar gave you even more Coppers then more people would buy it!
Jokes aside, I don't really see the appeal of this outside of a few combos that people have mentioned (Gardens, Guildhall, arguably Triumph, arguably Monastery). Gaining Coppers is just... not something I'd like to be doing most of the time. I don't buy Beggar very much and when I do it's usually purely for the reaction.
Mountain by WillhemSchulzMy main complaint with this is similar to my one with Stronghold, only even worse because it costs the same as Province. When I have $8 and want to green, it's easy to determine whether Mountain or Province is going to be better for me. And, it's unlikely that I'll really build my deck around scoring with Mountain-- if I can use actions rather than treasures for my economy, I'd often want to be doing that anyway. There are times I can think of that I would build a deck with fewer treasures so I could score with Mountain, but I feel like that's obviously the right choice on a lot of boards where it's feasible. And then there's also the issue that someone pointed out of no Copper trashing making this garbage. I think Vineyard just does the concept of encouraging Actions better.
Refine/Graveyard Key by anordinarymanAt first glance, Refine looks terrible to me. It's like a bad Rebuild, or a bad Mine, or a bad Graverobber. Sure, you get all three modes for only $4, but it also loses pretty much all the attractive parts of all three (if they can even be said to be attractive in the first place). Graveyard Key, on the other hand, is quite cool at first glance and at least partially saves the weakness of Refine by giving you an incentive to trash good cards for benefit. But even then... you're usually going to be trashing weak actions into stronger actions, and maybe Silvers into Golds? So it's not like the payoff for Graveyard Key is that great, and if people have been thinning their Coppers, then woo, have a bunch of Coppers too. See Fountain of Tears for why that's a bad idea. So I really like Graveyard Key, both mechanically and thematically, and I think the idea has potential, but I don't think the potential is really realized here and both cards end up feeling too limited to me.
Depot by Jonatan DjurachkovitchI tested the old version of this with +2 Coffers. It was insane. This new version is probably a bit less so, but now it doesn't even need a village to function which is pretty crazy as well. The sifting is gonna end up looking like +7 Cards, discard 6 cards when played from the starting hand, and if you have a couple more Depots in your deck, then now it's a nonterminal +7 Cards, discard 6 cards. Whoa, that's like Forum on steroids, on steroids again, and due to the reaction it self-synergizes even more when you get more of them. This is still very strong, too centralizing I would say, especially when there's any sort of disappearing payload.
Master Plan by X-traI tested the old version of this as well (the one that cost $8). It's... well it's like a Royal Carriage. It doesn't play out all that differently from it. To be precise, it's like two Royal Carriages. Horribly awkward as the only village, otherwise a nice thing to pick up one or two of for use when you need it. Since it doesn't self-chain, it isn't as crazy or centralizing as King's Court, but I feel like that means it can almost never be centralizing, unless it is the only village and you REALLY need a village in the kingdom.
Automaton by LordBaphometTracking is gonna be a pain, especially with things like Thrones where you play one Automaton while another one is still resolving and then you have to put the cards back in the right order afterward. This is why Golem and the like discard first, then play. As for the card itself, wow that's strong, and wow that buy restriction is annoying. This is even more centralizing than Grand Market, but it actually makes it harder to buy copies of itself rather than easier, so it's gonna end up being annoying and luck-based a decent portion of the time, while also forcing you to try to hit $6 sans Coppers as much as possible which is already irritating with Grand Market.
Migrate by AquilaThis is a cool take on Seize the Day. Timing of it is interesting, though you probably want to try to save it for a dud if you can. You can also do tricks similar to the ones you can do with Villa/Cavalry, but you have to time it since you can only do them once. In big engine games this is less than impressive, but it still is neat to use it early on to get a boost while building.
Way of the Chupacabra by spheremonkI gotta hand it to you, this is pretty big. In multiplayer games, it's probably pretty political, especially if you're playing with someone you don't like. First-player advantage in Shelters games is significant, and it also seems like it would be tricky to implement online.
Fortification by D782802859Holy cow this is good, especially on a 5/2. I'm also with LordBaphomet that this will be really annoying in face-to-face games; City Gate is already bad enough. The $5 price tag gives it a decently steep opportunity cost, but I suspect that it will almost always be worth getting on your second $5, if not your first, barring extremely strong trashing-- you'll immediately start seeing your good cards way more often, and the handsize reduction probably won't matter much given you can dig for your draw cards anyway. (And if there are no draw cards, then the sifting is even more valuable.)
Arboretum by alion8meWe talked about this one in the Discord. Really sad I didn't get a chance to test this one to see how it played out, but my impression was that you buy it turn 2 in a lot of games. Gain to hand is just an enormous flexibility and even if you don't manage to do much with your deck before it kicks in you will just start having good turns super reliably once it does.
Scribe by RhodosThis technically needs a "you may" for accountability, but that's very minor. As for the effect itself, it's not at all minor, and while it's probably too slow in a money game (by the time you collide it with Gold, you want to be buying Provinces, which this probably hinders), it seems quite strong in an engine game, especially with nonterminal draw like Hunting Party or Laboratory. I think like many of the cards submitted this week this one is niche but very strong when it is viable. That's not bad-- look at Counting House or Scepter for niche-- but it's pretty disappointing when the board isn't high-powered enough to reliably collide your Scribe with your other $5 actions. And in the midgame it's probably pretty RNG dependent as to whether you do get this along with good actions to copy.
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Don't feel bad if you felt my criticism was harsh-- if I criticized something minor, it was because there were no major flaws for me to talk about. Overall I'm quite happy with how the contest turned out, there were a lot of concepts that were explored in some very cool ways, and I really liked a lot of the ideas even if I didn't end up liking the resulting cards.
Winner: Inquisition by pubby
Runner-up: Investor by faust
