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801

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Card updating contest

« on: August 19, 2020, 05:11:02 pm »

There are only a dozen or so over- and underpowered cards but I like this idea.

802

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 19, 2020, 05:03:59 pm »

“Okay, overall, all these choices seem to average around , so that’s what it should cost.”

Ironmonger also shows that this averaging-the-effects method doesn't necessarily make you arrive at a correct price. Depending on what it reveals, Ironmonger is either a Village+ (), a Peddler+ (), or a Lab+ (), which averages out to , which is higher than its cost (this is because you don't have full control over the effect, and the strongest effect is also the rarest).

When you just get to directly choose which effect your card has, then it has to cost at least as much as the maximum "effect-cost." In the case of Wager, you could just choose to always use the Lab- () effect, so it has to cost at least , even without the strictly-better-than-Village comparison. I'd even argue that Wager should actually cost , since Lab with is probably worth , and Wager is strictly better than that, enough so to probably cost .

That is a quite brilliant point about Ironmonger.

About Wager, I find it very hard to evaluate. Asper had a Lab that comes with 1D for $3. I don’t know if it was balanced but the choice between the effect of two $3s doesn’t smell like a $5. Hard to say.
On the other hand, there is the third option use this as dead-terminal draw. In the absence of Villagers, only something for money decks and in Platinum Kingdoms it might be a real thing.

I think that this very third option, albeit perhaps only sometimes useful, is what might push this into $5 territory.
On a meta-level, the card should obviously get rid of the village part and focus on debt->money, that is interesting enough in itself without further complications.

803

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 19, 2020, 10:34:26 am »

This is like saying that Mining Village would be fine at $3 because, duh, what kind of idiot blow ups his village.
Contrary to your claim, the card is Village plus something. The first part is village, then you can either skip the second part or, if you want to, use the extra part.

It does not matter what the extra option is or that it involves converting one resource into another or whatever. The extra option is valuable and thus has to be priced in.

This is nothing controversial but Dominion 101: all villages with a cherry on top cost more than $3.

804

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 19, 2020, 09:54:59 am »

First of all, this is strictly better than Village.
Second, even at $4 it might be too strong. If you had to spend the Action to draw it would be OK.

I don’t think it’s strictly better than Village.

Dude, it is a Village with an extra, non-mandatory option.
That is most definitely strictly better, so it has to cost at least $4.

805

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 19, 2020, 08:38:31 am »

A quick idea of a Forge variant for a late entry.

Smelting Pot
Cost
Trash at least one card from your hand. You may gain any number of differently named cards whose total cost is not greater than the total cost of the cards trashed.

This is strictly better than Forge yet massively cheaper. Scripted opening.

806

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 19, 2020, 05:04:40 am »

I am so terribly sorry to post this so late, but I was still not satisfied with my entry, so I narrowed it to this:



Now, regardless if there still are some small hiccups with Wager V3, I'll leave it as is.

First of all, this is strictly better than Village.
Second, even at $4 it might be too strong. If you had to spend the Action to draw it would be OK.

807

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 18, 2020, 06:10:06 pm »

First time you play this, you take the Villagers. That is after the first shuffle.
Second time you play this, you use the Villagers to trash two cards. That is after the second shuffle.
The whole thing is nearly equivalent to playing on average a terminal that trashes one card, except that it is slightly worse as you could not trash during T3-T5.

This sucks. Of course you might use the card if there is no other splitter or trasher but it is pretty bad at either job.

808

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 18, 2020, 02:58:11 pm »

Abbey
$5 Action
Choose one: +2 Villagers; or you may spend any number of Villagers to trash that many cards from your hand.

Quick new submission, how about this?

This could cost less.

I don't know; I feel like it might compare too favorable to Hideout at $4.

Looks like a fairly undesirable $2 to me. It is either a Villager-Necro or it is a terminal that trashes one card from your hand (actually it is slightly worse as you cannot trash anything after the first shuffle).
Hoarding the Villagers to trash later increases the efficiency of the card but is bad tempo-wise (you wanna trash now). Late-game junking situations in which this would shine, like e.g. Coven, are rare.

809

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 18, 2020, 01:13:01 pm »

No idea, Death Cart, Animal Fair and Harvest are the only three terminals that come to mind which yield more than 3 Coins. They are of little help for determining a price though. I am fairly certain though that it cannot cost less than $5.

810

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 18, 2020, 12:51:02 pm »

Ignoring that the card is obviously too good, there is no reason to use Coffers instead of Coins (Black Market is the only thing I see now which would make a mechanical difference) if you are forced to spend them. Thus the only thing this achieves is to make tracking easier.

811

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 18, 2020, 09:58:04 am »

Tunnel is probably OK. For example 2 Tunnels plus Cull makes Cull a DoubleGoldGainer. Yeah, that is nice but unlikely to broken or anything.
Patron is potentially more problematic but I seriously doubt that this combo would be crazier than Hunting Party / Patron. Hunting Party always does something very useful whereas Cull is a stop card that yields some Coffers.

Hard to say without actual playtesting but I would not change the card because of two combos (that don't seem wacky at first glance to me).

812

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 17, 2020, 07:30:22 pm »

Forum sifts from hand, Statue untriggered aka Borderguard+Lantern sifts from deck.

Forum sifts from hand AND deck; since you draw first. Which is why Forum is much better.

Decksifters like Borderguard also draw. That is why it makes little sense to say that a handsifter is a decksifter. All sifters draw, the question is rather where they can DISCARD from, deck or hand.

813

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 17, 2020, 05:56:49 pm »

Forum is the best 5 out of 7. Borderguard+Lantern is 4 plus the best 1 out of 3.

Apart from the fact that we usually categorize these cards as sifters, they have little in common. For example Advisor plus a handsifter like Forum is a combo whereas Advisor plus a decksifter like Borderguard have no synergy at all.

814

Dominion Articles / Re: Castles

« on: August 17, 2020, 05:24:55 pm »

One thing I'm never sure of in Castles games is whether to trash my Estates. On a lot of boards, trashing my estates early is a very high priority, since it improves my buying power a lot. In a game with, say, Crossroads, the estates are not so bad to have in my deck, so I probably won't trash them. In a Castles game, if I knew that I will be buying Opulent Castle, I wouldn't trash my Estates. But if I keep my Estates, and my opponent ends up getting the Opulent Castle, I've been playing with an unnecessarily weak deck for a long time for no benefit except the 3VP, which is a big mistake. How do you decide whether to trash your Estates?

You always do. All that Opulent Castle does is to convert some Estates into Silvers which is not impressive.

If Baron is the only source of extra Buys, you might want to keep one Estate.

The only (Kingdom) reasons to keep all Estates is Shepherd. Only if they are worth an additional VP and become something between cantrip and Labs (that can sometimes be used several times per turn) does keeping Estates become worthwile. All the stuff that Shepherd and Pasture do to buff Estates, i.e. add extra VP and draw power, and thus make them worthwhile basically shows how bad they are normally.

815

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 17, 2020, 05:23:56 pm »

Forum sifts from hand, Statue untriggered aka Borderguard+Lantern sifts from deck.

816

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 17, 2020, 05:15:04 pm »

Statute (Action, $4)

+1 Action

Pick any number. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. If the total cost (in coins) of the revealed cards matches the number you picked, put the revealed cards into your hand. Otherwise, put one of the revealed cards into your hand and discard the rest.

No idea if this is the right price for the card. Might be too good for $4.

This is pretty busted since it's good even if you don't guess correctly. You can guess correctly pretty consistently with thinning too.

How can you guess "consistently"? Even if you only have 3 different costed cards in your deck (for example Statue as $4 for draw, some $5s for trashing/junking/whatever and Gold for payload), it is anything but obvious or clear that you can guess correctly most of the time.
At the first glance, Menagerie seems much easier to pull off.

The problem isn't the payoff. It's the failcase. The non-activated effect is strong enough to be bought on its own, compared to Cartographer at 5.

Border Guard with Lantern for $4 does not impress me.

I think it should be also compared with Advisor. There, the player gets 2 out of 3 cards, but usually not the best one.

You could argue that Border Guard with Lantern is the "inverse" of Advisor, i.e. you get the best out of 3.

I don't think that this gets us anywhere though. The card is either Borderguard with Lantern or it is a DoubleLab, i.e. it either sifts or draws. My guess is that it is a $3.

817

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 17, 2020, 03:16:06 pm »

Border Guard with Lantern for $4 does not impress me.

818

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 17, 2020, 02:33:27 pm »

Statute (Action, $4)

+1 Action

Pick any number. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. If the total cost (in coins) of the revealed cards matches the number you picked, put the revealed cards into your hand. Otherwise, put one of the revealed cards into your hand and discard the rest.

No idea if this is the right price for the card. Might be too good for $4.

This is pretty busted since it's good even if you don't guess correctly. You can guess correctly pretty consistently with thinning too.

How can you guess "consistently"? Even if you only have 3 different costed cards in your deck (for example Statue as $4 for draw, some $5s for trashing/junking/whatever and Gold for payload), it is anything but obvious or clear that you can guess correctly most of the time.
At the first glance, Menagerie seems much easier to pull off.

819

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 16, 2020, 07:40:41 pm »

I'm not really happy with my submission, and because it uses a sort of complex mechanic, I'm not likely to get it to a good point in the time alotted. I am going to be replacing it with this.

You gotta phrase this as "costing less in Coins than".
I think that a difference of 1 is too small. I'd roll with 2.

mail-mi posted this card on this forum a while back. Seems awfully similar.

Well, it is better worded and it has the correct spread of 2.

820

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 16, 2020, 12:14:45 pm »

I'm not really happy with my submission, and because it uses a sort of complex mechanic, I'm not likely to get it to a good point in the time alotted. I am going to be replacing it with this.

You gotta phrase this as "costing less in Coins than".
I think that a difference of 1 is too small. I'd roll with 2.

821

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 15, 2020, 07:03:05 am »

Could be a $4, I don't know.

822

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 15, 2020, 06:49:50 am »

I don’t know, if it can only interact with terminal draw besides itself it seems weaker than Lab.

Maybe, but Laboratory is a quite strong $5 cost card (36/127 in the 2018 Qvist list). Early in the game, Accountant isn't of much use (but that was also true for the first version), but with a high enough Action card density, it can really shine. Accountant can for example play several Witches or Smithies, which Lab can't. Anyway, it is different enough and thus, if it is indeed weaker than Lab (on average), so be it.

There are decks which use a mixture of terminal and non-terminal draw. But in my experience using only one source for draw power occurs more frequently.
That is why I think that the new version is so weak. It is not just the fact that this is strictly weaker than Lab in Kingdoms without other drawers. Even if there are others, you might not really want them for your deck.

Something between the first overpowered and the second underpowered version, i.e. either "Cards" at $5 or "Card" at $4, is the way to go.

823

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 15, 2020, 03:14:11 am »

I don’t know, if it can only interact with terminal draw besides itself it seems weaker than Lab.

824

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 14, 2020, 06:36:22 am »

Burgh

Reveal and set aside any number of Action cards from your hand.
Play them in any order.

$2
Action

Dammit! Yesterday, I worker on a card with a similar concept. I had about 5-6 different versions. All of them had this part:

+2 Cards
Reveal any number of Action cards from your hand
with “+X Card” in their text, where X is any number.

.
First, my cards gave +1 Villager for each card revealed, until I noticed -when the text got too long/complex- e.g.

+2 Cards
Reveal any number of Action cards from your hand
with “+X Card” in their text, where X is any number.
For each card revealed, +1 Villager.
If you took more than 4 Villager tokens this way,
trash this or one of the revealed cards.

...that I don't need the "Villager" part and therefore any restrictions for massive hoarding of Villagers. My final version -ready for submission- was:

Accountant
Action $4
+2 Cards
Reveal any number of Action cards from your hand
with “+X Card” in their text, where X is any number.
Play them in any order.

I don't have the "set aside", because I compared it with Golem, which doesn't have it either.
Then, I just saw your card....

I do not see any similarities. Burgh is a Megalopolis, i.e. a nondrawing village that potentially provides more Actions than Necropolis.
Accountant is a Lab variant (sometimes Moat, sometimes Lost City or better). I think that the card is a 5 as the Moat option does not seem to occur more often than the Lost City+ option.

825

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: August 13, 2020, 05:03:37 pm »

I don't get this. You take a quadrillion Villagers and spend of all them when the game is about to end.

But then, at Clean-up, you get a quadrillion Villagers back because you have that many unused Actions. I made the same mistake at first.

So it's potentially all the villages you're ever going to need for the game, after getting a few terminals first. But overindulge at your peril. I like the skill here...

True that. That makes the card interesting.