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251

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 09, 2020, 10:49:02 am »

Updated Submission - UPDATED

+1 Action +$1

You may play an Action or Treasure Card from your hand.

You may set this aside. If you do, replay a card you played this turn that's still in play.

Uses feedback from Aquila to make it more like scepter. Pendant now removes itself from the game by being set-aside. There's no more infinite loops, once it is set aside, you can't gain it or play it (it's no longer in play, it's set aside. You can't even recover it from the trash).
I also did like the cleanness alion8me suggested so this can't play night cards any more.

In a FAQ I would say that this card cannot play itself (which would generate infinite $). I think the setting-aside justifies that.

Thank you for your feedback.

As always I'm very open to feedback

252

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 08, 2020, 09:06:40 pm »

Night Hag
If it's your Night Phase, return to your Buy phase for +2 and each other player gains a Curse. Otherwise,
+2 Cards
+1 Buy

Cursed Locket
$1
The first time you play a Copper this turn, +$1
-
While this is in play, when you return to a previous phase, each player may trash a Curse from their hand.

Night Hag's Night effect is basically a cursing Silver, it could easily be a Treasure with almost equivalent effect. Looks quite OP, much stronger than Idol.
The heirloom can add some balance by having an anti-cursing effect like "when you gain a Curse, you may discard this to trash that Curse".

A silver that curses is really really good. The way Idol gets around this is by making you have at least 2 in play to curse. I'm not sure if there's an effective way to balance this, unless the heirloom is a strong trasher, like goat. Maybe have it simply provide +buy? Or +1$. Honestly, I think you could give it 0 benefit and it would be best balanced. However, this then wouldn't qualify for the contest.

Actually, now that I think about it, it seems like Night Hag makes more sense as an Action - Treasure. That's essentially what it does. I wonder if there's a way to have the night-effect actually affect your buy phase? Like +1$ per card you've gained. Obviously that is way too strong, but you see the idea here -- you want to buy cards to gain them so it's stronger, and if it's stronger you want to go back to your buy phase to use the $. A Card like this would be justified as being Action - Night. But your card has no compelling reason not to be Action- Treasure other than you want it to qualify for this contest.

253

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 08, 2020, 04:18:28 pm »

Lunar Ritual

This turn, you may play Action cards as Night cards.

$4
Event

It's like Mission, except for all the ways that it's not. Please tell me if you can see any broken combos; I know that a gainer + Villa/Calvary lets you Champion for a turn at the cost of $4 but I don't think that should be a problem because it is limited by the size of the Villa/Calvary pile, and I suspect that any case where this lets you drain the supply in a single turn already had that property without the presence of Lunar Ritual so long as Villa was the enabler. I would appreciate feedback on both this particular aspect and the card in general.

This is a wonderful card and I'm pulling for it to win this contest. It's such a simple concept with some really interesting implications. I agree strongly with D782802859's comment to rephrase it like:

You may play actions during the Night phase this turn

If you do this, there actually isn't any broken Champion combos. Becuase if you return to your action phase, you still need actions to play all your action cards. And once you hit your night phase, there's no way to return to your action phase.

My only criticism is about price. I believe that you could price this lower.
If you buy this event, it means you have Action cards to play during your night Phase.
If you have Action cards to play during your night phase, it means you weren't able to play them during your Action phase.
If you weren't able to play Action cards during your Action phase, it's likely that your total payload was lower than you wanted.
If your total payload was smaller, using a buy has a much bigger impact, considering you can't buy anything else when you play your Action cards in your night phase.

Essentially, I believe that the fact that this costs a buy is the most expensive part of this card, rather than it's actual cost. I think it would be balanced (and more fun) to price it lower.

I'm thinking $3, possibly $2.

My gut says $2 would still not be broken, and thus the best pricing.

Replicate - Treasure, $6 cost.
$1
When you play this, you may play an Action from your hand, changing its +Card amounts into + $. You may gain a copy of it.

We can do Disciple on a Treasure can't we? You aren't gaining copies of itself, and here +card amounts are chameleoned to help slow cycling and the times you play it. Hopefully the $6 cost and the $1 worth are roughly right for balance.

I am thinking that this card doesn't need the $1 to be balanced, and for simplicity I would consider removing it. Non terminally gaining a copy of a card is pretty powerful, as is Chameleoning a collided terminal. This is great.

254

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 08, 2020, 04:06:30 pm »

Updated Submission

Pendant - Action - Treasure - $3
+1 Action +$1

You may play an Action, Treasure, or Night Card from your hand.

You may trash this. If you do, play a non-Duration card you have in play.

Updated Pendant to remove the Silver+ness and it can't play Curses anymore. Now, even if you don't have a reason to play a card out of order, you can still use this as a Village during your action phase. So, it always have some use, albeit it would be the weakest village in the game. For fun, it can be a one-shot crown. The non-duration clause is to prevent confusing situations.

Edit: like always, open to feedback.

255

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 06, 2020, 04:23:23 pm »

Alchemist's Guild • $2P • Action
+$1
Play a Treasure card from your hand (or reveal you can't).
If you have exactly 3 Treasures in play, trash one to gain a Prize; Otherwise, +1 Action and draw until you have 4 cards in hand.

Revisiting an entry from contest #40 (the good, non-boring half of my entry from that one). This time it's draw-to-x. This uses the same Prize pile from Tournament.

I was going to critique this because it seems to compare so favorably to tournament. And I was confused why it costed a potion. Assuming you have a copper in a hand of 4 other cards (extremely likely for most of the game), this is basically +1card +1action +1money. It's like tournament but harder to block. Then, any subsequent plays of Alchemist Guild is like +2card +1action +1money -- insanely powerful. And all you have to do is buy a bunch of these, you don't need to spike Province, and that seemed imbalanced because it's easy to get a bunch of Tournaments. But now I realize, the Potion cost makes it much more difficult to get a bunch of these. That's why it has to cost a Potion. Very nice. This also doesn't gain a Prize to the top of the deck and it's terminal in that case.

So, I think this is really interesting and much closer to balanced that I first thought. My only thought is that once you gain a prize, you're just one Alchemist Guild away from another prize. That I don't love so much. I wonder if you could have Alchemist Guild self-trash to gain a prize (and maybe to top of deck) or have it discard all treasures in play?

256

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 06, 2020, 04:13:59 pm »

Pendant - $4 - Action - Treasure
+$1

You may play a card from your hand. If you don't, +$1 and you may trash this for +1 buy.

Pendant allows you to play any card from your hand. Sometimes you need to lower your hand-size and you can "play" a victory card; however there's no psuedo-trashing with this... the cleanup phase will take care of discarding those again. More likely, you're going to use it to play Treasures that are useful for your action phase (access to a Quarry could really help your Workshops). If you had terminal collision, you can always play an Action card during your buy phase. This even works for playing Night cards in a different phase: Maybe play your Devil's workshop early to gain golds, or hit hard with Raider and still play your Coppers.

These are quite situational based on the rest of the Kingdom. It won't always be useful. That's why there's a one-shot +buy effect in order to make this card have use. Though you can't get the +buy if you chose to play a card with Pendant.

open to feedback of course!

257

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 01, 2020, 06:03:04 pm »

Once a pile has been set-aside, it's no longer in the kingdom and can't be bought.

Hmmm... I love this concept. But it takes so long to get to 9. By the time you've gotten to 9, most likely everyone has bought one of the cards you want. Any card you want to gain every turn is a card you will want to gain to get you to 9. I'm not sure how to resolve this as pricing this lower is broken since it can be bought early. What if you make it that instead of limiting it's gain to piles that are full, what if this project does nothing until a Province is bought? I dunno some other condition? I also wonder if the set aside and eliminate the pile is a little bit too strong if you do this suggested variant.

258

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: July 01, 2020, 05:56:32 pm »

Contest Submission

Council Chamber - Action - $4
Move your Council Token to an Action Supply pile. (When other players play a card from that pile, +1 card)
-
Setup: Move each player's Council Token to the Council Chamber pile.

So, I listened to the feedback... sort of :p. It's still a card (I like the self-slow down like skulk). The major change is you don't need to lose a copy of the card to put a token on it. No worries about waiting to line this up. This card can be super powerful, it's sort of like a Pathfinding for 4! How is that balanced? Well this card has several drawbacks (that I think are interesting). It's a lot slower, you have to buy it and wait some turns to draw it, and then play it and wait for your next turn before you get the benefit. The draw is vulnerable to discard attacks. After you do that all, Council Chamber is a dead card in your deck. It gives all the other players +1 card immediately the first time you play it. It does have the benefit of starting your hand with lots of cards, but other players can choose to avoid playing the card you provide Council on.

In truth, it's hard for me to tell if this is totally balanced, but I think it's not broken and I think it is fun.

Open to feedback as always.

259

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 30, 2020, 01:24:23 pm »

not a submission yet, still picking which of these variants to do.
Feedback requested!

I decided to go the route of having a card-shaped thing that encourages players to use different cards. It's a modification from a previous entry I did a long time ago. I can't figure out the best direction to go in. Would love some help in helping me figure out which of these directions to go in:

Council Chamber - Action - $5
Set aside an Action card from your hand under this. When other players play copies of that card, +1 card. When you play copies of that card, trash a card you have in play.

(This stays in play)

* note - heavy cost to gain the Action and line it up, plus cost of bad self-trashing. This encourages all players to avoid heavily relying on this card. The card does not junk your hand though because it stays in play

Council Chamber - Action - $5
Set aside an Action card from your hand under this. When other players play copies of that card, Exile a Horse. When you play copies of that card, trash a card you have in play.
-
When you trash this, Gain a Horse.

(This stays in play)

Same as above but weakened to gain Horses instead. I'm not sure I Like this.

Council Chamber - PROJECT - $6
Set aside an Action card from the Supply under this. When other players play copies of that card, gain a Horse.

Project variant is a lot stronger. Sort of an interactive path-finding variant. Slowed down by using Horses rather than immediate +1 draw, but does not allow discards. This encourages players to avoid a monolithic strategy. It does not discourage the buyer of Council Chamber from avoiding that card so encourages different strategies.

Council Chamber - Action - $5
Choose one: Trash this; or set aside an Action card from your hand. Move your Council Token to it. (When other players play copies of that card, Exile a Horse.)
-
When you trash this, Gain a Horse.

Sort of like the above -- encourages other players to avoid using that card, with a slow down through the exile of Horses. This card also slows down by self junking, although it can self-trash.

Council Chamber - Action - $5
Set aside an Action card from your hand. Move your Council Token to it. (When other players play copies of that card +1 card)

Similar to the above but without the horse or exile nonsense might be too powerful.

The ones that use Tokens mean they can't stack, the ones without tokens can stack. I'm curious y'alls thoughts on these variants. Thank you so much!

260

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 25, 2020, 10:58:52 pm »

Reclaimer • $4 • Action • auth: anordinaryman
+1 Buy

Trash a card from your hand. For every $2 it costs, rounded down, gain a Trinket to your hand.

I think, on the one hand, the scenario you outlined with the province milling makes a compelling case for this card, but this card will otherwise be a noob trap, Just, in general, you want trashers to get cards out of your deck, not flood it with more junk. I think it's going to be higher skill and/or more niche than you're presenting it (though it does have a fun synergy with Triumph).

I think maybe a direction to look into to fix this would be giving a choice of, per $2 rounded down, +$1 or a Trinket? like you could take the money or take the trinkets, but not a little of each. That keeps it worse than Salvager but not totally useless.

Ah, that's a really really good suggestion. I knew that Reclaimer was weak, but it still felt interesting to me. Your suggestion strengthens it in a thematic way (continuing to use the per $2 rounded down) and I think would be a much better designed card. Thanks for the feedback!

For what it's worth I thought this was a really good and interesting contest! You demonstrated that Trinkets definitely have a lot of interesting design space with all the varied submissions. The winner does a great job taking advantage of using both the Junking aspect of trinket and the beneficial aspect of Trinket.

261

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 25, 2020, 12:01:06 pm »

Again, to avoid ambiguity, will set my entry as the following.

Gewgaw (Treasure, $5)

+$3
+1 Buy
---
When you gain this, gain 2 Trinkets.

This is strictly superior to cache. Trinkets are better than coppers almost all the time (cuz they can be self trashed) and this comes with a +buy.

Maybe Cost it 6 or price it with debt or something.

Edit: I do think this design space is really really good (coming with trinkets as a cost, but providing a +buy so the trinkets aren’t actually bad). It just needs to be reworked as to not be so much better than a similarly priced card.

262

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 24, 2020, 09:43:41 pm »

I really love this card. I wonder if it's too strong. Basically 9 turns after I buy this, I can lower the cost of provinces to 0. That's really strong. It seems like any game with easy to come by +buys (and there's quite a few of these that are non-terminal -- worker village, squire, market square, spices, even to some extent forager. Then any engine that is capable of generating lots of +buys ) there's a simple tactic of buy Gold Tree, then spend 9 turns building a +buy engine, then triggering the gold tree and emptying provinces.

Maybe I'm overestimating the power of this strategy. It would lead me to pricing this up at $6

263

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: June 24, 2020, 09:36:10 pm »

Reclaimer - Action - $4
+1 Buy

Trash a card from your hand. For every $2 it costs, rounded down, gain a Trinket to your hand.

a Tfb card. Turns Coppers into nothing, estates into a single Trinket. The +buy almost makes it a +$2 for an estate, on par with salvager. This seems to compare a little poorly to Salvager for trashing, and will continue to do so, unless you can play multiple. Look at the following two scenarios:
1. you have two provinces and throne room and Salvager
2. you have two provinces and throne room and Reclaimer
In the first case you can mill two provinces.
In the second case you can mill two provinces and buy a third province (you got 8 trinkets to lower the cost of provinces to 0)

The idea I wanted to pursue here was helping use Trinkets for mega-turn potential and explore the t4b space with trinkets. I didn't want the card to so easily make a mega-turn all on it's own.

I would love feedback on this card.

264

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A card which helps whoever is losing the game

« on: June 09, 2020, 03:04:01 pm »

I designed a card intended to help balance the game. It won a weekly design contest, so other people enjoyed it as well:




AGH! I noticed a bad typo, it should say "The Player" instead of "The Players" as it does nothing if there is a tie (this appropriately limits the power of the card).

EDIT: this is meant to work best with more than 2 players.

265

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 11, 2020, 12:14:27 am »

Update of previous entry

Courier - Action Duration - $5
Gain an Action card and set it aside. Each other player may Exile a copy of that card from the Supply. At the start of your next turn, play the set aside card.

I decided to update Courier. I agreed it was a little bit too fast in causing pile-outs. There's a few solutions to slowing it down while keeping the core mechanic. (1) It can self-exile. (2) It can not "work" on piles that are low or when any pile is gone. (3) It can use the journey token and only gain every other play (4) or it can be a duration so it can only work on second play. (there's actually another solution, but happening on-gain or on-buy is well covered by messenger and not worth revisiting). Self exile(1) is interesting but it's hard to make a one-shot version powerful enough. I wanted this to remain big font, and couldn't easily do that with changing its behavior based on pile size (2). (3) Journey token seemed okay but kind of wordy. I decided to go with Duration to make the gain a little stronger, with the problem that it does absolutely nothing on this turn. It also slows down the pile-out by being a duration.

There's only 24 hours left, so I may not be able to make any changes, but I'm curious if any of y'all think that any of the 1-3 choices could have been better to explore.

Of course let me know your thoughts.

266

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 09, 2020, 07:41:23 pm »

Courier - Action - $4
+2$
Gain an Action card to the top of your Deck. Each other player may Exile a copy of the card from the Supply.

I really like this. Not sure about the balance, but seems reasonable as is. It might actually be quite strong.
The main uses will probably be the "only I get a copy" use that messenger has, where you play it, gaining something whose pile you empty by the end of the turn. Notably, it is much easier than messenger to be the only person who gets a copy - all you have to do in run the pile this turn, and their cards are stuck in exile forever.

Any reason why there is a "may"? Seems unnecessary; it is very hard for an Exiled Action to hurt you.

The reason for the "may" is to weaken it in ways I think are interesting. Namely, it combats the issue you mentioned how it's easier than messenger to be the only person with a copy. The player to the left can choose to not exile a copy so there is one more in the supply for them to gain on their next turn. You're right, for the vast majority of time, the other players will probably exile a copy. Even if they don't want the card, they lose nothing by having it exiled (except for Wall, etc). But giving them the choice helps out a bit to weaken the card, and I agree it seems like one of the stronger 4s, so I'd like to keep the may clause. If you think it would add too much AP or complexity, I could be persuaded to drop the may, it would be simpler. But that was my reasoning.

Thanks for the thoughts!

I didn't "may" the gaining though, and I don't plan on.

267

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 09, 2020, 05:25:22 pm »

Courier - Action - $4
+2$
Gain an Action card to the top of your Deck. Each other player may Exile a copy of the card from the Supply.

Anyone else's favorite part of Messenger the on-buy part? This card builds on that idea by making it the main focus. Everyone gets this card, but the player of the Courier gets it very soon (next turn, or even this turn) while everyone else needs to buy a copy first.

There's a bunch of clever ways to use Courier. You want to courier a card that people don't want more than one copy of. Stop cards could be good. The problem is, Courier is already a stop card, so you have to keep that in mind.

Open to feedback! The general mechanic of gain to top of deck, other people exile, is the fixed and important (and I think fun) concept of the card. The bonus (in this case, +2$ but it has to be terminal for sure), the limit of what cards you can gain (limiting to action vs limiting by price?) could change for sure.

268

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 27, 2020, 07:06:29 pm »

Bridle Craftsman - $4 - Action
+2 Cards

If you have played a Horse this turn, +1 Action. Otherwise, gain a Horse.

I am submitting the one I submitted two contests ago. I still like it, and didn't receive any feedback to change it, so it's the exact same. I am definitely open to feedback, still.

I actually debated putting the +2 cards at the end, to make it more difficult to activate. But then I realized that actually the math works out that it's still fairly difficult to activate. And flooding your deck with Bridle Craftsman to help line them up with horses actually can work against you significantly since it's hard to have a functioning deck full of moats.

I also debated having you reveal a horse from hand to activate it. But one of the cool things about this is it's either on or off. I like that the turn you have played a horse, you can't get any more horses from Bridle Craftsman, so next turn it might be harder to activate them again. Then, every horse you play is now less of a chance to activate next turn. But if you don't play a horse, it's kind of like one of your Bridle Craftsman just became a cantrip. Not very useful. I like this complexity and trade off.

So yeah, the exact same card.

269

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 22, 2020, 10:18:24 am »

Metalsmith - Action - $3*
Trash a card you have in play or a Treasure from your hand. Gain a card costing up to $1 more per unique card in the trash.
-
This costs $1 more per unique card in the trash.

[i emitted this out to make this when quoting smaller]

I'm open to feedback!

Does unique mean "differently named", or cards in the trash with only one copy?
Also it has a similar wording problem to Artificer, but it's a bit more of a problem as gaining multiple cards costing $1 more than what you trash is a more common scenario than gaining a bunch of Poor Houses. Not sure how to resolve it.

Unique meant to be a more succinct stand in for differently named.

What’s the wording problem with artificer? Ah, do you mean you believe
The phrasing ambiguous between, gain 2 cards each costing 1 more and vs gain 1 card costing up to 2 more? Yeah, quirk of the English language. I believe it’s fair to use the same wording as artificer and have it do the same thing. Do you disagree?

270

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 21, 2020, 11:26:57 pm »

Metalsmith - Action - $3*
Trash a card you have in play or a Treasure from your hand. Gain a card costing up to $1 more per unique card in the trash.
-
This costs $1 more per unique card in the trash.

I wanted to make a card that got stronger as its price increased. Pairing that with a remodeler variant worked well. As you play a Metalsmith, it is in play, so you can self-trash it. You can even think of it like a Feast, although, this is Dominion, there are a ton of scenarios in which Feast is better at doing that, still. Trashing cards in play is a bit exotic-- You can trash your night durations if you want, even. It does not do well clearing out Victory Cards or Curses. And it can only trash ruins if you have the spare actions to play the ruin first. So, it plays differently than other remodels for sure: Metalsmith is all about improving cards. It's quite possible to super charge this so that it costs $7 and can turn itself into a Colony. But along the way you'll have to trash quite a bit (at the bare minimum: a copper, a silver or an action card, a different action card, *and* itself). And you've open up the flood gates for your opponents to do the same.

Another interesting fact, the card becomes more powerful later in the game, but later in the game it's liable to cost a lot more. Are you willing to pay $5 for something that just remodels? Hard to justify that. Therefore there's a tension between investing in this earlier or waiting and paying high.

I'm open to feedback!

Secret History:
Pricing the concept of a strengthening remodeler was difficult. For example, if I made it simply "Trash a card from your hand, gain a card costing up to $1 more ..." then there's no good way to price it. If I price it at 4, then it's simply far too weak when compared to remodel. And if I price it at a 3 it becomes easier to get a lot of and power up to a cheap expand that still costs 6 when it's as powerful as expand. I don't like that there could be a card in the supply that acted as an Expand and cost 1 less. So I had to create a way to slightly change it.
I tried adding benefits to opponents but then the card text got very wordy and there didn't seem like a good thematic benefit to give opponents. An earlier version of the card tried to be way stronger than remodel and allowed self-trashing. I played with that a bit and realized I could have fun with trashing any card that's in play. Now we got to this.

271

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 09, 2020, 05:46:22 pm »

Bridle Craftsman - $4 - Action
+2 Cards

If you have played a Horse this turn, +1 Action. Otherwise, gain a Horse.

I'm back to this contest, with an uncharacteristically simple card that has no player interaction. How unlike me!

 My attempt to make a super simple horse card. One of those 4s that become better when you buy multiple of them. It's probably most interesting to analyze when there aren't other horse gaining cards on the table, which, given how large Dominion is, is pretty likely. With only a non-terminal gaining one horse at a time, it might be hard to get enough to turn your Bridle Craftsmans into labs. But, eventually you'll amass enough horses that you can activate them. Horses at the end of a shuffle become tricky ... what if you hold onto this horse at the hope of activating your Bridle Craftsmans next shuffle? Etc.

272

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 23, 2019, 11:27:54 pm »

All theme aside, Lump of Coal likely renders Attacks automatically impossible to play in Christmas games.  In 2-player games, playing an Attack means that the other player can buy a super-cheap Ball-ish that junks you for the rest of the game.  In multiplayer games, playing an Attack means that players can bury you in Lump of Coal cards for the rest of the game.
There probably needs to be something to prevent Lump of Coal from becoming so oppressive.

I appreciate the feedback. I believe this dynamic is what makes Christmas interesting. Similar to how a player who buys a bunch of ambassadors can be so oppressive, or like a torturer chain can be oppressive, or a ghost ship can be oppressive, but now it's the person who bought the attack that is in trouble with losing out on Christmas.

 Except the lump of coal isn't as bad as any of those attacks. It's not that oppressive. It's much better to have in you deck than a curse. You can trash a Lump of Coal if there's trashers available. If there's no trashers available, then you can return it for an action. Also, if there are no trashers available, well, you don't mind being Naughty because the Witch you bought is definitely worth being Naughty for. But the presence of Christmas makes you probably delay Witch so you can take advantage of a few Gifts before you get Naughty. If there are trashers available, then you don't care so much for the lump of coals you're getting, but it does make you rethink some of the weaker attacks like oracle might be worth skipping. A strong attack though, it might be worth being naughty. And Christmas always comes with a strong attack -- you want to add a Grinch to almost any deck. Plus, naughty isn't cumulative. In a game with multiple attack cards, it is probably a viable strategy to either be naughty or nice. It's a complicated strategy. It's also worth noting you can only get cards costing up to $4 with Christmas. So your opponents will probably have to shell out for $5s later on. Towards the endgame, no one will want to buy Christmas, so it's safer to become naughty then.

273

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 23, 2019, 02:45:46 pm »

I think anordinaryman's suggestion is too political and also far too weak; I'd never take a $3 if it meant my opponent got a $5, and the Ruined Village aspect doesn't really help. (At least make it a cantrip, though it could be interesting to make it a Peddler or Lab or something your opponent might want to accept the gift to deny you, but that's still very political in multiplayer.)

Uh... I’m really confused. There’s no choice to take a 3 for your opponent to get a 5...i think you may have misread it?

When you buy Christmas, there’s no conditional on the opponents accepting the gift. They always get it, and you always get your reward of either a gift and a $4, or a grinch.

So, it’s not that political. Sure in a 3 person game there’s a little politics between buying a $4 and buying Christmas if one opponent is naughty and the other isn’t, but more often the choice is, do *I* want a free gift with my $4? In a game where you’re buying $4s, you do. Or if you’re going for a grinch, it ain’t political cuz you can’t buy one you need to buy Christmas


There’s also nothing close to a ruined village... there’s a weak gift that has +1 action on it but you gain a card with it. And there’s a lump of coal but that’s like a confusion you can self return if you have a spare action. So it’s like a minus action.

edit: spineflu pointed out that  this comment was directed towards his suggestion towards a card, and not my contest submission. Probably using my name instead of his was a typo Something_Smart made?

274

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 23, 2019, 09:13:04 am »

Wanted something heavy on theme? Here we go!

Christmas - Event $4
Choose to gain a Grinch; or both a Gift and a card costing up to $4. Each other player that has Naughty gains a Lump of Coal; if they don't have Naughty, they gain a Gift.

An event that acts like a sort of messenger if everyone plays nice, but ends up attacking everyone if they are Naughty. How do you get Naughty?

Naughty - State
When you play an Attack card, take Naughty.

Ah, so you get Naughty by being Naughty. Seems thematic.

So that explains that. But what a Lump of Coal vs a Gift? And what's a Grinch? A Grinch is a laboratory attack (that's where Naughty comes into play). And a Lump of Coal is a better Confusion and a Gift is a weak wish.

      

Gift - Action - $4*
+1 Action

Return this to the Gift pile, if you did, gain a card costing up to $4.

(This is not in the Supply.)

Lump of Coal - Action - $0*
Return this to the Lump of Coal pile.

(This is not in the Supply.)

Grinch - Action Attack - $6*
+2 Cards
+1 Action
Each other player with at least 5 cards in hand discards a Gift or reveals a hand with no Gifts. Then, each other player discards down to 4 cards in hand.
(This is not in the Supply.)

(There are 10 copies of each of these. Seems about right. Sometimes you will run out of gifts to give.)

So yeah, you buy Christmas and everyone gets presents, and hey you get one two, and also get to open one immediately! Or you could get a grinch to take away people's presents. Grinch is a powerful card in that Laboratory is a powerful card. The attack is annoying but amounts to a slightly stronger urchin overall, so not terribly painful. Plus, normally you can only be hit once by it. Of course, playing a Grinch opens you up to other people attacking you by buying Christmases. It's worth noting that giving the other players Gifts is nice, but they have to wait to play the card and then another shuffle to use the card they exchanged the Gift for. So, it is slightly weaker of a boon to your opponents then it may seem. And you, if you're naughty, you don't mind giving them gifts because you can force them to discard them with your Grinches and never even be able to open the Gifts. Now that isn't the Christmas spirit!

So, at first buying Christmas does something positive for the other players. If they stay nice, it keeps doing something positive. But if they get Naughty, then it no longer does. Okay, those are my cards! Always open to feedback.

Nice theme!

Once you take naughty, are you naughty for the rest of the game, or should there maybe be a way to return it? How about when you play / return lump of coal? (Forcing you to play it and not just trash it)

Yes, I guess the one thing anti-theme is that you can’t ever lose naughty (goes against the literal tale I’m invoking of the grinch). I thought about ways to make naughty go away (what if you could give a gift to become Un-naughty — VERY thematic ) but they all run into design problems. If naughty is temporary, you tactically get these cheap labs, so Christmas has to be more expensive, and more powerful, but still balanced for both naughty and nice players. I couldn’t think of a way that was fun and balanced to play.

I also like that, once made, this is a permanent decision. It also gives players who don’t like attacks a way to playfully punish players that do use attacks. “Hey— I was trying to give you a gift. It’s YOUR fault you’re naughty!”

Thank you for the feedback. Feel free to take the naughty concept and play with a workable way to lose naughty. I just personally couldn’t find design there that I wanted to pursue more than a permanent naughty.

275

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 22, 2019, 06:26:56 pm »

Wanted something heavy on theme? Here we go!

Christmas - Event $4
Choose to gain a Grinch; or both a Gift and a card costing up to $4. Each other player that has Naughty gains a Lump of Coal; if they don't have Naughty, they gain a Gift.

An event that acts like a sort of messenger if everyone plays nice, but ends up attacking everyone if they are Naughty. How do you get Naughty?

Naughty - State
When you play an Attack card, take Naughty.

Ah, so you get Naughty by being Naughty. Seems thematic.

So that explains that. But what a Lump of Coal vs a Gift? And what's a Grinch? A Grinch is a laboratory attack (that's where Naughty comes into play). And a Lump of Coal is a better Confusion and a Gift is a weak wish.

      

Gift - Action - $4*
+1 Action

Return this to the Gift pile, if you did, gain a card costing up to $4.

(This is not in the Supply.)

Lump of Coal - Action - $0*
Return this to the Lump of Coal pile.

(This is not in the Supply.)

Grinch - Action Attack - $6*
+2 Cards
+1 Action
Each other player with at least 5 cards in hand discards a Gift or reveals a hand with no Gifts. Then, each other player discards down to 4 cards in hand.
(This is not in the Supply.)

(There are 10 copies of each of these. Seems about right. Sometimes you will run out of gifts to give.)

So yeah, you buy Christmas and everyone gets presents, and hey you get one two, and also get to open one immediately! Or you could get a grinch to take away people's presents. Grinch is a powerful card in that Laboratory is a powerful card. The attack is annoying but amounts to a slightly stronger urchin overall, so not terribly painful. Plus, normally you can only be hit once by it. Of course, playing a Grinch opens you up to other people attacking you by buying Christmases. It's worth noting that giving the other players Gifts is nice, but they have to wait to play the card and then another shuffle to use the card they exchanged the Gift for. So, it is slightly weaker of a boon to your opponents then it may seem. And you, if you're naughty, you don't mind giving them gifts because you can force them to discard them with your Grinches and never even be able to open the Gifts. Now that isn't the Christmas spirit!

So, at first buying Christmas does something positive for the other players. If they stay nice, it keeps doing something positive. But if they get Naughty, then it no longer does. Okay, those are my cards! Always open to feedback.