Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

1

Variants and Fan Cards / Dominion: City Life

« on: March 25, 2023, 11:49:33 am »

     DOMINON: CITY LIFE     

Like a nail in a mighty trebuchet, everyone has a place in their hometown. The local baker sells your bread, the local farrier shoes your horse and the local fence extorts your hard-earned doubloons. With every task, a worker is assigned, and together they bustle with purpose in ever-growing urban areas. No kidding; you used to have to brush your teeth all by yourself, but nowadays, they have a guy for that! Sir Hector-the-Teeth-Brushing-Connoisseur, he’s the guy you hired. Perhaps you’ll employ a toenail clipping expert next, that’s ought to be an existing job now.

Sadly, the lively sprawl of lively cities full of lively people brings a darker – less lively – side to what should’ve been a beautiful utopia. They say one bad apple spoils the bunch. In the grimier parts of town, you’ll be hard pressed to find the good apples. Gang of teenage thugs stealing your coin pouch, overzealous bankers taxing your savings to pay for their new wigs, and hired mercenaries leaving with your pants, having no more coins to usurp from your bankrupted pockets. These rotten apples are so common that it's near impossible to avoid the swarm of fruit flies anymore.

Caution is of the essence. In a world where naivety is easily punished, one should be careful when falling for the courtship of a beautiful damsel near a dark alleyway, for a knife to your throat could be the next step to your gullible foray into the dangerous world of romance. If you keep to the main road however, you’ll find buildings upon buildings full of interesting individuals: Mushroom growers, pompadour testers, scarf designers, trapdoor makers, teeth pullers – maybe just try to avoid that last one.

City Life:
City Life is a full-sized fan expansion for Dominion. It features 32 Kingdom cards, 10 Events, an out-of-Supply pile of Workers and 10 different Dreads. More onto those last two points in the “New mechanics” category below. In total, randomizers included, the set has 430 cards.
City Life, as opposed to my last two fan expansions (New World and Heroes) has no Duration cards! This was by design. City Life also re-introduces tokens, something I have also done in New World. I love them chips, what can I say! Here’s what else you can expect in this set:

• Cheap cards. Indeed, a decent amount of cards cost , and the proportion of cards costing is lower than your typical expansion.
• Attacks. Attack cards everywhere! City Life has 7 Kingdom cards bearing the “Attack” label. Tough life in the city!
• Villages. Or pseudo-Villages. City Life offers a lot in terms of being able to play many many terminal cards. You definitely won’t have a hard time building an engine in City Life. An engine that will probably fire volleys upon volleys of the many Attack cards at your disposal!

Here you can find:

• The rulebook (not yet available)
• A save file for City Life for Tabletop Simulator (V1)
• A folder with high-res pictures of the cards (V1)

Half a year after my release of Heroes, I present to you this new expansion. And not unlike Heroes, I have worked for over a year onto this project, until I deemed it was good enough to be exhibited to the grand public. Feel free to play with the cards, and if you have any comments, by all means, post ‘em! I always love reading what you guys have to say.


New mechanics:

WORKERS: A Worker is an out-of-Supply card gainable by specific City Life Kingdom cards (analogous to Horses, Spoils, etc.). The Worker pile has 18 copies in it.

CURSE TOKENS: Curse tokens are little skull-shaped tokens with -1 printed on them. Certain City Life cards/Events/Dreads dispatch them. They are tokens and thus aren’t taking any space in your deck, not unlike Coffers, tokens, etc. There’s a limited pool of Curse tokens that can be given in a game. It scales the same as Curses do. For instance, in a 2-player game, there are 10 Curse tokens that can be given. In a 3-player game, use 20 Curse tokens. So on, so forth. When an effect says: “+1,” then you take a Curse token. If the Curse token pool is empty, you take nothing. Each Curse token you have at the end of the game incurs -1 to your score.

HORROR CARDS & DREADS: Dreads are an out-of-Supply mix pile of 10 different purple-coloured cards. These cards have a general negative impact on your deck, and may be considered junk cards. Dreads are pictured below, under the City Life Kingdom cards. Certain City Life cards bear the “Horror” type. If so, you will use Dreads this game. Shuffle them into a face down pile and put it near the Supply. These cards may only be gained when you are instructed to “gain a Dread.” When you gain a Dread, you gain only the top card of the face down shuffled pile. You must show it to the other players (turning it face up), so that they may see which Dread you just gained. For each player except for the first, use 10 Dreads, just like you would with Curses. So, in a 3-player game, the Dread pile has 20 Dreads mixed in, of which there are 2 copies of each Dread. In a 4-player game, shuffle 3 of each 10 Dreads into a face down pile of 30 Dreads.

Cards/Landscapes:

Special thanks:
Once again, this set couldn’t have possibly come to be without the generous help of dedicated play testers, and the input of many altruistic community members. Their unconditional aid truly has been a blessing.

With that in mind, a big thank to play testers Gubump, LastFootnote, MochaMoko and HollowNub. Another shout out to Hawke, my significant other. Hope I didn’t bore you too much with my insistence, girl!

Other thanks go to Discord members: Kaplane, Crlundy, Mahowrath, Shvegait, Braydon, Pokemonfan1937, Shael, S_Smart, Unjer, TheFunFighter, Alion8me and GarveyParvenu. If I forgot anyone, DM me about it, and I'll promptly rectify (and sorry)!

2

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Card Mechanics Week 43: Piety

« on: September 07, 2022, 10:53:59 am »

Contest:
So, I suppose this is that time where I do self-promotion about a gameplay mechanic I've toyed with before in New World. We're going full pious this week! Design a card that gives +Piety.


How Piety works:

• Some cards say +Piety. Like, +1 Piety, or +2 Pieties, etc… Like Villagers and Coffers, these Pieties are tokens. They go on your Piety mat. So each player will take a Piety mat of their color in games with cards with +Piety instructions.
• When you get +1 Piety, you may either put it to the left area (area 1) on your mat, or move a Piety token ALREADY on your mat from one area to the next. So if you get, say +2 Pieties, then you could put a Piety token on the area 1 of your mat, to then slide it right onto area 2. Hurray!
• At the start of your turn, you may spend any number of Piety tokens to trash cards from your hand. They’re like Ratcatcher tokens, in sum. But! Piety tokens spent from higher areas on your mat give you stronger bonuses! You get all bonuses from areas below it, from left to right.
• All in all, instructions are written on the mat if you forget. The mat is shown just below. And look, there’s even a spot for you to put tokens!

Click here to make to have a zoomed-in view of the Piety mat just above.


Existing examples:
Here are all the Piety cards that I've made thus far:

3

Weekly Design Contest / Weekly Design Contest #162: You Can Trip at $5

« on: August 30, 2022, 09:38:42 am »

Weekly Design Contest 162:You Can Trip at $5
Design a cantrip card costing or more.

I have always found creating such cards to be hard. And yet, Dominion wants these cards to exist, somehow. We have Cartographer, Groundskeeper, Swap, etc... The task of this challenge is for you to add a new card to that list!

A cantrip is a card that gives you +1 Card and +1 Action. Base yourself upon the "List of Cantrip Cards" listed on this page.


Some extra rules include:

• Please, do not make a Village, Laboratory or a Peddler variant. That opens up the design space a little too much for my taste and well, we want to have some kind of challenge here! A Village generates +2 Actions. A Laboratory increases your handsize by making you draw 2 or more cards. A Peddler is a cantrip that also yield + (or more).
• Normally, a cantrip starts with a vanilla +1 Card and +1 Action. That's the purest and easiest form of a cantrip, you should aim to do just that. However, some cantrips can be creative, as is the case with Sorceress. The +1 Card aspect of it is hidden in the non-vanilla text. You can try to do that, but please be careful.
• Ideally, your card would cost . But you can make a cantrip costing , or , etc...
  

Judging will attempt to be completed by 2022-09-08. I'm giving myself a week and a buffer of two extra days to account for the inevitable delays I always put you guys through (sorry)!

4

Variants and Fan Cards / Dominion: Heroes

« on: August 01, 2022, 08:56:26 pm »

     DOMINON: HEROES     

Things are getting out of hand. This morning, you had to squish another bat-winged eyeball on your way out of bed. And what was that in your soup at the royal buffet? A mutant tarantula? That does it. Soup is not to be disrespected. There’s an invasion right now. For once, your pesky neighbors aren’t to blame: rather, we are dealing here with waves upon waves of sharp toothed creatures. “Monsters”, so your peasants call them. No one knows where these devilish fiends came from, but you know where they’ll end up: under the steel caps of your boots.

It would be unrealistic to chase away these outliers on your own. Well, in the few quiet and uninterrupted dreams you have, that’s already a done deal. But the reality is, you had to get creative. You funded corps of blood thirsty mercenaries, “Saviors” – again, to borrow the word of the population. Those Saviors have a mission: to fill up their XP bar, to level up, to loot and to gear up from the corpses of these slayed Monsters. And hey, if that can contain the invasion all the while, mission accomplished for you too. To sip your soup in utter peace is a dream shared by every monarch after all.

Heroes:
Heroes is a full-sized fan expansion for Dominion. It features 30 Kingdom cards, 20 Events and 16 Monsters (what are Monsters??? Read more to find out!) This set’s mechanics include:

• Recursive Duration cards.
• A heavy focus on trashing, with a fair share of cards caring about being trashed.
• The main gimmick, Saviors, Strength and Monsters, coming with a custom manual mat (again, read more to find out).

Here you can find:

• The rulebook (V4.1)
• A save file for Heroes for Tabletop Simulator (V2)
• A folder with high-res pictures of the cards and the manuals (V3)
• The secret history of Heroes (V2)

I have been working on this set for more than a year now. I think more work has been put into this than my previous expansion, New World, but truth be told, there was way more stuff to test and get right with Heroes. Still, I hope you enjoy the high standards this expansion hopes to achieve. Feel free to leave any comments!


Meet the Saviors, the Monsters, Strength and your trusty manual:

• Saviors are Kingdom cards that gives access to the new resource in some form. We call it Strength.
  
  
• Setup: When one or more Saviors are in the Supply, randomly select 4 Monster cards: One costing , one costing , one costing and one costing . Make 4 Supply piles with 10 copies for each of these Monsters (or 8 or 12 if it’s also a Victory card, like Ent). Indeed, Saviors mean there will be 14 Kingdom cards instead of the usual 10. Each player takes a manual mat of their color (see picture below).
  
  
• is a resource used to buy Monster cards. As an extra resource, it follows the same rules as and . During your buy phase, you can spend and a buy to buy a Monster. For instance, if you have 1 Buy and , you could buy a Carnivorous Plant or a Silver, but not both (you’d need 2 buys).
  
  
• Monsters are gained and discarded from play directly to your manual. This means when you buy a Monster, it’ll go directly to your manual without visiting your discard pile. When you discard cards from play during Clean-up, put your Monsters in play back into your manual.
  
  
• Monsters can be played during your turns as if they were in your hand (they’re not, but they follow the same rules). Action Monsters can be played during your Action phase at the cost of an Action, and Treasure Monsters can be played during your Buy phase like other Treasures are played. Victory Monsters cannot be played at all. Essentially, it’s as if they are cards that are always in your hand each turn, and they do not decrease your hand size too!
  
  
• Your manual can hold 4 Monsters. If a Monster tries to enter your manual but it’s already full, return a Monster from your manual to its Supply pile, or return the Monster you’re trying to add to your manual to its Supply pile. You can be tricky and juggle more than 4 Monster however, especially with Duration Monsters.
  
  
• Since they are Supply piles, emptying Monster piles counts toward 3-pile ending. This usually won’t happen though, since they have a tendency of returning themselves to their pile. They can be gained with other neat non-Strength tricks too, like trashing a Squire to gain a Dragon, or using a Tragic Hero to gain a Mimic.
  
  
• Although rare, Monsters can accidentally enter your deck. This is the case if you, say, use Watchtower to topdeck a Monster you just gained. Still, when played from your hand, they’ll go to your manual on this turn’s Clean-up (discarded from play to your manual).

Click the picture to enlarge it.

Cards/Landscapes:

Special thanks:
Heroes has received the much-needed help from Crlundy, Gubump, LastFootnote and MochaMoko during many many play testing sessions. Without them, Heroes would be in a pretty sad state. Likewise, I received the helpful comments from many kind souls in the #variants channel of the Dominion Discord server. Heroes greatly benefited from these advices. Thank you to everyone involved for all of your help!

And last but not least, for anyone who comments here to give your opinions and muses: thank you! It’s always super encouraging and prompts me to do more Dominion fan-related work.

Cheers!

5

Weekly Design Contest / Weekly Design Contest #145: Down the hatch!

« on: March 05, 2022, 04:34:54 pm »

Weekly Design Contest 145: Down the hatch!

Design a card that thematically lends itself to alcohol

Allies is around the corner! Previews have dropped! Dominion now has 14 expansions in its catalogue. 14!
This calls for a celebration! Bring out the Champaign, because this contest is all about alcohol. And, well, nothing much more beyond that, actually. It’s pretty simple really: just make a card that invokes alcohol thematically.

It doesn’t need to be as straightforward as a mug o’ beer. A keg is as acceptable of a card as would be a bar or a brew master. Or how about a nice branch of hops? Anyway, these are just quick ideas to get you going. Go nuts beyond that. But remember: t’has to do with alcohol!


Some extra rules include:

• Actually, not many extra rules. You can do a Landscape card if you want. Or send multiple cards at once, such as with split piles or Travelers. I will say though that I prefer when only one card is submitted. Makes it easier to judge, lol.

Judging will be, of course, based on whether or not your card(s) match the requested theme. That’s like, a mandatory thing. And, well, how much the effects of your card(s) use said theme. That's kind of important too. Otherwise, tip of the judge: I’ll admit that I’m biased toward simpler cards. I mean, we’re celebrating with alcohol here, I’m way past the point where I can read a novel on a card!


Judging desperately wants to occur in exactly one week, so on the 12th of March. However, I am not without my fare share of delays. Sorry if it happens, I’ll try my best not to!
Crap, the expected delay has come forth! Judging will actually be done on the upcoming Tuesday, on the 22-03-15.

6

Variants and Fan Cards / Dominion: New World

« on: December 11, 2021, 05:51:41 pm »

     DOMINON: NEW WORLD     

It is getting rather crowded, isn’t it? You’ve been itching for a battle or two lately… but wherever you wage war, an overprotective monarch builds more palisades. Mere days ago, after tea and biscuits, you ordered your troops to make a quick foray into your neighbor’s territory but alas! The duke of my-grass-is-greener-than-yours was already prepared to fight back. It seems like no land’s up for grabs anymore. A warmonger such as yourself couldn’t be more disappointed.

It all changed when you overheard rumors about how the Earth wasn’t all that flat after all, and that explorers from other nations found new uncharted continents. Your curiosity bone sufficiently piqued, you promptly swore to plant a flag in the fresh soil of these lands.

Ah, but the new hemisphere is not devoid of souls! This, you came to learn after a long and perilous trip overseas jam-packed with whiskey and scurvy. The natives are nothing to scoff at, for they know their home far better than you ever will. A healthy alliance with them may provide beneficial. If they can keep their spears pointed toward the other overzealous invaders, you'll be quite content. Besides, you cannot wait to be taught how to use poison darts against those who dared claiming the New World before you!

New World:
New World is a medium-sized fan card expansion. It features 18 Kingdom cards alongside 12 Landscape cards, for a total of 210 cards (including the randomizers). Not quite as small as Alchemy/Cornucopia/Guilds, but not as big as the other “normal-sized” expansions. New World features two new mechanics: Laws and Piety. Piety is a mechanic that comes with its own mat. Also, tokens make a triumphant return!

• [V2] The rulebook can be found here.
• [V2] A save file of New World for Tabletop Simulator can be found here. In case you want to try it yourself! Extract to Documents\My Games\Tabletop Simulator\Saves.
• [V3] High resolution pictures of the cards, Laws and Piety mats can be found here.

Introduction:
Hi everyone! Today, I’d like to present you a brand-new fan expansion made by me for Dominion. I have tried making sets before (Urbanisation being the most “serious” one), but these felt extremely unsatisfactory to me in the end. First and foremost, because they lacked severely in terms of cohesion. Urbanisation, for instance, featured only one card that gave tokens… why? The card was fine, but it was so… out of place. New World addresses that problem and is tied pretty niftily together. Another problem Urbanisation had was a blatant lack of playtesting. Indeed, cards were just thrown in the thread with minimum afterthoughts. New World has been thoroughly tested for months. It’s still a pale comparison to the countless hours that go into actual official expansions, but still. I’d like to think New World takes a step in the right direction.

So, in the end, I see New World as my actual first real attempt at making a set that can work. Call this an early celebration, but I think the design process was way more serious here than what I’ve put forth before. So, I hope you enjoy the cards, concepts and mechanics I will present!


New mechanics:

LAWS: Laws are 12 Landscape cards shuffled together into a facedown pile, just like Boons and Hexes are. Laws are only ever used if a card with the "Leader" type appears in the game (see examples below). If so, then it is recommended to have at most one other Landscape in the Supply (one Way, or one Project, etc...). Laws are taken from the Law pile. Leader cards will tell you to "take a Law". When you take a Law, only you get to see it; other players may not. It's a secret! You keep that Law next to you, hidden from their curious little eyes. Then, once per turn, at the cost of one Action, you may enact a Law you have during your Action phase. Like, instead of playing an Action card, you use that Action to enact that Law you have, basically. When you enact a Law, you put it face up in the Supply. That Law is now active. It has effects on it. Every player is affected by these effects. So all in all, it sorts of act like a global Project. If you enact a Law, but there's already an enacted Law, then you discard that Law and put yours in its place. Indeed, there can only ever be one enacted Law at a time. Finally, last thing you need to know: you may only have one Law taken at a time. You can carry that Law over turns and enact it whenever the situation fits best. If you get a second Law, then discard one of the 2 Laws you have. Only keep one at a time!

PIETY: Some cards say +Piety. Like, +1 Piety, or +2 Pieties, etc… Like Villagers and Coffers, these Pieties are tokens. They go on your Piety mat. So each player will take a Piety mat of their color in games with cards with +Piety instructions. When you put a Piety token on your Piety mat, you may either put it to the left area (area 1) on your mat, or move a Piety token ALREADY on your mat from one area to the next. So if you get, say +2 Pieties, then you could put a Piety token on the area 1 of your mat, to then slide it right onto area 2. Hurray! At the start of your turn, you may spend any number of Piety tokens to trash cards from your hand. They’re like Ratcatcher tokens, in sum. But! Piety tokens spent from higher areas on your mat give you stronger bonuses! You get all bonuses from areas below it, from left to right. All in all, instructions are written on the mat if you forget. The mat is shown just below. And look, there’s even a spot for you to put tokens!

Click here to make to have a zoomed-in view of the Piety mat just above.

Cards/Landscapes:

Special thanks:
A big shout out to the Dominion Discord community, who helped me fine tune certain cards. Their opinions were extremely valuable, as they allowed me to see design pitfalls I would have otherwise not seen. This include Gubump, Kaplane, Annie, Freaky, Spineflu, S_smart, Crlundy, Unjer, Petzi, Muenstercheese, Alion8Me, MochaMoko, Shael and others (please, do tell if I forgot your name here - I will promptly add it. Stuff like this keeps me up at night).

Another big shout out to LastFootNote, who has religiously helped me playtest this set on Tabletop Simulator. New World would be pretty abysmal without the problems we found together, let me tell you.

Special mention to ShardOfHonor with his awesome card generator, as always! Made making this expansion a real piece of cake. Another special mention to all the artists who made the art on the cards. Their name, if I could find them, are credited at the bottom of each card.

A big thank you in advance to whomever share their opinions/ideas/comments about New World! Your comments mean a lot to me.

7

Weekly Design Contest / Weekly Design Contest #127: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

« on: August 31, 2021, 09:05:30 am »

Weekly Design Contest 127: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Design a card that matches the theme of one of the 3 pictures below.

In this contest, you will be tasked to come up with a card that will thematically match one of the 3 suggested pictures. The pictures all come from artist Tomasz Jedruszek. His material can be found on Artstation. A very talented fellow with inspiring art, I believe he has that magic touch that very-well fit within the legacy of Dominion. Here are the 3 pieces of art in question, with links below them toward ShardOfHonor’s card maker with the picture well-adjusted to the card frame:

1		2		3
Card template.		Card template.		Card template.

You can do whatever with these pictures. Name your card as you wish, price it as your heart desires and give it the best effect you can think of. And hey, make it any type you want too. So long as everything is bundled as a cohesive card. Like, if you take the first picture and name it “Mountain”, I’ll probably give the win to someone else . So take that into account, because judging will look at that aspect, alongside the balance of the card. The usual, more or less.

Some extra rules include:

• The pictures are better formatted to fit a vertical, normal card (that’s debatable, but w/e). So exceptionally, to honour the challenge of this week, no landscapes please. Say no to Events, Landmarks, Projects and Ways.
• If you're not going to use the card generator and simply want to write what your card does, please specify which art it would use. In most cases, I know this'll be obvious given the name of your card, but let's make it extra clear just in case.
• I suppose if you’re feeling extra creative, you may use 2 or all 3 pictures to do something like a split pile or a mix pile. Or even use one of them as an out-of-Supply card à la Mercenary. If you do that, it will be up to you to find creative ways to thematically link the cards together. You may even do a mini 3-card Traveller line if you’re into that. Of course, just using one card is probably the simpler, safer bet here.

I will try my gosh darn best to do the judging on next Tuesday (21-09-07) around 8:00 PM… but we all know how it goes with my systematic delays. Sorry in advance if that’s the case…! Still, have fun, and do ask any questions if you’re unsure about stuff.


As a quick side note, I apologize to those for which I misjudged their cards last time (contest 122, the draw-to-X one). Re-reading it, I can see I made some bad mistakes in my judging. Please, don't let that deter you from submitting in this thread. You know what they say: people learn from their mistakes. So with that in mind, hopefully, I will do a more satisfactory job this week.

8

Weekly Design Contest / Weekly Design Contest 122: That Other Way of Drawing

« on: July 17, 2021, 02:42:58 pm »

Weekly Design Contest 122: That Other Way of Drawing

Either design a draw-to-X card, or a card that helps activate a draw-to-X engine.

Draw-to-X is fun. Took me a couple of years to realize that. Man, screw +Cards or w/e. Drawing in Dominion's good and all, but draw-to-X is fun. What is draw-to-X? "Draw-to-x abilities are those that allow you to draw cards until you have a specified number of cards in your hand, regardless of how many cards you have to start with." I quoted the wiki. See here for more details.

This contest offers you two choices. Either you make an actual draw-to-X card, such as Watchtower, Way of the Owl, Library or Cursed Village; or you make a card that helps you activate a draw-to-X engine, such as Oasis, Native Village, Festival or Coven. Basically, a non-terminal stop card would qualify. Or a card that makes you discard stuff from your hand for a bonus such as Artificer, that's cool too. I'm a little more torn on terminal discarding Action cards such as Vault, because they require a Village first for you to play your draw-to-X card after discarding stuff. So you know. Try to avoid that, I suppose. In case of doubt, I will let you guys know. So no silly surprises before the deadline. 

Some extra rules include:

• Please guys, just make one card, okay? I will not hesitate to say a particular entry does not qualify if I see more than one card in one post. So, no out-of-Supply shenanigans, no Travellers, no split piles...
• Uh, well, I guess that was the only rule.

Judging will be done in a week. Expect it around next Saturday (21-07-24), around perhaps 8:00 PM EDT. EDIT: Judging date postponed by a day. It will be done on next Sunday (21-07-25) around 8:00 PM.
K thx have fun bai.

9

Variants and Fan Cards / More Dominon Fan Card Ideas

« on: April 26, 2021, 10:23:15 am »

So, this might seem like a hot take, but I really do like designing Dominion fan cards. Everyone needs their poison; making cards is mine.

Normally, this would be where I’d put a super elaborate intro about the thought process behind this thread, how them cards came to be, why I felt the need to compile but a few cards together even though they’re not part of a set or fan expansion per say, etc etc. But uh, honestly, I simply just have a couple of cards floating around, and I’d like to share them. That’s pretty much it. I thus won’t fake an epic story and simply jump into the cards themselves.

Over the next few days, I’ll post the cards in batch of 3, like I’ve done in other threads before. I like this format better. I feel like it’s less overbearing on readers as opposed to just dumping everything at once. Let’s make this smooth, baby!


So, right off the bat, we have 3 Reaction cards. I bothered the Discord for a while with Reaction cards. I really tried to make some wacky out-of-the-box Reactions happen. Most of them were underwhelming, or didn’t need to be Reactions at all. These 3 cards are my best attempt however, so here they are (and look, they form an "Action - Treasure - Victory" trio!):

          

• Resupply: A versatile gainer. It relies solely on what you’ve gained before though, otherwise it straight up does nothing. So playing this without the Reaction on your Action phase without having gained something beforehand this turn is probably a bad idea. Better wait in your Buy phase to at least buy and gain a card, to which you’ll be able to React with Resupply.
  
  So, what can Resupply do. Well, you could Workshop a Action card, and then Resupply will React and gain an Action card costing up to . Or you could buy a Copper and Resupply will make you gain a nice card, kind of like a less punishing Banquet. Or, if you’re cheeky, you could wait to get Cursed by your adversary. Just React with Resupply to that curse, and you’ll also add a to your deck. Thanks for the Attack, friend! All in all, Resupply does a bunch of stuff, and it’s up to you to make the best of it.
  
  
• Recycled Goods: More Discord shenanigans with that one. And hey, I did the art for that one too ! Always wanted to take a crack at that. But, onto the card itself, now. This is a disappearing Silver, more or less. It can be interesting when you need to spike a certain price point, but don’t want to keep the Silver in your deck (Engines often like that prospect). You get a too, so yay! There can be ways to farm some off Recycled Goods, because adding an Estate or a Duchy to your deck allows you to “un-Exile” each copy of Recycled Goods from the trash. Everyone shares that fight, and pulling the trigger could be important. In the face of an opponent who’s ahead, Duchy dancing with Recycled Goods in the trash can be beneficial for you. Not only will you re-add some form of economy to your deck growing greener and greener, but you’ll toss in some extra to your score too, and that could make the difference. You can also play, like, 4 Recycled Goods in one turn, trash them all, get 4, buy a Duchy and automatically re-gain them all. The wheel is churning!
  
  All in all, probably a below median card strength wise. But I’m ok with that. It’s a card people will have to try to find ways to make it work instead of mindlessly emptying the pile, and that’s a pretty cool feeling. Also, this probably overstretch the definition of a Reaction card, but if Patron can be one, then so too can Recycled Goods. It's mostly blue to draw attention to it.
  
  
• Hanging Gardens: A Duchy giving 1 less . What do you get in exchange? A pseudo one-shot Throne Room Reaction. Using the Reaction will make you Exile that "Duchy", so hurray for Victory cards not clogging your deck. On top of that, you get to replay an Action, Treasure or even Night card, so that’s some neat versatility. It’ll almost certainly always work, even in the face of hand with no Action cards. Worst case scenario, just Throne a Copper or a Silver or what have you. And it still works even if drawn dead with, say, a Smithy. Hanging Gardens looks past that and can replay that Smithy anyway. Such is the beauty of the Reaction.
  
  If keeping these green cards out of your deck à la Distant Land is not satisfying enough for you, nothing stops you from gaining another Hanging Gardens and un-Exiling them all. Your Throne Rooms will happily rejoin your deck, ready for some double trouble!
  
  A quick note about some rule precision: Hanging Gardens cannot React to other Hanging Gardens, since they can never be played. They never enter your play area; they are simply Exiled. This brings some tracking issues with re-playing Duration cards, since they don’t keep themselves out, but that’s a problem I’ll learn to live with. It can also replay cards that have left your play area, such as Horses or even Recycled Goods up there, but again, too bad. I like the elegance as-is, and don't want to add a bunch of fail safes on the card to tackle these cases.
  

10

Variants and Fan Cards / 10 Events

« on: February 09, 2021, 10:19:21 pm »

It occurred to me that I have never really took a crack at designing Events for Dominion.

My focus mainly goes toward Kingdom cards, probably because I prefer designing these. Oddly enough though, I woke up this morning with a headful of ideas to fulfil that Event gap in my life. Lots of the ideas portrayed below were juggling in my head for a long time, but have been nothing more than rough sketches. This sudden desire to put on paper the new Event ideas I’ve had pushed me to finally clean up these drafts and to compile everything into a nifty little 10 pack.

On the Dominion Discord server, I have posted a few (4) Events, some of which already got their wording tweaked. It would be a little too much of an attention hog to post and ask for feedback for all 10 of them over there... so instead, I’m doing the same, but here!

The testing has been minimal for these (as in, there hasn’t been any testing, whoopsy daisy). This isn’t normally how I go about things, but eeeeh. I’m going to do a leap of faith here! Hopefully, the ideas aren’t too abysmal, or worse of all, too unbalanced/broken. If you’d like to pool in to give me some pointers about these 10 Events, feel free (and welcomed) to do so!

So, here’s the bad boys, ordered by cost:

	We start this journey with the wackiest of the wack-Os. It’s a communal Event! It joins the likes of Trade Route, Forager and Lurker as an effect shared between the players. A downside I could see to Brewery is that there is kind of a first player disadvantage. The more players invest in Brewery together, the bigger the payoff. But… it has to start somewhere. And the player who does so before the others will reap less benefits than the others will with their subsequent plays. Then again, stuff like Flag Bearer exists, so that’s not a never seen before problem. Anyway, Brewery could explode with Buys, but there’s a condition to fulfill for you to get there. “I’ll just buy more Coppers with Brewery’s extra Buys to keep it going!” Okay. Well enjoy your 5+ Coppers in your deck then, I suppose. Stuff in Dominion relying on Coppers is always so strong, as we all know. Coppersmith and Counting House are top tier cards, after all. Edit: Changed the wording slightly ("onto" → "on"). Turns out I changed my mind and now prefer the word "on", since Brewery acts more like a pseudo Tavern mat than a deck.
	Cute little thing going on here. You gain more and more expensive cards the more you buy Loot in a turn, starting with . ‘Course, this is heavily reliant on extra Buys. Otherwise, it’s uh… It’s probably just going to sit there. I mean, it can give your 5/2 opening a small kicker... and you can “Delve” a Silver with Loot. But truthfully, it wants +Buys. With 6 Buys and , you can reach for a Province with Loot, and each extra Buy and after that is another Province. How neat would it be to pull that one off? Edit: Changed the wording slightly ("+" → "plus"). Thanks based Butcher for the wording! And thank you Bbobb for the suggestion!
	I once made a card with that exact same name and picture as an entry for a weekly contest. It didn’t win and I totally agree with that: it kind of sucked. So here’s Bifurcation, the Event. It tries to do an Annex thingy where you shuffle stuff into your deck. Except here, it’s shuffled onto your deck. And hey, you can bottom deck 3 crappy cards, which is where Secret Passage stuffs crap sometimes too. You’ll see these 3 unwanted cards at once though, for your deck will be weirdly layered with Bifurcation. The fact that you must bottom deck at least 1 card means that you can’t buy something really good and topdeck it with Bifurcation thereafter. Overall, I suspect Bifurcation to be pretty situational (and probably not very good?), but that’s okay. They can’t all be top tier Events.
	Guide, but it’s an Event. You can control what you discard with this, though. But, uh, it costs you a Buy to do so. It may draw more than Expedition, but unlike Expedition, you don’t know until you have your new hand whether Refurbish was a worthy investment or not. If the risk of losing your Buy for a dud doesn’t seem worth it, perhaps Scouting Party’s effects are more desirable to you? I thought it’d be a reasonable thing to price this in the same range as Expedition. Edit: Simply changed the formatting, 'cuz it looks better this way. The number '5' is now on the next line... that's all!
	Next, we move to a Cavalry/Villa hybrid. An Event that makes you return to your Action phase! People tend to like these kinds of things. Once per turn though, let’s not get crazy! So here, maybe two terminal drawing cards collided. In this case, you pick Travel’s Village option. Or perhaps you had the Actions to spare, but were out of draw (ex: you drew payload cards). In this situation, Travel’s Smithy option becomes pretty sexy. It’s versatile. Its mere presence in a given Kingdom should proooobably not go unnoticed.
	I once made a card that was pretty much this. It was called Printing Press. It revealed the card from your hand, gained a copy of it and *smooch* voilà! No topdecking and upper bound either. I much prefer this Event variant. Printing Press was erm, boring, I guess? Collect is cooler in my opinion. It even Discards the card you want to gain a copy of, so you don’t topdeck too many of them. Why the limit? Well. I don’t want this to print Platinums. Or King’s Courts too, for that matter.
	We continue the trend of comparing these Events to existing Dominion cards. Here, the comparison is, of course, Scheme. But Herbalist says hi too! With the whole “topdecking when discarded” biz. Here, you’re forced to do so. But you bought Tactics, so of course you wanted to do that. What you maaaay not have wanted to do is to topdeck that Copper or that Silver alongside your awesome Action card. Too bad! It’s Tactics. The topdecked cards come in duo. Unless you have no Treasures in play. In which case you’re no fun. Edit: Man, that's weaksauce. I normally try not to go there, but this could really benefit from a +1 Buy. And voilà, there's one now! I'm nooot going to fluctuate Tactics' cost just quite yet. Picture this: Topdecking a Mountebank and a Silver every turn. Yikes. And now that you have the extra Buy to do other stuff on top of the topdecking thingy, that's an even more dangerous game to play. Leeeet's just keep this at for the time being.
	Well. A pure vanilla Event. No official Events even do that. That’s cool, that’s simple. However, pure vanilla makes Citizenship way easier to evaluate than some of the crazy stuff here like, say, Brewery. And as such, this is the one that will probably get my head ripped off the most. When I made this, I thought was reasonable to add 2 Coffers and 2 Villagers onto your mats. Time will tell if I’m bad at pricing stuff.
	Well, this definitely has a Count-esque approach to it. You can even save stuff from your hand before the fire trashes it all, just like Count does. A good question would be: “How does this fare against that other trashing Event?” The Event being Trade. Trade gives you back Economy via Silver. Not what you’d like the most added to you deck, but hey, “trash 2; gain 2” is pretty sweet overall. Meanwhile, Forest Fire cleans up your hand full stop. So you get to trash more, huzzah! But uh, don’t draw too much before you plan on unleashing flames to your hand. And late into the game, remember that you can only save 2 Provinces. The others will have to burn. And the 2 saved Provinces? They’ll clog up your next hand. Careful when playing with fire!
	Kay. So why does this super Mine costs ? I original priced this at , but it somehow felt… off. It’s not that far away from Gold and man, why wouldn’t you take this over Gold if you hit ? At , it competes with Province, so now the interesting thinking game is afoot. Yeah yeah, Reap is in the same boat. Nyeh. Excavation is pretty simple. Engine users will probably hate this. Let the hate flow, I say, for this doesn’t invalidate Excavation’s right to exist. Edit: Gave this more thoughts and weeeell, I bit the bullet and decreased Excavation's cost back to . Now it's really in love with Platinum. And it's not too bad of a deal if you seek to buy Golds. Yes, these kind of games exist. Oh I also changed the formatting so that the "Gain a Treasure" sentence appears on one line instead. Sexier that way.

11

Rules Questions / Prince + Way of the Turtle

« on: January 27, 2021, 05:39:58 pm »

An interesting little puzzler was raised on the Dominion Discord and I now seek more answers about it. Without any fluff, the question is:

Does Prince fail to play its set aside Action card if that card is played as Way of the Turtle?


Question might seem to point toward an obvious “yes”. But, why would that be? Prince’s only failing clause for re-playing its set aside Action card is that ”you fail to set it aside on a turn you play it”. This is normally avoided by Prince’s auto set-aside on discard mechanic. But what if you use Way of the Turtle on that Action card? Technically, you played that card this turn; and you successfully set it aside on that very same turn. Why would Prince fail to re-play it on subsequent turns? Why would Prince care about what set the card aside, whether it was the Prince itself who did it or something else?

Dominion Online says that regardless of my above enquiry, Prince does indeed fail to re-play a Turtle’d card. My question is, why? What is it that causes this failure?

Before anyone asks, there are strategical implications to use Way of the Turtle on a Prince’d card. For instance, if you have set aside a mandatory trasher, like Salvager, but your hand is simply too good for you to want to trash something. You could Turtle the Salvager and keep replaying it via Prince on your next turns. Thank you Gubump for imagining such a scenario!

Anyway, thanks for the clarification!

12

Variants and Fan Cards / Dominion: Weekly Design Contest Set

« on: January 14, 2021, 09:34:44 pm »

Dominion: Weekly Design Contest Set

Hello everyone!  Celebrating the end of the 100th Weekly Design Contest, an impressive milestone, I thought it could be cute to pool a couple of winning cards together into a community-created set. I’ve compiled my favourite quarter of these winning cards (25 cards), updated some of them with the ever-changing wording of Dominion and added/changed pictures on some of them. Multiple questions arise in the light of what I’ve just said:

1. What determined which card made it into this set? Why wasn’t my submission included here?

First of all, it’s nothing personal. These 100 cards all have their merits, if only by how creative they are. But I limited myself to multiple factors, and that filtered a bunch of cards out. Here’s my list of criteria:

• Card had to be the winner of a weekly competition. Runner-ups were sometimes extremely interesting, but there was too much to choose from. So winning cards only.
  
• No extra components. This eliminates all cards that come with their own tokens, mats, personal out-of-Supply piles and what not.
  
• No Landscape cards. It’d feel awkward to create a 25-card set with like... 3 Events, y’know. If Landscapes are to be included, there would need to be a good amount of them for them to not look out of place. But there weren’t enough winning Landscape cards, so I decided against including these.
  
• Simplicity rhymes with priority. The elegance of Dominion comes from the interaction of cards together in a given Kingdom. Not from a card alone doing everything and then some. Donald has been edging closer and closer toward simplicity with his recent-most expansions (Renaissance, Menagerie), and I agree with this design philosophy. So I avoided cards with a massive wall of text on them more than I didn’t.
  
• A set must hold itself together with a certain number of core cards. For instance, there needs to be enough trashing, enough draw cards, enough payload and enough villages for cards to work well together, should a player decide to play only with this set. But also, there mustn’t be too many Attack cards, too many Kingdom Treasure cards, too many cards with super-duper wacky effects, etc... There’s also a question of cost. The ratio of - - cards in the set must be reasonable. So, sometimes, I had to filter out cards to be able to realize that vision.
  

2. Why did you change the wording on my card? Wasn’t it good enough to begin with?

Of course it was! Sometimes, I only changed a couple of things to make the card perhaps less wordy, or perhaps because the Dominion lexicon changed over time. All of this will be explained in each card’s individual entry. But this was all done in good spirits: the mechanics on the card itself remain unchanged (or ultra close to what it was originally).

3. What about the art? Why is it different than the art I originally submitted?

Not all cards have a different art. But I’m a big sucker for crediting the original artists. Sometimes, I could not find the original piece of art submitted and as such, I could not find the artist to credit. In such cases, I searched for new art to credit it. And even on rarer cases could I not find the original artist on art I added. I hate when this happens… But anyway.


Here are the 25 cards now, ordered in ascending cost.

		Name: Actor Creator: Belugawhale Description: A simple cantrip card that gives Villagers. Changes from the original card: None. Thoughts: Poor House now has some company in the range of Kingdom cards! I won’t be as angry Upgrading or Remaking my Coppers into Actors as I would with Poor House, to be fair. Worst case scenario: I just cantrip my Actors away.
		Name: Lady Creator: Fragasnap Description: A cheap utility card; and a cheap source of Buys. Changes from the original card: None. Thoughts: This card fluctuates between giving you +1 Card and +1 Action, depending on the village availability in the Supply. The +1 Card is perhaps not the best “bonus” you can gather out of your multiple available Actions, but then again, so is the disappearing money version of it too. Still, a cheap +Buy is a cheap +Buy. Sometimes you need that!
		Name: Mouse Creator: Somekindoftony Description: A top deck trashing Necropolis that gains copies of itself. Changes from the original card: “Gain a Mouse” was simply moved before the reveal/trashing clause. This was to mimic more how Rats function. Instinctively, it perhaps is better to gain a Mouse before proceeding with the instructions on the card. Thoughts: Mouse unconditionally gains copies of itself. Rats do that as well. But Rats has 20 cards in its Supply pile. As such, I’m pondering whether Mouse should get a bigger Supply pile or not. Otherwise, man, it would be depleted at Mach 5 speed. Mouse really loves being paired with big, juicy draw cards, like Hunting Grounds or Embassy. Since it constantly gains itself, your thirst for villages will probably be quenched after your first Mouse gain. Oh, and the trashing thingy is pretty nice too. Good Copper trasher and good Estate filterer.
		Name: Craftsman Creator: Grep Description: A cantrip gainer that works only once per turn. Changes from the original card: The vanilla bonuses were moved above the gaining part. This is just more intuitive and more elegant that way, in my opinion. This barely changes anything too, except that you get to see one more card before you decide whether or not you want to gain a card with Craftsman. Hardly consequential. Thoughts: Cantrip gainers are interesting. Perhaps too easy to spam. But Craftsman solves that issue by having it only work once per turn. So why invest in multiple Craftsman, then? Well, because you can simply decide to cantrip them until you reach the price point you want to gain from with your last Craftsman. Brilliant design! And hey, it may be a Province gainer too, if you work hard enough. Definitely possible on the right Kingdom. But hey, that’s still once per turn, so the abuse is well bounded!
		Name: Gift Exchange Creator: Snowyowl Description: A trasher that involves every player; and a gainer from the trash that also involves every player. Changes from the original card: Nearly identical to its original counterpart, save for a “then” I added just before the gaining part. Thoughts: This is the wacky card of the set. The Possession – Masquerade – Ambassador level of “huh?” card. And it’s highly interactive too. Everyone gets to trash from their hand... and if anyone doesn’t feel like it, they can simply move a Gold from the Supply into the trash instead. Careful though! This gives you some Gold gaining ammunition if anyone (including yourself) does. Very wacky card. Probably hard to use. But fun nonetheless!
		Name: King’s Counsel Creator: Naitchman Description: A Throne Room variant involving another player. Changes from the original card: None Thoughts: A King’s Court cheaper. What! Why? Well, because King’s Counsel’s powers can be wasted by the player to your left, should you not plan carefully. The bigger your hand, the bigger the number of Action cards in it, the easier your opponent can make it “dud”. Ideally, you’ll plan a little bit with King Counsel to make sure just exactly the card you want to triple is forced to be played. King’s Courting has never been so puzzling!
		Name: Neighbouring Village Creator: Aquila Description: A utility Necropolis. Changes from the original card: Oof, quite a lot changed. First of all, since Neighbouring Village was first submitted, Menagerie came out and has given us precedence for things happening in this card. So Neighbouring Village now uses a mixture of the wording used in Kiln and Way of the Chameleon. Kiln for the “The next time you play an Action card this turn”, and Way of the Chameleon for the “each time it gives you +[Vanilla Bonus] this turn”. Yes, this means that Neighbouring Village now says “this turn” 2 times, but this was unavoidable. Thoughts: So Neighbouring Village, in itself, is a severely overpriced Necropolis. Truly, its real perk is to improve whichever Action card you play next. A simple Smithy is thus improved to a Hunting Grounds. A Village is now a Stable sans-Treasure discarding condition. A monument is a terminal Gold with double the amount of it usually gives! The possibilities are quite large (and fun)! The best cards to use this on are the ones that gives lotsa different vanilla bonuses, such as Market. You know, a Grand Market that says: “+2 Cards, +1 Action, +2 Buys and +” is quite a deal!
		Name: Porcelain Shop Creator: Snowyowl Description: A payload card that gives coffers. Changes from the original card: Simply merged the two non-Vanilla bonus sentences. Thoughts: Pretty nice how it wants you to accumulate Coffers for you to boom with them. ‘Course, you can immediately spend the one Coffers the moment you play Porcelain Shop. But that, my friend, would be equivalent to you having bought a terminal Silver Action card. Duchess costs , so why did you pay for this? Letting the Coffers rest for a while brings you closer to a megaturn, which is what Porcelain Shop really wants you to do.
		Name: Silver Worker Creator: Chappy7 Description: A draw card with Silver interactions. Changes from the original card: Simplified the top part with wording matching the one found on Royal Blacksmith. Thoughts: Smithy, but cheaper. Smithy doesn’t come with a drawback though; and the on-gain clause helps you force that drawback upon others. Indeed, when you gain a Silver Worker, each other player topdecks a Silver, à la Bureaucrat. Should they then play a terminal Silver Worker on their turn, they’re guaranteed to have to discard at least one card. Getting a Silver Worker in your opening split can kind of mess up the split of your opponents, and probably in a good way for them. This could bring them to have something like /, perhaps not the most desirable outcome for you.
		Name: Cats Creator: Somekindoftony Description: A trash for benefits cantrip. Changes from the original card: Reworded a few things (ex: “If you do” > “If you did”). Changed the drawing wording to include “+Cards”. It interacts with stuff like Way of the Chameleon better like this. The old wording for drawing was also somewhat incomplete. What if you trashed an Overlord, for instance? The part of a card’s cost had to be mentioned. Most importantly, the name of this card was changed (the only one in this set who had a name change). It went from “Cat”, to “Cats”. I simply pluralized the name... to match the art better, lol. Also, to match fit with Rats. Rats... cats... only one letter sets them apart! Thoughts: This is pretty much Apprentice, but limited as to what it can trash. You’ll never get more than +2 Cards with it. But, it is cheaper than Apprentice, and it’s also a cantrip. Overall, it’s a pretty neat Estate trasher and you should probably open with Cats.
		Name: Charity Creator: Commodore Chuckles Description: A trasher/emulator hybrid. Changes from the original card: None. Thoughts: A funny way to play that one nasty Attack card via Estate trashing. The trashing clause is pretty novel. And I like novel ways of trashing. You can pull all sort of weird stuff with Charity, and its simple effects leading to intricate moments is super intriguing. Trashing has always been fun, but Charity makes it extra fun!
		Name: Countryside Creator: Scott_Pilgrim Description: A variable alt- card. Changes from the original card: None. Thoughts: This is just a plain awesome Victory card, proving that the design space of pure Victory cards is not that strangled yet. Man, Countryside is a game changer in whichever Kingdom it appears in. Because technically, simply with Estate/Duchy/Province, Countryside can be a Province at half the price. Quite a steal! But... how much green can your deck handle? For each Countryside you add in your deck, you must also add an extra Estate, Duchy and Province for it to keep its 6 score. Perhaps you won’t want to trash your starting Estates to help them stay above the number of Countryside you add to your deck. Perhaps you can fish for other Victory cards in the Supply, such as Nobles or Harems. Countryside really makes you play a different game!
		Name: Cowrie Creator: D782802859 Description: An on-call draw card that’s also a Silver. Changes from the original card: Extremely minor changes (capitalised “Buy” from “Buy phase”, separated the on-call effects in two sentences, “on top of” > “onto”). Thoughts: “Uh oh, it’s a Silver+”, they’ll say. Except not really. You’ll only get this one turn out of two. It acts sort of like Coin of the Realm. In fact, it shares the same types. But what Cowrie is trying to achieve is to give you a chance to draw more Treasures during your Buy phase. It even also come with a neat little anti-dud clause. Uselessly drawing an Action card in your Buy phase, save for some fringe cases, is frustrating. But Cowrie’s got you covered. Topdeck it and have it ready to play next turn!
		Name: Fanatic Creator: Silverspawn Description: A Lost City+ that worsen your cards with each play. Changes from the original card: Just changed “that card” to “copies of it”. This is less confusing about which particular card “that” card is (“that” implies only one card getting downgraded). Thoughts: Man, it’s bonkers when you first play Fanatic. A stronger Lost City, and cheaper! Of course, after that, it’s all downhill from there onward. The player to your left can simply say “Fanatic”, and then your strong Lost Cities are Abandoned Mines. Woops. If they’re cocky, they can name another card, waiting for you to play another Fanatic for them to have the opportunity to downgrade yet another card. I can’t wait to see that in action!
		Name: Valley Town Creator: Something_Smart Description: A self-Exiling village. Changes from the original card: None. Thoughts: It’s a village that can do a little more, not unlike Mining Village. Both at , they can sacrifice themselves to help you go a little further. Unlike Mining Village though, I suspect you’ll use the extra push from Valley Town more often than not. I mean, you’ll see them back in your deck when you gain more of them. It’s not over until the Valley Town Supply pile is empty! Anyway. This is simple, elegant and useful. What’s not to love?
		Name: Wine Cellar Creator: ConMan Description: A payload card that grows over time. Changes from the original card: This is the only card in this set that has changed slightly in how it functions. Here, the Coin token is put on Wine Cellar before you can call it. This accelerates it one turn ahead as opposed as to what it was before. This was changed because I felt that it’d be easier for players to remember and to see that they have to put a Coin token on Wine Cellar each turn it is on your Tavern mat, even when you decide not to call it. Thoughts: A nice card that wants to grow over time for an ultimate payload. Multiple Wine Cellars can rest on your Tavern mat, doing their thing until you’re ready to all call them for a bunch of .
		Name: Bailiff Creator: King Leon Description: A draw payload card. Changes from the original card: “per Duchy in your hand” > “per Duchy revealed”. Thoughts: +Cards with +Buys are always cool. Margrave, Barge, Silk Merchant, etc. Bailiff does that as well. But it also provides you with a payload that could be quite large if you decide to invest in Duchies. Bailiff could justify that investment. Two Duchies revealed, for instance, brings it at: “+2 Cards, +1 Buy and +”. That’s pretty badass already. Still, the timing of Bailiff is quite awkward. It’s definitely no power card, but that doesn’t invalidate its right to exist.
		Name: Crumbling City Creator: Something_Smart Description: A Lost City variant. Changes from the original card: The whole dividing line has been abolished in favour of a simpler wording that imitates Encampment and Outpost (immediate set-aside effect and mentioning your next hand like Outpost does). Functionally slightly different, it still retains the purpose of this card at heart. Thoughts: This is such a cool card. It’s Lost City, but it stays the heck away from your next hand(s). As far as it can be in fact. You’ll have to be careful about triggering shuffles with that one. And if you draw your entire deck anyway, well... Crumbling City will probably be the last card you see as you draw your deck the following turn. Bwa ha ha! This is such a funny concept, I love it!
		Name: Farmer Creator: Gubump Description: A draw card which rewards variety. Changes from the original card: None. Thoughts: This is exactly the missing terminal draw card Cornucopia should’ve had, right down to the theming of this card. This card can technically be a +6 cards if you reveal the right cards. Realistically, it probably won’t go there. This is true for the opposite end of the spectrum too. You uh, probably won’t reveal 6 copies of the same card for +1 Card. You’ll probably end up somewhere in the middle. But Farmer’s high variance is dang cool. And perhaps one will build a deck around this variety-for-benefit it offers!
		Name: Forbidden City Creator: Spheremonk Description: A junker, emulator village. Changes from the original card: None. Thoughts: Man, the cool concepts are flying left and right, it’s baffling! This village can shapeshift into so many things, depending on the top Ruins. And if you’re sick of playing Survivors with Forbidden City, then open your turn with one and filter the Ruins to play something else. It works on so many levels, I’m damned impressed. Gotta love me some cool villages!
		Name: Judge Creator: Naitchman Description: A terminal Silver discarding Attack. Changes from the original card: None. Thoughts: This is a nastier Militia. But not completely game breaking and not as punishing as Pillage. It found quite a comfortable spot between these two cards in fact. A spot so perfect, so okay-to-exist, that I’m surprised we haven’t had a discarding Attack in Dominion like this as of yet. Other players get to protect their two most precious cards in their hand while they’ll probably say goodbye to their third strongest card. Judge is so reasonable, so interactively cool of an Attack that of course it had to be in this set.
		Name: Motherly Witch Creator: MeNowDealWithIt Description: A duration draw cursing Attack. Changes from the original card: Removed the dividing line to move away from the “while this is in play” wording Donald avoids more and more nowadays. The wording mimics the one found on Gatekeeper (“until then”, it says). Thoughts: This is Witch, but like, way stronger. In addition of being Witch, it also draws 2 cards on your next turn, just like Wharf does. And Wharf is strong. So if it’s Wharf and Witch, why does it just costs ? Because, should your opponents play Attack cards until your next turn, on top of the Attack, you’ll also be junked with a Copper. Imagine if they use that time to play a Mountebank. ‘Grats, you just gained a Curse and 2 Coppers. Ouch. So the risk is definitely there. For a card that strong, that risk is worth existing. And hey, look at that, Motherly Witch worsen significantly the more players there are!
		Name: Savings Creator: X-tra Description: A Silver+ that adds/removes Buys. Changes from the original card: Simply switched the two bonuses so that the “+1 Buy” bonus appears first. I can’t explain why... but this felt more “right” this way. Thoughts: Shamelessly self-including a card of mine, harr harr! Bow down to my infinite modesty! So this is indeed a Silver+ for . So far, it falls within the convention laid out by stuff like Royal Seal, Relic, Treasure Trove, etc. But here, you can choose to suck a buy to have a Treasure worth in play. You’ll need to get that Buy back somehow. Either with another Savings, or ideally, with an Action card like Market. If you can’t afford to remove that Buy, well, you’ve got a non-terminal Woodcutter, which is eeeehhh...
		Name: Voyage Creator: Commodore Chuckles Description: An extra turn giver. Changes from the original card: Used the “during which” wording found on Mission. “at the end of your Action phase” turned into “at the start of your Buy phase”. I think it’s better practice to deal with start of phases over end of phases. Now. I had no choice but to add the “If the previous turn wasn’t yours” clause. Believe me, I really did not want to have to do this. The card already seemed perfectly bound to not give million of turns in a row. But... it’s definitely possible given the right circumstances. March, Village Green and Innovation all make 3+ turns in a row a little too easy to achieve. So unfortunately, Voyage needs that limiting clause. Thoughts: I love Voyage. It’s so beautifully put together. It’s very comparable to Outpost. But whereas Outpost lets you take another turn with a smaller hand size, this does not have such a restriction. However, Outpost still lets you play Treasures and Night cards while Voyage does not. It’s probably stronger than Outpost most of the time, but I’m alright with that. Voyage is too cool of a concept to let that opportunity pass.
		Name: Convoy Creator: Gubump Description: A draw card that can give Horses. Changes from the original card: None. Thoughts: A big card. It draws like Smithy does, but it has the possibility of not being terminal by discarding an Action card. In a pinch, maybe you’ll want to do so. But overall, this is subpar. Compared to Stables, for instance, this is both weaker and more expensive. Now, getting the Horse, that’s more like it! Ideally, you’ll aim for that. But you know what? For all I’ve said about Stables being better and blablabla, simply having the option of discarding an Action for +1 Action is still a nice ability to have.

Some final thoughts:

I really love how well together these cards synergize! It looks pretty complete to me. However, there are lacking patterns I have noticed over the course of me compiling these cards together. Here are what I believe to be the shortcomings:

• There are simply not enough payload cards. Not enough cards simply give a “+” vanilla bonus for instance. There are payload cards in there, but some of them aren’t too straightforward, like Porcelain Shop and Wine Cellar. Bailiff is too conditional to reliably be a payload card. Meanwhile, Treasures like Cowrie won’t be in play as much as other Treasures can. And Savings needs help to give a decent payload.
  
• Likewise, trashing is too scarce in this 25-card set. Both Mouse and Cats are limited in what they can trash. Gift Exchange is too erratic to be the centralising trasher in your deck. This pretty much only leaves Charity as a normal trashing card.
  
• Perhaps there is a little bit too much focus on revealing in this set. (Mouse, King’s Counsel, Silver Worker, Bailiff, Farmer, Judge).
  
• Finally, it’s a shame that certain concepts only appear once in this set. This makes them stand out as outliers in a less-than-cohesive set. Mechanics appearing on only one card are: Villagers, Coffers, Exile, Ruins, Night and Horses.
  

Anyway, that’s all! Enjoy folks. And thank you for all these beautifully crafted cards. I plan on posting one or multiple Kingdom mock-up(s) solely using cards from this set in the near future (perhaps even tonight). It’d be fun to discuss strategy over these Kingdoms.

13

Variants and Fan Cards / Dominion: Urbanisation

« on: August 29, 2020, 02:19:21 pm »

Hello everyone !

This thread is sort of a continuation of this thread. Here, I’d like to present you a set of 30 cards I’ve crafted over early 2019 ‘til now. Why am I doing this? Well, it’s because after all this time, I’d like to have this set printed for it to be ready for IRL plays. However, printing is not cheap. So I’d like to make sure the cards truly are ready before I commit the cards for printing. I thought maybe you guys could help me spot the design mishaps in this set.

The name of the set is Urbanisation. It was named that way because that was the theme that emerged from the 30 Kingdom cards in this set. A lot of cards represent city stuff. A good chunk of them are also people doing various jobs. Therefore, Urbanisation, as a name, came to be. This set introduces no new mechanics, but rather, it borrows existing ones. Urbanisation also does not have any landscape cards (albeit, it does contain out-of-Supply cards and some new components, such as a mat). This set is a hybrid of cards I have posted in the Weekly Card Design Contest thread, cards I have posted in this thread and cards I have shown and have been given feedback for in the Dominion Discord server. So some of the entries here might not be new for some of you guys.

Posting 30 cards right away like this will undeniably be overwhelming for the readers. Therefore, I will post them slowly over time, following this model:

• 3 cards will be posted every 3 days, usually around 8PM EST (I might not be too punctual though, don’t expect much from this scatterbrain ).
• If possible, of the 3 cards posted, they will be split as such:
  
  • One will be a card posted in the Weekly Card Design Contest thread.
  • One will be a card posted in my other thread.
  • One will be a card posted in the Discord server.
• Links on each card post will be put to navigate this thread with more ease.
• 3 cards every 3 days for a set of 30 cards means the whole set will be posted in around a month.
• In the end, after all cards are posted, I'll make a short analysis of potential cohesion problems of the whole project. I'll also note what Urbanisation does a lot of and what it doesn't do a lot of.

Any feedback is appreciated. Sometimes, an extra pair of eyes can shed light onto problems my own brain just refused to notice over time, if y’know what I mean . So let’s end this increasingly big wall of text and let’s just straight into the first of 10 card posts:

Card set #1

          

True to its name, Urbanisation presents lots of folks with lots of different backgrounds. Here, we are offering you 3 people performing 3 different jobs for your kingdom. Choose your people wisely, m'Lord!

• Appraiser (Discord card): Meet Appraiser, a card you’ll probably open with. It’s a decent trasher and people like that. And a non-terminal one too, uh-oh! This card was entered in this set relatively late, because there wasn’t enough trashing in Urbanisation. So what can it do for you? Well:
  
  • Early game, it trashes your crap for a payload of . An opening of double Appraiser is not out of the question.
  • It’s a Silver trasher that turns Appraiser into a Laboratory.
  • Late game, it kills your expensive Action cards (or Treasures) you no longer desperately need for a clutch of 2.
  On its own, Appraiser looks neat. In the set, though, it’s somewhat problematic, because out of all the cards I will present in this thread, this is the only one that dispatches tokens. It’s not very cohesive with the rest of Urbanisation.
  
  
• Informer (Weekly Contest thread): Informer is a card I’ve reshaped constantly, even within the Weekly Card Design Contest thread. I really wanted to give a Command card a crack. With the current version of Informer, I’m pleased. You have 5 cards Informer can hit. And if it doesn’t hit, well it’s a terminal Silver. And hey, your left neighbour’s going to have a crappy turn anyway, you know that now! So, the pill is easier to swallow. I’ve had a nasty game where my opponent kept playing my Prizes (mostly Followers) through their Informer and that annoyed me, but in a good way! So Informer is extra potent when there are unique cards only one player can have. It’s also good if you’ve been junked more than your competition.
  
  
• Vigil (my other thread): And finally, we have the good ol’ Vigil. It has changed quite a bit in the other thread (mostly its wording though). The version I am presenting here is also different. Opponents must have 5 or more cards in hand to discard to Vigil. It used to be 4+ cards. Discarding your 2 best cards is unfun though. One Pillage effect is enough. Vigil is a disappearing money Attack that only gives you . It’s not great... but if you open with one and go to your buy phase to play a Copper, it’s a weaker Cutpurse. Anyway, you’ll have to do some setup here. 2 Vigils can be good: Use the first one to scout your opponent’s hand and play the second one to make them discard something nasty. Again, some serious setup is required for it to be truly annoying. It probably scales better in games with more players.
  
  

Next set of 3 cards → | List of all cards →

14

Variants and Fan Cards / A Dozen of Custom-made Cards

« on: June 23, 2020, 01:29:06 pm »

Hi everyone! I’d like to share a couple ideas for custom Dominion cards I’ve had for the past couple of months. Yes, I was bored. The confinement has taken its toll on my recreation starved brain.

So I first appeared on this forum with another set of custom Dominion cards which were labeled under the expansion name “Odyssey”. This fan-made expansion was conceived by my brother and I right after we discovered ShardOfHonor’s online card maker. Thrilled, we wanted to take a shot at making custom cards. We compiled a bunch of ‘em and, in the end, I made 15 cards and my bro made another 15. Now, even back then, we knew about the suggested guidelines for card creation. But we were still relatively new at this. And so, in the end, Odyssey was... uhhh... pretty messy. Actually, it was very messy. Looking back at it, there were some nifty concepts, but not much is salvageable in there. Over time, the Weekly Card Design Contest thread helped me better myself at creating cards. And it’s with this new set of skills that I present here today a nice little catalogue of cards. Hopefully, I will have learned from my past mistakes in Odyssey.

I should say that a lot of these cards were created out of the desire to see something cool and unique. Sometimes, yeah, some of these cards can be centered around a gimmicky concept. But my goal was to make this work! And finally, another important self-imposed guideline I wanted to follow was to keep it simple. As much as possible. I was dreadfully avoiding shrinking the text by putting too many words. I’ve mostly respected it (there are 1 or 2 exceptions).

Alright. So below, you’ll find the list of cards. Some cards use Artifacts or whatnot. Scroll further down to find them. In my next post, I will provide you guys with a nice summary for each of these cards (in alphabetical order). This summary will further explain the intent of a given card, its history, the potential pitfalls it comes with, etc (don't worry, you don't have to read any of that stuff).

In the end, I just want to say that I’d appreciate your opinions/thoughts on these cards. You don’t have to judge everything. Merely picking one card and saying what you think of it is more than enough for me. The goal, of course, is to get better at making cards.


Kingdom Cards





Landscape Cards





Artifacts and State Cards





Faces for the D6 (For the Dice Games card)

                  

There are 20 Tracker Tokens. 10 with a faceup side showing “+2 Actions” and a facedown side showing “+3 Cards” and 10 others with a faceup side showing “+” and a facedown side showing “+1 Buy”.

15

Rules Questions / Gaining a Treasure in your Buy phase

« on: February 01, 2020, 12:55:51 am »

Hello everyone!

I have a very simple question for you all. If you gain a Treasure card in your hand during your Buy phase and have extra Buys to spare, can you immediately play that Treasure to increase your money for that turn, or can you not play that newly gained card even though it's in your hand ? Thank you for the help and apologies if that issue was discussed to death before.

16

Variants and Fan Cards / Odyssey: A 30 Cards Fan Set in Need of Input

« on: January 23, 2020, 03:13:39 pm »

Hello everyone! This is my first day on this forum, seeing as I just registered today.
Just as a quick (and rather pointless) preface: My brother and I alongside our partners have been quickly hooked on Dominion. We are by no mean experts. However, that doesn’t stop us from really enjoying our time together, gathering Provinces left and right ‘til one of us trumps the others. So far, we have under our wings the Base set (Dominion), Intrigue, Dark Ages, Guilds and Adventures and we are currently eyeing Seaside. To spice things up, we have decided to start designing cards, seeing as this community provided us peasants with a wonderful card-making tool. We have played a couple of games with them; so far, we are having a pretty good time. We settled on the name Odyssey, for the sake of giving a name to our set. It focuses heavily on gaining/trashing and has a lot of different card types, some of which are two-typed in a peculiar way.
However, like I mentioned before, we aren’t that familiar with the pro meta of this game. We do not even own half of the expansions! Therefore, some of our cards might be in need of rebalance. This is why I am here, requesting you guys’ generous help. We’d like to know what you think of the 30 Kingdom cards we have done. What works, what doesn’t. If things are priced correctly. Loopholes we didn’t think through. Formatting errors. Typos. Rewording to make it easier to read and understand. Any input is appreciated.

Just as a quick note, there are 3 cards that are of Buy type. Cards with that type cannot be obtained in any way outside of your Buy phase. You may only gain/buy them during your Buy phase. Also, my thoughts on some cards will be in italic bellow them.

Newer version of the cards are displayed on the right of their older counterpart.
Without further ado, here are the cards (click on them to make them larger):




Architect (Action - Duration)
+1 Action
At the end of your Action phase and your next one, you may set aside Victory cards under this. At the end of the Clean-up phase of your next turn, trash every card under this. Gain 1 Victory card costing up to the sum of the trashed cards’ costs.





Arsenal (Action - Duration)
+3 Cards
At the start of your next turn, +1 Card and turn this card sideways. At the start of your second next turn, +1 Card.




Bar (Action - Reserve)
(This card's cost is more for each Bar on any Tavern mat.)
Put this on your Tavern mat.
At the start of your turn, you may call this to choose: + and put this on your Tavern mat at the start of your next Clean-up phase; or + and trash this.




Bushfire (Action)
+1 Action
Each other player reveals their hand and trash the non-Victory card that costs the most. You may gain to your hand a card costing less than the trashed card that costed the most.




Cardinal (Action - Victory - Reserve)
+1 Action
Put this on your Tavern mat.
1




Carpenter (Action)
+1 Action
Gain an Estate. You may trash a card from your hand or from your discard pile.




Chalice (Action - Reaction - Reserve)
+1 Card
+
When you gain a Treasure, you may reveal this from your hand to put this on your Tavern mat.
When you gain a card, you may call this to trash it instead.




Commander (Action)
Reveal the top 2 cards of your deck. You may discard up to 2 cards among these. Add the rest to your hand. +1 Card per discarded card.




Crook (Action - Attack)
+1 Action
+
Each other player reveals the top 3 cards of their deck. They discard one. Among the 2 others, they trash the one with the highest cost up to and put back the remainder on their deck.




Devil's Pact (Action)
+2 Cards
You may gain a Curse for +1 Action and +1 Buy.




Fence (Action)
If you have 3 cards or less in your hand, gain 1 Copper to your hand. Draw up to 5 cards. - per drawn card.




Haunted Treasure (Buy - Treasure - Curse)

-2




Lock (Action)
Spend as much as wanted. For each spent: +1 Card and +1 Buy.




Missionary (Action)
Reveal the top 3 cards from your deck. Trash any Curse revealed. Add every other card to your hand. For each Treasure revealed: +1 Buy and +. If you did not reveal any Treasure, +2 Actions.




Possessed Witch (Action - Attack - Reaction - Duration)
At the start of each of your turns, each other player gains a Curse in their hands.
When any player plays or gain a Possessed Witch, discard this.




Promising Lands (Action)
When you buy this, add a Clearing on its Supply pile, or create one if there isn't any.
Reveal your hand. Per each 2 non Victory cards revealed, +1 Card and +.

(For this card, scroll at the bottom of its list. Just like the Urchin is paired with its non-Supply deck of Mercenaries, so is Promising Lands with its pile of Clearing cards.)




Redistribution (Action - Attack)
Choose: +2 Cards; or +.
Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of their deck. They put back revealed Base Victory cards on their Supply pile and discard the rest. They gain Base Victory cards of lower cost to regain the amount of lost. If they can't, then this attack doesn't affect them.




Refractory Gold (Treasure - Reaction)

When you trash this during your turn: +1 Action, +1 Buy and +3$.




Riverbed Village (Action)
+2 Actions
Reveal any number of Victory cards. Draw as many cards.




Sarcophagus (Treasure - Reaction)

When another player plays an Attack card, you may first trash this to gain a Gold and a Curse to your hand.




Scrapyard (Action)
+2 Cards
+
You may trash an entire Action Supply pile if there are 5 cards or less in it.




Shoppers (Treasure)

+1 Buy
This turn, if you bought 2 differently named cards, +1 Buy and +.




Slaves (Action - Buy - Curse)
+5 Cards
Discard 2 cards.
-2 VP




Stray Cat (Reserve)
When you buy this, put this on your Tavern mat.
At the start of your turn, you may call this for +3 Cards. Then, put this card onto the deck of the player to your left.




Town Center (Action)
+1 Card
+2 Actions
+1 Buy
+
If you have any Actions remaining, draw 1 fewer card for your next hand at the end of your Clean-up phase.




Trap (Action)
+1 Action
Put this card on any Action Supply pile where the first card isn't a Trap.
When you buy this, you may trash this for +1 Buy.




Vigilante (Reaction)
+2 Actions
When another player plays an Attack card, you may first discard this to gain to your hand a copy of that Attack card from the Supply.




Witch-hunt (Buy - Victory)
When you buy this, immediately end your Buy phase.
Worth 5 for every 2 Curses you have (round down).




Wonder (Action - Victory)
+1 Action
Do this 2 times: +1 Card, then discard 1 card.
2






Clearing (Action)
+
You may discard 1 non-Victory card for +. Each player may trash a Promising Lands to gain a Duchy or a Gold.
(This is not in the Supply until added by a Promising Lands.)



Oof, this was a long list. And for those who went through all of it, you are very courageous! Thank you guys for your comments/suggestions/corrections and whatnot. This means a lot!