I was thinking about a couple of different ways to reign in Mill Town if you were inclined:
1) Put a clause in the text so that you cannot gain Mill Towns with Mill Towns (and remove the at least 3 Coppers clause) because my feeling is that more problems arise from quickly getting too many Mill Towns than running out a $2 pile.
OR
2) Change "discard a card" to "discard a Copper or reveal a hand without Coppers," reducing the power of multiple gains.
I'm a big fan of this one, but Mill Town might run faster if you "reveal 3 or more Coppers from your hand and gain a card costing up to the number of Coppers revealed" since we wouldn't be stuck in the awkward analysis-paralysis of trying not to reveal too many or too few Coppers. Why can't Mill Town gain a card that costs $2, anyway?
Well, the reason that Mill Town can't gain $2 cards is that I was afraid that it would be too easy to run out piles with it. A hand with 3 Mill Towns and 2 Coppers could gain 4 Estates, after all. Now that I think about it, I see no real problem with the gaining being 'up to' the number of Coppers revealed as long as you still have to reveal at least 3 Coppers. I'll change the wording. I think I actually have to reword the card anyway, because as it's currently written, I think you could gain, say, a Familiar by revealing 3 Coppers.
First of all, nice mini-set utilizing the one-shot theme!
One thing I thought of when reading the cards:
I don't think your concern about gaining too many cards with Mill Town and running out piles should be limited to just $2 cards. I think Mill Town would be a go-to card a lot of the time.
For instance, have you played any Mill Town - Tactician - terminal draw games? Goal: get a a deck of 2 Tacticians, 8 Coppers, and as many Mill Towns and Smithies as possible (making sure #Smithies < # Mill Towns at all times). Mill Town's gain and your normal buy should accomplish this very quickly. Then double Tac and reveal 8 Coppers for Provinces. I played this solitaire for two games and exhaused the Province pile on turn 11 in game 1 and turn 10 in game 2. Contested, the Mill Town and Smithy pile would run out extremely quickly.
See above for one player having multiples. They resolve separately, so you'd dig through one card at a time (or just leave the card there eventually). As for multiple players, there isn't current precedent for how it would work (that I know of). So, it's time to make one: should it resolve in turn order or reverse turn order? I'm used to Magic, where it goes it reverse. That is, if you and I both have Blockades out, and I shuffle my library on my turn, my Blockade would trigger, then yours would trigger. After all triggers occur, yours resolves, then mine resolves (Last In, First Out). That doesn't mean it needs to work the same here. Dominion isn't concerned with these type of timing issues. I'd say just resolve them in turn order. Thus, if I shuffle and we both have one out, I Spy, then you Spy.
well the existence of a campaign mode is sort of old news, but he made a passing reference at designing sets here.
You generally buy Tunnel for one of two things. First, you can buy it in the endgame when you have $3 or $4. At that point, it might as well just be a Victory card worth 2 VP. Even if you happen to use the reaction portion before the game ends, you probably won't be cycling back around to the Gold. Will I pay $3 just for a vanilla Victory card worth 2VP? Of course. It beats buying an Estate.
Second, you can buy it at the start of the game and try to use its reaction as much as possible. That's a fairly big risk. You're buying a card that's going to hurt your economy if you can't get it to fire, when you could have bought a Silver. You get 2 VP to compensate, but you don't see that benefit for a long time and it's rather paltry compared to your potential loss of momentum. So, would I pay $3 for a pure Reaction card that gained me Gold on discard? Given the right helper cards, I definitely would.
It seems like a card that combines these two $3 effects should be worth more than $3. But the fact that you use one portion of the card during the beginning and mid-game and the other only at the end means that the total can cost less than the sum of its parts.
Hey, here's what I take away from this! Don't tell people stuff, because there may be stuff you don't know that means you're wrong, and that will piss people off more than no information at all will. Cue someone to say how ungrateful of me this is!
Donald, just please stop taking things away from this kind of discussions. There are always people complaining, and there are tons of people that don't.
Why would your favorite card be Bureacrat? I like what it does, but since it's buyable in less than five percent of the games it appears in, it doesn't improve my experience much.
...but, what type DO you think that Overgrown Estate should have been? It's not an action or treasure because you can't play it. It's not a reaction because it doesn't react to anything, unlike Hovel which reacts to you buying a victory card. Victory makes sense - it's a card that sits in your deck and doesn't do anything.
As my RL friends will tell you, I have often been known to say "Errrrbody's favorite card is Goons!"
Well done. In Mill Town, you've finally created a card that would make me want a Counting House.
These are all really good!
I haven't had a chance to play with any of these cards, but they certainly look great. I like your designs -- novel, but not unnecessarily complex.
Also, the artwork is incredible. Where did you get it? Did somebody on the forum make those pictures for you?
Clerk's reaction seems very very powerful. If you start Chapel, you might trash four cards and buy a Silver over turns 3 and 4. Clerk can get that all accomplished in one hand! And the Silver will be on top of the deck! I'm not saying that's bad necessarily, for a card to scare people away from Sea Hag.
Hmm. Also, Cathedral big money looks really really really powerful. It's a one-time trasher (that is almost guaranteed to blow 2 Estates) and the best of both worlds in Smithy and Courtyard. A Cathedral - Nothing start is likely super strong.
GenCon starts Thursday. I expect to be fully spoiled on Thursday.
Can someone tell me why Overgrown Estate is a Victory card if it does not give you any VP's By that logic, all cards could be X-Victory with it granting 0 VP's. Suddenly, Scout and Tribute are incredible! Crossroads is the new Madman!
Or... Overgrown Estate should just be Shelter.
You forgot about Silk Road and Transmute.
Hold the phone... what happens when you Transmute a Great Hall? Do you get a Duchy and a Gold?
One thing I really like about this set is that it introduces the mechanic of "I don't want to play this card yet, it could help me more later" that takes a lot of players a long time to get. It's a much more intuitive step to go from "I don't want to play Spoils yet, it could help me more on my next shuffle" to "I don't want to play Smithy yet, it will trigger a reshuffle".
Basically, if you've got lots of $6+ cards, put in Plats and Colonies.
I was thinking an all Dark Ages game would be fun. It's good to see Donald has played it that way too. Is there any other expansion you would play by itself besides base?
4 and a hovel with island on the board is going to be the new mint fool's gold - elite opening that you have to be a little lucky to get.
Um, what are you going to do with that opening Island? Set aside a Copper? Setting aside an Overgrown Estate seems lackluster and setting aside a Necropolis is just counterproductive.
I thought (perhaps incorrectly) that the idea was that when Island is a good opening anyway -- which on some boards it is -- now it's even better when you can get rid of your Hovel when you get it. Then you can Island your Overgrown Estate (or Copper, even), and by that point you've gotten double the deck-thinning an Island usually does for you.
