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26

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Card Mechanics Week 79: We are our memories

« on: December 17, 2023, 05:29:37 am »

Going to go with Duchy Dance Academy for the win. It's nicely self contained to the endgame of the game you're in and the opening of the new game and (as indicated by the name) is a card you might be buying anyway, but now with an interesting twist.

Attic is the runner up. I like the idea that at a certain point you start thinking about what you want to put in the attic for the next game. I didn't imagine that you'd have kingdom cards across games but I don't see it being particularly hard to track. My issue with it is it messes with the opening a bit too much as it's not that much of an impost to put several very good cards in the Attic towards the end of the game that can make an enormous difference for several turns, and if you put enough cards there you can also use it for exile/trashing early game. So maybe a bit too game warping - but I can't rule out that being game warping in a fun way.

On the other hand, while I like the theme of Ozymandias statue (it's what I had in mind - that there's a small lingering legacy from the previous game), I don't think this mechanic is the one to make quadratic VP work. If you lose the split 5/3 it's a 16VP gap, but even with 3 ruinses on top you still have a pretty bad starting hand in the next game that will be hard to overcome. I also am not a fan of mechanics that slow down the early game or slogs, which is what this card sets you up for.

27

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Card Mechanics Week 79: We are our memories

« on: December 16, 2023, 02:53:29 am »

24 Hour Warning

28

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Card Mechanics Week 79: We are our memories

« on: December 08, 2023, 04:56:26 pm »

Now suggesting a fan mechanic that is also a "variant" (in the Variants and Fan Cards forum). If something has the Memory type, it impacts the game after the game you're playing.

Rulebook:

• At the end of the game, after scoring, set aside cards with a Memory type onto your Memory mat. During your next game, these remain there for tracking and will have some sort of effect.
  
• Once a Memory no longer can have any effect, if that card isn't in the Kingdom, return it to the box.
• If you are playing games with "Memory" cards in them, to win over-all, you must be the first player to win 2 games (e.g. "Best of 3" between 2 players).
• Do not include the same Memory card in the Kingdom in consecutive games.
• If each player playing has won precisely one game, then do not include any Memory cards in the final Kingdom (e.g. the 3rd game in a best of 3 between 2 players).
• In general, Memory Cards are like Victory cards and you get the Memory effect for having them in your deck. However you can put "If this was in play at the game's end" on Duration/Memory cards if you want them to be activated by playing a card.
• Memory/Reserve cards can be "Called" from Memory as if they were on the Tavern Mat (and the Tavern Mat does not need to be referenced at all) and can enter play. They are then returned to the box at the end of the last turn where they have an effect.
• Memory cards may impact your score at the end of the next game, but don't enter your deck for the purposes of Gardens etc. (this is so you can write rules around a card being "in your deck" at the end of the game, and simplify the setting aside process).

Other notes:
I thought the mechanic would be a good idea given that you can find yourself in a largely unwinnable position in Dominion. With "memories" you may be able to set up the next game in your favour as a consolation. But this can lead to games becoming slogs if not careful as players pursue next game advantage instead of leading the current game a conclusion state. As such I think cards with both a "this game" and "next game" effect will be better than cards that exclusively have a "next game" effect, but I'm not ruling out the latter.

This mechanic will lend itself to complexity, and I was thinking of setting a limit for how many Memory cards can be in the kingdom, but I'm not sure what a good limit would be. But try to think about the complexity of tracking as you design the card. As such I am imagining the mechanic applying exclusively to "cards" (not Landscapes). I'm open to Landscapes but you may need to explain the tracking in your submission.

Examples

Mock ups are done with a Primary Colour of 0,0.4,0 (thanks grrgrrgrr).

29

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Card Mechanics Week 78: He Who Remains

« on: December 08, 2023, 04:22:04 pm »

Thank you, next competition will be up soon.

30

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #206: Evolution

« on: December 06, 2023, 05:22:41 am »

Musician
Action - $5
Choose one: Gain a Musician; or +1 Card for every 2 cards (rounded down) in the Musician pile, and you may return this to its pile for +2 Actions.

31

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #205: Permission Requested

« on: November 24, 2023, 07:21:10 pm »

That's probably right, just seems like something stronger is implied by "You Must".

Rulebook I think would be: "If you can't buy cards, or if there aren't any cards you can buy, you can proceed to your clean up phase. This is still the case if you do something in your Buy phase that causes you to be unable to buy cards (e.g. buy a card costing Debt that you don't pay off)."

32

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #205: Permission Requested

« on: November 24, 2023, 12:05:41 am »

The answer to your question is the same as the answer to the question: „what happens when you play Forager while having no cards in your hand?“.

There is still a problem. If you have $5 and 2 buys, and those piles are empty, are you allowed to buy a Duchy then claim you can't use all your buys, even though you could have bought a  Silver and an Estate? This will actually come up on games with Debt - can you buy Overlord and then nothing or do you have to gain a copper first. What about Mission?

I think "If you can buy cards, and there are cards in the supply costing up to the $ you have, you must spend  all your buys"  covers the edge cases.

33

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Card Mechanics Week 78: He Who Remains

« on: November 23, 2023, 10:22:20 pm »

City Square
Action/Remain - $4
+2 Cards
+2 Actions
At the end of your buy phase, +1 Remain per Action you have.

34

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A Dominion Fan Card Creation Guide

« on: November 17, 2023, 10:45:26 pm »

Here are some classic tricks.
- Look at all of your data, and see what triggers and effects it produces, then pair them up.
- Look at all of your rules, and see which ones you can make exceptions to.
- Consider different basic forms of program flow and what they get you.
- Look at what you've got so far; see what will work with it.
- Categorize what you've got so far; see what holes there are that you can try cards for.
- Look for classic variations on what you have so far; especially, little, big, and lots.
- Flavor can inspire new ideas.
- Look at your other games, see what ideas from there will port over.
- Look at the world through the lens of rules on cards. Any random time when you have an idea, write it down.
- Look at what didn't work in the past that maybe now you can fix up.
- When you've got 15 expansions, you really want a strong direction to help you get going. You've got a mechanic to try and you put it through its paces.

Here are some examples of those.
- You have $, you have cards in hand; we could let you somehow make $ based on the cards. We can say discard them (Vault), or count them in reverse (Souk).
- The rules have phases going in a particular order. We can mess with the order (Villa); we can add a phase (Night).
- There are so many very basic program flow things. We can give you a choice of costs (Animal Fair), choice of effects (Pawn), just do multiple things (Jack of All Trades), do some things now and some things later (Durations). You can do loops, e.g. repeat-until (Library).
- Let's see there are a bunch of Villages, maybe something can interact with those (Diadem).
- At one point I looked at all the basic pairings of resources, what had I not done yet that was worth doing. Not for e.g. Bazaar and Worker's Village, which had just been saved for later. I don't remember if I got a specific card this way.
- Hamlet is a little village, Bustling Village is a big one, Port is two villages.
- Siren is an example of a card that started with flavor. What would a Siren do?
- I'd had Durations in games for years; Greed for example is from 2003, though it was published after Dominion, and has a few Durations. An idea from Rising Sun ultimately goes back to Nefarious.
- I do write down ideas whenever I have them. I'm looking at a notebook page from work on Adventures; the first thing is the VP card that turned into Wall.
- Horn of Plenty is an example I've talked at length about where the original card ("+$1 per Action you played this turn") failed (turning into Conspirator at the time) but I remembered it and worked on it more.
- Plunder had multiple themes from the start, it had Treasure - Durations and next-time Durations and Loot all on day one. So I could get right to looking at, what could I do with these mechanics.

Of course there are other ways to get card ideas too. Village for example, the idea was to limit Action plays specifically so I could make that card. Cards needed things to do.

35

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #204: Count up!

« on: November 13, 2023, 06:38:35 am »

Glide
Action - $2
+1 Card per Action you have
If you have no Actions remaining, +3 Actions

36

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Card Mechanics week 77: Trope (Horizontal)

« on: November 09, 2023, 04:34:48 am »

Frolicking
Trope
Play with the top card of your deck revealed. If it's a Victory card, first get +1 Action when you play an Action

Rules clarification: You get the +1 Action before following the action's instructions

37

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #203: Mixed Box 2

« on: November 01, 2023, 01:05:46 am »

Raiders Base
Project - $5
At the start of your buy phases, discard a Treasure (or reveal a hand with no Treasures) then gain a Spoils.

Dark Ages/Renaissance

Note: The discard isn't optional

38

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #202: Extra! Read all about it!

« on: October 18, 2023, 07:10:38 pm »

Time Shift
Event - $3
Take an extra turn after this one (but not a 3rd in a row) in which other players are unaffected by Attacks. Each other player gets +5 cards.

39

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Card Mechanics Week 74: Tiny Isle

« on: October 07, 2023, 04:06:17 am »

Isle of Hags
Action/Attack - $4
Choose one: +2 Cards, or Gain a Gold onto your Tiny Isle
Each other player gains a Curse onto their Tiny Isle

40

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #200: Do What You Love

« on: September 28, 2023, 09:40:01 pm »

Herder
Action - $3
+1 Buy
+$2
Gain a Horse to the bottom of your deck. Each other player may gain a Horse.

I love non attack interactivity, particularly symmetry, and bottom decking which I think is still an under explored mechanic. Some of my earliest posts focused on those two ideas.

This card gives you a big turn later when you play multiple copies. It's not "strictly better" than woodcutter  so it can cost $3. The horse gain is optional so it's not an Attack.

41

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #199: Composition in Blue

« on: September 25, 2023, 11:16:05 pm »

Headhunter
Night - $2
Gain a Horse
Put this anywhere in any non-Victory supply pile
______
When you gain this, gain a card from the same pile (that doesn't come with another)

Employer
Action/Duration/Reaction - $5
At the start of your next turn, +$4 and +1 Buy
_______
When any player gains a second card on their turns, you may play this from your hand

(5 Headhunters on top of 5 employers)

42

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan Card Mechanics week 73: Overplay

« on: September 25, 2023, 08:53:10 pm »

I'm a bit confused by the "additional copies" thing - taking the interpretation of "spending multiple actions to play a card".

Dog Breeder
Action - $5
+3 Cards
Overplay: +1 Card per Action

So it's a Smithy that you can spend extra actions on to draw more cards.

43

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #198: No Fear When the End is Near

« on: September 09, 2023, 07:14:21 pm »

Crowded Village
Action -  $3
+1 Card
+2 Actions
If you have 5 Crowded Villages in play, gain the Curses, and the game ends at the end of this turn.

44

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Annoying and potentially harmful card anti-synergies

« on: September 09, 2023, 06:35:42 am »

The real bum option is Inherited Castles. Small castle brings your average card to $0.8 wonderful. Crumbling castle is NOT gained so you neither gain the silver (so your average cards is still $0.7) nor the VP point (so it literally starts at the same value as the estate it replaced).

Changeling has the same constraints with the added detriment that delayed play trashes the card for nothing barring the outs and can always be played during the Night if you can set it aside during cleanup.

Traits only apply to Actions and Treasure piles. The Castle pile is Victory/Castle so you can't apply Traits to them, and Changeling is a pure Night Card.

Tireless Hireling etc.- Tireless can be meaningless. I really wanted to think of an anti-synergy - a card you want evenly spaced in your deck rather than clumped together (e.g. Throne Room and King's Court). But there's a lot of ways those cards benefit too. So useless Tireless it is.

I would suggest Shepherd. With a green deck, the end up clumped, not in your hand. Going with one or two to avoid clumping can be helpful, but only if you have green in hand when you draw it.
[/quote]

Makes sense and even 2 Shepherds is pretty risky. But buying a single Tireless Shepherd once you've started greening seems like a pretty good bet for deck consistency? That's why I struggled with Tireless - when clumping seems like a bad thing, you can still kind of play around it.

45

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Annoying and potentially harmful card anti-synergies

« on: September 09, 2023, 06:22:17 am »

Prepare sets aside your whole remaining hand, including Night cards, which are then discarded during your next turn.

About the worst Trait, just found Hasty Treasure Map.

I think that's worth editing the post over.

46

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: September 01, 2023, 03:08:49 am »

The main thing I had in mind is after you secure more than half the available VP with a megaturn (and there's nothing the other player can do about it), your remaining deck could be awful and you could be slogging for quite a while to get to the end. I try to resign if I notice that I'm behind by more than the available VP and there aren't any trashers etc. that can change that, but sometimes I don't notice.

Speaking of which, has your opinion on VP tracking changed over time?

47

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #197: One Order of Events, Hold the Gains

« on: September 01, 2023, 02:06:07 am »

Fold
Event - $1
Once per turn: +1 Buy, put your deck in your discard pile.

48

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: August 30, 2023, 07:55:55 am »

Would you support "insurmountable VP lead" being programmed as a win condition in Dominion Online?

49

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Adjusting the page line for a hypothetical Adventures 2e

« on: August 22, 2023, 10:41:45 pm »

It would be possible to pin players with Fighter if you get 4 other travelers in play. You may need to trash your own deck but that was also the case with the old Masquerade pin and you can keep up to 4 cards safe.

Also that means it technically doesn't solve the problem where Warrior can cut off other players' Traveller lines (then they're safe once they hit Champion)

Personally thinking Warrior could simply say "non-Traveller" for trashing and it's otherwise fine and I never had a problem with Champion.

50

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #196: If a card is in the kingdom...

« on: August 21, 2023, 01:28:55 am »

Hostile Village
Action - $3
+2 Actions
+1 Buy
This turn you may set aside cards you gain to put them into your hand at end of turn.
________
In games using this, Curse is also an Action and Attack with instructions: "Return this to its pile. Each other player gains a Curse"

Rules clarification: In games with both Hostile Village and Charlatan, Curses are Action/Attack/Treasure/Curse cards that say "+$1, return this to its pile, each other player gains a Curse"