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326

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: September 07, 2014, 05:45:57 pm »

Hmm, maybe. I'm not sure what top-decking the Conscripts really gets you, though. I do think I see what you mean about feeling more separate, though. I'll try the current version and see if it feels too weird. If you're almost always triggering the Conscripts on the turn you gain it, it's probably too strong anyway, so I can then try your idea of top-decking the Conscripts and giving another bonus.

Top-decking Conscripts would allow the Action effect of Barracks to be secondary to the Conscripts since the Conscripts card is so immediate (though not necessarily played in the same turn). It also maintains strength when played in Throne Room variants. You could flatly gain them if you wanted, top decking is simply more like gaining them to hand.

I don't suspect that it will be too weird. However, if the Conscripts pile is going to be on more than one card, you might want Barracks to feel a little bigger on its own than simply giving you Conscripts.

Well the reaction effect can't search for a Reaction (or an Action) without creating a potential endless loop. Discard the Recruiter, take it out of the discard pile, repeat. You have a really good point about having to shuffle immediately, though. I'm just trying to avoid the situation where you don't remember what you have in your discard pile, you discard the Recruiter, and then have nothing to replace it with.

Infinitely looping to retrieve your Recruiter does nothing though (just like you can infinitely replace the Silver you're going to gain with a Silver using Trader). If Recruiter could retrieve Reactions (i.e. itself) or Attacks from your discard pile, you can discard it to look through your discard pile and, if you don't have an Attack in your discard pile, you can pull the Recruiter back out. You don't have to remember the contents of your discard pile or miss out playing your Recruiter by messing up its Reaction since it can always retrieve itself. As a bonus, you can pull a different Reaction out to react to the Attack taking place.

327

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: September 07, 2014, 02:54:05 pm »

I like the new Conscripts. It is somewhat neat that they are vanishing Silvers when the Curse pile runs out. My only concern would be that they would make the Curse war even more chance based since you need Attacks to collide to give out Curses and Curses in your deck would make that harder.

but... isn't this like making conscripts a 5$ card and putting it into the kingdom instead of barracks?

No because Barracks keeps giving you Conscripts, even while they return themselves to their pile. I'd be more excited if Barracks top-decked the Conscripts and gave me some other benefit. It would make the Conscripts feel more separate from Barracks (even if they aren't) which would make them seem more like one-shots. As you know, I'm pretty obsessed with your mechanical theme.

I'm not such a fan of the new Recruiter. I don't like how strong its Action effect is, nor am I a huge fan of discarding my deck in response to an Attack. Often discarding my deck means my Attack will not only miss the shuffle, but I'll shuffle any Curses that I've gained into my deck immediately! Often I'll have to shuffle immediately as well for the Attack. In many cases, it won't even provide any sort of utility, because I'll be replacing "Gain 2 Silvers" with the one Attack that is in the Kingdom. I don't see that trade-off as being worthwhile since you wouldn't buy Recruiter unless the Silver flooding was actually going to be useful.

I'd like its Reaction more if it let you look for an Attack or Reaction from your discard pile without discarding your deck. I don't know what to do about its Action effect.

328

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Overpay for VP tokens

« on: September 06, 2014, 02:44:50 pm »

Overpaying isn't currently attached to any Victory cards, so what about the simplest one imaginable?

Frontier
Types: Victory
Cost: $4+
2VPWhen you buy this, you may overpay for it. For every $2 overpaid, rounded down, gain a Frontier

329

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Card Idea: Mountain Range

« on: September 06, 2014, 02:44:42 pm »

- Later on in the game, if both/all players are actively going for this as a strategy, the money density in their decks will be no higher than $7 in a regular non-platinum/colony game

I believe you have money density mistaken. Your money density is a calculation of the average value of a single card in your deck. If your money density is $7, you would expect an average value of $35 in a hand. As you add Coppers to your deck, your money density approaches $1. If you meant the average value of a hand is $7, your money density is $1.4.

- This could be an effective counter to Swindler if it is the main strategy as Swindler and all the other trashing attacks trigger it's on trash ability

Except that you have a million Coppers in your deck to be turned into Curses.

330

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A Hanabi Card

« on: August 27, 2014, 09:16:54 pm »

The original version tries to copy exactly the things that you do in Hanabi: Pointing at all cards with the same number or colour (the only difference is that in Hanabi you can say "you don't have any yellow cards"), then playing or discarding cards about which you have more or less information.

Correction: You cannot identify a feature that a hand does not have in Hanabi.

I intended the card to be a self-combo (and combo with other top-of-deck mocking cards) so that you may collect more information. Even if you know that the top 2 cards are not [insert cost/ type], it may be useful. E.g. you know that the top 2 cards aren't Treasures. You play the next Fireworks and get to know that the 2nd and 3rd card costs $0. So you will likely be discarding the 2nd card.
With your version, you can't collect information about your future cards.

While I agree that this is one of the cruxes of the card, it doesn't make any difference, even if we ignore player accountability issues. As you say, players will try to give the worst hint which will be the hint that gives the least information. Upon playing a second Fireworks card (where the other cards are top decked) the worst hint will always be the same hint as the previous so that the player doesn't receive additional information about the top decked cards. The only reason you would ever identify something else about the cards is because you literally can't give the same hint.

Because this can draw or sift, it seems to me that showing which cards are Treasures will always be the worst hint. That information leaves the player to wonder whether the identified cards are crappy Coppers or good Silvers and doesn't identify whether the others are Actions or Victory\Curse cards. The only exception would be Cultist\Marauder games where Actions also encompass both bad and good cards.

331

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Using extra actions for more effects?

« on: August 12, 2014, 11:35:23 am »

I don't like the idea presented here because the extra effects can't be accessed unless there are splitters (Village types) in the game. LastFootnote's similar Activation cards remain in play until they have been activated by spending an action (and turning them sideways to indicate that). Since they remain in play until used, you can always access the effect. Activation cards give a level of flexibility that the concept here does not since you get to keep the ability of Activation cards around until you use them.

I think the concept here can work, but the cards necessarily have to give additional actions so that you'll be able to use their "spend actions" effects and then they're just "choose one" cards written differently. I could see an expansion built around Activation cards having a couple cards using this concept on terminal cards.

I hadn't seen the Activation cards thread, that is indeed a better version of this idea. But I don't agree that this idea is bad just because it won't work without villages in the kingdom. As long as the card still does something worth buying without being able to use the extra clause. Market Square, Tunnel, Conspirator, (any on-trash effects actually) all have a mechanic that in some Kingdoms can never be used.

True enough, but there aren't very many simple ideas to build around anymore: Market Square, Tunnel (most reactions, really), and Conspirator are each very simple cards with cool extra effects (and on-trash effects and on-gain effects don't appreciably increase the complexity of a card because they only occur once and then can be ignored). Cards using this mechanism will be very cluttered and complicated unless their abilities without spending additional actions are very simple, and those simple abilities will make them terribly redundant with other cards sans splitters. For example, the card suggested in the original post is redundant with Moat and incredibly weak without its second ability. It certainly doesn't mean cards using this idea won't work or be interesting (whether they are simple and sometimes redundant or complex), but I am doubtful of the viability of this mechanism as a theme for an expansion since cards using this mechanism will likely be pretty dull without splitters.
If a full set of 13-25 Kingdom cards was not your intention, then I apologize for any apparent negativity I expressed in approaching the idea as though it were. This has always been a cool idea each time it has come up that I'd like to see explored further.

However, do consider the complexity added to the game as a whole as additional nomenclature must be added to the game in order to implement this concept. How many really compelling ideas can we construct around it and how many do we need to make defining "spending an action" within cards worthwhile?

332

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Using extra actions for more effects?

« on: August 11, 2014, 09:51:55 pm »

I don't like the idea presented here because the extra effects can't be accessed unless there are splitters (Village types) in the game. LastFootnote's similar Activation cards remain in play until they have been activated by spending an action (and turning them sideways to indicate that). Since they remain in play until used, you can always access the effect. Activation cards give a level of flexibility that the concept here does not since you get to keep the ability of Activation cards around until you use them.

I think the concept here can work, but the cards necessarily have to give additional actions so that you'll be able to use their "spend actions" effects and then they're just "choose one" cards written differently. I could see an expansion built around Activation cards having a couple cards using this concept on terminal cards.

333

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Tavern and Legends

« on: July 31, 2014, 02:38:43 pm »

$5 Villages have a hard time because if you need the +Actions, you can't wait until you're hitting $5 to get them.

Wait, why not, as a general matter? Villages don't do much for you before you have the terminals that they're supposed to support. Wouldn't you ordinarily want to buy a couple of terminal draw or payload cards (both of which might help you get to $5) before investing in villages?

Poor wording on my part. $5 Villages are competing with your draw cards\payloads. You can't get them fast enough. A lot of draw cards cost $5, so most of the time you're trying to buy $5 cards that you will support with $5 cards so that you can eventually buy $8 cards and then fight over more $5 cards. You don't have that kind of time to support your $3, $4, and $5 Actions with $5 purchases.

Tavern attempts to circumvent the problem by giving you the "Duchies" that you need at the same time as the splitter, but then you're choking on green to quickly since engines tend to hate green.

334

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Tavern and Legends

« on: July 31, 2014, 01:47:34 pm »

It's an interesting idea. An obvious bookkeeping problem is that we now have to count all of every one of these things in order to compare them. This wouldn't hurt as much if you only had to count one of them, but you have to count some feature for each Legend gained.

Tavern itself confuses me. It's a Village that costs $5 and comes with a maybe Duchy. That's really bad. $5 Villages have a hard time because if you need the +Actions, you can't wait until you're hitting $5 to get them. Engines that need +Action also choke a lot harder on green cards (which Legends are) than money decks do. So who's supposed to buy this and when? Big Money players won't bother with the Action they can draw dead. Engine players don't want the excess green in their deck while they're trying to build up. The best thing about Tavern is that it adds more VP to the table for engine players... but they can't rely on Tavern as their splitter anyway.

I might try increasing all the victory values of Legends to 4VP so that it isn't almost always better to buy a Duchy. I'd also consider giving Tavern a greater connection to Inn by giving it some amount of sifting capability (especially so that engine players can get around the Legends in their deck).

335

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Wartorn Province

« on: July 29, 2014, 09:27:25 am »

I've played around with effects like this. I call them End cards (so creative, I know). At the end of games, after putting all their cards together and before counting their points, players separate all the End cards from their decks and then take turns resolving them one at a time. I hadn't playtested enough to get to handling adding and removing End cards from players' decks during this process.

End cards have very limited functionality. You can only add or remove cards from a player's deck to have any effect, and in most cases only adding or removing Victory cards or Curses will actually change the player's score. To that end, I am leery of using this effect on a Victory card when adding or removing Victory cards is the easiest way to make adding or removing cards from decks actually change players' scores. Wartorn Province is a fine idea, but I think there are better uses for Victory-End cards (like counting empty Supply piles while gaining cards from the Supply or counting cards in the trash while trashing cards).

336

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: June 24, 2014, 04:08:51 pm »

So Domains are worth twice as much VP, making you really care them even in 2-player games. Barrister's only function (other than giving +$2) is to steal Domains. It can only gain one Domain at a time from the trash.

A single hit with this does make a 6VP swing against a player which is big, but not insurmountable since it is stealing a junk card. In a 3-player game, if one person steals a Domain, another basically has to contest the Barristers because one player getting all three gives them 18VP. I think it will be worthwhile now, but I don't know if it will be fun.

Conscripts
Types: Action – Attack
Cost: $0
+1 Action. +$2. Return this to the Conscripts pile. Each other player gains a Curse. (This is not in the Supply.)

I like Recruiter better with this new Conscripts since it is less analagous to Militia. Making Conscripts a curser will probably make Recruiter impossible to ignore though, for better or worse.

I think I'm going to test Axeman without the below-line portion. I was afraid that it would make the game suck when your opponent opened with it, but it's worth testing that way. I think the card will look less intimidating without those extra lines of text.

Also, I sorely need more terminal $5 cards. I may be replacing Wheelwright, and then Axeman will be all I have left.

I'd rather see Axeman get the axe than Wheelwright since Axeman feels similar to Pillage already, especially if you're going to give Conquest a shot seeing as it fits in with the one-shot themes.

337

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: June 18, 2014, 05:28:14 pm »

I got to play some games using Enterprise cards.

Axeman and Refurbish were in a University game was alongside Pillage. Though Axeman was a fine card, it still felt very similar to Pillage since it forces players to lose a useful card. Refurbish on the other hand was a lot more fun than I expected. Its slow trashing was still fine since I managed +$1 or even +$2 with Silvers eventually as the game moved forward (though trashing Coppers). I imagine in most cases, faster trashing will be better, but Refurbish ultimately worked quite well and felt very different from faster trashers.

Guide in a game using Goons and Familiar. Frustrating game, but Guide was fun. I used it quite effectively. Since there was no trashing, the sifting it gives was incredibly useful, in addition to using its ability for multiple plays on two occasions.

One of my playing partners (probably the best person I tend to play with the game) doesn't care much for the set in general. He finds a lot of the cards are fiddly, weak, or too similar to existing cards. I generally disagree, but can see where he is coming from since a bunch of the cards don't push a singular mechanical flavor.

338

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: April 21, 2014, 05:37:15 pm »

Cathedral

That +buy is kind of gross though. Look at it: It's just hanging there. You should do something about it before it gets infected.

Disagree! +1 Buy is never superfluous on a card that does something when you buy a card. Just look at Goons, Merchant Guild, etc. If you have two Cathedrals in play, it's probably worth buying an Estate for two tokens.

True! But Goons and Merchant Guild are practically all about gaining tokens (Victory point tokens and Coin tokens respectively) where Cathedral trashes, and draws, and gets Trade tokens. It's not a problem, but it is mentally crowded.

As for getting more cards into hands, I'm starting to come around to the idea that I have enough of that. Gambler and Vendor aside, I have Clerk, Guide, Floodgate, Convocation, and Wheelwright (and Dignitary to a lesser extent). And when it comes to getting one big mega-turn for Mill Towns, Gambler and Vendor can help. Probably I'm OK on draw after all (though if I get rid of Convocation, this may change).

There is a bit of draw, but Floodgate is a one-shot, Wheelwright only draws to 7, and each other draws only 2 cards (except Guide which is a one-shot for +4 Cards). I'd like to see at least one card that flat-out draws 3 cards.

I can't remember whether I've talked about it in this thread before, but I'm also considering splitting Conscripts into 3 or 4 different cards. Probably 3 different cards (5 copies of each). One would give out Curses. One would be a discard attack. One would be a spy attack. Perhaps this would create more problems than it solves. I'd prefer to have Conscripts not be totally useless once the Curses run out, but maybe that's not such a big deal. After all, Barracks still retains its utility with other Attacks on the board.

It's an interesting idea. I also like the idea of having limited Cursing Conscripts that trash themselves so that they can't empty the Curse pile on their own.

339

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: April 21, 2014, 02:39:17 pm »

Cathedral
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+3 Cards. +1 Buy. You may spend a Trade token. If you do, trash 2 cards from your hand.
While this is in play, when you buy a Victory card, take a Trade token.

Or something. This should eliminate the concern about Cathedral being too powerful as an opening because you can't use the trashing until at least turn 5. Unless you opened Cathedral/Jubilee, but that seems like a fine combo.

Remember that one of the big reasons Cathedral was a game decider was because it initially drew 4 cards. The difference between +3 Cards and +4 Cards is huge in any strategy. This way of acquiring Trade token looks weird since it is a gate rather than a synergy.
That +buy is kind of gross though. Look at it: It's just hanging there. You should do something about it before it gets infected.

In general, I want players to be informed as possible about what they'll get when they trigger a one-shot ability. That's why I'm against Trade tokens for blind draw. Similarly, I'm not a fan of spending tokens for Coins and then drawing, such that you'll have to guess whether you actually needed those Coins. If you guessed wrong, you either wasted your token or you don't have enough Coins.

Consider that Broker (and other such cards) have ways to gather Trade tokens, making their ordinarily one-shot abilities significantly less one-shotty and more plain expensive instead. I don't think it would be awful to have a card that can generate Trade tokens with a riskier effect, but definitely appreciate your dedication to making Trade tokens certain, for the most part.

I played with a different custom card using this bottom-line effect (it was a drawer that would let you pull a card from your discard by spending a Trade token). It strikes me that the point of attaching it to not discarding may be to make it harder to stack its token gaining effect which was the reason the card I tested didn't work.

Could you go into more detail about why it didn't work? What was the card, exactly? It sounds interesting.

Trapper
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+3 Cards. Look through your discard pile. You may spend a Trade token. If you do, put a card from your discard pile into your hand.While this is in play, when you buy a Victory card, take a Trade token.

A Smithy+ as a simple effect to see how compelling the selective draw was. The selective draw obviously synergizes with the way one actually acquires Trade tokens since you're increasing the size and variance of your deck by putting Victory cards into it but Trapper reaches through the bloated deck to reuse good cards.
Unfortunately, because of its strong draw it was really easy to stack its in-play effect and gain Trade tokens faster than you could really use them with other engine pieces.

Decreasing its draw to +2 Cards would make it a much weaker card-- maybe justifiably so for it being a practically infinite source of Trade tokens-- but it wouldn't fix the stacking problem. It could possibly be made into a sifter of sorts (+2 Cards, +$3, Discard 2 Cards, Pay to draw from discard) which would help its Trade token effect always have something to draw and also make it harder to stack with itself. However, the strength of its draw is one of the big reasons players are encouraged to do more than simply draw the best Treasure from their discard pile. Either of those changes also won't help your set allow players to get more cards into their hands.

340

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: April 21, 2014, 06:57:07 am »

Broker (I'm not sold on this name.)
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. +1 Buy. +$2. You may spend a Trade token. If you don't, discard 2 cards.
While this is in play, when you gain a Victory card, take a Trade token.

...Seems a bit counterintuitive. Is the idea to encourage (and mitigate the harms of) early greening?...

I played with a different custom card using this bottom-line effect (it was a drawer that would let you pull a card from your discard by spending a Trade token). It strikes me that the point of attaching it to not discarding may be to make it harder to stack its token gaining effect which was the reason the card I tested didn't work.

The idea looks fine. It's not very exciting though, which is always kind of a bummer for a $5 card.

341

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: March 30, 2014, 10:38:53 am »

I have been playing some games with your expansion as well as some experimental custom terminal draw cards in 2-player games.

Jubilee is fantastic in Kingdoms with other cards that use Trade tokens. I think it's a particular sense that its renewable source gives since it doesn't trash itself but returns itself to the Supply. I'm not sure I'd often buy it otherwise, but when there are other Trade token cards around, it is great fun-- and I even still expended Trade tokens on Jubilee itself, so I know the card would be fine even without those Trade token cards.

Barrister continues to be ignored in the Kingdoms I play it in. I think its ability is too swingy and situational. I think the coolest part about Barrister is the interaction Trash-for-benefit cards have with Domain and Barrister's ability to pull Domains back out of the trash. To that end, I might recommend removing the Attack entirely from Barrister. Domain is at the cost bracket that Saboteurs and Knights will trash them now, and Domain is fun to Trash-for-benefit. I think Barrister could be reworked to have a more interesting ability in addition to pulling Domains out of the trash and it would be great fun (and possibly decrease the number of Attacks in the set).

I've found Recruiter to be frustratingly slow and it is basically impossible to use Conscripts as a curser without Throne Room (or some other variant of such) since it puts Conscripts into your next hand. Would it be too much to optionally put the Conscripts into your discard pile?

Convocation is good. I don't think it's really too much better than Laboratory, but it always feels much more satisfying than it even when it's drawing a Copper and Estate from 2 Coppers and an Estate (I guess because of how much sifting exists in Dominion nowadays.

Terrace is good fun. I wish Enterprise had another disappearing card or two in addition to Jubilee to make its Trade token effect stronger.

Guide is an amazing card: I love its repetition and its sifting is really awesome too. Dignitary is still just as great as before and its reaction is also quite good. Fund is also as fantastic as always.

Now I will talk about the custom cards that worked out. The names are placeholders. Feel free to use, ignore, or build upon anything here:

Cathedral
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+3 Cards. You may spend any number of Trade tokens. For each Trade token spent, trash up to 3 cards from your hand.When you gain this, gain a Trade token.

This may look kind of familiar. Draw is always fun and +3 Cards at $5 isn't too weak. Combined with strong trashing that can be cashed in when desired, Cathedral is actually quite a bit of fun right now.

Sorceress
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $6
+3 Cards. You may spend a Trade token. If you do, each other player gains a Curse.When you gain this, gain a Trade token for every 2 Actions you have in play, rounded down.

This is somewhat playing around with alternative ways to gain Trade tokens, in addition to a Curser with Trade tokens. It ended up working out in a Kingdom with Jubilee (which is probably one of the best tests for it since Jubilee makes Trade tokens so readily available). In Kingdoms without other Trade tokens cards, a player has to build up a bit of an engine to be able to give out many curses with Sorceress (or with Trade token cards, to cash in for a million Trade tokens that the player needs for other reasons). I gained three tokens at once at one point which made me feel pretty clever.

EDIT: Ugh, spelling and semantics.

342

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: New junk card

« on: February 28, 2014, 12:33:12 pm »

I think they should all have +1 Action. Having to spend an Action just to trash a card is awful enough without additional penalties.

Thats a good idea.

Not having +1 Action seems like a good penalty.

Giving each +1 Action would help differentiate Tarnished cards from Ruins cards.

343

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Card Idea: Emptor

« on: February 25, 2014, 01:58:47 pm »

Emptor's concept is cool, but doesn't it have a lot of the same problems as Counting House? Powering it up is easy, but you still need to draw Emptor-- but this time with the right stuff on top of your deck in the right order.

How about a farming Smithy that has +3 cards and cant draw victory cards.

That's probably a lot better than Journeyman, but maybe not.

Though the utility is less than Journeyman's, I'd imagine it would be the best card draw in the entire game. Might you consider working that into a one-shot?

344

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Bonus-Picking Interaction

« on: January 24, 2014, 08:19:47 am »

It seems to me that the crux of this decision is the position of the +2 Actions.
+2 Cards, +2 Actions is far too good in any deck running multiple copies of this, so that means that the choices will be as follows:
+2 Cards, +$2; or +2 Actions, +2 Buys -- or -- +2 Cards, +2 Buys; or +2 Actions, +$2.
I would split them so if the player had the Action cards to play but not the actions to play them, he would have to take buys with the actions. Otherwise (either a money centric deck or when he has multiple actions already) I would choose to put the buys with the cards so he can't get both cards and economy.

The problem is, from many games watching players agonize over Pawn, I know this card would cause absolutely terrible analysis paralysis. If you want a "Player to your left chooses for you" effect, it should probably be a choice between two options and they are preferably terminal so that the card can't occur over and over again in a turn.

345

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: January 21, 2014, 06:03:52 pm »

I actually recently had a game with Terrace and Tinker (no longer pictured), where it was way too easy to rack up Trade tokens just by gaining Terraces (with Ironworks). ...
That's not to say that I couldn't have some other card that got you two tokens when you gained it. It would probably have to be a less spammable card, though. There's not much opportunity cost for stocking up on Terraces in most games.

Fair point. From experience, a mini-Forge (especially with draw) is ludicrously powerful.
Making a spammable card afford multiple tokens could especially encourage the use of that card's perhaps more situational Trade token ability in the presence of other Trade token cards. Were that card Terrace, buying one would give so many Trade tokens, it would seem trivial to spend one for its effect. You're probably right overall. This was only a gut reaction.

Yeah, that combo is bonkers. Getting three uses out of every Embargo you play could also be aggravating, and it might run out the tokens too quickly, but I can't think of any other cards you really have to worry about.

Hmm, that's a good call with Embargo. Especially since I use Embargo tokens as Trade tokens!   It may be that I'll have to take out the one-shot synergy after more playtesting. Hopefully not, but maybe.

King's Court/Embargo already does this, so I cannot imagine that General/Embargo will present any bigger an issue even though General is much more attainable. If it were to present such a problem, you can probably Embargo the Generals before it would be much of an problem.

If I need to buff it, my top two ideas at this point are reducing its cost to $4 and/or making you play the Action card before setting it aside.

I like that second one much more. It saves you a lot of AP, and makes it viable on a lot more boards. Of course, if Investment turns out to be terribroken as is, that might not be a good thing. 

I also like the "play it first" option except for the fact that it makes it not work with other one-shots because the Investment will lose track of the card before it can be set aside. Maybe that's not a big deal. Investment itself is a one-shot and with that change it would kind of make other cards into one-shots. And as you say, it saves a lot of AP, particularly when you have another terminal in hand you'd like to play.

To be fair, you probably wouldn't want to invest in true one-shots anyway. The problem is that Investment is basically nonterminal if built to play cards first which changes the card significantly. The change would further incentivize investing in nonterminal cards because one could invest and get the pay off on the same turn. I would look into making it as viable as possible to invest in good terminal Actions... but I'm not sure how to do that.

First attempt at a "play this again" Trade token mechanic:

Pioneer
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+2 Cards. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Discard one and put the rest back. You may spend a trade token. If you do, play this again.
When you gain this, take a Trade token.

I said before that I didn't want to have a Trade-tokens for draw mechanic, but with this card you'll often know what you'd be drawing, so I'm fine with it. Feedback?

This should say "look at" instead of "reveal" and "put the rest back in any order." I like it. I especially like that a single Pioneer can be used as many times as you have Trade tokens. That could be a great payoff in games with cards with weaker Trade token abilities like Jubilee and Terrace. I'd like it a bit more if the discard was optional, but it is probably better to keep it simple since most of the time discarding will be the better option.
There are, of course, numerous ways around the "unknown draw" issue. How about making a sort of Embassy whose discard (or penalty otherwise) is made less severe by paying a Trade token?

346

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: January 18, 2014, 12:45:34 pm »

Still love your set, LastFootnote. The Trade tokens are cool. I haven't gotten a chance to play with each card, but I can give you my response to a few.

I've played some games with Clerk. Clerk is probably one of the best $2 cards in the game. It's not Fool's Gold good-- you're not going to lose because you didn't get enough Clerks-- but it's easily better than Hamlet. You used the example of how Vagrant never hurts a deck: That's true, but Vagrant misses a lot more than Clerk and has a much smaller benefit (and especially a less visible benefit).
It is a fun and powerful card at $2, but I encourage increasing Clerk's price up to $3. It would harder to buy but will still be competitive in that price bracket.

Jubilee I'm not such a fan of. +2 Actions is something I want to use repeatedly and Jubilee won't let me do that. There are also very limited instances when I want Silvers to disappear from my deck. It will be cool in the games you can buy Jubilees as one-shot Silvers to enable other Trade token cards, but I'm not sure their sustainable enough.

I've played with Redistrict. This one I really like. Redistrict I think is best for trashing $4 and $5 cards while building which is really cool since few other trash-for-benefits really work that way. Redistrct can be used to grab $5 and $6 cards with $4 and $5 cards respectively and that can be really strong. I especially like the ability to gain a Gold and a $7 or a $7 and a Province in applicable games. The only thing I would question is again, its price. In the cases where I did bust open my Redistricts, I often had only $2 so it often seemed best to immediately replace my Redistrict. If it cost $3, trashing it would be a harder decision. Though, collecting them by Redistricting Estates would be easier... the cost for trash-for-benefit cards are weird.

I've played with Barrister\Domain, but only 2-player games. This one I do not like. Barrister has an interesting sort of mini-game to it in that it becomes practically impossible to hit other players' Domains after the earliest portion of the game, but Domains are just better Coppers in your deck, so stealing them isn't all that great anyway. I do like that one cannot simply trash Domains in Barrister games since Barrister pulls Domains out of the trash regardless of whether it trashed them or not: That's a nice design touch. The big issue I have is that in multiplayer games, I think it is going to be way too swingy. I usually play 3-player games and the opportunity to pick up 9VP from stealing cards from other players (even using an admittedly weak card) is so swingy that I do not appreciate the sound of it. Just the same, it's a very cool idea and well designed card. I'm not going to really knock it, I don't like it much personally.

I've played with Gambler. Gambler is still cool. One of my players says it his favorite custom card. It's so concise and thematic. Regardless of how bad it feels when you have to trash your Gambler, a one-shot Laboratory at $3 is not too shabby.

I've played with Mill Town. I stand by Mill Town being ridiculous in any game one can increase his hand size consistently. I love the card to death, but recommend adding a trashing clause like Horn of Plenty's.

I don't like Refurbish. It is a good and simple way to get the concept to work, but it is so incredibly off theme that I cannot associate it with the rest of your set.

Committee is a decent bit of player interaction, but I'm not a huge fan. I have an extremely similar card that rather than copying or trashing one of 2 cards copies a found card costing from $3 to $6 which I think is more fun since a player can control it with deck manipulation cards. Dropping Duchies on top of the deck explicitly to copy them makes a player feel clever. Still, Committee's trashing is really good at $4, so I wouldn't mind if both my card and your Committee appeared on the same table.

I've played with Craftsman. I keep calling it Carpenter because of the art association. Scott_pilgrim commented that the combo with other Trade token consuming cards is too on the nose, but I disagree. Craftsman can be used to gain Trade tokens, but other cards can also gain Trade tokens to be consumed by Craftsman and the flexibility and choice provided by that is cool, especially since one can tactically respond to the cards drawn.

I've played with Dignitary. I will assure everyone: Its action effect is just about worth $4. The flexibility of it can make it a bear to resolve, but the strength is easily there. I kind of appreciate that its Reaction is weaker than before so I don't have to track the other players' decks as much to prevent them from using it. I don't like that it forces a player with a 6 card hand to trash 2 cards, but it is probably the clearest and simplest wording.

I've played with Floodgate. I kind of agree that it can seem like a waste with $5 since there often isn't much reason to pass cards into a following hand, but the reasons for doing so are there (with King's Courts especially) and it works quite nicely with trash -for-benefit cards at that price.

Terrace is alright. It provides a much needed Village variant with a worthwhile, unique benefit. Have you considered letting it gain 2 Trade tokens instead of only 1? It might make it interact more interestingly with other Trade token cards.

I've played with Vendor and I love it. It is so much better than Enforcer. No complaints with this one.

I've played with Axeman. It is cool. It encourages building around cheaper parts but is pretty slow in itself. I might say it is too wildly better than Saboteur (hitting both hand-size and deck composition), but it does give the player a choice and lets them gain anything costing less to the top of the deck and also can only hit a player once but for Governor/Council Room.

I've played with Barracks/Conscripts, but not with Conscripts in their current form. I hope another card can use Conscripts. I think Conscripts is a pretty poor curser (though I'm surely underestimating the strength of gaining 2 one-shot non-terminal Militia), so I hope your set has another Curser. Maybe one that relies on Trade tokens somehow? I love Barracks either way.

I don't like Convocation very much because it is off-theme and I feel too often practically better than Laboratory. It's a fine card and a good way to do non-terminal draw.

I've played with Exchange. Exchange is awesome. Remodel is cool. Non-terminal Remodel is also cool. Pulling cards into hand with Trade tokens is the icing on the cake. I like this thing as much as Butcher (though Butcher is probably a better card on average).

I've played with Fund. Fund is a really cool one-shot and players always feel clever then they can blow Fund up to pick up a Province and something else or even only two expensive cards. Players don't even feel bad about it since Fund turns into a Silver! I love the new art too.

General is pretty cool. While it is off-theme, it lets you save your own one-shots which there are enough in your set to make it a great interaction. I like Throne Room variants and this one seems like it would be worth the $5 price. I'm pretty excited to try it.

Lodge is somewhat disjointed, but certainly a good card. The set is lacking in much terminal draw without it.

I've played with Investment. Investment is really nice with a $2 cantrip but I think is not viable otherwise. It simply costs too much-- both price and momentum since you don't get to play the card you're setting aside (and playing the card makes it significantly more complex to resolve which I don't appreciate). I like the idea of it giving coins. +$3 would make it almost a no-brainer with a $2 cantrip, but would make it so much more attractive with $3 and $4 cards.

The only game I've played with Wheelwright was the sample game you were testing. I haven't gotten to see it used though since there were no +Actions on that board and no one wanted to play such a simple, boring strategy. It seems like a fine card. The use of the "may gain a Copper" is a pretty comparable marginal benefit to Wheelwright's discard. Despite it being entirely off-theme, I can deal with it.

Have you considered a card that lets you draw by expending Trade tokens? There isn't a Coin token card that does that so I think it would be sufficiently different.

I was actually a bit worried when you said you were expanding the set and working with tokens, but now I don't even know why. I cannot wait to see what else you do with this set!

347

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: How many cards would be too many?

« on: January 18, 2014, 10:57:09 am »

348

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: January 01, 2014, 09:04:31 am »

So this is only sort of a joke card. As in, I wonder if it could work. But I don't think it's worth starting a thread for.

Wishing Smithy
Types: Action
Cost: $2
Name a card. Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's the named card, put it into your hand and play this again.

Not to derail the thread, but I was considering submitting this to the Alchemy competition:

Toady
Types: Action
Cost: $3P
Name a card. Reveal the top card of your deck and put it into your hand. If it was the named card or a Potion, play this again. Otherwise, +2 Cards.

349

Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: Treasure Chest Design Contest — Card #8: Guilds

« on: December 19, 2013, 06:32:37 pm »

Tiller
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+1 Action. Reveal the top card of your deck. You may pay a Coin token. If you do, put the card into yoru hand. Otherwise discard it and take a Coin token.

Is something missing from this card? Isn't this way worse than Candlestick Maker. It can sift by 1 extra card than Candlestick Maker does, but doesn't have +1 buy and costs $4 instead of $2. To the author: please don't take too much offense for me having singled out your card before the others. After all, card balance does not necessarily correlate to how good a card is.

Yeah, I'd only ever play Tiller ironically.

350

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Most instructive cards

« on: November 19, 2013, 06:48:37 am »

Goons, Bishop, Monument: You can actually win without having to destroy your deck in the end.

Apprentice, Graverobber: But sometimes, you can win so much more by literally demolishing your deck in the end.
Really, Remodel teaches this well, but I didn't really appreciate the strength of Trash-for-Benefit cards until I started playing more with these two.