Here are the ones I like:
Usurer
Types: Action
Cost: $6
+1 Card. +1 Action. Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Treasure. Discard the rest. Trash the Treausre; gain a Treasure costing up to $3 more than it, putting it on top of your deck. Each other player may gain a Copper, putting it into his hand.
Kudos for teaching me a new word. I hadn't heard of an Usurer before. It takes a lot of words, but I like the look of the effect and the "benefit" for other players. Doubly so, I love the flavor. A Usurer (olden "Loan Shark") gives other players bad money that they can use immediately and you benefit. Great stuff there.
With a quick test, this card is terrible. It is a cantrip that
Mines a random Treasure from your deck and lets each other player gain a Copper to hand. At a cost of $6, there is simply far, far too much opportunity cost there, and even were it a bit cheaper, the card is still swingy in that it can end up trashing Golds into Golds.
I'd put it at $4 and maybe it'd be good but then it might also be too much like an inverse
Taxman. I guess between that and
Mine we have enough cards that upgrade Treasures.
Good: Nice fit for Platinum games, where you can really breathe life into your early Silvers. I wondered about the need for the +1 Card, but I suppose it causes you to scoop up your upgraded Treasures as you play multiple Usurers.
Bad: Maybe too fast? I wonder how a Usurer rush would compare with Rebuild. I guess Rebuild depletes the Duchy pile, which is a huge strategical difference.
I was testing in a Province game (since that will be the majority of games with it) and it was far, far too slow. Maybe dropping to $4 is too extreme considering Platinum.
Charity (A)
Types: Treasure
Cost: $7
Worth $4. +1 Buy.
While this is in play, when you buy a card, each other player gains a card costing at most $2 less than it.
The gain should be optional otherwise I'd usually use it to buy 2 Silvers, but I like the look of this one. Each other player gaining a Gold for your Province is pretty bad, so the cost of the gain might need to be altered. Thematically, you give stuff to every player and everyone benefits. I like it. I worry that other players wouldn't buy it though to avoid giving other players good cards.
This is really swingy. Also it compares poorly to
Bank. I'd push it down to $6.
As others have said the gain really should be optional, otherwise you pick up a ton of $3 and $4 components and snowball the hell out of your engine. Even if the gain were optional, it's still a little iffy to me, because endgame VP-buying is suddenly so awful. If they gain the next lowest VP card, which they can (almost) always do, Colony = 4VP, Prov = 3VP...I really want this card to work, but I'm not sure it's doable. Maybe if you make the gain exactly less than $2, but then it might be too strong in endgame.
Great point on VP gaining. I'm not sure if it would be better to not allow gaining Victory cards like
Haggler.
Wedding
Types: Action
Cost: $7
+1 Action. Reveal cards from the top you your deck until you reveal an Action card, a Treasure card and a Victory card. If you do reveal a card of each of these types, put an Action card, a Treasure card and a Victory card from among the revealed cards into you hand. Discard the other revealed cards.
Super
Laboratory: Great idea at $7. At a cost of $7 and only being able to draw one other Action, it might not be too overpowered for megaturns. Fiddly when in multiples, too. It is dead if you have no Action\Treasure\Victory cards left in your deck which sucks for a $7 Action. No idea about the flavor here though. Who's wedding are we celebrating and why should it be a big deal to me? With the name "Royal Wedding," the implications of the size of the royal line would become hilarious.
I think this is really strong, and it is pretty easy to keep them firing off properly since, being so expensive, it is easy to control the rate at which you're buying them.
Concept: Big non-terminal draw that hits a rainbow of types.
Prosperity fit: Expensive, big effect.
Comments: Rules question -- what if you reveal a hybrid? I expect that it would count as both types, so if you reveal a Copper and a Nobles, that's all you get for drawing. But maybe you reveal Nobles, Nobles, Estate, Harem, you should be able to choose two Nobles and Harem (with Harem being your treasure and each Nobles filling in a different slot). So Wedding+hybrid cards is a double-edged sword. Overall, fairly interesting.
I think that interaction with hybrids is unusual, but more an exploit than ordinary. There are so few hybrid cards anyway that with a footnote in the instructions it won't be much to worry about.
Mediator
Types: Action – Reaction
Cost: $3
+$3. Reveal 3 cards from your hand. The player to your left selects one of them. Discard it or put it on top of your deck.
When another player plays an Attack, you may set this aside from your hand. If you do, +1 Card, +1 VP, and at the start of your next turn, discard this.
+$3 is a lot on a $3 card, but you are forced to get rid of a card that you don't get to choose. You'd have to get a lot of building done before that Action could be at all useful-- it might be too weak, but that Reaction looks nice. I worry it would disincentize Attacks too much. Flavorwise, I think it's funny that it doesn't at all stop attacks, just makes them sting less.
Quick tests against
Militia and
Witch show that it is easy to use its Reaction in response to
Militia, a little harder with
Witch, but it loses badly against either without a lot of work, so it doesn't kill strong Attacks at least.
Good: The reaction is interesting.
Bad: The terminal gold on a $3 card seems too strong. Also, there are lots of choices being made here. Choose three cards to reveal, then the opponent selects one, then you have to decide to topdeck or discard. I say just force the last step to be "discard", and then the first two decisions will be easier too. Or am I missing something?
I found the three steps were pretty easy to remember because of other "reveal cards, pick a card, get rid of it" cards like
Envoy and
Advisor and for the most part easy to resolve since the player of it has been staring at his hand and putting the card on top of the deck or not is such a no-brainer.
Philanthropist
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+3 VP. Each other player gains a card costing up to $5.
This is adorable. Everyone can gain Duchies to nullify the positive effect for the player or can gain good cards to try to get better returns for them later. I love the way it sounds, but it is probably underpowered right now. It likely can only be effectively used in the latter portion of the game in order to require other players to gain Duchies with it, but then the Duchies are simply canceling out any effect Philanthropist would have for you. The theme is pretty good too, like Charity, but a person.
Probably underpowered.
Furthermore, I would imagine a lot of players wouldn't want to play it since they don't want to give other players powerful cards, similarly to Charity, but I like it a lot better than Charity.
Really though, this thing is weird. In testing it, of course one doesn't buy it until later in the game. This is much different than
Monument (which you buy at the start so that the Victory tokens can build up), instead you only want to start playing Philanthropist once players have to start buying Duchies. Ideally, you can play Philanthropist after the Duchy pile has emptied because then the players can only gain decent cards that they may not get to see while you're accumulating free Duchies, though you probably will have played Philanthropist a couple of times, forcing everyone else to quickly empty the Duchy pile for you.
Philanthropist is a really interesting card and the most unique card submitted, I feel. It really provides a fascinating new way to build a VP-chip deck while still moving the game forward. That being said, I foresee some possible issues with the card. First, the bonus to your opponents is huge. I'm not saying that the card is unbalanced, but from what I've read, people generally don't like to give their opponent gifts, and this gift is huge. Second, this could still devolve into a VP-gaining stalemate with both (or all) players going for a Philanthropist deck and trying to keep the game from ending. Goons helps to give you the ability to end the game on your VP-chip megaturn while you're ahead. Philanthropist doesn't. Overall, though, an awesome idea.
Edging out Philanthropist is Indulgence. The name is the only thing I don't love about this card. Well, that and the fact that it executes similarly to Contraband. However, I think that changing anything about the card to differentiate it would be a mistake. It's a brilliant idea that I think will really work.
I am significantly more excited by Philanthropist for being such a unique card and easily one of the most unique submitted. I love Philanthropist because it feels the least like any other Dominion card. I do agree with all your worries except about the stalemate. The gain is mandatory, so the game is always proceeding to its end, even if only on base cards.
I'm sure this one will need some balancing, but it's so unique and wonderfully simple that I think it's worth the effort.
Villa
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+1 Action. Play up to 2 Treasures from your hand. Draw until you have 4 cards in hand.
While I'm not a huge fan of mixing Treasures into the buy phase, this is an obvious rule that has never really been broken in Dominion (
Black Market being a promo only kind of counts). This is pretty interesting and I do like Draw until X cards. A neat little self-limiting
Laboratory variant that encourages a deck with a careful balance of Treasures and Villas. I don't like the name very much though: It probably ought to refer to some sort of illicit market in honor of
Black Market. Fence maybe?
What's more, Prosperity is really the only place this card can make sense since this is the only expansion that has different Treasures that you'd really like to play in the Action phase.
Not to mention all the cool combos you can get out of it. Like...
Now I want to see a Villa/Counterfeit Combo.
Silk Merchant
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+$2. You may trash two cards from your hand. If you do, +1 VP per token on the Trade Route mat.
Setup: Put a token on each Victory card Supply pile. When a card is gained from that pile, move the token to the Trade Route mat.
Clarification: The Trade Route mat and tokens referred to by Silk Merchant are the same as those referred to by Trade Route. If both Trade Route and Silk Merchant are in the kingdom and/or Black Market deck, use only one token on each victory card pile.
I love that this uses the same mat as
Trade Route, though I believe the wording will need some fiddling to avoid there being two tokens on each Victory Supply pile. The card itself is certainly weak unless you're using its trashing (which you'll only be using once it gives at least +2VP I think). The card references
Silk Road and
Spice Merchant, right? I like the reuse there too, though
Spice Merchant was already a pretty weak card, thematically.
As I mentioned previously, I like the idea. Linking the VP tokens to trashing seems potentially problematic to me though, at least when the Trade Route Mat gets full enough. With a bit of alt VP, it can easily reach 6, and I'm afraid it would then encourage the players to simply cannibalize their decks. Keep a Pawn (for the nonterminal buy) and Silk Merchant, and then just buy and trash two Coppers each turn for a Province worth of points.
Agreed. Perhaps if least one of the cards trashed had to be a non-Treasure it would work? You could still build a "Golden deck," but you would have to be grinding up Supply piles other than the large Copper and Silver piles.
Indulgence
Types: Treasure
Cost: $5
Worth $2. +1 Buy. When you play this, the player to your left names a card in the Supply costing between $3 and $6. If you buy that card this turn, +2VP.
I've found that I don't like this one as much as I had hoped I would, though I do like it. The name's religious connotations are okay, though without an image, I definitely think of
this kind of indulgence.
I don't think [Indulgence]'s really that strong. Yeah OK, buy a Thief or a Scout for 2VP. But how many times are you willing to do that? Probably not a lot, at least until the late game. And then there's the opportunity cost of what you could have bought instead of that weak action. I still think that dropping the +Buy would be a good change to make. But the main concept is interesting and there should be many easy tweaks that would bring it in line.
Also remember that whenever you have an Indulgence, you necessarily have $2. If you have $3 more, a Duchy is better than that
Chancellor+2VP if you aren't going to see the card again (besides edge cases where that
Coppersmith might push your
Vineyard up or something) and in many cases, even if you do see that
Baron you won't play it so it may as well have been a Victory card. And I like a lot of these cards: I buy
Workshop on more boards than I should, so
Ironworks+2VP would look pretty nice, but once I have time to get $5 cards like Indulgence in my deck, I already have
Lookout and another is unnecessary.
Dropping Indulgence to a cost of $4 so one can open with it and producing only $1 would help differentiate it from
Contraband and would make it more practical, but then I actually worry about +2VP being too strong. If Donald X. came up and asked me if I would rather have
Contraband or Indulgence in Prosperity, I would pick Indulgence, but because
Contraband already is in the game and Prosperity has so many Treasures even without it, I'm not as excited by this as I could be.
...Is the King actually a three year old?
