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.

51

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 13, 2020, 06:16:08 pm »

 

Comptroller
Types: Action, Reserve
Cost: $2
+$1. Put this on your Tavern mat.At the start of your Buy phase, you may call this. If you do, +2 Buys, Ignore any further +Buys you get this turn, and Events cost $1 less this turn.

Market Day
Types: Event
Cost: $9
+$11

Comptroller: A Reserve that gives +Buys when you need it and Event cost-reduction.  Comptroller also causes you to ignore further +Buys so you can't go infinite with any +Buy Events like Delve, Gamble, and Travelling Fair.
Market Day: An Event that turns each extra +1 Buy into +$2 provided you meet the $9 threshold.  Most spammable +Buy doesn't build your economy much compared to competing cards, so there's a push and pull to that.
Combo: Comptroller + Market Day nets you +$6 from Comptroller's buys. You could get more coins by calling more Comptrollers, but the growth is only +$2 per Comptroller called as only the first Comptroller gives you +Buys.

52

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: May 12, 2020, 09:46:06 pm »

53

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: May 05, 2020, 09:15:34 pm »

New World
Types: Event
Cost: $6
Once per game: Put the cards you have in Exile into your hand. Exile all cards from your deck, your discard pile, and that you have in play.Setup: Each player Exiles 2 Coppers, 1 Gold, and 2 Curses from the Supply, and the same set of 4 different unused Action cards.

Clarification: Each players' Exile mat begins containing copies of the same cards with the same set of 4 Action cards.  If Monument, Scheme, Sheepdog, and Torturer were chosen, each player Exiles copies of that same collection of 4 Action cards (along with the 2 Coppers, 1 Gold, and 2 Curses).

A silly setup Event.  You lose all your deck that you don't have in your hand (unfortunate happenstance that Duration cards still in effect get Exiled from play too, but that only applies for one turn per game (and should happen pretty early in games you want to trigger New World), so it shouldn't get too hairy).  You have an extra deck of 9 cards waiting for you in the New World with otherwise unavailable Action cards.  Because of the way the Exile mat works, you can of course bring the Gold from the New World back to the old world (the unused Action cards cannot be brought over without buying either New World or Transport because you won't be able to gain copies of them), or you can swap over to the New World and then start bringing lost cards from the old world over.  You could also grab an extra Copper or Curse before getting New World to clean up Exile first before making the swap.

The numbers might be all wrong for this thing to work.  Let me know if you think it's interesting or salvageable.  I'm not sure if it is.

54

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 28, 2020, 07:29:26 pm »

Stable Master
Types: Action
Cost: $6
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck and put them into your hand. Gain a Horse for each Action card revealed.

Hunting Grounds variant with a draw that modulates from 3 to 6-ish based upon how many Actions it draws.

55

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 18, 2020, 06:52:55 am »

Rovers
Types: Action
Cost: $6*
+2 Cards. Turn your Journey token over (it starts face up). Then if it's face up, +3 Actions.During your turns, if your Journey token is face up, this costs $2 less.

A Lost City variant using the Journey token that costs $6 when it's ready to go and $4 when it isn't. You want to setup your next turn by leaving your Journey token face down, except then Rovers costs $6, so you leave it face up so you can buy a cheap Rovers, but now, whoops, your first Rovers next turn is terminal.  Note that it functionally starts the game costing $4.  +2 Cards is a stronger benefit attached to flipping your token face down than Giant's +$1, Ranger's +1 Buy, and Pilgrimage's nothing-event if Rovers appears with them.
Maybe +3 Actions is too much?

56

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 16, 2020, 05:50:53 pm »

My entry for this week:
(which is the other one I was considering entering for last week. I may have entered this one at some point before, but I don't think I have for one of these weekly contests at least.)

Mysterious Door
- Action
The player to your left discards the bottom card of their deck. If it's an action card, play it, leaving it there. Otherwise if it's... a victory card, +2 Cards; anything else, +$2.

I didn't even make the list. This is the second time this happened. 
I even made the text size bigger...

My sincere apologies.  I'm not even sure how I missed it. I noted your post when you posted it and yet it didn't end up in the quote repository I build throughout the week.  I recommend posting an artless mock-up using the Dominion Card Image Generator and uploading the result to Imgur, as my final sweep would certainly not have missed an image.

Regardless,

Mysterious Door
Types: Action
Cost: $2
The player to your left discards the bottom card of their deck. If it's an action card, play it, leaving it there. Otherwise if it's... a victory card, +2 Cards; anything else, +$2.

Mysterious Door discarding is sure to make some players dislike it much as players disliked Tribute.  The effect is a nice fix to X-tra's Informer, as it costs less than the things you want to play with it and even gives better benefits when it cycles a Victory card in the form of +2 Cards.  It is ultimately falling into the same hole as Tribute, where its pseudo-terminal effect is so volatile that you end up playing it like it's terminal.  Ultimately I imagine that it would be better priced at $3, as the current effect is something I wouldn't want shoved so randomly into a game as it would be on an easy-to-buy $2-cost card, but it might end up being too weak for $3 in the average Kingdom.  I like it, though.  It's not on the shortlist, but it's a high 2/3.

57

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Contest #69: Pseudo-terminal

« on: April 16, 2020, 03:01:57 pm »

Dalmatian
Types: Action, Reaction
Cost: $3
Gain 2 Horses. You may play a Horse from your hand.When another player plays a Horse, you may discard this to gain a Horse to your hand.

Another 2-Horser along with Cavalry, Paddock, and Sleigh.  The reaction is a tad fiddly because you have to pause the first time you play a Horse and ultimately pointless due to the raw strength of Dalmatian.  By the time you play Dalmatian 3 times, even without significant support, you can probably expect to trigger the Dalmatian→Horse every time which increases the number of Horses you have.  This will drain the Horse pile rapidly, especially in multiplayer, which gives it a dynamic that doesn't seem to be a consideration in other Horsers: Horses being unlimited seems to be the intent of them (regardless of how Livery goes).  I don't hate it, but I'm leery to put it out as I think it will be too game dominating, especially if any Way appears with it.

Would you mind explaining a little more about the "draining the Horse pile rapidly"? My intent was that on play, you either gain two horses, or you effectively play a cantrip and gain one horse (since the one you play would return to its pile). i.e. the same effect would be achieved by "Gain a Horse. Discard a Horse from your hand for +2 Cards, +1 Action." (with a minor difference if the Horse pile only had 1 Horse in it)
The reaction was so, among other things, with two Dalmatians in hand you could discard one to guarantee a Horse in your hand.
(I'm also unsure how a Way would make it particularly dominating)

Dalmatian reduces the number of Horses in its pile as a "cantrip" where the other Horsers do so in a much more limited fashion (Supplies is also a Copper, Scrap has to trash stuff, Paddock turns non-terminal only in the late-game, others are terminal).  Most games where I have Horses I find it easy and beneficial to hang on to one or more Horses to get a bigger benefit from the draw later.  I am likely leery of new tech, as I did not dislike either of the Horse entries (Bridle Craftsman and Dalmatian)  (and am probably playing the new tech very poorly as well) but did not include them in my top 3.  Perhaps greater experience would lead me to feel otherwise about it.
I have found Horses to generally be a strong way to improve the consistency of a deck mid construction between cards like Scrap, Sleigh, and Demand (which I have used more than others), so a cantrip that gains a Horse looks pretty crazy at a cost of $3.  A decent Way target makes it easier to hang on to your Horses for big benefits because unplayed Horses don't drag in your deck: You can Way them.  Considering the way Ways affect Horses feels very relevant as they both appear in Menagerie.

58

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Contest #69: Pseudo-terminal

« on: April 16, 2020, 01:57:30 pm »

With apologies for the delays (writing this up has taken more time than I expected, and even then I haven't edited nearly as much as I'd like to):

Coronation
Types: Action
Cost: $5
If this is the first Coronation you have played this turn, gain a Gold onto your deck. Otherwise, you may play an Action card from your hand three times.

I like this one a fair bit because it introduces a meaningful and unique problem to what is otherwise a very powerful card.  You need to build a bit before you want to start using Coronation to get its King's Court effect, while the Gold-to-deck function is new and passable on $5 and causes you to use its

Stockade
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+2 Cards, +1 Buy. You may trash this, for +1 Action.

+Buy is something you don't really want to throw away, so the trashing effect seems like a get-out-of-jail function to toss it when its draw works poorly otherwise, but that "+2 Cards and +1 Buy" function is rare enough and likely well balanced at $4.  Pretty good.

Fool's Laboratory
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+2 Cards. If you don't have another copy of this in play, +1 Action.

I do not like the esoteric wording here to combo with Throne Room variants and Command cards.
The first is a Laboratory which is a bit silly, while the second is a Moat which is middling to bad (depending on trashing and junking).  So buying the first is trivial, but the question of whether you should buy more than one is virtually identical to every other +2 Cards card. I wouldn't call the card broken, but it's not very interesting.

Courier
Types: Action, Reaction
Cost: $4
+2 Cards. You may play an Action that costs more than this from your hand.Directly after resolving an Action that costs less than this on your turn, you may play this from your hand.

Getting +2 Actions from it via a $3-cost and $5-cost Action might be difficult enough, but I'm not sure this needs to do both as Laboratory at $4 is already very strong, let alone that it can be even stronger than that.  I mostly get into my head how frustrating this card would be, trying to draw it with such a variety of Action costs: The payout for doing so is so large that you might have to try regardless.  The paradigm shift of whether the more or less expensive card is the on-play and which is the Reaction also isn't very memorable which could lead to misplaying the card: I would much prefer a name that implies the direction, like Climber as you suggested.

Bridle Craftsman
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+2 Cards. If you have played a Horse this turn, +1 Action. Otherwise, gain a Horse.

The trick here is that you want to be able to play at least one of your Bridle Craftsman terminally so that you don't run out of Horses and end up with a deck full of terminal Bridle Craftsman cards.  It seems like trying to find a Horse to turn the other Bridle Craftsman cards into Laboratories will be difficult enough to make over-buying Bridle Craftsman a real concern.  I like it.

Dalmatian
Types: Action, Reaction
Cost: $3
Gain 2 Horses. You may play a Horse from your hand.When another player plays a Horse, you may discard this to gain a Horse to your hand.

Another 2-Horser along with Cavalry, Paddock, and Sleigh.  The reaction is a tad fiddly because you have to pause the first time you play a Horse and ultimately pointless due to the raw strength of Dalmatian.  By the time you play Dalmatian 3 times, even without significant support, you can probably expect to trigger the Dalmatian→Horse every time which increases the number of Horses you have.  This will drain the Horse pile rapidly, especially in multiplayer, which gives it a dynamic that doesn't seem to be a consideration in other Horsers: Horses being unlimited seems to be the intent of them (regardless of how Livery goes).  I don't hate it, but I'm leery to put it out as I think it will be too game dominating, especially if any Way appears with it.

Commissioner
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $6
Gain a non-Command Action card costing up to $4 and play it.

Unfortunately, having played with cards like this, I can confirm that they don't work well in multiplayer games due to the limitation of the Supply.  There needs to be some strong bounding that prevents this from draining piles to nothing (for example Dominion: Season's Ballroom).  I might recommend gaining "a non-Command Action card costing up to $4 from a pile with at least 4 cards in it."

Beachcomber
Types: Action
Cost: <5>
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck and put them in your hand. If there were no Treasures, Actions, or Nights revealed, +1 Action.

I'm not sure this giving +1 Action will virtually ever change anything about the way it plays. You typically won't play your Smithy if you have other Actions in hand because those Actions are either non-terminal or payload from which you would expect to gain more benefit than drawing 3 dead cards from your misfiring deck.  I guess maybe it would be better in money-focused deck where drawing 2 Beachcombers together has some ghost of a chance of being played non-terminally which would allow you to play the other Beachcomber.  If that assumption is correct, this will virtually only be different than Smithy by virtue of costing debt.

This entry was erased and replaced with Interchange, but I captured it before and wrote a bit on it before it was removed, so it is maintained for posterity.

Terrier
Types: Action, Treasure
Cost: $4
When you gain or play this, +2 Cards, and you may put a card from your hand onto your deck.

This one is very technically terminal, because if you use it as an Action it is a Courtyard- being both more expensive and less effective. I imagine the primary use of Terrier is to simply act as a Laboratory in Treasure form, which is probably too strong at a cost of $4.

Outlaw
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+3 Cards. You may discard 3 cards. If you do, +1 Action.

I've played with a card named Alehouse since 2015 that did this for a bit.  It was decent but quite boring and very, very weak whenever you did discard cards.  Doing more than acting as a Warehouse when discarding would make it much more interesting.

Hearth
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Choose one: +2 Cards and add a Villager to the Hearth Supply pile; or take the Villagers from the pile.When you gain or trash this, add a Villager to the Hearth Supply pile.

This has shades of Wild Hunt, providing a repeating and communal source of Villagers, which sounds much more fun than Wild Hunt's often explosive VP. 

Ironworker
Types: Action
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. Reveal the top three cards of your deck. You may discard any number of them. If you discarded at least two... Action cards, +1 Action; Treasure cards, +1 Buy and +$1, Victory cards, +1 Card.

The ability to sift Treasures is probably alright to make this a source of +Buy.  Discarding Actions for +Actions seems like such a non-starter of a function though.

Sorcerer
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $6
Play a non-Command Action card from the Supply costing up to $4, leaving it there. If the card has no +Cards amount in its text, +1 Action.

So Sorcerer turns the stop-cards it plays either non-terminal or anti-terminal.  This seems like a fairly marginal benefit due to the proliferation of cantrips at $3 and $4.  Spinning up a few Kingdoms, its only change from Band of Misfits is that you can often target terminal Silvers or some tempo-trashers at <$4-cost.  Unless it appear with cards like Watchtower or Envoy that don't "+Cards" but do "Draw" cards (which is a problem Donald X. wrote about under Seize the Day in the Menagerie Secret History), this seems like it will play largely as a weaker version of Band of Misfits.

Angry Mob
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $5
+$2. Each other player gains a Curse into hand, and if they did, discards a card. If anyone of them discards a Curse, +1 Action

This has political issues in multiplayer games because discards are asynchronous, but they probably don't matter.  Much like Bard, you likely can't play Angry Mob with the assumption that it will be non-terminal, which makes its non-terminal function circumstantial.  I think you want this function on a thing that would be happier to have the +Action.

Prospector
Types: Action, Reaction
Cost: $2
+1 Card, +$1Whenever any player buys a treasure you may set this aside from your hand. If you do, play it at the start of your next turn.

"+1 Card and +$1" is really bad.  The ability to play it later by buying a Treasure doesn't make it a whole lot better: In the situation that players would buy a lot of Treasures, there won't be enough +actions on the board to justify buying Prospectors.  The only way it really functions is triggering it yourself to get the additional +Cards next turn, but then it needs additional Buys and the ability to weather accumulating many Treasures, which not many decks can do very well.

Cooper
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $4. If it costs $3 or less: +1 Card and +1 Action. If it costs $1 or less, +1 Buy and +$1.

Having played with $4 Workshop variants that can quickly drain $3 cards, the size of the Supply is a rather unpredictable problem in multiplayer games: If there are good Workshop targets a $3, the game ends so fast on piles with such blanket gaining on a cantrip.  I'd recommend shifting the benefits incurred so that it only becomes non-terminal when gaining those super cheap cards.

Sparrow
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Choose one: +2 Cards or +1 VP. You may play a Sparrow from your hand.When you buy this, put all Sparrows from your discard pile on the top of your deck.

I imagine it is typically correct to assume "+1VP play another of this" will be very slow in the average case, the abuse case of a golden "+4VP to +7VP per turn forever," leaves me wondering why this even has +VP attached to it.  While the +2 Cards chain is a fairly powerful effect on its own, the ability to shift to +VP attached to it doubles-down the incentive to build a deck that is made of nothing but Sparrows, and that doesn't sound very fun.  The top-decking thing is cute though.

Sexton
Types: Action
Cost: $3
You may discard a card from your deck. Look through your discard pile. Choose one: trash exactly 2 cards from your discard pile; or +1 Action and put a card from your discard pile into your hand.

Per the 2019 Errata, you can omit "look through your discard pile."  I like the idea of a blanket discard trasher, but as someone who considers Chapel's turn 3\4 variance a bit much, Sexton's is even worse, varying from "trash a Copper out of hand (or +1 Card and +1 Action if you flip your turn 2 buy)" to "trash 2 Estates out of hand".  The deck-discard effect is a neat improvement, but I'd much rather it buff itself to a $4-cost that can "discard up to 2" and "trash up to 2".

Friar Types: Action Cost: $4 Look at the top 2 cards of your deck. Trash any number of them and put the rest back in any order. If you trashed a card costing $3 or more and you don't have the Tunic: +1 Card, +1 Action and take the Tunic.

Tunic Types: Artifact When you play a Friar: +1 Action and put the cards you don't trash into your hand instead of onto your deck.

Friar begins its life as a terminal Sentry, but can be upgraded into a Laboratory+Sentry.  The cost of taking the Tunic is a sort of counter-point to Flag Bearer: Instead of buying\trashing a terminal Silver, you trash another Silver at minimum.  Because you can take the Tunic from a player, it likely pulls Friar back into a moderately reasonable position: If someone takes the Tunic from you, you can trash one of your otherwise troublesome terminal Friars to make the rest non-terminal.  It is easier to draw your deck with Laboratories, so fast-trashing with Laboratory Friars is probably a bad idea.
This is clever. I like it.

Informer
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $4
The player to your left reveals cards from their deck until they reveal a non-Command, non-Duration Action card, discarding the rest. You may play it, leaving it there. If you didn't, +$2.

The cards that don't specify that the card goes back are all cards that look at or reveal exactly 1 card (even Oracle says how the 2 go back), so this still reads funny.  I won't hold that against the card, though.  So the ideal of Informer is randomly flipping up a powerful $5-cost Action to play, as otherwise you could have bought and played the Action yourself (because Informer costs $4) without garnering a sifting benefit to the player to your left.  I like the player interaction idea, but this just seems terribly weak.

Fixed Horse Race
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Each other player may set aside a card from their hand face down. Reveal a card from your hand. Each other player reveals their set aside card and discards it. If your card costs the most: +3 Coffers, +1 Villager. Otherwise, gain a Curse.

This probably wants to act as a payload to a deck that can already draw itself (or almost draw itself) so you can justify discarding a high-cost card to it or consistently align it with a Province.  Even then, that pass-fail to huge: If anyone else has a Province to discard to it, you gain a Curse while it awkwardly holds down other players' Fixed Horse Races.  I think the cost of having a terminal dead card that consumes another of your cards is already a big cost without making it Curse yourself.

Palm Reader
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $4
Play a non-Command Action card from the Supply costing up to $5 (leaving it there). If it costs $4 or more, discard a card.

The value of Palm Reader contrasted to Band of Misfits is a function of the $4 and $5 cards available: Palm Reader is better at playing cheaper Actions, which vary so wildly from game to game, but is much worse at playing $4 Village-variants (often premier Band of Misfits targets).  The ability to play a $5-card at the cost of discarding a card is mostly reasonable: There are games with Laboratory-variants (like Lost City) where Palm Reader will be a powerhouse, but most games will make it middling.  This is a unique enough Command card.  I like it.

Interchange
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+$2. If you have Actions remaining, +2 Actions

Similarities to Conclave are not to be missed, where Conclave is guaranteed to act as a splitter if there are any other Actions in the game, Interchange can only act as a splitter if there is another splitter.  It's like a finickier Conspirator in that way, where it will act as a terminal Silver unless it is supported.  You will rarely buy more than one (maybe two) Interchanges, and likely early in the game when you need economy, lest its pass-fail paradigm become frustrating.  Seems fine.

Builder
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $4. If it doesn't cost $4, +1 Villager.

As King Leon points out, this seems quite familiar to Sculptor, though it gains the card to your discard pile and non-terminally gains any card costing at most $3.  Playing with $4 Workshop variants that can quickly drain $3 cards, the size of the Supply is a rather unpredictable problem in multiplayer games: If there are good Workshop targets a $3, the game ends so fast on piles with such blanket non-terminal gaining.  It is likely not too much of a problem, but its similarities to Sculptor are ultimately far too close as far as I'm concerned.  Sculptor asks similar questions, but in a more interesting way.

Investigator
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+2 Cards. Put any number of cards from your hand on top of your deck.When you gain this, put it into your hand and +1 Buy.

Setting aside the admitted problem of +1 Buy on-gain auto-piling them with decent cost reduction (which is a serious problem: multiplayer games that end on Provinces still often have 2 empty Supply piles) (you could fix this with a Messenger-like clause), putting "any number" of cards on top of your deck could be a problem as you can theoretically setup further than your next hand with it: I'd "put up to 4 cards from your hand on top of your deck in any order".  In play, this seems to adjust the on-play problems of Terrier being so similar to Laboratory at $4 because it can only be played non-terminally during your Night phase, when +2 Cards is not wildly useful.  The larger function of the card is likely to save otherwise missed cards, which is a function handled similarly by Save and Delay, but this does it at a theoretical cost of adding a middling card to your deck.  It is a solid variation.


Show: BlueHairedMeerkat's Coronation

Coronation
Types: Action
Cost: $5
If this is the first Coronation you have played this turn, gain a Gold onto your deck. Otherwise, you may play an Action card from your hand three times.

Place: segura's Hearth

Hearth
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Choose one: +2 Cards and add a Villager to the Hearth Supply pile; or take the Villagers from the pile.When you gain or trash this, add a Villager to the Hearth Supply pile.

Win: Rhodos' Friar and Tunic

Friar Types: Action Cost: $4 Look at the top 2 cards of your deck. Trash any number of them and put the rest back in any order. If you trashed a card costing $3 or more and you don't have the Tunic: +1 Card, +1 Action and take the Tunic.

Tunic Types: Artifact When you play a Friar: +1 Action and put the cards you don't trash into your hand instead of onto your deck.

The interaction of this card and artifact pairing is novel and ties into itself to theoretically hold itself in check, as opposed to being a brainless piledrive.  If it proves to centralizing to have Friar trash Friar, you could always put an awkward on-trash effect (like gaining a Duchy or some such).

You may post the next challenge when you would, Rhodos.

59

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 15, 2020, 08:34:06 am »

24-ish hours for submissions.

Sorcerer
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $6
Play a non-Command Action card from the Supply costing up to $4, leaving it there. If the card has no +Cards amount in its text, +1 Action.

Are both "+1 Card" and "+2 Cards" "+Cards amount"? I will assume yes.

Informer
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $4
The player to your left reveals cards from their deck until they reveal a non-Command, non-Duration Action card. You may play it, leaving it there. If you didn't, +$2.

What does the player to your left do with the cards they revealed? Because it is not an Attack, I will assume the Action is put on top and the rest are discarded.

60

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 09, 2020, 07:09:37 am »

Contest 69: Pseudo-terminal Create a pseudo-terminal Action card.  A pseudo-terminal card is a card that can be terminal or non-terminal depending on circumstances.  Gratuitous details and clarification below (card names color coded blue for applicable cards and red for non-applicable cards):

• The card can be conditionally terminal or non-terminal (such as Conspirator, Crossroads, Ironworks, or Scrap).
• The card can be "randomly" terminal or non-terminal (such as Tribute or Vassal).
• The card can be terminal or non-terminal by the choice of the player (such as Pawn and Squire).
• The card must be an Action, but can have additional types (such as Diplomat, Nobles, and Sheepdog).
  • A Duration will only count as pseudo-terminal if it can be terminal or non-terminal on-play, regardless of later turn effects (Village Green applies; Archive, Dungeon, Fishing Village, and Research do not apply because they are only ever non-terminal on-play; Barge, Enchantress, Haunted Woods, and Tactician do not apply because they are only ever terminal on-play (+1 Action token excepted)).
  • An Action-Treasure or Action-Night card could be pseudo-terminal, just ensure the card is capable of consuming your last +action (Werewolf applies).
  • A Command or Command-alike card is pseudo-terminal so long as there is no condition or setup that prevents them from being variably terminal and non-terminal (Band of Misfits, Captain, and Overlord apply even though there is no guarantee that there will exist both terminal and non-terminal targets; Necromancer also applies).
• The card can use Villagers so long as they are not given unconditionally (Recruiter and Sculptor apply; Acting Troupe and Patron do not).
• The card can be in a split pile so long as at least 1 card in it is pseudo-terminal (Sauna/Avanto applies because Avanto is pseudo-terminal).
• The card can allow playing other cards so long as it is not largely blanket permission (Conclave, Cultist, and Imp apply; Crown, Procession (most cards aren't Durations), Royal Carriage, and Throne Room do not). Blanket permission is effectively the same as +actions.
  • The card could give blanket permission to play another card outside the current turn so long as it can be terminal or non-terminal this turn (Mastermind and Prince do not apply only because they are always terminal on-play).
  • The card could theoretically give a choice between some terminal effect and blanket permission to play another card.
• The pseudo-terminal effect should be with respect to playing the card, not gaining, buying, or trashing the card (Lackeys and Silk Merchant do not apply; Peasant does not apply as there is no requirement to move the +1 Action token onto Peasant).
• Special exception: Please don't make a Traveller line.

61

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 09, 2020, 07:09:22 am »

Augur
Types: Action
Cost: $2
You may gain an Augur. +2 Cards.When you gain this, looks at the top 4 cards of your deck. Choose any number of them to discard and return the remainder to the top of your deck in any order.

An interesting take on +2 cards. I'm always worried about self-gaining cards leading to swingy games, but this one's non-terminal so that shouldn't be an issue most of the time. The on-gain seems like the strongest part. Sifting through 4 then drawing 2 is about as good as embassy, and the first time you buy it it's is almost as good as night watchman. You don't want to fill your deck with these and that's an elegant downside, but IMO 4 card sifting is a little strong for a $2 card.

I don't think I agree here simply because you have to fill your deck with Augurs to get the powerful sifting.  You typically won't be able to afford gaining additional Augurs until your deck is partially setup (and using Augurs to sift your Augurs sounds like a losing game).  Otherwise it's just "+2 Cards" which is a fairly middling $2 effect.

Rabbit
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+2 Cards. You may play a Rabbit from your hand.When you gain this, each other player gains a Coffer.

I love the top effect on a $2 card and like the design a lot, but the bottom text is too good for your opponents. It's a big enough penalty that if there's any other draw cards on the board you should use those instead of rabbit, and if rabbit is the only draw, you're probably better off skipping it. I can make a suggestion: give a villager instead of a coffer. Villagers aren't as dangerous to give to your opponent.

I was rather concerned that Rabbit is too strong, so I put a stronger penalty down there. Might be too much of a penalty, I don't know. Maybe villager is a good take; since horse is there now, that could also be a try. Definitely need to test different versions some day.

I agree with Rhodos here: If Rabbit is the only Action in my deck, it is a Laboratory at $2.  While I agree that giving +Coffers to other players is a bad idea (mostly because of tempo implications in multiplayer games), the Cultist chain effect alone is worth at least $4 to avoid utterly dominating the board.

Diving School
Types: Project
Cost: $2
At the start of your turn, look at the bottom card of your deck. You may place it on top of your deck or discard it.You can't buy this if you have any cards in hand.

This card reminds me of City Gate and Silos, and I think it's a similar power level. The buy restriction does make it more interesting, but it also makes it way more expensive without +Buy. But if you do have +Buy, then the decision to buy this becomes uninteresting again. Haha, I dunno. It's alright, but I think City Gate and Silos covers enough ground in this area.

Without +Buy, this buy restriction makes Diving School effectively cost ~$5, so I think you want to make this into a stronger $3-cost Project to normalize its behavior.  I think there is plenty of room around City Gate and Silos though.  City Gate gives organization and Silos gives sifting while this gives less of both.

Caver
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+2 Cards. If your deck is empty, +$2.

I love the simplicity here and think it's a perfect $2 card to play in an engine. BUT... there's a problem. This card is too good if drawn on turn 4. Getting +2 cards and +$2 on turn 4 can be a strong advantage on certain boards and I believe this overshadows Caver's use elsewhere. Maybe +2 Actions instead of +$2 would work better? That would be similar to Shanty Town in terms of power.

Giving it a non-draw benefit substitutes one issue for another.  The current version chancing into the ~$6 effect of "+2 Cards and +$2" on turn 4 is a big problem, but a version that allows every one of them to be played as "+2 Actions and +$2" so long your deck is randomly empty is a problem its own.  I think this would work better as "+1 Card, +2 Actions; If your deck is empty, +$2" at a cost of $4.

Lady
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+1 Buy, +$1. If you have unused Actions (Actions, not Action cards), +1 Card. Otherwise, +1 Action.

This is a really elegant way to make a $2 market. It seems like a very reasonable design for a $2 card, while not being strictly better than herbalist or CM. This is a very good $2 card design.

Thank you for the recognition.
I will post the next design challenge shortly.

62

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: April 06, 2020, 09:46:10 pm »

Lady
Types: Action
Cost: $2
+1 Buy, +$1. If you have unused Actions (Actions, not Action cards), +1 Card. Otherwise, +1 Action.

A Market-. She always gives you the +1 Buy and +$1, but gives either the +1 Card or the +1 Action based on whether or not you already have the +action to use the Actions you will inevitably draw.  If +buys are your need, Lady can get them to you non-terminally.  If +actions are plentiful, Lady turns them into +card and +$ cheaply.

63

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: March 28, 2020, 05:02:06 pm »

Township
Types: Action
Cost: <8>
+1 Card, +2 Actions, +1 Buy, +$1.In games using this, when you gain a Gold, you may exchange it for a Township.

Tried a couple variations on this concept of "exchange Gold you gain" before I decided that Gold-gainers really suck because you have to gain a buncha stop cards to use them.  This lets you use Gold gainers to gain engine components (quickly in comparison to Changeling) instead of Golds.  You can also buy Township directly for 8 Debt or indirectly for $6 by buying Gold and exchanging it.  It's the marriage of Bazaar and Market.
Mine Silvers into Townships.  Enclave a Duchy and get a Township.  Make a deal with a Leprechaun for the deed to a Township.  Complete a Treasure Map to find a promised land of 4 Townships.  Skulk comes with a Township to wander around.  The Swashbuckler's booty is actually the friends we made along the way.

64

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: March 16, 2020, 05:20:11 pm »

Super late post.  Feel free to disregard.

Consolidate
Types: Action
Cost: $5
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Trash up to 2 of them. If you trash 2 that share a type, gain a card sharing a type with them that is differently named than either of them. Discard any number of the others, and put the rest back in any order.

Trash 2 Estates for a Province, trash Treasures for Golds, or maybe you'll want to trash Copper+Estate to reduce stop cards.
It trashes from the top so it's harder to align cards to get it to behave. It can't gain a card with the same name so you can't drain the Province pile with Province\Estate→Province.  Estate\Consolidate rush looks pretty dodgy in a quick test because Consolidate has to find 2 Estates in the top 4 to trash (and, if contested, there are only 7 Estates per player).

65

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: February 10, 2020, 08:55:31 am »

Threat cards:
At the end of your Clean-Up, you may reveal 1 Threat from your hand to "Threaten" other players during their turns.  When you are threatened, you trigger an effect per the instructions of the Threat card during your turn.  The Threat card remains revealed in the player's hand.  If the card is removed from your hand, its Threat effect no longer applies.

Do threats threaten everyone? I assume they do.

You decide at the end of your Clean-Up if you want to threaten each other player on their turn with 1 Threat card from your hand (even if you have multiple Threat cards in your hand).  All other players are "threatened," but only on their turn.  The only way a Threat stops between turns is if it leaves your hand via some other effect.

This is similar to Duration Attacks, but limited to one-per-player and it doesn't come with all the inherent shuffle-timing implications and design limitations of being a Duration card.

Cloister
Types: Action, Threat
Cost: $2
+2 Actions. You may trash a card from your hand. If you do, set this aside and at the start of Clean-Up put it on top of your deck.When the threatened player trashes a card costing at most $2 this turn, they put it into their discard pile.

Phylactery
Types: Treasure, Threat
Cost: $3
$1, +1 Buy. When you play this, you may put a card from your discard pile on top of your deck.When the threatened player gains a second card this turn, they gain a Copper and a Curse.

Dam
Types: Action, Threat
Cost: $4
+$3. Discard a card. If you do, you may put this on top of your deckWhen the threatened player plays a third Treasure this turn, they discard their hand.

I don't like attacks that can't be blocked. Maybe say in the rules for this mechanic that revealing a threat counts as playing an attack?

This is a kind of silly standard in the first place considering there are 4 cards that block Attacks directly (and the things that do so indirectly interact with Threat cards the same way).  98% of Kingdoms are Kingdoms in which you can't block Attacks.  I'll address the point anyway.  Threats are things you can avoid regardless by not leaning on trashing (Cloister), not gaining many cards at once (Phylactery), and not playing many Treasures (Dam).  This is the design principle of Threat cards: Don't do this thing, or else (compared to cards like Swamp Hag, in which "don't buy any cards" is not often a reasonable solution, Events and Projects notwithstanding).

Another thing: This is something that happens after the clean up phase. When we play IRL, we almost always start our turn when the previous person ends their buy phase (or night phase if applicable). The previous player finishes their clean-up phase while I take my turn. I assume a lot of people do this when playing IRL. In this case, the Threat mechanic would slow the game down a lot by making the other players wait while the current player shuffles and draws a new hand just so they can see if they have a Threat card in their hand. yuk.

Yes, which is why the Threat cards here care about things that don't occur at the start of your turn. Dam and Phylactery largely apply in the Buy phase, while Cloister cares about trashing cheap cards─a thing you typically do at the end of your Action phase.  You could design a Threat card that slows the game down in this way (in much the same way that a Reaction could be designed in this fashion), but these specific cards do not.

Morning Cards
Morning cards are kingdom cards. They can be thought of as temporary projects or artifacts that affect everyone simultaneously.
Morning cards are a Kingdom card; they're playable in your Morning Phase, which happens after the start of your turn but before your Action Phase.
You may play as many Morning cards as you like.
There can only be one Morning card in play at a time.
When a new Morning card is played, any in-play Morning cards are discarded and stop doing things. Morning cards are assumed to have "While this is in play:" at the top of their text.

In order to play a Morning card, I have to draw it at the start of my turn, because if I draw it mid-turn then I can't play it because I'm no longer in my morning phase.  That's pretty bad, especially considering that I would never buy more than one Morning card because there can only be 1 in play (across all players, if I'm understanding correctly).

Each pile of Morning cards has four distinct cards in it; in a 2 player game, use two of each (8 total to the pile); otherwise use three of each (12 total to the pile, like Victory cards). The piles are mixed/shuffled, and all but the top card are kept face-down (like Knights).
...

Dawn Chorus • $3 • Morning - Sunrise
Now and at the start of each players turn, they get +1 Card
Now and at the start of your turn, +1 Action

Dew • $3 • Morning - Sunrise
Now and at the start of each players turn, +$1
Now and at the start of your turn, +1 Buy

Rooster • $3 • Morning - Sunrise
Now and at the start of each players turn, they may discard a card for +1 Card.
Now and at the start of your turn, if the card you discard for this costs $5 or more, +$1

Sunrise • $3 • Morning - Sunrise
Now and at the start of each players turn, +1 Action
Now and at the start of your turn, +1 Buy

Why are you putting four different cards in each Morning pile? There being 2 of each seems like it just adds a major luck-based element.  If Sunrise/Dew is the only way to get +Buys, I have a 4/7 chance that we flip Dawn Chorus/Rooster and then I don't get to have +Buys or else have to eat multiple unplayable Morning cards (because only 1 can be played!) trying to find that source of +Buy.

So how do you compare your number of against other players’? First, this comparison happens IMMEDIATELY when you play a Strength card. Do whatever the card says and then, when you reach the “If most ” part, you do the comparison. Each Strength card in play from any player (most of the time, that’ll only be you) have their added to their total. Then, each player, starting from you and going clockwise, may or may not reveal additional Strength cards from their hand. This number is not limited, players may reveal any number of Strength cards from their hand. If a player does not wish to reveal Strength cards from their hand (for instance, knowing that they cannot beat the active player’s total), then they do not have to do it. All additionally revealed Strength cards have their added to their player's total. The moment another player beats your total, then you fail the “If most ” clause of your card and must perform the “Otherwise” part, if there is any. Your total must be compared again each time you play a Strength card, even in the same turn.

These Strength cards face a similar problem LibraryAdventurer was complaining about above that the design can easily result in cards that force players to wait until other players have finished their Clean-Up to be able to start your turn.  You can get around that by designing only payload cards, but you've already submit 4 cantrips (or pseudo-cantrips) in Pikemen, Strategic Village, Palisade, and Plunderer.

Suddenly, playing cards is fiddlier. There is a thought-process invoked in how you’re going to use that Strength, how much you can have of it, how to best optimise it in your hand, etc. This is especially true for cards of varying strength.

If all the Strength cards I have in play count towards my Strength total, how will playing my Strength cards change my thought process at all?  I still play cards to maximize my hand-size and then am further rewarded for doing this with overbearing Strength cards that my 8-card hand and 3 cards in play will bully out anyone from possibly competing with their 5 random cards.  Is Strength meant to be a resource that is spent, or is Strength a flat value accrued by the Strength cards I have in play and in my hand?  I mean, you write in Strategic Village's blurb:

The other side of the medal is... the more Strategic Villages you play on the same turn, the weaker in terms of they all become.

which patently disagrees with this

Each Strength card in play from any player (most of the time, that’ll only be you) have their added to their total...

Greaves: still cantrip on play, but now acts as a one-turn Lost Arts on the card it equips
Gauntlets: terminal silver on play, with a draw-to-X effect equipping ability
Helm: still a Gold-gainer on play; equipping lets you trash copies of the treasure after you play it to gain cheaper cards (e.g. play your Golds for +$3 then trash them to gain $5s)
Halberd: Smithy with mild discard attack, equip another Attack to add a Copper junking effect
Cuirass: same as before, Market Square on play with Ferry equipping effect

Do you "play" the copy of the card after the Armor is equipped, thereby triggering the Armor's effect? Will Greaves make all my Smithies non-terminal immediately, or do I need to equip a Greaves to a Smithy and then play a second Smithy to get +1 Action?  Either way, Greaves is a slightly worse Lost Arts, but you can stack multiple on your most common card to get multiple +Actions per play.  I'd cost it at $4 at least if not go back to the drawing board.
The "Armor" concepts is thematically weird now, because it is upgrading all copies of a card even though all my Smithies are sharing the same leggings.

Yeah, I didn't think too hard about this one. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

The Carry concept is totally workable, but your cards need to have more niche Carry effects or generally reason to not carry them every turn.

66

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: February 09, 2020, 11:59:23 am »

Threat cards:
At the end of your Clean-Up, you may reveal 1 Threat from your hand to "Threaten" other players during their turns.  When you are threatened, you trigger an effect per the instructions of the Threat card during your turn.  The Threat card remains revealed in the player's hand.  If the card is removed from your hand, its Threat effect no longer applies.

Cloister
Types: Action, Threat
Cost: $2
+2 Actions. You may trash a card from your hand. If you do, set this aside and at the start of Clean-Up put it on top of your deck.When the threatened player trashes a card costing at most $2 this turn, they put it into their discard pile.

Phylactery
Types: Treasure, Threat
Cost: $3
$1, +1 Buy. When you play this, you may put a card from your discard pile on top of your deck.When the threatened player gains a second card this turn, they gain a Copper and a Curse.

Dam
Types: Action, Threat
Cost: $4
+$3. Discard a card. If you do, you may put this on top of your deckWhen the threatened player plays a third Treasure this turn, they discard their hand.

Cloister is a splitter with a trashing ability that lets you keep it every turn.  Its threat disables trashing cheap cards.
Phylactery is a Copper with a Buy that lets you top-deck a thing.  You could top-deck a Threat with it if you wanted.  Its threat discourages players from gaining multiple cards in a turn.
Dam is a sifting terminal payload that can jump on top of your deck.  Its threat requires players to use big Treasures as only 3 can be played.

67

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: February 01, 2020, 07:50:59 am »

(it just flips itself to Sentenced)

Judge Types: Action, Attack Cost: $5 +$3. Each other player who has Sentenced returns it and discards their hand. Each other player who doesn't have Condemned or Sentenced may reveal a hand with no cards costing $5 or more in it. Otherwise, they take Condemned.

Condemned Types: State At the start of your turn, flip this over to Sentenced. Sentenced Types: State When you gain a Victory card or a card costing at most $2, you may return this.

Judge is an Attack that makes other players lose an entire turn!  First it hands out Condemned which becomes Sentenced at the start of their turn (this is to ensure that players have at least one turn with Sentenced before being affected by Judge).  Then the player can get a cheap card or a Victory card, or else run the risk of discarding their hand.

Do note that a player can avoid Condemned by not having a $5 card in hand, so a player who opens with Judge can only Condemn other players with similar $5 openings, and a player who has no hand will necessarily be unaffected.

68

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: January 29, 2020, 07:28:41 am »

Scribe
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+1 Action, +$1. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. The player to your left chooses an Action card from the revealed cards. Discard the rest, then play that card.

The large amount of sifting makes it look more like a Wandering Minstrelish+ than a Bazaar-.  I concur that this would be on the weaker-half of $5-cost cards but is surely too strong in the average case at $4 due to the guaranteed non-terminal nature of it.

Palace Garden
Types: Action, Victory
Cost: $6
2VP
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal an Action. Discard the rest. Play it twice, trash it, and gain a card costing up to $2 more than it.

The order of this is wrong per Distant Lands, Island, Mill, and Nobles: List the Action effect, horizontal rule, and then the Victory value (colors are swapped too).  This ought to follow Procession's lead either skipping Duration cards or trashing them only when they leave play.
The only thing bad about Remodeling Actions is that you don't get to play the Actions, but this plays them twice while Remodeling them, and acts as the perfect intermediary to Remodel your $4 Actions into Palace Gardens that later turn into Provinces.  That. Is. Bonkers.  It would honestly be weaker if it cost $5 (though I'd reduce its Victory points to 1VP).
I think when you originally posted this it had to gain a Victory card and it lost that when you rejiggered the wording.  Was that an intentional omission or am I remembering incorrectly? Only Remodeling into Victory cards would be an improvement, but doesn't change the wild power of Out-of-Hand-Throne Room-$4→Palace Garden to Out-of-Hand-Throne Room-Palace Garden→Province.  If it can only gain Victory cards, I'd still bump this up to $7 just because Palace Gardens→Palace Gardens is ridiculously good.

Sword
Types: Treasure
Cost: $5
When you play this, choose one: +$2; or reveal the top card of your deck, and play it if it's an Action or a Treasure.

I second GendoIkari that choosing between Silver and "Maybe Village" is bad for a $5-cost.  Changing as little as possible would be to make it a $5 Treasure-Vassal (always produce $2, always discard, always play if an Action), but those changes emphasize the card's similarity to Vassal, but without the excitement of the Vassal→Vassal dream.
Thematically it is odd, too, being a weapon that isn't an Attack (unless you mean "Ceremonial Sword").

Machine
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+2 Cards. Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's an Action, play it, otherwise trash it.

"+3 Cards. Trash a bad card," is crazy at $4.  "+3 Cards, +1 Action," is crazy at $4.  "+3 Cards. Trash a good card," is awful at any price.  The pass\fail of this card is too large a gap: It is too powerful to ignore and too random to control, which would cause games to degenerate into the flip of the Machine.

Clown
Types: Action, Attack
Cost: $4
Choose one: +$2; or each other player reveals their deck until they reveals an Action card. Then, you choose one of the revealed Action cards to play, leaving it there. Each other player discards the revealed cards afterwards.

This should probably be a Command card that finds a non-Command card so you don't end up with Clown→Clown→Clown, as unlikely as that might be to occur.  Tracking could also become a headache if it plays Duration cards.
I think these sorts of Attack cards need some way to ensure that it doesn't just pull players closer to their shuffles.  Getting a choice between +$2 and the Attack-and-Command effect seems kind of pointless, as you would never buy Clown if you intended to choose +$2.  I'd either nix the +$2 completely or make the +$2 a choice instead of playing another player's card (the latter of which would make it invalid for the contest).  I also don't like how much stronger it becomes in multiplayer for the added flexibility.

Maester
Types: Action, Command
Cost: $4
Name two differently named non-Command Action cards in the Supply. The player to your left chooses one of them for your to play, leaving it there.

Maester should "Choose two differently named..." instead of "Name two differently named..."
I think that too many Kingdoms will make this too safe.  A lot of Kingdoms have a reasonable 2-card redundancy (choose Journeyman or Embassy) or a spam-friendly card (choose Laboratory or Journeyman) which make Maester an easy throw-away $4 buy which will circumstantially drag the pace of the game down as you're constantly choosing cards that another player also has to choose.  A Potion cost might be a better limiter.

69

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: January 26, 2020, 09:06:29 am »

Retainers
Types: Action
Cost: <4>
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal an Action. Discard the other cards and then play the Action. If it's the first time you've played a copy of that card this turn, +1 Card and +1 Action.

Action-search card.  It costs debt so as to be expensive enough to not load up on them arbitrarily and "cheap" enough to not compete with most of the stuff you want to play with it.  It encourages deck variety because it turns into a Lost City if it finds a unique card. It's like Herald but in reverse, where it always finds a card and only sometimes gives "+1 Card and +1 Action."  Retainers can never proc each other because Retainers→Retainers will never be the first Retainers you've played.

70

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: January 20, 2020, 09:22:53 pm »

Promenade (Action, $6).

You may play an Action card from your hand twice.
You may return one of your Villagers. If you did, play it a third time.
---
When you gain this, +1 Villager.

A Throne Room variant that lets you upgrade to King's Court if you have a Villager to hand.

...
That said, my main issue with Promenade isn't its power level, but that it's too Kingdom dependent. If the Kingdom has no other sources of Villagers, it's too weak IMO, but if the Kingdom has a way of getting large amounts of Villagers, such as Recruiter or Academy, then Promenade becomes practically just a cheap King's Court. It's always going to be broken in one direction or the other, IMO.

Couldn't say it better.

seeked (sook?)

"Sought."

What about if it, rather than going from hand for its target card, was like Rebuild, where it [sought] out the next Victory card in your deck and set it aside? It'd still be terminal. Maybe get rid of the penalty with that since it's going to be more randomized. Feel like that'd be less centralizing than Rebuild. Could be maybe a little swingy in slogs (player A sets aside an Overgrown Estate, player B sets aside a Colony - bad news bears for A) but it wouldn't slow the game down nearly as hard as trying to line up a collision which causes a price increase.

Revising it to

Vista • $5 • Action - Duration - Victory
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Victory card. Set the revealed Victory card aside, face up, under this. If this sets aside a Province or Colony, all other players get +1 Card.
(This stays in play).
-
This is worth % equal to its set-aside card(s).

The hunting Island is definitely more interesting conceptually, but, as you cover, it would render many games far too luck-based, not even in the worst-case. Consider Estate versus Province for a 5VP swing that makes the player lose a $5-cost one-shot while, in a way, reducing the overall VP that is available in the game.  That's pretty miserable compared to Distant Lands.  I think it needs to be worked into something where hitting an Estate is actually a good thing.

Cavern - Treasure Shelter, $1
When you play this, discard 2 Shelters and a Victory card, revealing them. If you d, +1 Buy and double your $ if you haven't yet this turn.

Something more rewarding to build around. Fortune spread across 4 cards I'm hoping is safe on a Shelter? The Victory need is there to stop a $5/$2 opening becoming $5/$4. I could make it need an Action in play if 4 cards is too many.

Thanks for your feedback.

Assuming we are doubling $10 (not too unreasonable for a deck junked up with 3 Shelters and a Province), that turns the 4 cards into $2.5 each, so it's probably still on the weak side.  The +Buy will likely be the deciding factor on whether or not Cavern is worth pursuing, which is fine if that is your intent.

$8 Project
When you buy this, set aside an action card from your hand. Whenever you play a copy of that card from your hand, play it again.

I like the concept.  I also but don't imagine that there are many Kingdoms for which it is not irreparably broken.  $14 would possibly still be too low.

Knight Errant
$5 - Action
+$3. Each player (including you) reveals and discards the top 2 cards of their deck and gains a copy of a card they revealed costing from $3 to $6 that you choose.

This is gonna decimate piles in 4+ player games

Gaining an Action typically decimates its pile.

Jester gives out one card per player who revealed a non-Victory card. Knight Errant has just as high a cap as Jester.

The cap is higher as the player of Knight Errant is affected too: It is not N-1 cards gained, it is straight N cards.  Really though, this will be far more like an Attack that not.  Gaining a Smithy is good.  Gaining 4 Smithies is not so good. And I can think of plenty worse targets that will be commonly swung into since the player of Knight Errant chooses.  I think it will be pretty strong.  I will confirm though that this will speed up 4-player games to an unhealthy degree whenever relevant, which would make me loathe to use the card.

71

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: January 18, 2020, 09:05:05 am »

Provisioner
Types: Action
Cost: $5
You may gain a Silver. For each card in your hand, the player to your left puts a card from your discard pile into your hand.

Doubles your hand from the worst cards in your discard pile (or all of them if you don't have that many).  It also lets you gain a Silver for the cases when you don't have a discard pile or want to slog your deck.

This seems like a card that should be purchased with some debt.  And more expensive maybe?  Maybe 3$ and $3debt?

Can't say why.  Just a feel that it is OP at $5.

Without villages and labs, it's worse than Envoy, and degrading quickly while greening. I would value it $4

You make a convincing case there.  I think you are right.  In one sense, a guaranteed 10 cards is better than.  But I would easily prefer 5 cards of cycling progression to five cards without it.

$4 is right.  But a pretty good card at that price if TFB cards and a village is present.

But not as good as Envoy.

Provisioner's draw becomes big and decent if you have a source of +actions and a way to ensure you have a larger number of cards in hand than useless cards in your discard pile (especially trash Estates, gain mid-turn, and discard productively).  When this occurs, Provisioner's draw is often non-trivial, so the length of its resolution becomes an important consideration in its design.  The draw effect on its own is likely a $4 effect due to how much needs to appear to make it valuable, but I want Provisioner to be a $5 card to reduce the number of times it is gained and played in a game.  In order to make Provisioner's draw worthwhile, I put one of the things it needs onto it: A mid-turn gain.  The form of that mid-turn gain needs to be something that does not add significantly to its resolution speed (Workshop or The Sky's Gift would take too long), so it optionally gains a Silver.  With that gain, its plays become more like Explorer (can't gain Gold) or Sculptor (can't gain non-Silver, doesn't give Villagers), so $5 looks like a fair enough cost─though definitely in the weaker half of $5 cards.

Summer House - Action Shelter, $1
You may play a non-Duration, non-Shelter Action card from your hand twice. If you do, trash this.

Taverna - Night Shelter, $1
Choose a card you have in play that you've gained a copy of this turn. If you do, trash this to gain another copy of it.

Asylum - Action Shelter, $1
Discard 2 Shelters. If you do, +1 Card per card in your hand.

Edit: reworked Summer House so it can't be trashed in the opening. Replaced Wagon with the cleaner Taverna, which also can't be trashed in the opening.

You can still trash Taverna in the opening by turning it into a Copper.  Not sure if that's good or not, but I would just ask to "choose an Action you have in play..." to avoid the issue altogether.
Asylum looks super weak.  I get that the idea is that you have to hold onto Taverna and Summer House so you can get a powerful draw, but fact is that if you can manage to draw all 3 junk Shelters in any kind of consistent way, the not-even-doubling your hand (your hand is reduced by 3 before you get to draw anything) will be a paltry benefit that only clinches a deck that was already going to draw itself anyway.  I cannot imagine a deck that could stomach 3 extra dead-weight cards that it could otherwise trash just for the hope of this benefit.

Harlequin
Types: Action
Cost: $4
You may play a card from your hand three times. If you did, trash it.

Note that it specifies card, not just action, meaning it can be used on any playable card.

This is strictly better than Moneylender (as in, using it on a copper is the same as Moneylender, and this adds additional functionality) and should probably cost more as a result

Seconded.  I'd say it would still be strong at $5 but unhealthy at $6 (as swinging into a strong tempo-trasher on turn 3\4 is typically too luck-based).
I'm also not sure that the rules inherently imply that you can't "play" a Curse or Victory card, it just doesn't have any generic function to do so nor a definition of what would happen if you did.  I think this does need to specify Action or Treasure.  It also should either trash the card when it is discarded or else follow Procession's lead by excluding Duration cards to avoid tracking issues.

Vista • $5 • Action - Victory - Duration
Set a Victory card aside under this, face up.
(This stays in play)
If the card set aside in this way cost $5 or more, cards cost <1> more during your turn.
-
This is worth VP equal to the set-aside card.

This is a riff on an old card from the Throne Room contest, spiralstaircase's Eyre, with the difference being this always works (and sometimes hurts you after the fact) instead of having to try to time it.

Needs to be optional for when it gets played with no Victory cards in your hand.
I was playing around with a similar idea, but the problem is that its power budget gets completely eaten up by setting aside Provinces and then it ends up feeling so similar to a less interesting Island anyway.  The really meaningful difference here is that it makes cards more expensive, but that only occurs so close to the end of the game (other than the fact that it drags out the game's ending more because adding another whole ~36VP to the game is pretty silly) and doing virtually anything else with it seems like such a waste of a one-shot $5 card.

Promenade (Action, $6).

You may play an Action card from your hand twice.
You may return one of your Villagers. If you did, play it a third time.
---
When you gain this, +1 Villager.

A Throne Room variant that lets you upgrade to King's Court if you have a Villager to hand.

...
Yeah. This is just a more-expensive Throne Room that has a stronger effect than Throne Room. I dunno if it's weak at or not, but it seemed weird to use the term "dead" when that generally refers to something like Stables in a hand with no treasure; or when people make fan cards that do almost nothing unless there's an attack available, etc. Even if the card were just literally Throne Room but costing , I wouldn't think to use the term "dead".

Would this work better as a $5? I wasn't sure initially if it should cost $5 or $6; eventually I erred on the side of caution.

I think $6 is an appropriate cost. I'd generally advise against using busted cards like King's Court as a benchmark to balance other cards and comparing this to the $5 Throne variants it seems clearly much stronger than those to me.

A King's Court once that becomes a Throne Room is much stronger than a Throne Room that never misses (Royal Carriage)?  Crown and Scepter are definitely a very marginal benefit on top of Throne Room, but having a one-time upgrade is also not much of one.  I would not vote a $5 price as overwhelming, merely that the way it plays is dully familiar.
I'd personally prefer its playing be limited in some other way and it generate Villagers in some circumstance.  It would make it feel more different than Throne Room and the other Villager cards.

Siege Tower
Types: Action, Attack, Duration
Cost: $4
You may play an Attack card from your hand. If you do, at the start of your next turn, play it again. Otherwise, each other player puts their -1 Card token on their deck.Setup: Add 2 extra Attack Kingdom card piles to the Supply.

I've played with "Play a non-Duration Action from your hand. If it is still in play, at the start of your next turn: Play it again." Even with no limiters it is such a weak effect that it is often best ignored at a cost of $2, because the costs of aligning it with a worthwhile Action and that inherent -1 Card on the first turn is not nearly compensated by the strength of start-of-turn draw.  Siege Tower however is significantly more limited than that.  It should probably Throne Room the Attack now and play it again next turn.
Playing an Attack Duration in an Attack Duration sounds like a tracking headache, and it seems doubly frustrating that Siege Tower is so bad in Siege Tower.  I'd much rather its Attack be something that can stack.  Maybe "+$1 and each other player with at least 4 cards in hand puts a card from their hand on top of their deck"?
I continue to dislike the idea of anything that throws more piles into the Supply simply because that is a design path that doesn't seem to have any meaningful end: We're just going to keep getting bigger and bigger Kingdoms.  That is completely to taste, though, so don't mind me.

72

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: January 16, 2020, 08:27:15 am »

Provisioner
Types: Action
Cost: $5
You may gain a Silver. For each card in your hand, the player to your left puts a card from your discard pile into your hand.

Doubles your hand from the worst cards in your discard pile (or all of them if you don't have that many).  It also lets you gain a Silver for the cases when you don't have a discard pile or want to slog your deck.

73

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: January 12, 2020, 08:15:02 am »

Nouveau Riche
Types: Action
Cost: $5
You may remove a token from your Villager mat to play an Action from your hand three times. Otherwise, you may play an Action from your hand of which you have no copies in play two times for +1 Villager.

HISTORY:
Changed from "You may reveal an Action from your hand. If you have no copies of it in play, +1 Villager. Either way, play it twice, and then you may remove a token from your Villager mat to play it a third time." Realized that's virtually never going to generate Villagers since you'd only keep one so you could consume it with a different play. Now it's a King's Court by eating a Villager or an Impish Throne Room that generates a Villager.

74

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 27, 2019, 11:36:14 pm »

Pioneer
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+1 Action, +$1. Move your +1 Card token to an Action Supply pile. (When you play a card from that pile, you first get +1 Card.) At the start of Clean-Up, remove it from the Supply.

75

Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread

« on: December 23, 2019, 10:07:01 pm »

Gift Exchange
$3 - Action
Starting with the player to your left, each player trashes a card from their hand or a Gold from the supply.
Starting with you, each player may gain a card from the trash.

Question:
The way I want this to work when the Gold pile is empty is: players can still choose the Gold option, and if they do they trash nothing. Is that how you understood it? If not, how can I tweak the wording?

Your wording is correct according to the similar behavior of Tournament.  I've always disliked the wording and would prefer something such as

Code: [Select]

Starting with the player to your left, each player may trash a card from their hand. If they don't, they trash a Gold from the Supply.I don't know how much I like the card, just because it reads to me like a more troublesome Bishop.  The way it provides trashing to all players way will make it similarly irrelevant whenever it appears without other trashers.  When other trashers─and especially trashing Attacks─appear it goes on to be a weak Gold gainer with an uneven gaining power that is strongly bound by turn order.  Bishop at least can be relevant in any end-game by providing a decent trash-for-benefit effect.

Magic Workshop
Types: Action
Cost: $4
Gain a card costing up to $5. Choose a card in the Supply costing at least $3; each other player may gain a copy of it.

the goodwill-to-all aspect breaks in Potions games because no one is going to want to get junked with potions.
You might want to revise the order of these to make it more ... charitable - something like

Choose a card in the Supply costing at least $3; each other player may gain a copy of it. If anyone does, gain a card costing up to $5; otherwise, +1 Action

which keeps it from being a totally dead card in a game with an opponent who is refusing your help.

I could change Magic Workshop to "choose an Action card costing at least $3." That would solve both the Silver and Potion problems, though it would remove the ability to distribute useless alt-VP like Duke and Feodum (which I thought was cool), but that's also probably for the better.

I think anordinaryman spineflu's suggestion is too political and also far too weak; I'd never take a $3 if it meant my opponent got a $5, and the Ruined Village aspect doesn't really help. (At least make it a cantrip, though it could be interesting to make it a Peddler or Lab or something your opponent might want to accept the gift to deny you, but that's still very political in multiplayer.)

Magic Workshop is inherently incredibly political because Player A gets to choose the card that Players B and C can gain.  Helpful cards for each of those players would be different in many circumstances.  Regardless of politics, the ability for other players to gain a Silver in response to me gaining a $5 card does little to nothing to counterbalance the strength of that effect, let alone that there will often be worse options than Silver (like Duchy in the early game).  Frankly, this may as well just read "Gain a card costing up to $5."
While "Choose an Action card in the Supply..." would go a long way to improving the effect, I think that spineflu is ultimately correct to say that the card ought to be throttled by requiring one to select cards other players want.  I would try to make Magic Workshop an unconditional cantrip that then only gives you its powerful Workshop effect when you choose a card another player actually wants.

Christmas - Event $4
Choose to gain a Grinch; or both a Gift and a card costing up to $4. Each other player that has Naughty gains a Lump of Coal; if they don't have Naughty, they gain a Gift.

Naughty - State
When you play an Attack card, take Naughty.

Gift - Action - $4*
+1 Action. Return this to the Gift pile, if you did, gain a card costing up to $4.
(This is not in the Supply.)

Lump of Coal - Action - $0*
Return this to the Lump of Coal pile.
(This is not in the Supply.)

Grinch - Action Attack - $6*
+2 Cards, +1 Action. Each other player with at least 5 cards in hand discards a Gift or reveals a hand with no Gifts. Then, each other player discards down to 4 cards in hand.
(This is not in the Supply.)

All theme aside, Lump of Coal likely renders Attacks automatically impossible to play in Christmas games.  In 2-player games, playing an Attack means that the other player can buy a super-cheap Ball-ish that junks you for the rest of the game.  In multiplayer games, playing an Attack means that players can bury you in Lump of Coal cards for the rest of the game.
There probably needs to be something to prevent Lump of Coal from becoming so oppressive.