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LastFootnote

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Activation Cards
« on: March 03, 2014, 03:54:24 pm »
+30

So I had an idea the other day for a new type of card: Activation. I even wrote a quick blurb:

These cards say “Activation” on the bottom line, i.e. "Action – Activation.” In addition to any effects these cards have when played or while in play, an Activation card has another effect that you can use by spending an Action. During your Action phase, instead of spending an Action to play an Action card from your hand, you may spend an Action to get the activation effect of an Activation card you already have in play.

Activation cards in play that have not yet been activated are not discarded during your Clean-up phase. They stay in play until activated and are discarded from play during the Clean-up phase of that turn.

Activation cards can only be activated once per time they are played. Once activated, they cannot be activated again until they have been removed from play and played again. Even if another card plays a single Activation card more than once, the activation effect can only be used once before the Activation card leaves play. Hence, if an Activation card is played twice by Throne Room, the Throne Room will be discarded from play normally during the Clean-up phase of that turn, whether or not the card it played has been activated.

In order to keep track of which Activation cards have been activated and which ones haven’t, when you play an Activation card from your hand, turn it 90° to the right. When you activate an Activation card, turn it right-side up. During your Clean-up phase, remember to only discard cards from play which are right-side up.

Examples

Patron
Types: Action – Activation
Cost: $2
While this is in play, when another player plays an Attack card, +1 Card then discard a card.

When you activate this, +$4.


Hidden Passage
Types: Action – Activation
Cost: $3
+2 Actions.

When you activate this, discard any number of cards. +$1 per card discarded.


Balcony
Types: Action – Activation
Cost: $5
+1 Card. +1 Action.

When you activate this, you may play an Action card from your hand twice.


Boomtown
Types: Action – Activation
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. +2 Actions. +1 Buy.

When you activate this, discard a card.

« Last Edit: March 03, 2014, 04:03:20 pm by LastFootnote »
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BadAssMutha

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #1 on: March 03, 2014, 04:32:31 pm »
+1

Interesting concept. It's almost like a little Native Village that keeps a single card (with a particular power) that can be retrieved at any time for 1 action. I like that some of the activation powers are good, and some are "bad", but balanced by the on-play effect. When I first saw Boomtown, I wondered why you'd ever want to activate it, but you have to in order to shuffle it back in and get the excellent on-play effect again.

I imagine you'll usually want to use an activation power as soon as possible, so you can play and activate many times. Otherwise, you could run into the Seaside issue where the duration cards get played quite a bit less than other cards, since they're staying out and missing the shuffle.
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Witherweaver

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #2 on: March 03, 2014, 04:43:04 pm »
+1

Tactician+Hidden Passage seems kind of cool.. well, two of each.  Would let you consistently Province for a turn for a bit.
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GeoLib

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #3 on: March 03, 2014, 04:47:09 pm »
+4

This offers some cool design space and I think your examples illustrate that. Patron you deliberately don't activate so you can keep the attack defense. Hidden passage is just an effect that's good to save until later. Balcony does nothing when you play it, but fixes the dead throne room problem. Boomtown (don't we already have a card with that name?) has a penalty so you can't play it as often.

I think one good way to make sure they aren't overpowered is to just subtract 1 action from each and look at the effect + the activation effect, since that's always an option at least.

Patron becomes two terminal silvers in one card. So it takes two actions to play and gives +$4. With the attack defense that actually seems pretty good for $2. Maybe not though.

Hidden Passage becomes a non-terminal secret chamber without the reaction. That seems fine

Balcony becomes TR+1 card. Definitely not OP for $5. The real power is in never having no action to play it on though.

Boomtown becomes +2 cards. +1 action. +1 Buy. Discard a card. So a cycling cantrip +buy. That doesn't seem OP either.

These all seem good.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #4 on: March 03, 2014, 05:54:43 pm »
+3

Very neat concept.  I think it's going to be pretty hard to balance cards with this mechanic, but it would be well worth the effort.  The difficulty is due to how different it is from anything currently in the game.

At first, Patron seems like two terminal silvers with a minor reaction to attacks built in.  Certainly nothing exciting for $2.  However, it's also worth considering its similarity to cards that weaken the current turn in order to strengthen a future turn.  Patron is actually pretty similar to Tactician.  You sacrifice the current turn -- Patron does nothing when you first play it while Tactician tosses your whole hand -- but you get a strong turn later on -- Patron gives you the option for a terminal +$4 every turn after until you use it while Tactician gives you an extra 5 cards and +1 action on the next turn.  The sacrifice is smaller with Patron.  The bonus is debatable.  I think Patron's is weaker than Tactician, especially in terms of potential (Patron is a fixed bonus while Tactician can be huge depending on your deck composition) but it does have a coin token-like flexibility in that you can save it until you want it.  Add to that the optionally permanent reaction (which can stack with multiple Patrons in play, right?)... I do think Patron is worth more than $2.  It seems more powerful to me than just "two terminal silvers".

Hidden Passage is pretty interesting as well.  It actually provides actions which can be used to activate itself.  If you do activate it right away, it's pretty much a non-terminal Secret Chamber, which seems reasonable for $3.  But if you wait before using the activation, it can actually get close to Vault in power.  If you wait until the next turn, you can discard 5 cards instead of just the 4 you'd get from Secret Chamber.  Not quite as good as Vault, which discards 6, but there also isn't any benefit to you opponents.  Moreover, Hidden Passage combos better with other cards because it is non-terminal.  A key difference between Hidden Passage and a non-terminal SC is that you are more easily able to play draw cards before discarding for coin.  You could play Hidden Passage and then Smithy before activating, a trick that wouldn't be possible with a non-terminal SC without some other village support.  I think $3 is still a good price for it, but it is more powerful than it first appears.

I don't have any particular thoughts on Balcony other than the general notion that the ability to save these activation effects for the ideal time makes them more powerful, in the same way that coin tokens are better than virtual coin.

Boomtown is very neat in that the activation is a penalty which must be paid if you ever want to play that card again.  This kind of penalty is really interesting -- you can wait to pay it at a time where it hurts less (in this case, waiting until you have a junk card in hand and actions to spare), but you need to be wary of missing the reshuffle.  I think Boomtown is nice as is, but other cards could have an activation that is even milder than "discard a card".  Even if the activation efffect was entirely neutral, it could still be a penalty in that it uses up an action. 

I think an interesting activation penalty would be "discard your hand and draw 5 new cards".  It is neutral on the surface (minus the action cost), but can be used to your benefit to mulligan a bad hand.  However, waiting on activation can cause the power card to miss the reshuffle, a danger which is made more likely because it draws cards itself.






Anyway, this is a really cool concept.  I'm sure many different things could be done with this.  It opens up a lot of design space without adding a lot of complexity.  Maybe this could be used as the basis for a future community-created fan expansion that has an actual focused theme.  We still gotta finish up the Treasure Chest first though. ;)
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Max Boomtown

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #5 on: March 03, 2014, 06:24:10 pm »
+3

Boomtown
Types: Action – Activation
Cost: $5
+2 Cards. +2 Actions. +1 Buy.

When you activate this, discard a card.

This is a nice take on City's predecessor.
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soulnet

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #6 on: March 03, 2014, 06:42:11 pm »
+1

I think the concept is cool and Boomtown shows why: Everything else on the card is vanilla, and yet the card is interesting enough for me (and apparently others) to doubt to judge its balance.

I think Patron is too powerful. The permanent reaction is really good. Even better for the Attacked than Vault's penalty, for example. The fact that the "Reaction" is mandatory is strange, because it makes reshuffles get totally out of control. I think I would like it better with a "you may" to reduce crazyness, and possibly making it more expensive, or tweaking something else.

Another nice concept could be to put the penalty on the "while this is in play" part:

Mighty Smitty
Action - Activation
+3 Cards
---
When you activate this, +3 Cards.
---
At the start of your turn, if this is in play, discard a card.
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SirPeebles

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #7 on: March 03, 2014, 07:14:14 pm »
+4

I think this is the first new mechanic I've seen on the forums that I've really been excited about.  I would love to see an expansion with an activation theme.
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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #8 on: March 03, 2014, 07:30:09 pm »
+1

I think this is the first new mechanic I've seen on the forums that I've really been excited about.  I would love to see an expansion with an activation theme.

Could not agree with this more. I don't always check the new variants threads these days, but this mechanic seems extremely original and full of potential. Very exciting stuff.
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GeoLib

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #9 on: March 03, 2014, 09:55:24 pm »
+1

At first, Patron seems like two terminal silvers with a minor reaction to attacks built in.  Certainly nothing exciting for $2.  However, it's also worth considering its similarity to cards that weaken the current turn in order to strengthen a future turn.  Patron is actually pretty similar to Tactician.  You sacrifice the current turn -- Patron does nothing when you first play it while Tactician tosses your whole hand -- but you get a strong turn later on -- Patron gives you the option for a terminal +$4 every turn after until you use it while Tactician gives you an extra 5 cards and +1 action on the next turn.  The sacrifice is smaller with Patron.  The bonus is debatable.  I think Patron's is weaker than Tactician, especially in terms of potential (Patron is a fixed bonus while Tactician can be huge depending on your deck composition) but it does have a coin token-like flexibility in that you can save it until you want it.  Add to that the optionally permanent reaction (which can stack with multiple Patrons in play, right?)... I do think Patron is worth more than $2.  It seems more powerful to me than just "two terminal silvers".

I didn't mean to imply that Patron was just two terminal silvers. Rather, it is, at minimum two terminal silvers. I was just doing a quick sanity check on whether these cards were terribly OP by assuming that you activate immediately. Unsurprisingly, none of LF's cards failed this pretty cursory check. I think I agree that it's probably too powerful for $2 though.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #10 on: March 03, 2014, 10:11:35 pm »
+1

At first, Patron seems like two terminal silvers with a minor reaction to attacks built in.  Certainly nothing exciting for $2.  However, it's also worth considering its similarity to cards that weaken the current turn in order to strengthen a future turn.  Patron is actually pretty similar to Tactician.  You sacrifice the current turn -- Patron does nothing when you first play it while Tactician tosses your whole hand -- but you get a strong turn later on -- Patron gives you the option for a terminal +$4 every turn after until you use it while Tactician gives you an extra 5 cards and +1 action on the next turn.  The sacrifice is smaller with Patron.  The bonus is debatable.  I think Patron's is weaker than Tactician, especially in terms of potential (Patron is a fixed bonus while Tactician can be huge depending on your deck composition) but it does have a coin token-like flexibility in that you can save it until you want it.  Add to that the optionally permanent reaction (which can stack with multiple Patrons in play, right?)... I do think Patron is worth more than $2.  It seems more powerful to me than just "two terminal silvers".

I didn't mean to imply that Patron was just two terminal silvers. Rather, it is, at minimum two terminal silvers. I was just doing a quick sanity check on whether these cards were terribly OP by assuming that you activate immediately. Unsurprisingly, none of LF's cards failed this pretty cursory check. I think I agree that it's probably too powerful for $2 though.

Wasn't criticizing your analysis/sanity-check!  It's definitely a good method for the initial look at the cards' effects.  My post was written as my thoughts just on LF's concepts, not on the comments made by you or others. 
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GeoLib

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #11 on: March 03, 2014, 10:45:15 pm »
+2

At first, Patron seems like two terminal silvers with a minor reaction to attacks built in.  Certainly nothing exciting for $2.  However, it's also worth considering its similarity to cards that weaken the current turn in order to strengthen a future turn.  Patron is actually pretty similar to Tactician.  You sacrifice the current turn -- Patron does nothing when you first play it while Tactician tosses your whole hand -- but you get a strong turn later on -- Patron gives you the option for a terminal +$4 every turn after until you use it while Tactician gives you an extra 5 cards and +1 action on the next turn.  The sacrifice is smaller with Patron.  The bonus is debatable.  I think Patron's is weaker than Tactician, especially in terms of potential (Patron is a fixed bonus while Tactician can be huge depending on your deck composition) but it does have a coin token-like flexibility in that you can save it until you want it.  Add to that the optionally permanent reaction (which can stack with multiple Patrons in play, right?)... I do think Patron is worth more than $2.  It seems more powerful to me than just "two terminal silvers".

I didn't mean to imply that Patron was just two terminal silvers. Rather, it is, at minimum two terminal silvers. I was just doing a quick sanity check on whether these cards were terribly OP by assuming that you activate immediately. Unsurprisingly, none of LF's cards failed this pretty cursory check. I think I agree that it's probably too powerful for $2 though.

Wasn't criticizing your analysis/sanity-check!  It's definitely a good method for the initial look at the cards' effects.  My post was written as my thoughts just on LF's concepts, not on the comments made by you or others.

I didn't feel criticized. Just wanted to make sure that my meaning was clear :)
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Co0kieL0rd

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #12 on: March 04, 2014, 10:22:52 am »
+1

The Activation card type is a really cool idea. Patron would need some clarification, though.
Patron
Types: Action – Activation
Cost: $2
While this is in play, when another player plays an Attack card, +1 Card then discard a card.

When you activate this, +$4.
The text above the dash needs to be reworded to avoid confusion - unless you want the player to be able to cycle through their deck as often as they want. If this should only happen once per attack or turn, make it clear this is a rule to this card. Or have the player discard it upon using its reaction ability. Furthermore, I think +$4 is a little too much for a $2-card. +$3 seems more accurate.

The other cards could be tweaked a little as well. There have already been made good suggestions to that here. But overall, a very interesting concept for Dominion that might potentially be the theme of a whole set. I might think of some Activation cards on my own and credit you for it ;)
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SirPeebles

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #13 on: March 04, 2014, 10:32:24 am »
+3

I don't think that clarification needs to be on Patron.  It is the same as lots of effects, like when-gain, when-buy, when-trash, etc.  I imagine that you are comparing it with reactions, but there the rule book states you may reveal multiple times.
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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #14 on: March 04, 2014, 11:56:13 am »
0

I don't think that clarification needs to be on Patron.  It is the same as lots of effects, like when-gain, when-buy, when-trash, etc.  I imagine that you are comparing it with reactions, but there the rule book states you may reveal multiple times.
You can reveal Moat, Secret Chamber or Trader to the same action as often as you want but the outcome will always be the same. Now think why this isn't the case with Beggar (your own avatar) - in order to gain two Silvers, you have to discard it. Otherwise you could reveal it infinitely and gain all the Silvers from the supply. It's the same principle with Patron; with no restriction clause, you could cycle through your deck when a single card is played. The trivia part of the wiki article on Outpost (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Outpost) is a good example of how much thought Donald X. sometimes has to put on the correct wording of a card to avoid open questions and prevent abuse of a card's abilities.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2014, 11:57:28 am by Co0kieL0rd »
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Witherweaver

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #15 on: March 04, 2014, 12:01:17 pm »
+3

I don't think that clarification needs to be on Patron.  It is the same as lots of effects, like when-gain, when-buy, when-trash, etc.  I imagine that you are comparing it with reactions, but there the rule book states you may reveal multiple times.
You can reveal Moat, Secret Chamber or Trader to the same action as often as you want but the outcome will always be the same. Now think why this isn't the case with Beggar (your own avatar) - in order to gain two Silvers, you have to discard it. Otherwise you could reveal it infinitely and gain all the Silvers from the supply. It's the same principle with Patron; with no restriction clause, you could cycle through your deck when a single card is played. The trivia part of the wiki article on Outpost (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Outpost) is a good example of how much thought Donald X. sometimes has to put on the correct wording of a card to avoid open questions and prevent abuse of a card's abilities.

I think Peebles was referring to, e.g.,

Haggler:

"While this is in play, when you buy a card, gain a card costing less than it that is not a victory card."

You wouldn't argue that you can empty out a pile by initiating Hagglers "reaction" many times.
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soulnet

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #16 on: March 04, 2014, 12:40:45 pm »
+1

I think Peebles was referring to, e.g.,

Haggler:

"While this is in play, when you buy a card, gain a card costing less than it that is not a victory card."

You wouldn't argue that you can empty out a pile by initiating Hagglers "reaction" many times.

This. You are confusing the interpretation of Patron's text. Outpost is there to avoid stacking with more copies of itself, not because you could use a single Outpost to have an unbounded number of turns. Possession does not have such clause and you cannot use a single play of a single Possession to possess an arbitrary large number of your opponent's turns.

In this case, several copies of Patron in play would let you draw and discard several cards, the same as several copies of Beggar would give you several Silvers as Reaction to Attacks or several Horse Traders can be set aside and give you extra cards when reacting to the same Attack. Each copy of Patron will only let you sift one card per Attack.

Maybe you were referring to Patron's "reacting" to several Attacks with a single card. That is in fact what happens, but it is the same as Secret Chamber, Lighthouse, Moat and Trader.

The point is, as is, the Patron's text "only" sifts one card per copy of Patron in play and per Attack an opponent plays.
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soulnet

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #17 on: March 04, 2014, 12:46:18 pm »
+1

With activations, there is a new notion of "semi-non-terminal" or even "semi-village". You could have clauses like "You may choose an Activation in play and activate it." which is like a limited "+1 Action". You can also have a TR for Activations, although it is hard to make it work without ensuring other Activations:
 
$4 - Cortege
Action - Activation
You may play an Action card from your hand twice.
---
When you activate this, you may choose an Activation card from play and activate it twice.

Maybe something better would be if it worked better on itself.


$4 - Cortege
Action - Activation
You may choose an Activation card from play and activate it twice.
---
You may play an Action card from your hand twice.

or

$5 - Cortege
Action - Activation
You may play an Action card from your hand twice. You may choose an Activation card from play and activate it twice.
---
When you activate this, +$1.
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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #18 on: March 04, 2014, 01:53:57 pm »
+3

Thanks a lot for all the encouraging words, everyone! I'm glad you like the mechanic.

Hidden Passage is pretty interesting as well.  It actually provides actions which can be used to activate itself.  If you do activate it right away, it's pretty much a non-terminal Secret Chamber, which seems reasonable for $3.  But if you wait before using the activation, it can actually get close to Vault in power.  If you wait until the next turn, you can discard 5 cards instead of just the 4 you'd get from Secret Chamber.  Not quite as good as Vault, which discards 6, but there also isn't any benefit to you opponents.  Moreover, Hidden Passage combos better with other cards because it is non-terminal.  A key difference between Hidden Passage and a non-terminal SC is that you are more easily able to play draw cards before discarding for coin.  You could play Hidden Passage and then Smithy before activating, a trick that wouldn't be possible with a non-terminal SC without some other village support.  I think $3 is still a good price for it, but it is more powerful than it first appears.

I am incredibly pleased that you 100% nailed the concept of the card, including the "Play Hidden Passage, play Smithy, activate Hidden Passage" combo.

Boomtown is very neat in that the activation is a penalty which must be paid if you ever want to play that card again.  This kind of penalty is really interesting -- you can wait to pay it at a time where it hurts less (in this case, waiting until you have a junk card in hand and actions to spare), but you need to be wary of missing the reshuffle.  I think Boomtown is nice as is, but other cards could have an activation that is even milder than "discard a card".  Even if the activation efffect was entirely neutral, it could still be a penalty in that it uses up an action.

Funny enough, I was considering this for Boomtown. Right before I posted this thread, I had penciled in "something weak" for its activation effect. I thought about just +1 Card or +1 Buy, etc. Then I thought of just, "When you activate this, do nothing." But then I (luckily) did GeoLib's sanity check and realized that would make it strictly better than Lab at $5. So I posted the version you see above.

I think an interesting activation penalty would be "discard your hand and draw 5 new cards".  It is neutral on the surface (minus the action cost), but can be used to your benefit to mulligan a bad hand.  However, waiting on activation can cause the power card to miss the reshuffle, a danger which is made more likely because it draws cards itself.

Huh. I would consider that to be a bonus way more often than a penalty, although the lack of +1 Action somewhat limits its usefulness. I am definitely interested in making a card with a mulligan effect. The problem is making it not suck when you don't want to mulligan. At one point I was considering this card:

Quote
Corridor
Types: Action
Cost: $3
+1 Action. +$1. Look at a card from your deck per card in your hand. Either discard those cards or discard your hand and put them into your hand.

I never actually printed it for testing, though. Knowing what I know now, it would be a bear to resolve with larger hand sizes. Right now I have Terrace in Enterprise:

Quote
Terrace
Types: Action
Cost: $4
+1 Card. +2 Actions. You may spend a Trade token. If you do, discard your hand and +5 Cards.

When you gain this, take a Trade token.

It's working out great so far, so I already have one good mulligan card. I really the idea of an Activation mulligan, though. It ensures that you have it when you need it, like Balcony does for playing a card twice. Chances are that if I make such a card, it will be different enough from Terrace that I can do both.

As for Patron being worth more than $2, perhaps that's true. I take that criticism with a grain of salt, though. Often it seems that any $2 card worth buying seems "too powerful for $2" to most people. There's this perception that $2 cards need to be weak, but that's a fallacy. Cards that are weak ideally don't get published at all. In playtesting, they don't get bought.

Anyhow, the upshot is that I'll probably test it at $2 first and keep an open mind. Either I am overestimating or several others are underestimating how harsh having a double-terminal is. Really I think it'll come down to how useful it is to just leave them in play until game end. I'm hoping that the +$4 will be enough to entice players to sometimes activate them even in the face of Attacks being played.

In other news, I've been trying to come up with a good Activation Attack. The challenge is that, ideally, the attack effect should be blockable with Moat, etc. So I'd rather not do a card where the attack itself is on the Activation portion. Here's an idea that uses an ancillary Activation card (because I'm a big proponent of Attack cards using ancillary cards).

Quote
Cannoneer
Types: Action – Attack
Cost: $4
+1 Action. Activate all your deactivated Cannons. For each one, each other player trashes the top card of his deck and gains a cheaper card that shares a type with it. If he didn't, he gains a Curse.

When you gain this, gain a Cannon.

Cannon
Types: Action – Activation
Cost: $0*
+2 Cards.

When you activate this, +1 Card. (This is not in the Supply.)

Maybe a bit wordy. Still, seems promising as a mechanic.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2014, 03:54:59 pm by LastFootnote »
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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #19 on: March 04, 2014, 02:31:30 pm »
+1

Ha, cannon is a cool idea thematically.  Lay out a bunch of cannons and then light them all in one big go.  Of course, you have to get a cannoneer to get each cannon, and setting them all up would take a while, so it wouldn't work like that in practice. 

But I like to imagine it.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #20 on: March 04, 2014, 03:38:36 pm »
0

Ha, cannon is a cool idea thematically.  Lay out a bunch of cannons and then light them all in one big go.  Of course, you have to get a cannoneer to get each cannon, and setting them all up would take a while, so it wouldn't work like that in practice. 

But I like to imagine it.

Yeah, you've got the general thematic idea. On some boards, you could remodel a bunch of your Cannoneers and then just have one firing off your Cannons. The issue is that both Cannoneers and Cannons can be trashed by opponents' Cannoneers. If you have multiple Cannoneers and some get trashed, woohoo! If your Cannons get trashed instead, d'awww. I could change the Attack such that Cannoneers could only trash cards costing from $3 to $6, I suppose. If I did so, I'd probably change it from downgrading to pure trashing.

On the other hand, I could change Cannon's cost to $5*, allowing you to gain another Cannoneer when a Cannon gets trashed.

EDIT: On the other other hand, the fact that Cannons are spending more time in play means they're less likely to get trashed anyway.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2014, 03:40:42 pm by LastFootnote »
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eHalcyon

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #21 on: March 04, 2014, 04:26:39 pm »
+1

I don't think that clarification needs to be on Patron.  It is the same as lots of effects, like when-gain, when-buy, when-trash, etc.  I imagine that you are comparing it with reactions, but there the rule book states you may reveal multiple times.
You can reveal Moat, Secret Chamber or Trader to the same action as often as you want but the outcome will always be the same. Now think why this isn't the case with Beggar (your own avatar) - in order to gain two Silvers, you have to discard it. Otherwise you could reveal it infinitely and gain all the Silvers from the supply. It's the same principle with Patron; with no restriction clause, you could cycle through your deck when a single card is played. The trivia part of the wiki article on Outpost (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Outpost) is a good example of how much thought Donald X. sometimes has to put on the correct wording of a card to avoid open questions and prevent abuse of a card's abilities.

People have responded to this and even provided counter-examples like Haggler, but I don't think it's been spelled out explicitly.  The reason why Patron is not problematic is that it is NOT a Reaction.  Reactions can be revealed multiple times but are idempotent (or else they discard themselves or set themselves aside or something), but conditional "while in play" effects do not trigger repeatedly.  "While in play" effects can resemble reactions (Lighthouse protects like Moat; cards like Haggler and Goons are triggered by events that might also trigger reactions) but they are distinct.


In other news, I've been trying to come up with a good Activation Attack. The challenge is that, ideally, the attack effect should be blockable with Moat, etc. So I'd rather not do a card where the attack itself is on the Activation portion.

Perhaps not the best idea, but an option is to have an activation along the lines of:

When you activate this, each other player discards down to 3 cards in his hand.  (Treat this activation as an attack being played.)

If the primary action is not attack-y at all, then the attack type could be left off the card.  I'm not sure if this would create any weird situations though.  Right now, the weirdest thing I can come up with is that Squire would be unable to gain this card because it isn't normally an Attack.

Mighty Smitty
Action - Activation
+3 Cards
---
When you activate this, +3 Cards.
---
At the start of your turn, if this is in play, discard a card.

I missed this idea earlier.  Even without the penalty, it's interesting to consider how it's different from a regular Smithy.  Or, perhaps it would be more relevant to consider how it's different from TWO regular Smithy cards. 

If you buy one Smithy, you get to play one Smithy per shuffle.  But if you buy Mighty Smithy, you get TWO Smithy plays per shuffle.  In a case like this, the Activation is giving you a lot more bang for your buy.  Another positive is that there is no risk of terminal collision with Mighty Smithy.  And of course, there is the "wait until the right time" aspect that adds some power to all activation cards.

With all that in mind, how much would Mighty Smithy have to cost?  It's arguably better than two individual Smithy cards, which would cost a total of $8 and 2 Buys.  However, you could buy each Smithy on a separate turn whereas you need to pony up the full cost for Mighty Smithy up front.  Right now I'm thinking it should be $6 or $7.

Note that the above is without considering the start of turn penalty, which is an interesting exercise.  With the penalty, it is only equivalent to double Smithy if you have village support.  If you wait until the next turn to activate it, the second play is Moat with a bit of filtering.  It hurts even more if you wait longer.  The start-of-turn penalty is interesting because it disincentivizes waiting for the best time, instead putting pressure on you to use it sooner rather than later.

All in all, this is another neat thing to do with the activation mechanic.  My biggest concern here is how ugly it is to have two lines on a card.  Unfortunately, this may be a necessary evil. :P
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LastFootnote

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #22 on: March 04, 2014, 04:34:17 pm »
0

All in all, this is another neat thing to do with the activation mechanic.  My biggest concern here is how ugly it is to have two lines on a card.  Unfortunately, this may be a necessary evil. :P

"When you play or activate this, +3 Cards." Boom, no need for a second line. Which is good, because I will personally never make a card with two dividing lines.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #23 on: March 04, 2014, 04:49:21 pm »
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All in all, this is another neat thing to do with the activation mechanic.  My biggest concern here is how ugly it is to have two lines on a card.  Unfortunately, this may be a necessary evil. :P

"When you play or activate this, +3 Cards." Boom, no need for a second line. Which is good, because I will personally never make a card with two dividing lines.

OK, but what if you want a while-in-play or start-of-turn effect but don't want the activation to be the same as the on-play, e.g. +2 Cards initially, +4 cards on activation?  I guess that just has to summarily ruled out?
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Re: Activation Cards
« Reply #24 on: March 04, 2014, 05:20:25 pm »
+2

Perhaps not the best idea, but an option is to have an activation along the lines of:

When you activate this, each other player discards down to 3 cards in his hand.  (Treat this activation as an attack being played.)
Or you could play a card from a non-supply pile, like Spoils.

EDIT: This could be used for a card that gives +1 action and makes the opponents reveal their hands on play and has a hand attack on activation, that would be pretty cool. If they currently have a hand that you want to attack, you can activate it immediately, or you can wait for next turn when they possibly have a better hand.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2014, 05:23:25 pm by Awaclus »
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Bomb, Cannon, and many of the Gunpowder cards can strongly effect gameplay, particularly in a destructive way

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