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[rinkworks]

I have a card that I think is a $5, but what do you think?

Hunter
$? - Action
+1 Action
Discard a card.
Do this twice:  Look at the top card of your deck and choose one: Put it in your hand; or discard it and +1 Card.

If you do the math, you will see that you wind up with exactly the number of cards and actions you started with.  So it's a cantrip, I guess you'd say.  What it offers, however, is a way to improve the current hand.  So it's like a Cellar that doesn't shrink your hand-size (which is a pretty big deal).  Or a Spice Merchant that doesn't trash?  But the degree of hand-improvement tends to be very good.

Basically, you get rid of two cards -- the weakest card in your hand, and the Hunter itself -- and replace each with a card that is probably better than the average card in your deck.  I've not done nearly enough testing with this yet, but I have played it in a real 2p game, and it seemed to be a pretty good card.

The inspiration for this came from the dealing rules for 2-player Spades:  in drawing his hand, each player looks at the next card in the deck and decides whether to keep it and throw the next one away, or throw it away and take the next one.  This is less sure than simply looking at the next two cards and picking the best one, but it's a whole lot better than just taking the next card, whatever it may be (as Cellar requires).  Anyway, I really liked that particular game mechanic and thought I'd like to make a Dominion card that uses it.

Thing is, it probably needs to be done twice to be interesting.  (I suppose you could use it once in a $4 Village-with-a-bonus, too).  But then you'd get a strictly-superior Laboratory, so I weakened the card by mandating a discard at the outset.  That's a pretty severe penalty, maybe.

Anyway, I'll be doing more testing soon, but I thought I'd solicit opinions here, too.

Anyway, thoughts?

[Deadlock39]

Seems interesting, and $5 sounds like a good place to test it.  It's personal preference, but I would word it more like Spy. (Look at the top card of your deck and either discard it or put it back.  +1 Card.)

I also like the idea of a $4 Village quite a bit.  It could just be +2 Actions, then Spy, then +1 card.  Its like a Spy but you trade Spying your opponent for the extra action and getting to draw your card after the Spy instead of before.

[rrenaud]

It seems basically like cartographer, where it has a little bit less control of the 'future hand', traded for a bit more control of the 'current hand'.

[play2draw]

This card is essentially a Warehouse with significantly less control over your deck. I suspect that I'd often prefer one Warehouse to this if I'm looking to sift through my deck to find certain cards. The only reason to get this card above Warehouse is that it does not reduce the size of your final hand. Initially that made me think you'd want many of these, but the penalty of having to discard before drawing (and then still potentially drawing junk) is much too significant to make this a viable option.

It's also very similar to Inn, except Inn provides +2 actions, while Hunter forces a discard before drawing and allows you to grab, potentially, 2 better cards than what Inn might have drawn (and at the end you have 5 cards instead of 4). I suspect Inn is, in most situations, superior (and Inn is probably only a $5 card because of its buy effect).

I'd say it should be priced, at $3 or $4 max.

[WanderingWinder]

Best comparison I can think would probably be cartographer. This would be a weak 5, I'd probably put it at 4, where it's probably quite good but not game-breakingly so.

[rinkworks]

The extra card over Warehouse is a pretty big deal.  Laboratory, after all, is only one card better than a vanilla cantrip.  But I see what you're saying.  Maybe if the discard were moved to the end, it would be a better fit for the $5 tier.  I hadn't even thought of the Cartographer comparison, and -- though there are still some significant differences -- I suspect Cartographer is almost always superior.

I'll try it out at $4, and if it's too strong there, I'll look into changing the functionality around in some way.  Thanks, all!

[LastFootnote]

Hmm, I think you'd have to test it at both $4 and $5. My concern at $4 is that there are very few situations in which you would not want to buy it, and buy many of it. It strikes me as much better than Spy in most scenarios. Perhaps if it's not quite powerful enough for $5, you could tweak it slightly so that it is?
Alternatively, you could do this:

Hunter
$2 - Action
+1 Action. Look at the top card of your deck and choose one: Put it in your hand; or discard it and +1 Card.