Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[spiralstaircase]

Wartorn Province
$5 - Victory
Worth 6 VP
Wartorn Province counts as a Province. (the Wartorn Province pile does not count as a Province pile)
----
At the end of the game, trash a victory card.


The idea here is that it's a cheap but high-value card that slows you down by forcing you to keep another VP card around.  I'm trying to develop the 'at the end of a game' as a mini-theme; this is the least problematic card with that wording.  The 'counts as a province' part is there to give it a few more interactions.

[Awaclus]

There are some issues.

What does "counts as a Province" mean? If I trash this with Apprentice, do I draw 5 or 8 cards? If I play Menagerie with this and a Province in hand, do I draw 1 or 3 cards? If my opponent names Province for my Contraband, can I still buy a Wartorn Province? Also, it's crazy with Tournament, which is already arguably the strongest card in the game.

Also, sometimes you are forced to keep another VP card around anyway, namely when it's an Estate game and there is no trashing. In those situations, this is not very interesting, as it is just a plain $5 Victory card worth 5VP.

The trashing clause should also specify where you're trashing the Victory card from, because it's probably not intended that you can trash it from your opponent's deck or from the supply.

[LastFootnote]

Welcome to the forums!

I think the idea has promise. I would remove the part about counting as a Province. It feels tacked on and only matters for a few specific cards (Explorer, Tournament, Fool's Gold, etc.). And maybe rename it (Battlefield? Wartorn Something-Else?).

I disagree with Awaclus on a few points. Yes, it's better when you can't trash your Estates, but I think that's fine. In games where you can trash your Estates, do you do so and buy some back later, or do you not trash them? Even in games where you can't trash your Estates, you might buy more Estates. So I think it might still be interesting.

I'm not sure further clarification is needed on the below-line part. You could add, "from your deck". But the rulebook is still going to cover common-sense stuff, like the fact that you trash those cards before counting up your score. ACTUALLY, you may want to change it to say, "Remove a Victory card from your deck" so as not to trigger Feodum's on-trash ability, which would probably cause confusion.

Cool card!

[GendoIkari]

If "Counts as a Province" is meant the way that I think of it, then it has no effect except for comboing with Tournament, Fool's Gold, and Explorer. Those aren't good reasons to add that clause.

As for the rest, it's probably just way too good... too easy to just buy this and an Estate, or just this if you still have Estates. It does make deck-tracking a little more important I suppose.

[LastFootnote]

As for the rest, it's probably just way too good... too easy to just buy this and an Estate, or just this if you still have Estates. It does make deck-tracking a little more important I suppose.

I don't know. 6VP spread over 2 cards for $7 and 2 buys seems like it could be fine. In fact I'd say it's super-weak except for the fact that you (usually) start with 3 Estates in your deck.

[jonts26]

Yeah as is, it sounds really strong. In no trashing games, you're getting a 5vp card for $5. And in engine type games you can just rebuy your estates near end game and you still get a 5vp card for $5. I think you need to limit how reliably you can actually get that value. Maybe if it trashes either two estates or one of any other victory card?

[LastFootnote]

Yeah as is, it sounds really strong. In no trashing games, you're getting a 5vp card for $5. And in engine type games you can just rebuy your estates near end game and you still get a 5vp card for $5. I think you need to limit how reliably you can actually get that value. Maybe if it trashes either two estates or one of any other victory card?

If it is too strong, I would suggest bumping it down to 5 VP before adding more complex clauses. Or maybe bumping the price up to $6. If the "counts as a Province" clause is removed, the card has the advantage of being super-simple.

[jonts26]

Well the issue is, for many boards, this card is just a duchy replacement. So that's really uninteresting. But the trash a vp at the end of the game mechanic seems like it has a lot of potential to add strategic endgame play. If it needs a bit more complexity to do that, I think it's worth it.

[LastFootnote]

Well the issue is, for many boards, this card is just a duchy replacement. So that's really uninteresting. But the trash a vp at the end of the game mechanic seems like it has a lot of potential to add strategic endgame play. If it needs a bit more complexity to do that, I think it's worth it.

Sure. I'm just saying, try the simple fixes before the more complex ones. Do you think it would be better with either 5 VP or a $6 cost?

[jonts26]

Well the issue is, for many boards, this card is just a duchy replacement. So that's really uninteresting. But the trash a vp at the end of the game mechanic seems like it has a lot of potential to add strategic endgame play. If it needs a bit more complexity to do that, I think it's worth it.

Sure. I'm just saying, try the simple fixes before the more complex ones. Do you think it would be better with either 5 VP or a $6 cost?

No. It doesn't fix the just a better duchy problem. At 5vp its still net 4vp for the first 3. At $6 it's just buy this instead of duchy if you get $6 instead of $5. $6 also makes it a lot worse since in engines you'd need to spend $8 and two buys for a worse card than province.

[LastFootnote]

Well the issue is, for many boards, this card is just a duchy replacement. So that's really uninteresting. But the trash a vp at the end of the game mechanic seems like it has a lot of potential to add strategic endgame play. If it needs a bit more complexity to do that, I think it's worth it.

Sure. I'm just saying, try the simple fixes before the more complex ones. Do you think it would be better with either 5 VP or a $6 cost?

No. It doesn't fix the just a better duchy problem. At 5vp its still net 4vp for the first 3. At $6 it's just buy this instead of duchy if you get $6 instead of $5. $6 also makes it a lot worse since in engines you'd need to spend $8 and two buys for a worse card than province.

I don't buy that it has a "better than Duchy" problem. It necessitates keeping your Estates, which Duchy doesn't. It makes you want to buy additional Estates, which Duchy doesn't.

[Awaclus]

As for the rest, it's probably just way too good... too easy to just buy this and an Estate, or just this if you still have Estates. It does make deck-tracking a little more important I suppose.

I'm pretty sure it isn't too strong if you have to buy the Estates. It's worse than a Province since it's two junk cards, so it makes sense that it's cheaper, too. Often, you can get similar effect with Gardens or Silk Road, for just $1 more. Piles aside, it's strictly better than double Duchy, but it's not a big deal since having to buy double Duchy sucks anyway.

What about making it an Action-Victory that trashes a card from your hand on-play? That would kind of solve the problem with the lack of Estate trashing, plus it would be amusing when it's bought mostly just for that effect.

EDIT: Without trashing, it definitely is better than Duchy. Maybe it's not a problem, but usually there is no reason to buy a Duchy if you have more Estates in your deck than Wartorn Provinces, and if you start with three Estates you can't get rid of, then there just is no reason to buy a Duchy at all until you have three Wartorn Provinces. How often do you buy more Duchies than that anyway if there isn't any trashing?

[LastFootnote]

What about making it an Action-Victory that trashes a card from your hand on-play? That would kind of solve the problem with the lack of Estate trashing, plus it would be amusing when it's bought mostly just for that effect.

In addition to not fitting with the rest of the card, I think adding that might require two dividing lines, which isn't great. Maybe the VP part and the endgame trashing don't need a line between them, but I think they do.

[silverspawn]

I agree with LFN that it shouldn't have the "counts as a Province" part, and I agree with awaclus that it should specify where you trash from

I'm not sure how interesting it is, but how about this version?

Battlefield - Victory - 5$
6 VP. Trash a Victory card from your deck at the end of the game.
--
In games using this, you can't gain duchies.

if the top part doesn't work without a dividing line, you could also do

Battlefield - Victory - 5$
6 VP.
--
And the end of the game, trash a victory card from your deck for every copy of Battlefield in your deck. You can't gain duchies in games using this.

[LastFootnote]

At $6 it's just buy this instead of duchy if you get $6 instead of $5.

This is just nonsense. "At $5, you just buy Duchy over Estate if you get $5 instead of $2." If it's almost always better than Duchy, $6 is a fine cost. $5 ≠ $6. Just look at Fairgrounds.

[jonts26]

Well the issue is, for many boards, this card is just a duchy replacement. So that's really uninteresting. But the trash a vp at the end of the game mechanic seems like it has a lot of potential to add strategic endgame play. If it needs a bit more complexity to do that, I think it's worth it.

Sure. I'm just saying, try the simple fixes before the more complex ones. Do you think it would be better with either 5 VP or a $6 cost?

No. It doesn't fix the just a better duchy problem. At 5vp its still net 4vp for the first 3. At $6 it's just buy this instead of duchy if you get $6 instead of $5. $6 also makes it a lot worse since in engines you'd need to spend $8 and two buys for a worse card than province.

I don't buy that it has a "better than Duchy" problem. It necessitates keeping your Estates, which Duchy doesn't. It makes you want to buy additional Estates, which Duchy doesn't.

In games where you can't or don't trash your estates, it's just a better duchy and you only buy it when you would buy a duchy anyway (up to 3). In games where you get rid of your estates it's just either a worse province/better duchy when you can get estates to go with it, or it's not something you'd ever buy if you can't. It might give some small strategic advantage if you time some nice estate buys, but that's not enough for me. I think the idea has a lot of potential to allow for fun or creative play, but not as currently stated. 

[Awaclus]

What about making it an Action-Victory that trashes a card from your hand on-play? That would kind of solve the problem with the lack of Estate trashing, plus it would be amusing when it's bought mostly just for that effect.

In addition to not fitting with the rest of the card, I think adding that might require two dividing lines, which isn't great. Maybe the VP part and the endgame trashing don't need a line between them, but I think they do.

Why wouldn't it fit with the rest of the card? It already trashes cards.

But yeah, it would require two dividing lines, since the endgame trashing needs to happen before the VP. I don't think that two dividing lines would be a huge problem though, since Hermit and Urchin are already worse than that and they're just fine.

[jonts26]

At $6 it's just buy this instead of duchy if you get $6 instead of $5.

This is just nonsense. "At $5, you just buy Duchy over Estate if you get $5 instead of $2." If it's almost always better than Duchy, $6 is a fine cost. $5 ≠ $6. Just look at Fairgrounds.

Duchy and estate aren't kingdom cards. The game has three tiers of VP cards in province/duchy/estate. I guess you could argue that the game would be better with a 4th tier, but I think you need more to it, at least on a decent fraction of boards, to justify. And hey, you give a great example in Fairgrounds. It's sometimes just that 4th tier at $6. Which isn't so interesting, but it's usually not just that. And sometimes it's a lot more, and in those situations it usually requires some extra endgame play in trying to hit 10 or 15 or 20 unique cards.

[LastFootnote]

Duchy and estate aren't kingdom cards. The game has three tiers of VP cards in province/duchy/estate. I guess you could argue that the game would be better with a 4th tier, but I think you need more to it, at least on a decent fraction of boards, to justify. And hey, you give a great example in Fairgrounds. It's sometimes just that 4th tier at $6. Which isn't so interesting, but it's usually not just that. And sometimes it's a lot more, and in those situations it usually requires some extra endgame play in trying to hit 10 or 15 or 20 unique cards.

Right. I think the fact that you want an Estate for each copy of this card might be enough to make it interesting. Maybe not, but I think it's worth testing as-is. It's sort of like Duke, only for Estates. And you start with 3 Estates, so that helps differentiate it from other alt-VP cards.

If there's one thing I've learned from playtesting cards, it's that sometimes they're much more or less interesting than you might think at first glance.

[jonts26]

Sure, you never really know these things until you playtest. Duke at least can create non-province strategies, which I don't see this card doing. I'm betting the biggest real effect this has on the game is it adds a bunch more VP's, which has nothing to do with the trashing mechanic. Which would be a shame, because I really do like the mechanic.

[soulnet]

You really need Silverspawn's suggested wording. Otherwise, you need FAQ to tell what happens if you have two Battlefields and trash/remove one when triggering the other.

[spiralstaircase]

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks!

I think the idea has promise. I would remove the part about counting as a Province. It feels tacked on and only matters for a few specific cards (Explorer, Tournament, Fool's Gold, etc.). And maybe rename it (Battlefield? Wartorn Something-Else?).

Fair enough.  I was a bit worried that the card wasn't interesting enough, so I put that in for the interaction with Tournament, Explorer, Fools Gold.  But as Awaclus says...

What does "counts as a Province" mean? If I trash this with Apprentice, do I draw 5 or 8 cards? If I play Menagerie with this and a Province in hand, do I draw 1 or 3 cards? If my opponent names Province for my Contraband, can I still buy a Wartorn Province? Also, it's crazy with Tournament, which is already arguably the strongest card in the game.

The only one of those I'd intended was Tournament.  The Contraband interaction's quite nice, I like that.  But I'd only meant that it 'tests positive' when cards specifically look for a province; I hadn't meant that its cost would count differently and I hadn't considered 'is the same as' effects.  I'd rather remove that part than make the card too wordy.

I'm not sure further clarification is needed on the below-line part. You could add, "from your deck". But the rulebook is still going to cover common-sense stuff, like the fact that you trash those cards before counting up your score. ACTUALLY, you may want to change it to say, "Remove a Victory card from your deck" so as not to trigger Feodum's on-trash ability, which would probably cause confusion.

If I do continue with the 'end of game' theme, I'm going to need a better-developed idea of how end-of-game effects are resolved.  I don't mind - actually, I quite like - that it interacts with Feodum; except that it means that players can no longer resolve end-of-game effects simultaneously.  My next card with the theme is 'Victors', which is an end-of-game remodel; but that blasts the can of worms wide open rather than just poking it a bid.  As soulnet says,

Otherwise, you need FAQ to tell what happens if you have two Battlefields and trash/remove one when triggering the other.

My intention is that you go through your cards with end-of-game effects one at a time until there are none left in your deck.  If you have two of these cards and you resolve the first, trashing the other, then you've none left in your deck and you can stop.  Feodum is the interesting case because what happens if there aren't enough silvers for everyone?  Similarly, an end-of-game remodel is usually OK because there are no Provinces to gain and plenty of Duchies, but if the game three-piled then it's really swingy depending on who gets to turn their golds into the remaining Provinces.

Cool card!

Thanks again!

[Fragasnap]

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

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

[LastFootnote]

My intention is that you go through your cards with end-of-game effects one at a time until there are none left in your deck.  If you have two of these cards and you resolve the first, trashing the other, then you've none left in your deck and you can stop.

Well, you could say that it works this way, but it's not how other effects in Dominion work. All effects that have the same timing are queued up simultaneously, then you choose which order to do them in. So if the only two Victory cards in your deck are two Wartorn Provinces, you'd end up trashing both of them. Trashing the card the effect is written on doesn't stop that effect from taking place if it's already been triggered.

Feodum is the interesting case because what happens if there aren't enough silvers for everyone?

I guess the player who ended the game would resolve his end-of-game effects first, then the player to his left, etc. Or maybe the player to the game-ender's left would go first. That would make sense, too.

[soulnet]

I guess the player who ended the game would resolve his end-of-game effects first, then the player to his left, etc. Or maybe the player to the game-ender's left would go first. That would make sense, too.

I think it makes sense to have any ruling on this, because at the end of the game, it is nobody's turn, so usual rulings such as resolve in order and the player whose turn it is choose the order if not specified does not matter. If you want to have effects that interact with shared limited things (like the supply) it seems like having the player who ended the game resolve first would give him advantage (unless you are both trashing or returning to the supply stuff that someone may want to regain). To make the problem worst, this would further enhance first player advantage.

Regarding trashing: To avoid on-trash effects, I would return to the supply instead of trashing. However, this may create questions when the end conditions are not met anymore after doing so (like after returning a Province). Maybe remove from game can be introduced, but FAQ/rulebook will be needed in either case.