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Vislor

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Dominion: Pestilence
« on: January 14, 2015, 05:39:25 am »
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Dominion: Pestilence
The following rules, mats and cards are in play every time you use at least one card from Pestilence.
There is an infinite supply of plague tokens.
Each plague token you carry adds $1 to the cost of buying victory cards.

Charity Mat – During your buy phase you may discard one treasure card. If you do, place a coin on the Charity mat and discard one of your plague tokens.
At the end of your turn, if you alone have the most plague tokens you may take a coin from the charity mat.

Privy $0* – ACTION VICTORY
0VP. When you play this return it to the privy pile. You may discard one of your plague tokens.
During your buy phase you may gain one privy for free without using up a buy.

Diseases $0* – PERMANENT DURATION ATTACK. Deck of ten different cards. Shuffle and place face down. You acquire the top Disease when you gain/buy the last card of a Supply pile for the first time. It goes directly into your play area and takes effect from the start of your next turn. It is not discarded during cleanup and instead takes place at the start of each of your turns until a new Disease enters play. This does not use up an ACTION. If there is already a Disease in play when you acquire one, the Disease already in play is then put to the bottom of the Diseases pile. Thus only one Disease is allowed in play at one time. The Disease is not an ACTION TREASURE or VICTORY card. It does go into your deck at the end of the game.

Pox – Each other player gains a plague token.
Bubonic Plague – Each other player gains 2 plague tokens.
Syphilis – Each other player gains a curse.
Leprosy – Each other player with 4 or more cards discards a card.
Dysentery – Each other player gains a privy.
Influenza – You may gain a plague token. Each player including you passes one of their plague tokens to the left. You may discard one of your plague tokens.
Typhoid – Each other player may reveal a privy. Those who don’t gain a plague token.
Famine - Each other player gains a copper.
Rickets – Each other player discards an action card or reveals a hand with no actions.
Tapeworm – While this is in play each other player gets +1 buy but trashes the first thing they buy costing at least $1.

And now, the cards!!!

Flea $1 - ACTION REACTION (20 card supply deck)
+2 Actions. When you play this gain a Flea. When you discard this other than during cleanup it jumps to the player on your left's discard pile. When you trash this you may discard one of your plague tokens.

Contaminate $2 – ACTION
+$1. +1 buy. Place a plague token from the supply onto a supply deck of your choice. When a player gains a card if there are any plague tokens on it he gains one of them.

Quack $2 - ACTION INFECTION
You may gain a plague token. You may pass one of your plague tokens to the left.

Astrologer $3 - ACTION
+1 Action. Name a card. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Put the named cards into your hand and the rest back in any order.

Church $3 - ACTION DURATION REACTION
When you would draw 5 cards at the end of this turn draw 6 instead. While this is in play +1 buy and if you are attacked you may discard a card to be unaffected.

Haemorrhage $4 - ACTION INFECTION
+1 Action. Name an Action, Treasure or Victory card. Reveal cards from the top of your deck and trash cards of the same type which are not the named card until you reveal the named card. Put that card into your hand and discard the rest. Gain a plague token for every card you trashed.

Hospital $4+ - ACTION
+1 Card. +2 Actions. Trash a card from your hand. When you buy this you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpay you may discard one of your plague tokens.

Leech $4 - ACTION ATTACK
 All players including you reveal the top 2 cards of their deck and trash one costing up to $4 that they choose. The rest are discarded. You may gain any or all of the trashed cards.

Charity $5 – TREASURE ATTACK
$1. If this is the first time you played Charity this turn, each other player discards the top two cards of their deck. If they discard any treasure, place a coin token on the Charity mat. If they don't, they gain a plague token. - You may take a coin from the Charity mat.

Infection $5 - ACTION ATTACK
+3 cards. Each other player gains a plague token.

Barber $5 – ACTION
+1 Action. You may discard a token of your choice or trash a card from your hand. Gain a token of your choice.

Monastery $6 - ACTION
Reveal a non-treasure card from your hand costing up to $7. Gain a copy from the supply.

Autopsy $7 - ACTION
+1 Action. You may put your deck into your discard pile. Put one card from it into your hand.

Royal College of Physicians $7 – VICTORY
1VP for every Gold in your deck.

The Black Death $8 - ACTION INFECTION
+2 buys. +2 plague tokens. During your buy phase +$2 per plague token you have. Discard the top 2 cards of your deck. If you discard 2 treasures, double your plague tokens and at the end of your turn pass this to the player on your left's discard pile. - When you trash this you may remove half your plague tokens (round up).
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #1 on: January 14, 2015, 05:56:49 am »
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Grateful for all comments/criticisms/suggestions!! :)

The set is intended to use all previous mechanics already established in Dominion including adding the new Plague tokens which make buying Victory cards harder, so you will have to find a way around that if the Plague strikes! You would be best off having Coin and Victory tokens around as well. It is a set intended for players experienced with all previous sets!
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2015, 03:53:52 am »
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One thing I've already thought of changing is that the Diseases are acquired when you buy/gain the last card of any pile costing $3 or more.

ETA - but maybe it's fine as is?
« Last Edit: January 15, 2015, 04:09:55 am by Vislor »
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popsofctown

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2015, 10:08:54 am »
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As you have it written, I wouldn't anticipate anyone gaining any diseases until the Province pile is emptied in over 90% of your games.  I imagine that's not what you're going for, but maybe it is.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2015, 11:33:17 am »
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Why's that?? The Diseases are a benefit to whoever gains them as they attack everybody but that player. I imagine some of the more vindictive strategists would rather empty a pile quicker just to get the Disease!
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2015, 11:39:50 am »
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Also, a new name for Infection would be good, as I have now used it to mean the card type which gives you plague tokens. "Black Rat" was one idea I had for calling it.
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popsofctown

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #6 on: January 15, 2015, 12:14:12 pm »
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They're all very powerful, which is precisely why no player would buy the second to last copy of a card with diseases in play.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #7 on: January 15, 2015, 12:35:13 pm »
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Just buy the last two then...or use some other way of gaining the cards rather than buying them.

Also, I dispute that they are all "very powerful". One plague token is not that horrendous given how many ways there are to get rid of them. Syphilis is only good if there are any curses left by that stage in the game. The worst ones are Rickets and potentially Tapeworm, but I was trying to think of more diseases/conditions and ways they could attack...maybe these could be softened somehow.

One idea to soften all diseases could be to reveal a privy as protection as Tyhpoid does, but there are other protections/reactions in the game and these are very much late game attacks.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2015, 12:47:26 pm by Vislor »
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #8 on: January 15, 2015, 02:27:28 pm »
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For the defences how about:

Pox - each player may reveal a province
Bubonic plague - each player may reveal a victory card
Syphilis - each player may reveal a curse
Leprosy - just change this one to 5 cards instead of 4
Dysentery - no need to change
Influenza - no need to change
Typhoid - no need to change
Famine - each player may reveal a treasure other than copper
Rickets - change to players with 5 cards
Tapeworm - I'd like to have one vicious attack so this is potentially it!
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eHalcyon

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #9 on: January 15, 2015, 06:32:12 pm »
+1

Quote
Dominion: Pestilence
The following rules, mats and cards are in play every time you use at least one card from Pestilence.
There is an infinite supply of plague tokens.
Each plague token you carry adds $1 to the cost of buying victory cards.

Charity Mat – During your buy phase you may discard one treasure card. If you do, place a coin on the Charity mat and discard one of your plague tokens.
At the end of your turn, if you alone have the most plague tokens you may take a coin from the charity mat.

When you say "coin", do you mean "coin token"?  And presumably you have to discard the card from your hand?  Do you discard at the start of your turn or at the end, or any time?

One Plague token is dangerous.  Assuming you can discard a treasure at the start of your turn, this is still usually more powerful than Cutpurse.  You can only get rid of one Plague token per turn, so you can't afford to let them build up if you intend to buy VP cards.  So the turn after another player hands out a Plague token, you have a lot of incentive to pay a Treasure card to get rid of it.  Cutpurse only hits Copper, but Plague tokens can cost you more than that depending on what Treasures you draw. 

If you don't have any Treasure, it's essentially a Cutpurse every time you buy a VP card.  This can stack to terrible amounts and can pretty much destroy any treasureless strategy.

The coin token reprieve from the Charity mat means very little.  There might not be any coin tokens available on the mat.  In a 2p game, this kind of negates the first Plague token but does nothing about subsequent plague tokens.  With more than 2 players, multiple players will often have the same number of plague tokens due to the nature of Dominion attacks.  If they get rid of the tokens right away, the coin token bonus is only a bonus for the player to the right of whoever played the attack.  Very arbitrary.

Quote
Privy $0* – ACTION VICTORY
0VP. When you play this return it to the privy pile. You may discard one of your plague tokens.
During your buy phase you may gain one privy for free without using up a buy.

Can you buy these with actual Buys?  The asterisk needs to be clarified.  Cards like Madman and Followers have additional text indicating that they aren't in the supply, and Peddler has a changing cost.  If Privy isn't in the Supply, it needs to say so.  If it is, it doesn't need the asterisk.

Quote
Diseases $0* – PERMANENT DURATION ATTACK. Deck of ten different cards. Shuffle and place face down. You acquire the top Disease when you gain/buy the last card of a Supply pile for the first time. It goes directly into your play area and takes effect from the start of your next turn. It is not discarded during cleanup and instead takes place at the start of each of your turns until a new Disease enters play. This does not use up an ACTION. If there is already a Disease in play when you acquire one, the Disease already in play is then put to the bottom of the Diseases pile. Thus only one Disease is allowed in play at one time. The Disease is not an ACTION TREASURE or VICTORY card. It does go into your deck at the end of the game.

If the attacks are of only average power, this is still incredibly powerful.  As a "permanent duration", it is essentially a Princed attack.  That is very dangerous, even for weaker effects.

Quote
Pox – Each other player gains a plague token.
Bubonic Plague – Each other player gains 2 plague tokens.
Syphilis – Each other player gains a curse.
Leprosy – Each other player with 4 or more cards discards a card.
Dysentery – Each other player gains a privy.
Influenza – You may gain a plague token. Each player including you passes one of their plague tokens to the left. You may discard one of your plague tokens.
Typhoid – Each other player may reveal a privy. Those who don’t gain a plague token.
Famine - Each other player gains a copper.
Rickets – Each other player discards an action card or reveals a hand with no actions.
Tapeworm – While this is in play each other player gets +1 buy but trashes the first thing they buy costing at least $1.

Pox is really powerful because it hits every turn.  Bubonic Plague is even worse because players can't even keep pace with it.  They gain 2 plague tokens, then they can get rid of one.  After a few turns, it is impossible to buy VP cards at all for everyone but the player who controls the Bubonic Plague.

Influenza is a weaker version because it hits the player to your left first and then spreads in that direction.  Thematic, but not as big a deal.  This is probably the weakest of them all because the flu eventually comes back around to you as well.  It's worth noting that nobody has an incentive to get rid of the plague token because it will just pass to the next player on the next turn.  Getting rid of it would only save the next player the hassle.

Typhoid is also a nerfed Pox, but not really nerfed enough to matter.  Even if you could guarantee having Privy in hand to block the attack, that junk card in hand is about as bad.

Syphilis, Dysentery and Famine are all powerful as repeated junkers.  Dysentery is weird because presumably there are only 10 Privy cards, so the scaling is really messed up.  Famine hurts less than the other two in the short run, but it hurts more in the long run when your deck becomes crazy bloated (unless Gardens is in the game, heh).

Rickets cripples many interesting strategies.

Tapeworm costs players $2 per turn in most games.  Another super-Cutpurse.

If there is no +Buy or gainer in the kingdom, nobody will ever gain the second last card of a pile because it would be a death wish to let another player gain a disease.  With a way to gain multiple cards, it becomes a weird game of chicken.  Does another player have enough +Buy to empty the pile on their turn?  What if I gain a copy from that pile?

At this point, the game gets pretty swingy.  If everybody has a decent amount of +Buy and there is a cheap pile to rush down, then one player will get lucky enough to have enough +Buy on their turn to empty a pile.  They gain a huge advantage by lottery.

There is still some swinginess here as well, because the gulf between Influenza and Tapeworm or Bubonic Plague is huge.

Otherwise, pursuing this route is about as terrible as being the only player to go for Cities.  You gain a lot of power at the end of the pile, but by then the game is almost over anyway.

Quote
Flea $1 - ACTION REACTION (20 card supply deck)
+2 Actions. When you play this gain a Flea. When you discard this other than during cleanup it jumps to the player on your left's discard pile. When you trash this you may discard one of your plague tokens.

The discard effect and the trash effect should each be underneath a line (see: Tunnel, Rats).  Having two under-line effects is generally frowned upon, and it probably doesn't even fit on a card properly.  Neither of these effects matter if there's no way to discard or trash, so one or both are superfluous in many games.  The main thing about this card already exists in Rats.

All that said, I think it is OK, but I don't think it's interesting enough to warrant the big block of text or 10 extra cards.

Quote
Contaminate $2 – ACTION
+$1. +1 buy. Place a plague token from the supply onto a supply deck of your choice. When a player gains a card if there are any plague tokens on it he gains one of them.

It's kind of a round-about way of making one pile temporarily more expensive (since Plague tokens are kind of an extra cost which maybe could be removed on the same turn they are gained, for a price).  Seems alright.  It sits in sort of the same area as Embargo, but it may be different enough.

Quote
Quack $2 - ACTION INFECTION
You may gain a plague token. You may pass one of your plague tokens to the left.

This is an attack card that only hits the player to your left.  Not a fan of that.

Quote
Astrologer $3 - ACTION
+1 Action. Name a card. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Put the named cards into your hand and the rest back in any order.

Worth testing.  Has higher potential than Wishing Well and actually combos with stuff like Mystic and, well, Wishing Well itself.  The downside is that it really encourages boring decks with little variety.

Quote
Church $3 - ACTION DURATION REACTION
When you would draw 5 cards at the end of this turn draw 6 instead. While this is in play +1 buy and if you are attacked you may discard a card to be unaffected.

Why not just say "draw an extra card in your Cleanup Phase"?  As it is, this wording explicitly anti-combos with Outpost and other Churches.  "While this is in play +1 Buy" makes no sense.  And this card would fail to stay in play between turns because it doesn't have a next turn effect.

Quote
Haemorrhage $4 - ACTION INFECTION
+1 Action. Name an Action, Treasure or Victory card. Reveal cards from the top of your deck and trash cards of the same type which are not the named card until you reveal the named card. Put that card into your hand and discard the rest. Gain a plague token for every card you trashed.

This is incredibly complicated, and really weak if I understand it correctly.  You can't really use it as a mass trasher because the penalty of plague tokens will hobble you for many turns.  If you use it to search for an action you're probably going to trash other actions which is usually a bad thing.  It can't trash Curses at all.  The only good use case I see is for when you have no intention of buying VP cards, so you could use it as a mass trasher with no real penalty.

Quote
Hospital $4+ - ACTION
+1 Card. +2 Actions. Trash a card from your hand. When you buy this you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpay you may discard one of your plague tokens.

Almost certainly too powerful.  Even if it were only +1 Action I would say that it is too powerful compared to Rats.  As it is, this really should be $5 for initial testing.

Quote
Leech $4 - ACTION ATTACK
 All players including you reveal the top 2 cards of their deck and trash one costing up to $4 that they choose. The rest are discarded. You may gain any or all of the trashed cards.

Weak for the same reason that Thief is weak, but probably swingier because it can hit important engine components.  Not sure if that would be interesting or fun to play.  It might be.

Quote
Charity $5 – TREASURE ATTACK
$1. If this is the first time you played Charity this turn, each other player discards the top two cards of their deck. If they discard any treasure, place a coin token on the Charity mat. If they don't, they gain a plague token. - You may take a coin from the Charity mat.

Quote
Infection $5 - ACTION ATTACK
+3 cards. Each other player gains a plague token.

Basic.  Could be fine; if there are any problems, they would be with the plague tokens themselves.

Quote
Barber $5 – ACTION
+1 Action. You may discard a token of your choice or trash a card from your hand. Gain a token of your choice.

Can I discard tokens from other players?  Can I gain VP tokens?  The ability to non-terminally gain VP tokens can break the game, but other than that this card actually sounds a bit weak.

Quote
Monastery $6 - ACTION
Reveal a non-treasure card from your hand costing up to $7. Gain a copy from the supply.

Why restrict Treasure?  Gaining $5+ Action or VP card is usually better anyway.  Is it just to make it a Mint for non-Treasures?  This kind of effect has been considered before and I don't think there's any big problem with it.

Quote
Autopsy $7 - ACTION
+1 Action. You may put your deck into your discard pile. Put one card from it into your hand.

Many different variations of this card have been proposed.  I don't know if this one specifically would work, but it sounds OK.

Quote
Royal College of Physicians $7 – VICTORY
1VP for every Gold in your deck.

Not a fan.  Gold is something you often want anyway, and a 1:1 VP ratio is really good.  Feodum is interesting because Silver is a middling card and the ratio makes it difficult to build it up to crazy levels.  It's easy to get 4 Gold, and not tough to get 6 to make this better than Province.

Quote
The Black Death $8 - ACTION INFECTION
+2 buys. +2 plague tokens. During your buy phase +$2 per plague token you have. Discard the top 2 cards of your deck. If you discard 2 treasures, double your plague tokens and at the end of your turn pass this to the player on your left's discard pile. - When you trash this you may remove half your plague tokens (round up).

The timing on this is complicated and confusing.  Do I discard 2 cards now, or during my buy phase?  If the latter, do I get to choose when during my Buy phase?  Since it actually makes Plague tokens worth a net +$1, why would I pass it to another player?  Since it makes me money this way, using Black Death to repeatedly double my Plague tokens will actually make it trivial for me to buy multiple VP cards very quickly.  It even comes with +2 Buys!








Overall, I think Plague tokens could work.  The main thing you have to figure out is how to keep players from getting overwhelmed by them.  Diseases probably can't be fixed for that reason.  A more general issue is how it plays with more than 2 players.  With multiple opponents giving you plague tokens, those VP cards can become unbuyable very quickly.

As a set, I think you need more positive cards.  All of this seems incredibly brutal.  It's interesting to play slogs now and again, but not every game.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #10 on: January 16, 2015, 09:17:45 am »
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Hey, thanks for your valuable feedback!  :)


When you say "coin", do you mean "coin token"?  And presumably you have to discard the card from your hand?  Do you discard at the start of your turn or at the end, or any time?
Yes I do mean coin token. And yes you have to discard it from your hand at any point during your buy phase.

One Plague token is dangerous.  Assuming you can discard a treasure at the start of your turn, this is still usually more powerful than Cutpurse.  You can only get rid of one Plague token per turn, so you can't afford to let them build up if you intend to buy VP cards.  So the turn after another player hands out a Plague token, you have a lot of incentive to pay a Treasure card to get rid of it.  Cutpurse only hits Copper, but Plague tokens can cost you more than that depending on what Treasures you draw. 

If you don't have any Treasure, it's essentially a Cutpurse every time you buy a VP card.  This can stack to terrible amounts and can pretty much destroy any treasureless strategy.
A plague token is not as bad as Cutpurse because it only adds $1 to the cost of buying Victory cards, not other cards. If you have $8 and can't afford a Province but still want to empty Victory piles, just buy a cheaper Victory card! Or find ways to get rid of the Plague or improve your strategy by buying other cards. The aim of this set is to encourage a strategy combining more of the other Kingdom cards on offer, some of which may help get rid of Plague tokens, some of which may help gain Victory cards/tokens in other ways, some of which will give you phantom $ (I admit I probably need more of this in the cards in this set) and then there are always two ways permanently available to get rid of the Plague: Privy and giving to Charity.
 
The coin token reprieve from the Charity mat means very little.  There might not be any coin tokens available on the mat.  In a 2p game, this kind of negates the first Plague token but does nothing about subsequent plague tokens.  With more than 2 players, multiple players will often have the same number of plague tokens due to the nature of Dominion attacks.  If they get rid of the tokens right away, the coin token bonus is only a bonus for the player to the right of whoever played the attack.  Very arbitrary.

It's probable that this part of the game needs some work, however the reason for it being only one player allowed to take the coin was because there may not be enough coins on the mat to give to everybody if more players are tied for the lead on Plague. I guess they could just take one from supply in that instance though...but then the Charity mat becomes redundant.

Quote
Privy $0* – ACTION VICTORY
0VP. When you play this return it to the privy pile. You may discard one of your plague tokens.
During your buy phase you may gain one privy for free without using up a buy.

Can you buy these with actual Buys?  The asterisk needs to be clarified.  Cards like Madman and Followers have additional text indicating that they aren't in the supply, and Peddler has a changing cost.  If Privy isn't in the Supply, it needs to say so.  If it is, it doesn't need the asterisk.

They cannot be bought and will have the same text as all other cards in the game with $0* - ie: This card is not in the supply.

Quote
Diseases $0* – PERMANENT DURATION ATTACK. Deck of ten different cards. Shuffle and place face down. You acquire the top Disease when you gain/buy the last card of a Supply pile for the first time. It goes directly into your play area and takes effect from the start of your next turn. It is not discarded during cleanup and instead takes place at the start of each of your turns until a new Disease enters play. This does not use up an ACTION. If there is already a Disease in play when you acquire one, the Disease already in play is then put to the bottom of the Diseases pile. Thus only one Disease is allowed in play at one time. The Disease is not an ACTION TREASURE or VICTORY card. It does go into your deck at the end of the game.

If the attacks are of only average power, this is still incredibly powerful.  As a "permanent duration", it is essentially a Princed attack.  That is very dangerous, even for weaker effects.

Correct, which is why I am considering the defence mechanisms. The Diseases, though, are not going to be an every game affair, and even then they are late game, potentially allowing a slower strategy to take effect against the quick starters, and yes, it will create tension when piles get lower. I quite like that. Also, curses or ruins running out would give the person a Disease. I'm thinking of making the Diseases work something like this though to make them less obnoxious: "You may gain a Plague token, if you do.......and then carry out the attack."

Pox is really powerful because it hits every turn.  Bubonic Plague is even worse because players can't even keep pace with it.  They gain 2 plague tokens, then they can get rid of one.  After a few turns, it is impossible to buy VP cards at all for everyone but the player who controls the Bubonic Plague.
There are ways of getting rid of more than one Plague token per turn...not least play x number of Privies (assuming you have the Actions...maybe Privy should be +1 Action?) and/or give to Charity.

Influenza is a weaker version because it hits the player to your left first and then spreads in that direction.  Thematic, but not as big a deal.  This is probably the weakest of them all because the flu eventually comes back around to you as well.  It's worth noting that nobody has an incentive to get rid of the plague token because it will just pass to the next player on the next turn.  Getting rid of it would only save the next player the hassle.
I was never particularly happy with the Influenza card, I need to think about it some more. One idea is each player passes half their plague tokens to the left, which may be viable if I go with the idea of making Diseases an optional attack which affect everyone including you.

Typhoid is also a nerfed Pox, but not really nerfed enough to matter.  Even if you could guarantee having Privy in hand to block the attack, that junk card in hand is about as bad.

Syphilis, Dysentery and Famine are all powerful as repeated junkers.  Dysentery is weird because presumably there are only 10 Privy cards, so the scaling is really messed up.  Famine hurts less than the other two in the short run, but it hurts more in the long run when your deck becomes crazy bloated (unless Gardens is in the game, heh).

Rickets cripples many interesting strategies.

Tapeworm costs players $2 per turn in most games.  Another super-Cutpurse.

If there is no +Buy or gainer in the kingdom, nobody will ever gain the second last card of a pile because it would be a death wish to let another player gain a disease.  With a way to gain multiple cards, it becomes a weird game of chicken.  Does another player have enough +Buy to empty the pile on their turn?  What if I gain a copy from that pile?

At this point, the game gets pretty swingy.  If everybody has a decent amount of +Buy and there is a cheap pile to rush down, then one player will get lucky enough to have enough +Buy on their turn to empty a pile.  They gain a huge advantage by lottery.

There is still some swinginess here as well, because the gulf between Influenza and Tapeworm or Bubonic Plague is huge.

Otherwise, pursuing this route is about as terrible as being the only player to go for Cities.  You gain a lot of power at the end of the pile, but by then the game is almost over anyway.

I know there is some swinginess with the Diseases, which is why I have to think about ways to counteract that such as you may play the Disease and it affects everyone, or you may only play it if you gain a plague token or something. Maybe they should be face up as well so that you know what you are gaining when the pile runs out and can plan a strategy accordingly.

The Privies are meant to scale as much as any Victory card would, but remember when you play one it returns to the pile, so they will presumably rarely run out. I've just had an idea though, what if each player started with 3 Privies instead of Estates, and you are only allowed to play one if you have a plague token to discard?

I fully expect there to be games where no Diseases are gained. To be honest, the reason I did them this way rather than making another supply deck like Knights is because I wanted a way for Plague to always be part of the game if there were no cards around to dish it out, and this seemed quite nice, there is always the possibility that Plague might break out!

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Flea $1 - ACTION REACTION (20 card supply deck)
+2 Actions. When you play this gain a Flea. When you discard this other than during cleanup it jumps to the player on your left's discard pile. When you trash this you may discard one of your plague tokens.

The discard effect and the trash effect should each be underneath a line (see: Tunnel, Rats).  Having two under-line effects is generally frowned upon, and it probably doesn't even fit on a card properly.  Neither of these effects matter if there's no way to discard or trash, so one or both are superfluous in many games.  The main thing about this card already exists in Rats.

All that said, I think it is OK, but I don't think it's interesting enough to warrant the big block of text or 10 extra cards.

These have been pretty fun when we've had them in playtesting so far so I think they're fine, apart from the text not being under a line in the above. There is very often either a trasher or a discarder or some sort when you mix sets and even if not the extra actions can come in handy if there's not many of those in the game. Not every card is bought every game so I don't see any problem here. It's a $1 card.

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Contaminate $2 – ACTION
+$1. +1 buy. Place a plague token from the supply onto a supply deck of your choice. When a player gains a card if there are any plague tokens on it he gains one of them.

It's kind of a round-about way of making one pile temporarily more expensive (since Plague tokens are kind of an extra cost which maybe could be removed on the same turn they are gained, for a price).  Seems alright.  It sits in sort of the same area as Embargo, but it may be different enough.

It doesn't really make a pile more expensive, it just adds to your plague tokens if you buy from it which makes Victory cards more expensive unless you can get rid of them by the time your buy phase comes around. I think it's different enough to Embargo to make it a good additional little card.

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Quack $2 - ACTION INFECTION
You may gain a plague token. You may pass one of your plague tokens to the left.

This is an attack card that only hits the player to your left.  Not a fan of that.

You may not be a fan, but plenty of people I play with like it. Possession goes to the left, Tribute goes to the left. In fact some of them want it to be pass a token to target player, but I vetoed that. Remember plague is not as bad as you think, there are plenty ways to get rid of it, this is one way itself!

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Astrologer $3 - ACTION
+1 Action. Name a card. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Put the named cards into your hand and the rest back in any order.

Worth testing.  Has higher potential than Wishing Well and actually combos with stuff like Mystic and, well, Wishing Well itself.  The downside is that it really encourages boring decks with little variety.
Glad you like this, I kind of viewed it as an opposite to Menagerie. Works well early game or if you are doing a silver strategy, or as you say, in combo with other prediction or deck ordering cards.

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Church $3 - ACTION DURATION REACTION
When you would draw 5 cards at the end of this turn draw 6 instead. While this is in play +1 buy and if you are attacked you may discard a card to be unaffected.

Why not just say "draw an extra card in your Cleanup Phase"?  As it is, this wording explicitly anti-combos with Outpost and other Churches.  "While this is in play +1 Buy" makes no sense.  And this card would fail to stay in play between turns because it doesn't have a next turn effect.

You're right, it should definitely just say "draw an extra card in your Cleanup Phase". I thought it was too good when combined with itself and Outpost, but why shouldn't a card work well in combos? Perhaps it should cost $4 then? I thought the "While this is in play" clause would be simpler than a "Now and next turn" and then the bit about discarding. Why wouldn't it stay in play, it's a Duration card?

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Haemorrhage $4 - ACTION INFECTION
+1 Action. Name an Action, Treasure or Victory card. Reveal cards from the top of your deck and trash cards of the same type which are not the named card until you reveal the named card. Put that card into your hand and discard the rest. Gain a plague token for every card you trashed.

This is incredibly complicated, and really weak if I understand it correctly.  You can't really use it as a mass trasher because the penalty of plague tokens will hobble you for many turns.  If you use it to search for an action you're probably going to trash other actions which is usually a bad thing.  It can't trash Curses at all.  The only good use case I see is for when you have no intention of buying VP cards, so you could use it as a mass trasher with no real penalty.

More complicated than Rebuild? I understand it is difficult to use, but again I think you are overestimating the plague tokens vs the benefit to the multi-trashing and card to hand ability this card offers. It should say somewhere that you don't have to put a card into your hand if you name one and don't find it in your deck. It's been quite a favourite in playtesting with some players...for instance, buy it first turn, name Duchy and trash all your estates for only 3 plague tokens! Also works well with Fleas and Tunnels.

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Hospital $4+ - ACTION
+1 Card. +2 Actions. Trash a card from your hand. When you buy this you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpay you may discard one of your plague tokens.

Almost certainly too powerful.  Even if it were only +1 Action I would say that it is too powerful compared to Rats.  As it is, this really should be $5 for initial testing.

Possibly, but it's worse than Junk Dealer and doesn't have the when trashed ability of Rats. I suppose I could make it trash anything other than treasure, but I reckon that makes it too harsh. The overpay ability is important, maybe people will often only be buying it for $5/$6 or more anyway? Maybe making it $5+ and you MAY trash a card from your hand?

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Leech $4 - ACTION ATTACK
 All players including you reveal the top 2 cards of their deck and trash one costing up to $4 that they choose. The rest are discarded. You may gain any or all of the trashed cards.

Weak for the same reason that Thief is weak, but probably swingier because it can hit important engine components.  Not sure if that would be interesting or fun to play.  It might be.

The idea was to make a better version of Thief but not too expensive or obnoxious. This can trash bad cards for people, but you might get to trash a bad one as well.

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Charity $5 – TREASURE ATTACK
$1. If this is the first time you played Charity this turn, each other player discards the top two cards of their deck. If they discard any treasure, place a coin token on the Charity mat. If they don't, they gain a plague token. - You may take a coin from the Charity mat.

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Infection $5 - ACTION ATTACK
+3 cards. Each other player gains a plague token.

Basic.  Could be fine; if there are any problems, they would be with the plague tokens themselves.

Cool. :)

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Barber $5 – ACTION
+1 Action. You may discard a token of your choice or trash a card from your hand. Gain a token of your choice.

Can I discard tokens from other players?  Can I gain VP tokens?  The ability to non-terminally gain VP tokens can break the game, but other than that this card actually sounds a bit weak.

Sorry, this should read "You may discard one of your tokens". I don't quite like it though, it was meant to be a sort of token remodeller. I thought about making it 2 tokens but it creates a lot of AP if you have different sorts and you might not want to remodel them. That's why I put the trash a card bit in, but I am beginning to think that is unnecessary. Yes the idea is you can discard or gain any sort of token. Maybe it should be $4 and just "You may discard one of your tokens. Gain a token of your choice."

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Monastery $6 - ACTION
Reveal a non-treasure card from your hand costing up to $7. Gain a copy from the supply.

Why restrict Treasure?  Gaining $5+ Action or VP card is usually better anyway.  Is it just to make it a Mint for non-Treasures?  This kind of effect has been considered before and I don't think there's any big problem with it.

Exactly, it is a Mint for non-treasures.

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Autopsy $7 - ACTION
+1 Action. You may put your deck into your discard pile. Put one card from it into your hand.

Many different variations of this card have been proposed.  I don't know if this one specifically would work, but it sounds OK.
It used to be put one card into your hand and one on top of your deck, but I think that was obnoxiously good, even without the extra Action. Now I'm not so sure though...

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Royal College of Physicians $7 – VICTORY
1VP for every Gold in your deck.

Not a fan.  Gold is something you often want anyway, and a 1:1 VP ratio is really good.  Feodum is interesting because Silver is a middling card and the ratio makes it difficult to build it up to crazy levels.  It's easy to get 4 Gold, and not tough to get 6 to make this better than Province.

That's what I thought which is why initially this was 2VP for every 2 gold in your deck, but the people I played with said it should just be the other way. I reckon my initial thoughts were right though for the reasons you have made. It also makes the Hoard combo less obnoxious.

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The Black Death $8 - ACTION INFECTION
+2 buys. +2 plague tokens. During your buy phase +$2 per plague token you have. Discard the top 2 cards of your deck. If you discard 2 treasures, double your plague tokens and at the end of your turn pass this to the player on your left's discard pile. - When you trash this you may remove half your plague tokens (round up).

The timing on this is complicated and confusing.  Do I discard 2 cards now, or during my buy phase?  If the latter, do I get to choose when during my Buy phase?  Since it actually makes Plague tokens worth a net +$1, why would I pass it to another player?  Since it makes me money this way, using Black Death to repeatedly double my Plague tokens will actually make it trivial for me to buy multiple VP cards very quickly.  It even comes with +2 Buys!

Ok I'll move the "During your buy phase" clause to the end of the top half description. You discard the cards when you play it, not during your buy phase. The doubling of plague tokens is a sufficient downside to the extra money you get on that particular turn. The plague tokens will be with you from there on! The idea of the card though is to give you a significant cash boost if you have the Plague (indeed it gives you plague!) and the extra buys are in order to encourage buying cards other than Victory cards which will be significantly more expensive should you wish to purchase them anyway. The card is also meant to be a bit fun, inspired in some regard by Dynamite in Bang! - which explodes when you reveal a certain card.






Overall, I think Plague tokens could work.  The main thing you have to figure out is how to keep players from getting overwhelmed by them.  Diseases probably can't be fixed for that reason.  A more general issue is how it plays with more than 2 players.  With multiple opponents giving you plague tokens, those VP cards can become unbuyable very quickly.

As a set, I think you need more positive cards.  All of this seems incredibly brutal.  It's interesting to play slogs now and again, but not every game.

I agree, the balance needs to be a bit better and I think I need more phantom $ Action cards. Perhaps a few more cards wouldn't be a bad idea for the set anyway! I do think that +1 Action on Privy might be a good way of helping the reduction of plague along, and there is always the possibility of multiple treasure discards when giving to Charity, but I deliberately shied away from that because I do want to encourage less Big Money in general! :)

Thanks again for all your feedback!
« Last Edit: January 16, 2015, 09:30:38 am by Vislor »
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2015, 05:51:18 am »
0

Some new card ideas:

Bath House $3 - VICTORY TREASURE

1VP. $1. When you gain this you may discard one of your plague tokens.

Surgeon $5 – ACTION

$2. Return to the supply a Victory card worth a fixed number of VPs from your hand. If you do, gain as many VP tokens as it’s worth in VPs.

Doomsday Book £0* - ACTION

Draw a card for each plague token you have. This costs £1 per plague token you have.



Amputation $4 - ACTION

$3. Draw one less card after cleanup this turn.

Town Crier $4 - ACTION

$2. Look at the top card of your deck. Either put it into your hand or discard it and each other player gains a copy.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2015, 10:14:44 am by Vislor »
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #12 on: January 17, 2015, 07:24:19 pm »
+1


Quote
Church $3 - ACTION DURATION REACTION
When you would draw 5 cards at the end of this turn draw 6 instead. While this is in play +1 buy and if you are attacked you may discard a card to be unaffected.

Why not just say "draw an extra card in your Cleanup Phase"?  As it is, this wording explicitly anti-combos with Outpost and other Churches.  "While this is in play +1 Buy" makes no sense.  And this card would fail to stay in play between turns because it doesn't have a next turn effect.

You're right, it should definitely just say "draw an extra card in your Cleanup Phase". I thought it was too good when combined with itself and Outpost, but why shouldn't a card work well in combos? Perhaps it should cost $4 then? I thought the "While this is in play" clause would be simpler than a "Now and next turn" and then the bit about discarding. Why wouldn't it stay in play, it's a Duration card?


To answer your question, Duration cards to NOT automatically stay in play until next turn. The rules state that Duration cards stay in play until the clean-up phase of the last turn in which they do something. So a card that doesn't do anything next turn would get discarded even if it says "Duration". This is why if you play Tactician as the last card in your hand, it will be discarded at the end of turn, because it isn't doing anything next turn as it didn't discard any cards.

HOWEVER... Church actually does work, for the same reason Outpost does. Outpost actually doesn't do anything next turn either, but because it does something AFTER you have already discarded your cards during cleanup phase, it can't be discarded during cleanup of the turn you play it. So Church will work exactly like Outpost; it will stay in play, even though it doesn't do anything "next turn."
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #13 on: January 17, 2015, 07:43:40 pm »
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Quote
Quack $2 - ACTION INFECTION
You may gain a plague token. You may pass one of your plague tokens to the left.

This is an attack card that only hits the player to your left.  Not a fan of that.

You may not be a fan, but plenty of people I play with like it. Possession goes to the left, Tribute goes to the left. In fact some of them want it to be pass a token to target player, but I vetoed that. Remember plague is not as bad as you think, there are plenty ways to get rid of it, this is one way itself!

Possession and Tribute are not attacks though. On average, they leave a player just as well-off as he was before. With this, the problem is that if players A and B play the same strategy, with the same skill level, but player C happens to play a Quack strategy, then player A suddenly is much worse-off than player B, even though they are doing the same thing. Obviously your fan cards can do whatever your play group finds find and interesting, but Donald has always avoided any attacks that only hurt one player, for good reasons.

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Hospital $4+ - ACTION
+1 Card. +2 Actions. Trash a card from your hand. When you buy this you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpay you may discard one of your plague tokens.

Almost certainly too powerful.  Even if it were only +1 Action I would say that it is too powerful compared to Rats.  As it is, this really should be $5 for initial testing.

Possibly, but it's worse than Junk Dealer and doesn't have the when trashed ability of Rats. I suppose I could make it trash anything other than treasure, but I reckon that makes it too harsh. The overpay ability is important, maybe people will often only be buying it for $5/$6 or more anyway? Maybe making it $5+ and you MAY trash a card from your hand?


Only slightly worse than Junk Dealer, not as much as the difference between a $4 and a $5, I think.  Think of the difference between Village and Peddler* (a non-existent vanilla Peddler that would pretty much be a $4 card). They're both cantrips; Village tacks on 1 action, Peddler tacks on $1. And that changes a $3 to a $4. Your card does the exact same change to Junk Dealer than Village does to Peddler, but while changing a $5 to a $4, a much larger change. Also, there's the overpay effect. I wouldn't compare it to rats, because rats really isn't a trasher... but I agree with eHeHalcyon; I think a non-terminal trasher really needs to be $5.

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Barber $5 – ACTION
+1 Action. You may discard a token of your choice or trash a card from your hand. Gain a token of your choice.

Can I discard tokens from other players?  Can I gain VP tokens?  The ability to non-terminally gain VP tokens can break the game, but other than that this card actually sounds a bit weak.

Sorry, this should read "You may discard one of your tokens". I don't quite like it though, it was meant to be a sort of token remodeller. I thought about making it 2 tokens but it creates a lot of AP if you have different sorts and you might not want to remodel them. That's why I put the trash a card bit in, but I am beginning to think that is unnecessary. Yes the idea is you can discard or gain any sort of token. Maybe it should be $4 and just "You may discard one of your tokens. Gain a token of your choice."


I would really avoid an effect that talks about "a token of your choice." There's lots of different types of tokens, and different players may be familiar with different options. One player may have never seen Prosperity, and wouldn't know that a VP token is a thing. We also don't know what new tokens will exist in a couple months that we haven't seen yet. There could be one that's really hard to get, but also extremely good to have, and then suddenly your card allows you to get one more easily.

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Autopsy $7 - ACTION
+1 Action. You may put your deck into your discard pile. Put one card from it into your hand.

Many different variations of this card have been proposed.  I don't know if this one specifically would work, but it sounds OK.
It used to be put one card into your hand and one on top of your deck, but I think that was obnoxiously good, even without the extra Action. Now I'm not so sure though...


Well at the least you need wording to allow the player to look through their discard before they pull a card from it. But remember that this card is like another copy of the best card in your deck, and can be exactly what you need whenever you need it. Even at $7 it may be too good.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2015, 07:45:27 pm by GendoIkari »
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eHalcyon

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #14 on: January 17, 2015, 10:40:16 pm »
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Quote
A plague token is not as bad as Cutpurse because it only adds $1 to the cost of buying Victory cards, not other cards. If you have $8 and can't afford a Province but still want to empty Victory piles, just buy a cheaper Victory card! Or find ways to get rid of the Plague or improve your strategy by buying other cards. The aim of this set is to encourage a strategy combining more of the other Kingdom cards on offer, some of which may help get rid of Plague tokens, some of which may help gain Victory cards/tokens in other ways, some of which will give you phantom $ (I admit I probably need more of this in the cards in this set) and then there are always two ways permanently available to get rid of the Plague: Privy and giving to Charity.

Cutpurse subtracts one Copper from your hand when played, and it doesn't nothing if you have no Copper.  Each plague token is guaranteed to subtract $1 from your hand every time you buy a Victory card.  Yes, it only matters when buying a VP card, but you will be doing that in most games, so it usually matters eventually.  And because you can effectively only get rid of one token per turn, you actually can't afford to put it off.  If you wait, pretty soon even Estates will be too expensive to buy!  But the way to get rid of the plague token is by discarding a treasure card.  This may be a Copper (again, that Cutpurse comparison) or it might be a Silver or better (worse than Cutpurse).

Now, it is possible to get rid of more than one plague token per turn by using Privy or certain cards from the set.  But Privy is a really poor option.  First, it is delayed -- you have to wait until you draw it before it helps, and that plague token is hurting you the entire time.  Second, it is a terminal action that does nothing but get rid of a Plague token.  It's junk, and taking the time to play it will often be worse than just sacrificing a treasure. 

Making it non-terminal helps, but it's still adding junk to your deck!  I would suggest buffing Privy by letting it remove 2 or maybe even 3 Plague tokens.  This provides a more efficient way to remove multiple tokens and it gives you a strategic option to build up extra plague tokens for whatever reason until you remove them all in one quick go before you start greening.

The other cards in the set don't really factor into this.  You can't guarantee that they'll be in the game.  But what cards help anyway?  Flea doesn't work unless you have trashing, and even then it's slow and unreliable to do.  Quack is a single-target attack.  Hospital still costs you $1 per token (via overpay), which is the same value as the charity method of discarding a Copper from hand.  Barber seems like a weak card in general.

The options there aren't great, and it seems like there are more cards that add plague tokens than those that remove, which just exacerbates the problem.

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Correct, which is why I am considering the defence mechanisms. The Diseases, though, are not going to be an every game affair, and even then they are late game, potentially allowing a slower strategy to take effect against the quick starters, and yes, it will create tension when piles get lower. I quite like that. Also, curses or ruins running out would give the person a Disease. I'm thinking of making the Diseases work something like this though to make them less obnoxious: "You may gain a Plague token, if you do.......and then carry out the attack."

Tension is cool, but in this case I think that it would just feel too swingy.  As pops said, they are too powerful to let somebody else do it, so people would be hesitant to lower any pile into easy clearing range, whether that's 2 cards remaining or 3 or 4.  At that point, it's a bit of a lottery as to who can get enough +Buys and gains to clear the 5 cards or whatever.  In practice, it may mean that most games with diseases devolve into players going for a simple BM+X so no piles are ever in danger of emptying.  The same thing applies to Curses and Ruins -- players just won't play the junker when the pile is close to empty.

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There are ways of getting rid of more than one Plague token per turn...not least play x number of Privies (assuming you have the Actions...maybe Privy should be +1 Action?) and/or give to Charity.

Discussed above.

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(Flea)

These have been pretty fun when we've had them in playtesting so far so I think they're fine, apart from the text not being under a line in the above. There is very often either a trasher or a discarder or some sort when you mix sets and even if not the extra actions can come in handy if there's not many of those in the game. Not every card is bought every game so I don't see any problem here. It's a $1 card.

My comment is in the context of "what if this is a real set?"  Rats is a 20 card stack where its primary niche is providing you with a bunch of $4 fodder for TfB.  There is a sound mechanical reason in the design of Rats.  With Flea, it feels like all the quirks are strictly thematic.  That's not a bad thing, but it feels kind of clunky from a mechanical point of view.  The most interesting thing about the card is that they multiply, which is a niche already covered by Rats.

It might be interesting in that a game with Fleas is guaranteed to have an abundance of +actions.  But I think rigorous playtesting would still have you drop at least one of the reaction effects.

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(Contaminate)
It doesn't really make a pile more expensive, it just adds to your plague tokens if you buy from it which makes Victory cards more expensive unless you can get rid of them by the time your buy phase comes around. I think it's different enough to Embargo to make it a good additional little card.

It costs you to get rid of a Plague token.  It costs you one treasure from your hand, or a Privy in your hand that could have been a treasure or something better.  Either way, getting rid of that token costs you.  So gaining the plague token on the pile is, in a round-about way, an extra expense that you are paying to gain that card.

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You may not be a fan, but plenty of people I play with like it. Possession goes to the left, Tribute goes to the left. In fact some of them want it to be pass a token to target player, but I vetoed that. Remember plague is not as bad as you think, there are plenty ways to get rid of it, this is one way itself!

If you and the people you play with enjoy it, that is awesome and you should keep on enjoying it!  I am commenting from the perspective of whether it could be an official card, and the fact is that it couldn't.  In Dominion, attacks hit all players, but this card does not.  As Gendo pointed out, Possession and Tribute are not attacks.

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You're right, it should definitely just say "draw an extra card in your Cleanup Phase". I thought it was too good when combined with itself and Outpost, but why shouldn't a card work well in combos? Perhaps it should cost $4 then? I thought the "While this is in play" clause would be simpler than a "Now and next turn" and then the bit about discarding. Why wouldn't it stay in play, it's a Duration card?

(PPE: I see that Gendo has answered this already, but I'll leave this explanation here anyway.  He might be right about how Church compares to Outpost, but I am not convinced. :P)

The Duration type doesn't automatically mean that it will stay in play.  It's just a way to let the player know that, hey, this card might be sticking around longer than other cards!  The official rule is that "A Duration is not discarded from play until the Cleanup phase of last turn on which it does something" (quoted from the wiki because it's handier than the rulebook).  If you play Tactician but discard no cards, Tactician won't stay in play until the next round.  If Lighthouse didn't have an effect on the next round, it would not stay in play and the "while in play" would only be in effect on your own turn, thus being useless. 

So, I play Church.  In the clean-up phase, I check to see if Church will do anything on a future turn.  It does not, so it gets cleaned up.  The Duration typing doesn't change that.

Here's a re-wording of it, trying to keep it close to your effect and in keeping with the wording on official cards:

Church
$3 - Action-Duration
Now and at the start of your next turn: +1 Buy.
Draw an extra card in this turn's Clean-up phase.

While this is in play, when another player plays an Attack card, you may discard a card from your hand.  If you do, you are unaffected by that Attack.

Like Lighthouse, the Reaction type shouldn't be necessary.  The type tells the player that they may be able to reveal the card for an effect outside of their turn.  Church will be in play so it doesn't need to be revealed.

It needs testing, but I doubt that it would be too strong for $3.

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(Haemorrhage)
More complicated than Rebuild? I understand it is difficult to use, but again I think you are overestimating the plague tokens vs the benefit to the multi-trashing and card to hand ability this card offers. It should say somewhere that you don't have to put a card into your hand if you name one and don't find it in your deck. It's been quite a favourite in playtesting with some players...for instance, buy it first turn, name Duchy and trash all your estates for only 3 plague tokens! Also works well with Fleas and Tunnels.

Definitely more complicated than Rebuild. 

OK, the early trashing of 3 Estates sounds decent.  But that's about it?  7 Plague tokens to get rid of Copper sounds terrible.  I don't see how it could work with Fleas.  You'll usually have a few different Action cards, so naming one Action card is liable to get several other useful cards trashed alongside the Fleas.

Not sure how you set it up for Tunnels either.  Naming a Victory card either gets your Tunnels trashed or it just draws you the first Tunnel you find.  Naming a Treasure you don't have will get your Golds trashed along with gaining a bunch of plague tokens.  Naming Gold (or Copper, if you don't trash out your Copper) could easily have that card found early.  I guess you could play with almost no actions at all and name an action?

Just to be clear, limited numbers of Plague tokens are fine.  Where it gets terrible is when they are coming every round (like with those Diseases), and when there is an attack on the board that multiple players are playing every round to hand out plague tokens.  If the other players are giving me 2-3 plague tokens every round, it'll be almost impossible for me to keep pace in removing those plague tokens.  Pretty soon, even Estates are $20 each.  That's the problem.

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(Hospital)
Possibly, but it's worse than Junk Dealer and doesn't have the when trashed ability of Rats. I suppose I could make it trash anything other than treasure, but I reckon that makes it too harsh. The overpay ability is important, maybe people will often only be buying it for $5/$6 or more anyway? Maybe making it $5+ and you MAY trash a card from your hand?

It's not worse than Junk Dealer.  Junk Dealer gives you an extra +$1 whereas Hospital gives you an extra +1 action.

If the overpay is the important thing, I would suggest removing the trashing and maybe making it $2 and weaker than a regular Village.

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(Leech)
The idea was to make a better version of Thief but not too expensive or obnoxious. This can trash bad cards for people, but you might get to trash a bad one as well.

A noble idea, but I think it could easily be too obnoxious. :P

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(Barber)
Sorry, this should read "You may discard one of your tokens". I don't quite like it though, it was meant to be a sort of token remodeller. I thought about making it 2 tokens but it creates a lot of AP if you have different sorts and you might not want to remodel them. That's why I put the trash a card bit in, but I am beginning to think that is unnecessary. Yes the idea is you can discard or gain any sort of token. Maybe it should be $4 and just "You may discard one of your tokens. Gain a token of your choice."

My suggestion would be to make it a cheap terminal, maybe let it remove tokens from supply cards as well as from yourself, just to be interesting (this would affect Embargo, Contaminate and Trade Route) and maybe explicitly name the tokens you can choose to gain (if I choose to gain an Embargo token, what does that mean?).  A $2 terminal that lets me discard a plague token and gain a Victory or Coin token seems perfectly fine.

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(Royal College)
That's what I thought which is why initially this was 2VP for every 2 gold in your deck, but the people I played with said it should just be the other way. I reckon my initial thoughts were right though for the reasons you have made. It also makes the Hoard combo less obnoxious.

I think 2:2 is probably still no good, but it's better than 1:1 for sure. :P

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(Black Death)
Ok I'll move the "During your buy phase" clause to the end of the top half description. You discard the cards when you play it, not during your buy phase. The doubling of plague tokens is a sufficient downside to the extra money you get on that particular turn. The plague tokens will be with you from there on! The idea of the card though is to give you a significant cash boost if you have the Plague (indeed it gives you plague!) and the extra buys are in order to encourage buying cards other than Victory cards which will be significantly more expensive should you wish to purchase them anyway. The card is also meant to be a bit fun, inspired in some regard by Dynamite in Bang! - which explodes when you reveal a certain card.

I missed that the card must be passed.  I thought it was optional; the card makes more sense now.  So if I understand your intent, the wording should be like this:

The Black Death
$8 Action-Infection
+2 Buys
Take 2 Plague tokens.  Reveal then discard the top 2 cards of your deck.  If they are both treasure, double your plague tokens and put this card in the discard pile of the player to your left.  +$2 per plague token you have.

When you trash this, return half your plague tokens (rounded up).

Granting +$2 on play simplifies the wording a lot.  The only difference is that you don't benefit from tokens you gain after playing The Black Death, which shouldn't usually matter.  You can also pass the card immediately to make the wording simpler (otherwise you have to add more text specifying "at the start of your Clean-up phase" and it gets confusing with any text that comes after.

I think the timing is still overly complicated, but it may be OK if it is fun enough.  If you really want to replicate Dynamite, the card should be passed whether it blows up or not.  And maybe it should be top-decked or go into the player's hand so they have the option to gamble immediately.  Though to really replicate Dynamite you'd have to add some sort of clause that forces each player to play it. :P

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Bath House $3 - VICTORY TREASURE

1VP. $1. When you gain this you may discard one of your plague tokens.

Sure.

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Surgeon $5 – ACTION

$2. Return to the supply a Victory card worth a fixed number of VPs from your hand. If you do, gain as many VP tokens as it’s worth in VPs.

Wording really needs work.  Not sure if the concept is solid enough, because you kind of have to specify the "fixed number of VPs" but calling it out like that just doesn't feel right.  Maybe make it narrower, like this:

Surgeon
$5 - Action
+$2
You may return a Victory card to the Supply.  If it is an...
Estate: +2VP
Duchy: +3VP
Province: +5VP

You could use the correct values if you want, but it might be interesting to do it this way where you get a small bonus on Estates and a small penalty on Provinces.  You can also use it to return other Victory cards, but this would usually be a bad idea.  Sometimes it might be good though (delaying a 3-pile).

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Doomsday Book £0* - ACTION

Draw a card for each plague token you have. This costs £1 per plague token you have.

Suddenly, pounds! :P

For the variable cost, you really should put it under a line.  And note, as written, the cost can't be reduced by Bridge and the others.  If you made it "cost $1 more per plague token" then you would need a rulebook clarification about how it interacts with cost reducers.

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Amputation $4 - ACTION

$3. Draw one less card after cleanup this turn.

I think I've seen this proposed before.  I don't know how strong this would be, but $4 seems an OK cost.  Grammatically, it should say "one fewer card".

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Town Crier $4 - ACTION

$2. Look at the top card of your deck. Either put it into your hand or discard it and each other player gains a copy.

Needs the Attack type.  Seems OK to me.  Maybe a bit too powerful.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #15 on: January 19, 2015, 10:16:29 am »
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Quack $2 - ACTION INFECTION
You may gain a plague token. You may pass one of your plague tokens to the left.

This is an attack card that only hits the player to your left.  Not a fan of that.

You may not be a fan, but plenty of people I play with like it. Possession goes to the left, Tribute goes to the left. In fact some of them want it to be pass a token to target player, but I vetoed that. Remember plague is not as bad as you think, there are plenty ways to get rid of it, this is one way itself!

Possession and Tribute are not attacks though. On average, they leave a player just as well-off as he was before. With this, the problem is that if players A and B play the same strategy, with the same skill level, but player C happens to play a Quack strategy, then player A suddenly is much worse-off than player B, even though they are doing the same thing. Obviously your fan cards can do whatever your play group finds find and interesting, but Donald has always avoided any attacks that only hurt one player, for good reasons.

Fair enough. Maybe everyone passes one to the left is the way to go, but Influenza does that, so maybe I'll just get rid of it.

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Hospital $4+ - ACTION
+1 Card. +2 Actions. Trash a card from your hand. When you buy this you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpay you may discard one of your plague tokens.

Almost certainly too powerful.  Even if it were only +1 Action I would say that it is too powerful compared to Rats.  As it is, this really should be $5 for initial testing.

Possibly, but it's worse than Junk Dealer and doesn't have the when trashed ability of Rats. I suppose I could make it trash anything other than treasure, but I reckon that makes it too harsh. The overpay ability is important, maybe people will often only be buying it for $5/$6 or more anyway? Maybe making it $5+ and you MAY trash a card from your hand?



Only slightly worse than Junk Dealer, not as much as the difference between a $4 and a $5, I think.  Think of the difference between Village and Peddler* (a non-existent vanilla Peddler that would pretty much be a $4 card). They're both cantrips; Village tacks on 1 action, Peddler tacks on $1. And that changes a $3 to a $4. Your card does the exact same change to Junk Dealer than Village does to Peddler, but while changing a $5 to a $4, a much larger change. Also, there's the overpay effect. I wouldn't compare it to rats, because rats really isn't a trasher... but I agree with eHeHalcyon; I think a non-terminal trasher really needs to be $5.

I have to say I don't really understand your reasoning. Village is a $3 card and Hospital does 1 thing more than that. It's not even a you MAY trash like Chapel is (up to 4!!!). I think an extra action is worse than an extra $1, as evidenced by the difference between ruined village and abandoned mine. No one ever gets any value from ruined village unless they're throning or using it as a Horn of Plenty enabler. The reason Junk Dealer is better is because adding the extra $1 is effectively like drawing a guaranteed copper so it's more like Laboratory than it is village (+1 card doesn't guarantee anything!). In fact, arguably Hospital is worse than a regular Village, because you play a village and you are back to the same number of cards as you were at before, whereas with Hospital you are forced to reduce handsize! Imagine if you are left with one card, Hospital or Village....which one are you gonna opt to play??!

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Barber $5 – ACTION
+1 Action. You may discard a token of your choice or trash a card from your hand. Gain a token of your choice.

Can I discard tokens from other players?  Can I gain VP tokens?  The ability to non-terminally gain VP tokens can break the game, but other than that this card actually sounds a bit weak.

Sorry, this should read "You may discard one of your tokens". I don't quite like it though, it was meant to be a sort of token remodeller. I thought about making it 2 tokens but it creates a lot of AP if you have different sorts and you might not want to remodel them. That's why I put the trash a card bit in, but I am beginning to think that is unnecessary. Yes the idea is you can discard or gain any sort of token. Maybe it should be $4 and just "You may discard one of your tokens. Gain a token of your choice."



I would really avoid an effect that talks about "a token of your choice." There's lots of different types of tokens, and different players may be familiar with different options. One player may have never seen Prosperity, and wouldn't know that a VP token is a thing. We also don't know what new tokens will exist in a couple months that we haven't seen yet. There could be one that's really hard to get, but also extremely good to have, and then suddenly your card allows you to get one more easily.

Good points. I wasn't happy with this card from the get go. I'll probably work on it some more, but now I'm imagining something along the lines of:

Barber $5 - ACTION

You may discard any number of plague tokens. Gain 1VP for every 2 plague tokens discarded.

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Autopsy $7 - ACTION
+1 Action. You may put your deck into your discard pile. Put one card from it into your hand.

Many different variations of this card have been proposed.  I don't know if this one specifically would work, but it sounds OK.
It used to be put one card into your hand and one on top of your deck, but I think that was obnoxiously good, even without the extra Action. Now I'm not so sure though...



Well at the least you need wording to allow the player to look through their discard before they pull a card from it. But remember that this card is like another copy of the best card in your deck, and can be exactly what you need whenever you need it. Even at $7 it may be too good.

True. It certainly CAN be very good...perhaps you're right, I could just make it like this:

Autopsy $7 - ACTION

+1 Action. Look through your discard pile and put one card from it into your hand.

But Herald already covers that better............hmmm. Needs work!
« Last Edit: January 19, 2015, 10:20:03 am by Vislor »
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #16 on: January 19, 2015, 12:29:06 pm »
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I have to say I don't really understand your reasoning. Village is a $3 card and Hospital does 1 thing more than that. It's not even a you MAY trash like Chapel is (up to 4!!!). I think an extra action is worse than an extra $1, as evidenced by the difference between ruined village and abandoned mine. No one ever gets any value from ruined village unless they're throning or using it as a Horn of Plenty enabler. The reason Junk Dealer is better is because adding the extra $1 is effectively like drawing a guaranteed copper so it's more like Laboratory than it is village (+1 card doesn't guarantee anything!). In fact, arguably Hospital is worse than a regular Village, because you play a village and you are back to the same number of cards as you were at before, whereas with Hospital you are forced to reduce handsize! Imagine if you are left with one card, Hospital or Village....which one are you gonna opt to play??!

I probably wasn't very clear in my explanation; because you are somewhat say here same things I was saying in a different way. I agree that an extra action is worse than an extra $1.. (though I disagree with your reasoning as to why. Ruined Village is not comparable; I think it's much better to compare Village to Peddler here; taking card that has +1 action giving it a second action is very different than taking a card with no +1 action giving +1 action). My point was to say that the difference between Hospital and Junk Dealer is exactly the same as the difference between Village and Peddler. Village and Peddler are very close in average power level, as evidenced by the fact that $4 is very close in cost to $3. Hospital and Junk dealer should be equally close in power level. That is to say, yes Junk Dealer is stronger, I agree. I'm just saying that it's only a little bit stronger, and going from $4 to $5 usually means getting a lot stronger. If a card is almost as good as a $5, then it's likely really good for $4.

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eHalcyon

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #17 on: January 19, 2015, 04:24:51 pm »
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I have to say I don't really understand your reasoning. Village is a $3 card and Hospital does 1 thing more than that. It's not even a you MAY trash like Chapel is (up to 4!!!). I think an extra action is worse than an extra $1, as evidenced by the difference between ruined village and abandoned mine. No one ever gets any value from ruined village unless they're throning or using it as a Horn of Plenty enabler. The reason Junk Dealer is better is because adding the extra $1 is effectively like drawing a guaranteed copper so it's more like Laboratory than it is village (+1 card doesn't guarantee anything!). In fact, arguably Hospital is worse than a regular Village, because you play a village and you are back to the same number of cards as you were at before, whereas with Hospital you are forced to reduce handsize! Imagine if you are left with one card, Hospital or Village....which one are you gonna opt to play??!

Vanilla bonuses don't stack linearly like that.  Consider the card:

Metropolis
+2 Cards
+2 Actions

This also does just one more thing than Village, but it has to be a $6+ card (compare it to City and Laboratory).

For Hospital, the thing to look at is its primary use cases.  Hospital is a cantrip trasher, which makes it directly comparable to Junk Dealer and Upgrade, more the former than the latter because the Upgrade effect actually has some very big implications in certain strategies. 

Hospital really is not arguably worse than Village beacuse Hospital serves a different primary use case, one that is more powerful in general.  You're looking at Hospital as a village with a bonus when you need to think of it as a cantrip trasher with a bonus.

Cantrip trashing (+1 card, +1 action, trash a card -- no other bonus) on its own is very powerful, easily worth $4.  This is why I also compare it to Rats, another cantrip trasher that comes with what is usually a penalty.  The penalty is so big that it pretty much overtakes the "cantrip trasher" use case of the card and turns it into something else entirely (fodder generator for TfB).

As for Hospital vs. Junk Dealer, I actually think Hospital may be stronger.  As a package, it is just so conducive to engine building.  The +1 action lets you pick up an extra terminal rather than have to get an extra (regular) village.  I think the chance to play that other terminal will often be more valuable than the +$1 on Junk Dealer.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #18 on: January 19, 2015, 04:45:45 pm »
+1


As for Hospital vs. Junk Dealer, I actually think Hospital may be stronger.  As a package, it is just so conducive to engine building.  The +1 action lets you pick up an extra terminal rather than have to get an extra (regular) village.  I think the chance to play that other terminal will often be more valuable than the +$1 on Junk Dealer.

I think this probably wrong for 2 reasons:

Junk Dealer's +$1 helps you to buy your engine components while trashing down to be able to play your engine. It's basically a compensation for the card reducing your hand-size by 1. The extra action will not be helpful early on while you are trying to buy $5s that you want to play once your engine is running.

Before too long, you won't be able to continue playing Hospitals; because you'll be out of cards to trash. This means that you will need to rely on other Villages for the actions. Plus many engines are probably going to want to play several terminals per turn, and you don't want more than a couple Hospitals. Interesting edge case; if you have plenty of extra buys, and your deck is otherwise powerful enough to draw itself, then buy a couple coppers (or even Curses if you want to run down a pile) each turn, then trash them on your next turn with Hospitals.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #19 on: January 19, 2015, 05:06:38 pm »
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Why is cantrip trashing considered so good? You have to play 4 in a row before you can do what one chapel does, and then what are you gonna do with all those trashers in your ultra thin deck? They'd get too risky to cconsider playing.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #20 on: January 19, 2015, 05:10:55 pm »
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Why is cantrip trashing considered so good? You have to play 4 in a row before you can do what one chapel does, and then what are you gonna do with all those trashers in your ultra thin deck? They'd get too risky to cconsider playing.

Well it's not as good as Chapel. But compare it to terminal trashers that trash either 1 or 2 cards per play... usually with a trasher early on, playing that trasher is about the only thing you do that turn. With Chapel that's ok, because you're doing a lot. But with other trashers, when it's the only thing you do that turn, it is slow to be building your deck while thinning it. A cantrip trasher allows you to build your deck and thin it at the same time.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #21 on: January 19, 2015, 05:58:11 pm »
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As for Hospital vs. Junk Dealer, I actually think Hospital may be stronger.  As a package, it is just so conducive to engine building.  The +1 action lets you pick up an extra terminal rather than have to get an extra (regular) village.  I think the chance to play that other terminal will often be more valuable than the +$1 on Junk Dealer.

I think this probably wrong for 2 reasons:

Junk Dealer's +$1 helps you to buy your engine components while trashing down to be able to play your engine. It's basically a compensation for the card reducing your hand-size by 1. The extra action will not be helpful early on while you are trying to buy $5s that you want to play once your engine is running.

Before too long, you won't be able to continue playing Hospitals; because you'll be out of cards to trash. This means that you will need to rely on other Villages for the actions. Plus many engines are probably going to want to play several terminals per turn, and you don't want more than a couple Hospitals. Interesting edge case; if you have plenty of extra buys, and your deck is otherwise powerful enough to draw itself, then buy a couple coppers (or even Curses if you want to run down a pile) each turn, then trash them on your next turn with Hospitals.

I'm thinking more of the engines that have a couple lower cost terminals, like maybe a couple Swindlers or Monuments, or even terminal draw like Smithy.  You can put off buying a village for a turn and have an extra good terminal instead.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #22 on: January 19, 2015, 06:56:45 pm »
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Why is cantrip trashing considered so good? You have to play 4 in a row before you can do what one chapel does, and then what are you gonna do with all those trashers in your ultra thin deck? They'd get too risky to cconsider playing.

1. You don't always trash 4 cards when you play Chapel.
2. You can trash all but one of your trashers if you don't want them anymore.
3. A cantrip trasher trashes less cards at once, but has one more card to choose from.
4. A cantrip trasher means that even turns you trash something in can be worthwile, and if it's just playing Militia to annoy your opponents.
5. Generally, your ability to do things doesn't suffer as much during your trashing phase, which makes up for the fact it takes a bit longer.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #23 on: January 19, 2015, 07:01:21 pm »
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A plague token is not as bad as Cutpurse because it only adds $1 to the cost of buying Victory cards, not other cards. If you have $8 and can't afford a Province but still want to empty Victory piles, just buy a cheaper Victory card! Or find ways to get rid of the Plague or improve your strategy by buying other cards. The aim of this set is to encourage a strategy combining more of the other Kingdom cards on offer, some of which may help get rid of Plague tokens, some of which may help gain Victory cards/tokens in other ways, some of which will give you phantom $ (I admit I probably need more of this in the cards in this set) and then there are always two ways permanently available to get rid of the Plague: Privy and giving to Charity.

Cutpurse subtracts one Copper from your hand when played, and it doesn't nothing if you have no Copper.  Each plague token is guaranteed to subtract $1 from your hand every time you buy a Victory card.  Yes, it only matters when buying a VP card, but you will be doing that in most games, so it usually matters eventually.  And because you can effectively only get rid of one token per turn, you actually can't afford to put it off.  If you wait, pretty soon even Estates will be too expensive to buy!  But the way to get rid of the plague token is by discarding a treasure card.  This may be a Copper (again, that Cutpurse comparison) or it might be a Silver or better (worse than Cutpurse).

Now, it is possible to get rid of more than one plague token per turn by using Privy or certain cards from the set.  But Privy is a really poor option.  First, it is delayed -- you have to wait until you draw it before it helps, and that plague token is hurting you the entire time.  Second, it is a terminal action that does nothing but get rid of a Plague token.  It's junk, and taking the time to play it will often be worse than just sacrificing a treasure. 

Making it non-terminal helps, but it's still adding junk to your deck!  I would suggest buffing Privy by letting it remove 2 or maybe even 3 Plague tokens.  This provides a more efficient way to remove multiple tokens and it gives you a strategic option to build up extra plague tokens for whatever reason until you remove them all in one quick go before you start greening.

The other cards in the set don't really factor into this.  You can't guarantee that they'll be in the game.  But what cards help anyway?  Flea doesn't work unless you have trashing, and even then it's slow and unreliable to do.  Quack is a single-target attack.  Hospital still costs you $1 per token (via overpay), which is the same value as the charity method of discarding a Copper from hand.  Barber seems like a weak card in general.

The options there aren't great, and it seems like there are more cards that add plague tokens than those that remove, which just exacerbates the problem.

OK so maybe I should go back to one of my original ideas which was you may pay $2 to discard one of your plague tokens, and you can pay that as many times as you like to get rid of them? You can still just put one coin on the Charity mat no matter how many times you do it though? Kind of nukes the hospital overpay ability though...but not entirely I guess.

And I shall add the extra action to Privy, not sure about it removing 2 or more plague tokens though, will play test it still with one a few times I think. It may have to scale according to how many players there are...that might be the best solution. I suppose the point about Privy is that you can take one even if you don't have any plague tokens in preparation for whenever they might arrive! Also, early game plague tokens are not much concern, how often do you want to green expensive Victory cards early doors?! The aim of this set is to encourage buying more of the Actions and finding other ways to get to Victory than just BM Province/Colony rushes which is what I seem to end up losing to most often, even if I hit a really interesting combo or Alt VP strategy.

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Correct, which is why I am considering the defence mechanisms. The Diseases, though, are not going to be an every game affair, and even then they are late game, potentially allowing a slower strategy to take effect against the quick starters, and yes, it will create tension when piles get lower. I quite like that. Also, curses or ruins running out would give the person a Disease. I'm thinking of making the Diseases work something like this though to make them less obnoxious: "You may gain a Plague token, if you do.......and then carry out the attack."

Tension is cool, but in this case I think that it would just feel too swingy.  As pops said, they are too powerful to let somebody else do it, so people would be hesitant to lower any pile into easy clearing range, whether that's 2 cards remaining or 3 or 4.  At that point, it's a bit of a lottery as to who can get enough +Buys and gains to clear the 5 cards or whatever.  In practice, it may mean that most games with diseases devolve into players going for a simple BM+X so no piles are ever in danger of emptying.  The same thing applies to Curses and Ruins -- players just won't play the junker when the pile is close to empty.

I think you're probably right, so how about the Diseases are just another pile like Knights, but when you buy them they go straight to your play area as a Permanent Duration Attack and are returned to the bottom of the Disease pile when someone else buys another Disease. They could still have the "you may gain a plague token in order for this to attack" option.....Not sure what they should cost though, maybe $3.

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There are ways of getting rid of more than one Plague token per turn...not least play x number of Privies (assuming you have the Actions...maybe Privy should be +1 Action?) and/or give to Charity.

Discussed above.

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(Flea)

These have been pretty fun when we've had them in playtesting so far so I think they're fine, apart from the text not being under a line in the above. There is very often either a trasher or a discarder or some sort when you mix sets and even if not the extra actions can come in handy if there's not many of those in the game. Not every card is bought every game so I don't see any problem here. It's a $1 card.

My comment is in the context of "what if this is a real set?"  Rats is a 20 card stack where its primary niche is providing you with a bunch of $4 fodder for TfB.  There is a sound mechanical reason in the design of Rats.  With Flea, it feels like all the quirks are strictly thematic.  That's not a bad thing, but it feels kind of clunky from a mechanical point of view.  The most interesting thing about the card is that they multiply, which is a niche already covered by Rats.

It might be interesting in that a game with Fleas is guaranteed to have an abundance of +actions.  But I think rigorous playtesting would still have you drop at least one of the reaction effects.

What's wrong with one more Dominion card that multiplies? They are totally inspired by Rats and I love the thematic link between the rats and the fleas especially in a Black Death context. And they do provide you with TfB fodder...It's also pretty cool when you play Haemorrhage and discard a whole bunch of them to the player on your left! :)

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(Contaminate)
It doesn't really make a pile more expensive, it just adds to your plague tokens if you buy from it which makes Victory cards more expensive unless you can get rid of them by the time your buy phase comes around. I think it's different enough to Embargo to make it a good additional little card.

It costs you to get rid of a Plague token.  It costs you one treasure from your hand, or a Privy in your hand that could have been a treasure or something better.  Either way, getting rid of that token costs you.  So gaining the plague token on the pile is, in a round-about way, an extra expense that you are paying to gain that card.

True, but this is in no way as heinous a card as Embargo. The plague tokens run out from the supply pile for a start, not to mention I don't think they are as bad as a curse, and you can only ever gain 1 per card you purchase.

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You may not be a fan, but plenty of people I play with like it. Possession goes to the left, Tribute goes to the left. In fact some of them want it to be pass a token to target player, but I vetoed that. Remember plague is not as bad as you think, there are plenty ways to get rid of it, this is one way itself!

If you and the people you play with enjoy it, that is awesome and you should keep on enjoying it!  I am commenting from the perspective of whether it could be an official card, and the fact is that it couldn't.  In Dominion, attacks hit all players, but this card does not.  As Gendo pointed out, Possession and Tribute are not attacks.

Yeah I'll probably get rid of it. Either that or make it attack target player, but that goes against all Dominion philosophy, despite what my playgroup are wont to demand!

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You're right, it should definitely just say "draw an extra card in your Cleanup Phase". I thought it was too good when combined with itself and Outpost, but why shouldn't a card work well in combos? Perhaps it should cost $4 then? I thought the "While this is in play" clause would be simpler than a "Now and next turn" and then the bit about discarding. Why wouldn't it stay in play, it's a Duration card?

(PPE: I see that Gendo has answered this already, but I'll leave this explanation here anyway.  He might be right about how Church compares to Outpost, but I am not convinced. :P)

The Duration type doesn't automatically mean that it will stay in play.  It's just a way to let the player know that, hey, this card might be sticking around longer than other cards!  The official rule is that "A Duration is not discarded from play until the Cleanup phase of last turn on which it does something" (quoted from the wiki because it's handier than the rulebook).  If you play Tactician but discard no cards, Tactician won't stay in play until the next round.  If Lighthouse didn't have an effect on the next round, it would not stay in play and the "while in play" would only be in effect on your own turn, thus being useless. 

So, I play Church.  In the clean-up phase, I check to see if Church will do anything on a future turn.  It does not, so it gets cleaned up.  The Duration typing doesn't change that.

Here's a re-wording of it, trying to keep it close to your effect and in keeping with the wording on official cards:

Church
$3 - Action-Duration
Now and at the start of your next turn: +1 Buy.
Draw an extra card in this turn's Clean-up phase.

While this is in play, when another player plays an Attack card, you may discard a card from your hand.  If you do, you are unaffected by that Attack.

Like Lighthouse, the Reaction type shouldn't be necessary.  The type tells the player that they may be able to reveal the card for an effect outside of their turn.  Church will be in play so it doesn't need to be revealed.

It needs testing, but I doubt that it would be too strong for $3.

Yeah - way better wording!

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(Haemorrhage)
More complicated than Rebuild? I understand it is difficult to use, but again I think you are overestimating the plague tokens vs the benefit to the multi-trashing and card to hand ability this card offers. It should say somewhere that you don't have to put a card into your hand if you name one and don't find it in your deck. It's been quite a favourite in playtesting with some players...for instance, buy it first turn, name Duchy and trash all your estates for only 3 plague tokens! Also works well with Fleas and Tunnels.

Definitely more complicated than Rebuild. 

OK, the early trashing of 3 Estates sounds decent.  But that's about it?  7 Plague tokens to get rid of Copper sounds terrible.  I don't see how it could work with Fleas.  You'll usually have a few different Action cards, so naming one Action card is liable to get several other useful cards trashed alongside the Fleas.

Not sure how you set it up for Tunnels either.  Naming a Victory card either gets your Tunnels trashed or it just draws you the first Tunnel you find.  Naming a Treasure you don't have will get your Golds trashed along with gaining a bunch of plague tokens.  Naming Gold (or Copper, if you don't trash out your Copper) could easily have that card found early.  I guess you could play with almost no actions at all and name an action?

Just to be clear, limited numbers of Plague tokens are fine.  Where it gets terrible is when they are coming every round (like with those Diseases), and when there is an attack on the board that multiple players are playing every round to hand out plague tokens.  If the other players are giving me 2-3 plague tokens every round, it'll be almost impossible for me to keep pace in removing those plague tokens.  Pretty soon, even Estates are $20 each.  That's the problem.

With fleas it works best for the discard effect, so if you're trashing money or victory cards and can discard a bunch of fleas. It's harder to get it to work for trashing them because, as you rightly say, you don't want to trash those precious Action cards, not to mention you actually gain a plague token for each one you trash anyway, so they cancel each other out! With tunnels, well, we had a game where this guy was buying silver, naming that with haemorrage and trashing all his copper and discarding a bunch of tunnels into the bargain. Then he was naming gold, trashing silver and discarding a bunch of tunnels into the bargain. Then, though, he had the bright (or not?!) idea to name silver after filling his deck with gold and more tunnels....thus trashing all his gold, but discarding all his tunnels for more gold and draining the gold supply so the rest of us had none to buy!!! I thought it was excellent use of haemorrhage, but he still didn't win because he didn't manage to get his plague down in time before 3 piles were exhausted. Hmmmm...

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(Hospital)
Possibly, but it's worse than Junk Dealer and doesn't have the when trashed ability of Rats. I suppose I could make it trash anything other than treasure, but I reckon that makes it too harsh. The overpay ability is important, maybe people will often only be buying it for $5/$6 or more anyway? Maybe making it $5+ and you MAY trash a card from your hand?

It's not worse than Junk Dealer.  Junk Dealer gives you an extra +$1 whereas Hospital gives you an extra +1 action.

If the overpay is the important thing, I would suggest removing the trashing and maybe making it $2 and weaker than a regular Village.

I don't think you guys will get me to move on this. I still think Junk Dealer is way more like Lab in that it is essentially drawing you 2 cards, just that one of those is an enforced copper. Hospital draws you a card and then forces you to reduce hand size with no extra money. At least with Junk Dealer, chaining them is a reasonable option as it gives you some money to spend at the end of your turn, even if you end up having to trash a Junk Dealer itself with your final trash. Chaining hospitals is not that desirable given you may end up trashing something you really don't want to and there's no end pay off!! It just becomes another Village idiot strategy. Oh, I just played 4 hospitals...wow I could have spent 2 on a chapel to get that effect! Well there must be some reason they're so expensive, now...do I risk playing that 5th??? Oops, I now have no cards in hand and a bunch of hospitals to still try and play with!

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(Leech)
The idea was to make a better version of Thief but not too expensive or obnoxious. This can trash bad cards for people, but you might get to trash a bad one as well.

A noble idea, but I think it could easily be too obnoxious. :P

Meh... I'll play test it some more, bet it's not! Most people I know go for $5 Action cards, possibly with the occasional lower costing ones, there's almost always low costing junk around that people don't mind losing as well.

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(Barber)
Sorry, this should read "You may discard one of your tokens". I don't quite like it though, it was meant to be a sort of token remodeller. I thought about making it 2 tokens but it creates a lot of AP if you have different sorts and you might not want to remodel them. That's why I put the trash a card bit in, but I am beginning to think that is unnecessary. Yes the idea is you can discard or gain any sort of token. Maybe it should be $4 and just "You may discard one of your tokens. Gain a token of your choice."

My suggestion would be to make it a cheap terminal, maybe let it remove tokens from supply cards as well as from yourself, just to be interesting (this would affect Embargo, Contaminate and Trade Route) and maybe explicitly name the tokens you can choose to gain (if I choose to gain an Embargo token, what does that mean?).  A $2 terminal that lets me discard a plague token and gain a Victory or Coin token seems perfectly fine.

I've come up with an idea for the card which I think might work now:

Barber $5 - ACTION

+1 Plague token. You may discard up to 3 Plague tokens. - While this is in play gain 1VP for every plague token discarded this turn.

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(Royal College)
That's what I thought which is why initially this was 2VP for every 2 gold in your deck, but the people I played with said it should just be the other way. I reckon my initial thoughts were right though for the reasons you have made. It also makes the Hoard combo less obnoxious.

I think 2:2 is probably still no good, but it's better than 1:1 for sure. :P

Why's that? It scales pretty well, it's very rare to get more than 6 gold in most games. It think the most I've ever had was 11, but that's kind of freakish. Other $6 or less Victory cards can be worth more than Province. Fairgrounds, Vineyards, Duke, Feodum etc...I guess I could try 3:3.

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(Black Death)
Ok I'll move the "During your buy phase" clause to the end of the top half description. You discard the cards when you play it, not during your buy phase. The doubling of plague tokens is a sufficient downside to the extra money you get on that particular turn. The plague tokens will be with you from there on! The idea of the card though is to give you a significant cash boost if you have the Plague (indeed it gives you plague!) and the extra buys are in order to encourage buying cards other than Victory cards which will be significantly more expensive should you wish to purchase them anyway. The card is also meant to be a bit fun, inspired in some regard by Dynamite in Bang! - which explodes when you reveal a certain card.

I missed that the card must be passed.  I thought it was optional; the card makes more sense now.  So if I understand your intent, the wording should be like this:

The Black Death
$8 Action-Infection
+2 Buys
Take 2 Plague tokens.  Reveal then discard the top 2 cards of your deck.  If they are both treasure, double your plague tokens and put this card in the discard pile of the player to your left.  +$2 per plague token you have.

When you trash this, return half your plague tokens (rounded up).

Granting +$2 on play simplifies the wording a lot.  The only difference is that you don't benefit from tokens you gain after playing The Black Death, which shouldn't usually matter.  You can also pass the card immediately to make the wording simpler (otherwise you have to add more text specifying "at the start of your Clean-up phase" and it gets confusing with any text that comes after.

I think the timing is still overly complicated, but it may be OK if it is fun enough.  If you really want to replicate Dynamite, the card should be passed whether it blows up or not.  And maybe it should be top-decked or go into the player's hand so they have the option to gamble immediately.  Though to really replicate Dynamite you'd have to add some sort of clause that forces each player to play it. :P

Well originally I had thought of making it another Permanent Duration like the Diseases and it passes to the play area of the player to your left. It might work, especially if it is trashed once someone else plays another one. The wording gets kind of tricky and even more overly complicated though.

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Bath House $3 - VICTORY TREASURE

1VP. $1. When you gain this you may discard one of your plague tokens.

Sure.

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Surgeon $5 – ACTION

$2. Return to the supply a Victory card worth a fixed number of VPs from your hand. If you do, gain as many VP tokens as it’s worth in VPs.

Wording really needs work.  Not sure if the concept is solid enough, because you kind of have to specify the "fixed number of VPs" but calling it out like that just doesn't feel right.  Maybe make it narrower, like this:

Surgeon
$5 - Action
+$2
You may return a Victory card to the Supply.  If it is an...
Estate: +2VP
Duchy: +3VP
Province: +5VP

You could use the correct values if you want, but it might be interesting to do it this way where you get a small bonus on Estates and a small penalty on Provinces.  You can also use it to return other Victory cards, but this would usually be a bad idea.  Sometimes it might be good though (delaying a 3-pile).

I'm actually not really sure about this card any more, it'll probably just make the games go on forever....I had thought it was quite a cool idea, either your way or mine, but it will need a lot more thought and work I think, or maybe scrapping. Also I was thinkin +2 cards would be better than $2 anyway.

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Doomsday Book £0* - ACTION

Draw a card for each plague token you have. This costs £1 per plague token you have.

Suddenly, pounds! :P

For the variable cost, you really should put it under a line.  And note, as written, the cost can't be reduced by Bridge and the others.  If you made it "cost $1 more per plague token" then you would need a rulebook clarification about how it interacts with cost reducers.

Don't know why it wouldn't work with Bridge....you just take one off however many Plague tokens you have if Bridge is in play. Anyway...this is another one I need to think more about, not sure it is quite right yet.

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Amputation $4 - ACTION

$3. Draw one less card after cleanup this turn.

I think I've seen this proposed before.  I don't know how strong this would be, but $4 seems an OK cost.  Grammatically, it should say "one fewer card".

Yeah I think it might work....but wouldn't it be "one fewer cards"....? :P
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Town Crier $4 - ACTION

$2. Look at the top card of your deck. Either put it into your hand or discard it and each other player gains a copy.

Needs the Attack type.  Seems OK to me.  Maybe a bit too powerful.

Cool, I'll play test it.

Thanks again for all the feedback!

Also, just found out about the new expansion....exciting!
« Last Edit: January 19, 2015, 07:07:19 pm by Vislor »
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eHalcyon

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #24 on: January 19, 2015, 09:23:11 pm »
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OK so maybe I should go back to one of my original ideas which was you may pay $2 to discard one of your plague tokens, and you can pay that as many times as you like to get rid of them? You can still just put one coin on the Charity mat no matter how many times you do it though? Kind of nukes the hospital overpay ability though...but not entirely I guess.

And I shall add the extra action to Privy, not sure about it removing 2 or more plague tokens though, will play test it still with one a few times I think. It may have to scale according to how many players there are...that might be the best solution. I suppose the point about Privy is that you can take one even if you don't have any plague tokens in preparation for whenever they might arrive! Also, early game plague tokens are not much concern, how often do you want to green expensive Victory cards early doors?! The aim of this set is to encourage buying more of the Actions and finding other ways to get to Victory than just BM Province/Colony rushes which is what I seem to end up losing to most often, even if I hit a really interesting combo or Alt VP strategy.

I don't which changes would be best.  My primary concern is that you can accumulate plague tokens faster than you can realistically remove them, which leads to a broken game state on many boards.  Even though the plague tokens don't hurt in the early game, they can completely stonewall you when you want to green.  If there is no efficient way of clearing them, you have no choice but to try to keep pace and get rid of them even in the early game or else you will never catch back up.  Privies are junk so you actually don't want to gain them, even if they are free.

If you can remove unlimited numbers of curse tokens in one turn (by paying enough), that might help.  If Privies can clear more efficiently (e.g. 2 tokens per play), that might help.  The exact balance is tough to say.

While it is great to encourage finding alternate ways to green, not every board has VP tokens, Remodel cards or ways of gaining VP cards other than buying them.  Saying that you can buy cheaper VP is easy, but the reality is that plague tokens could make even Estates impossible to buy if you get too many of them.

As an aside, it should be noted that Dominion already leans away from Big Money strategies in high level play.  Don't be discouraged f you find your engines losing most to Big Money. The thing is, BM is easier to play and engines can be tricky.  But as you improve, Big Money becomes less and less effective!

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I think you're probably right, so how about the Diseases are just another pile like Knights, but when you buy them they go straight to your play area as a Permanent Duration Attack and are returned to the bottom of the Disease pile when someone else buys another Disease. They could still have the "you may gain a plague token in order for this to attack" option.....Not sure what they should cost though, maybe $3.

If they still act as they are (like permanent durations or a princed card), it's really tricky to balance.  Again, an attack that is guaranteed to be played every turn for free is really good! 

At a low price like $3, it is almost certainly the best use of your
buy.  The next player is given the same choice with the added incentive of getting rid of an opponent's attack.  And so it goes, on and on.  At some point somebody has to give up and do something different for a turn.  Maybe somebody gets a +Buy and can continue the cycle while still doing something useful.  It's not great.

But at a high price, it becomes kind of swingy.  Depending on which Disease is on top, the first player to get one may have a huge advantage.  The attack being played every turn may hinder others from getting a disease of their own.

I really don't know what you can do with the concept to make it reasonable.  If the attack is going to be played every single turn, they should probably be weaker overall, and more uniform in power.  It might be interesting if they didn't go directly into play.  In this case, if somebody else buys a Disease then you might want to as well, so you have a way to get rid of theirs (by putting your own into play).  But now, it is probably better to be the last to play their Disease card, so it creates a kind of cold war tension.  It also gives you a bonus if you can create a deck that gains, draws and plays the card in a single turn.  But still, as they are, I think the effects on most of these cards is too strong when "princed".

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(Flea) What's wrong with one more Dominion card that multiplies? They are totally inspired by Rats and I love the thematic link between the rats and the fleas especially in a Black Death context. And they do provide you with TfB fodder...It's also pretty cool when you play Haemorrhage and discard a whole bunch of them to the player on your left!

Basically, it's less interesting the second time around.  I like what Donald recently said about novelty in Dominion expansions:

Dominion has so many expansions that it has gotten to the point of being hard to do stuff that feels new that isn't really wordy. I avoided things like doing say four versions of each concept; you know, like there are a bunch of cards that do something when you gain/buy them, but Nomad Camp is the only one that goes on your deck. I could have made a Lab version of that and a Smithy version of that and so on, but I kept it at one card.

In the context of "what if this is a real set?", Rats was really cool but I'd rather have two new cards of 10 copies each rather than one new card with 20 copies that is itself pretty similar to another card.

TfB means "trash for benefit", like Salvager, Apprentice, Bishop.  These cards care about card cost, which has an interesting relationship with Rats.  Rats replaces low-cost Coppers and Estates with $4 cards -- much better for TfB cards!  Flea only costs $1 though, so it does not provide you with TfB fodder (at least none that is useful).

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(Contaminate) True, but this is in no way as heinous a card as Embargo. The plague tokens run out from the supply pile for a start, not to mention I don't think they are as bad as a curse, and you can only ever gain 1 per card you purchase.

I never said that it was worse than Embargo!  In my initial comment, I said that it sounded alright.  :P

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(Haemorrhage) With fleas it works best for the discard effect, so if you're trashing money or victory cards and can discard a bunch of fleas. It's harder to get it to work for trashing them because, as you rightly say, you don't want to trash those precious Action cards, not to mention you actually gain a plague token for each one you trash anyway, so they cancel each other out! With tunnels, well, we had a game where this guy was buying silver, naming that with haemorrage and trashing all his copper and discarding a bunch of tunnels into the bargain. Then he was naming gold, trashing silver and discarding a bunch of tunnels into the bargain. Then, though, he had the bright (or not?!) idea to name silver after filling his deck with gold and more tunnels....thus trashing all his gold, but discarding all his tunnels for more gold and draining the gold supply so the rest of us had none to buy!!! I thought it was excellent use of haemorrhage, but he still didn't win because he didn't manage to get his plague down in time before 3 piles were exhausted. Hmmmm...

I don't know, this still sounds like it needs too much prep to be worthwhile. :P

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(Hospital)
I don't think you guys will get me to move on this. I still think Junk Dealer is way more like Lab in that it is essentially drawing you 2 cards, just that one of those is an enforced copper. Hospital draws you a card and then forces you to reduce hand size with no extra money. At least with Junk Dealer, chaining them is a reasonable option as it gives you some money to spend at the end of your turn, even if you end up having to trash a Junk Dealer itself with your final trash. Chaining hospitals is not that desirable given you may end up trashing something you really don't want to and there's no end pay off!! It just becomes another Village idiot strategy. Oh, I just played 4 hospitals...wow I could have spent 2 on a chapel to get that effect! Well there must be some reason they're so expensive, now...do I risk playing that 5th??? Oops, I now have no cards in hand and a bunch of hospitals to still try and play with!

Junk Dealer really is not like Lab at all.  You absolutely cannot equate +$1 with +1 card, and the big thing about Junk Dealer is that it trashes.  Trashing is the key to this and to Hospital.

Comparing to Chapel is also no good.  If both Junk Dealer and Chapel are on the board, you are very unlikely to choose Junk Dealer.

And no, you probably should not be buying 4 Hospitals unless you really want to use that overpay effect.  You would buy 1 or 2 Hospitals to trim your deck, using the extra +action to play more terminals and eventually getting to the point where you have a thin deck with 1 Hospital that maybe won't get played again.

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(Leech) Meh... I'll play test it some more, bet it's not! Most people I know go for $5 Action cards, possibly with the occasional lower costing ones, there's almost always low costing junk around that people don't mind losing as well.

The targets that would really hurt to lose are the lower cost engine components, most commonly $3-$4 villages.  But really, I think that this will be on about the same level as Thief in how rare it is to be useful, and how obnoxious it is when that happens.

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I've come up with an idea for the card which I think might work now:

Barber $5 - ACTION

+1 Plague token. You may discard up to 3 Plague tokens. - While this is in play gain 1VP for every plague token discarded this turn.

The timing on the end is a bit strange.  A "while this is in play" effect is active as long as the card is in play, so it doesn't make sense to attach a specific window of time on it ("this turn").  Instead, it should say: "While this is in play, +1VP token when you discard a Plague token".

I think this is a weak card that is occasionally pretty strong (note: not necessarily a bad thing; not every card can or should be powerful).  Even at its most outrageous though, I don't think it eclipses Goons.  So it is reasonable.  I would actually suggest giving it +$2.  If you add that, it is often like Monument but with a bit more potential (especially when stacked).  You really want to give the player some money to spend to mitigate the possibility of getting into an unending game state where you spend your whole turn getting VP tokens and doing nothing else.  If the player has coins to spend, they are encouraged to buy something and progress towards a game ending condition.

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(Royal College) Why's that? It scales pretty well, it's very rare to get more than 6 gold in most games. It think the most I've ever had was 11, but that's kind of freakish. Other $6 or less Victory cards can be worth more than Province. Fairgrounds, Vineyards, Duke, Feodum etc...I guess I could try 3:3.

Just gut feeling.  I may be wrong.

Quote
(Surgeon) I'm actually not really sure about this card any more, it'll probably just make the games go on forever....I had thought it was quite a cool idea, either your way or mine, but it will need a lot more thought and work I think, or maybe scrapping. Also I was thinkin +2 cards would be better than $2 anyway.

Yeah, it could make the game unending.  I should have caught that earlier!  The easy solution is to have it trash instead of return, but at that point it is too similar to Bishop.  Even my version might be too similar, actually.

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(Doomsday Book) Don't know why it wouldn't work with Bridge....you just take one off however many Plague tokens you have if Bridge is in play. Anyway...this is another one I need to think more about, not sure it is quite right yet.

It doesn't work with Bridge because you wrote "This costs £1 per plague token you have."  It is a fixed price.  Oh, but I guess you could say this is another case that requires clarification depending on which effect you apply first.  But I read it as, "this cost exactly X (even if you try to reduce the cost, it is still X)".

Quote
Yeah I think it might work....but wouldn't it be "one fewer cards"....?

I don't think so, but now I am not sure... and now that I check, it seems like "one less" might be preferred anyways just because of common usage, despite the fact that "cards" is a countable noun.   :o
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #25 on: January 22, 2015, 10:55:58 am »
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I don't which changes would be best.  My primary concern is that you can accumulate plague tokens faster than you can realistically remove them, which leads to a broken game state on many boards.  Even though the plague tokens don't hurt in the early game, they can completely stonewall you when you want to green.  If there is no efficient way of clearing them, you have no choice but to try to keep pace and get rid of them even in the early game or else you will never catch back up.  Privies are junk so you actually don't want to gain them, even if they are free.

If you can remove unlimited numbers of curse tokens in one turn (by paying enough), that might help.  If Privies can clear more efficiently (e.g. 2 tokens per play), that might help.  The exact balance is tough to say.

While it is great to encourage finding alternate ways to green, not every board has VP tokens, Remodel cards or ways of gaining VP cards other than buying them.  Saying that you can buy cheaper VP is easy, but the reality is that plague tokens could make even Estates impossible to buy if you get too many of them.

As an aside, it should be noted that Dominion already leans away from Big Money strategies in high level play.  Don't be discouraged f you find your engines losing most to Big Money. The thing is, BM is easier to play and engines can be tricky.  But as you improve, Big Money becomes less and less effective!

As you say it's a balance thing...I don't want the plague to be EASY to get rid of. Also, no matter what the win conditions are (ie 3 piles empty and only a couple of Estates/Duchies each) then it's still the player who has managed their plague best who wins isn't it? Doesn't really matter if the bigger VPs don't get bought in every game.

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(Diseases)

If they still act as they are (like permanent durations or a princed card), it's really tricky to balance.  Again, an attack that is guaranteed to be played every turn for free is really good! 

At a low price like $3, it is almost certainly the best use of your
buy.  The next player is given the same choice with the added incentive of getting rid of an opponent's attack.  And so it goes, on and on.  At some point somebody has to give up and do something different for a turn.  Maybe somebody gets a +Buy and can continue the cycle while still doing something useful.  It's not great.

But at a high price, it becomes kind of swingy.  Depending on which Disease is on top, the first player to get one may have a huge advantage.  The attack being played every turn may hinder others from getting a disease of their own.

I really don't know what you can do with the concept to make it reasonable.  If the attack is going to be played every single turn, they should probably be weaker overall, and more uniform in power.  It might be interesting if they didn't go directly into play.  In this case, if somebody else buys a Disease then you might want to as well, so you have a way to get rid of theirs (by putting your own into play).  But now, it is probably better to be the last to play their Disease card, so it creates a kind of cold war tension.  It also gives you a bonus if you can create a deck that gains, draws and plays the card in a single turn.  But still, as they are, I think the effects on most of these cards is too strong when "princed".

How about this idea? When you have more than 5 plague tokens at the end of your turn gain a disease:

Disease $0* - DURATION ATTACK

When you gain this it goes straight into your play area.
At the start of your turn you may gain a plague token. If you do, carry out the attack.
At the start of your next turn pass this to the play area of the player to your left.
When another Disease is gained while this is in your play area, put this to the bottom of the Diseases pile and discard all your plague tokens.

 
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(flea)

Basically, it's less interesting the second time around.  I like what Donald recently said about novelty in Dominion expansions:



Dominion has so many expansions that it has gotten to the point of being hard to do stuff that feels new that isn't really wordy. I avoided things like doing say four versions of each concept; you know, like there are a bunch of cards that do something when you gain/buy them, but Nomad Camp is the only one that goes on your deck. I could have made a Lab version of that and a Smithy version of that and so on, but I kept it at one card.

In the context of "what if this is a real set?", Rats was really cool but I'd rather have two new cards of 10 copies each rather than one new card with 20 copies that is itself pretty similar to another card.

TfB means "trash for benefit", like Salvager, Apprentice, Bishop.  These cards care about card cost, which has an interesting relationship with Rats.  Rats replaces low-cost Coppers and Estates with $4 cards -- much better for TfB cards!  Flea only costs $1 though, so it does not provide you with TfB fodder (at least none that is useful).

I get what you and Donald mean, but this card does do something new, it jumps to the left....and yes, I have no shame in saying that this is entirely inspired by and meant to be a cool spin off of the Rats card...in fact I think in some situations it's probably a more useful card and may even be more likely to be bought more often...so I'm cool with it! One reason for that is that the benefit for trashing it improves ALL trashers when used in combo...not just the TfB trashers.

Quote
(Haemorrhage) With fleas it works best for the discard effect, so if you're trashing money or victory cards and can discard a bunch of fleas. It's harder to get it to work for trashing them because, as you rightly say, you don't want to trash those precious Action cards, not to mention you actually gain a plague token for each one you trash anyway, so they cancel each other out! With tunnels, well, we had a game where this guy was buying silver, naming that with haemorrage and trashing all his copper and discarding a bunch of tunnels into the bargain. Then he was naming gold, trashing silver and discarding a bunch of tunnels into the bargain. Then, though, he had the bright (or not?!) idea to name silver after filling his deck with gold and more tunnels....thus trashing all his gold, but discarding all his tunnels for more gold and draining the gold supply so the rest of us had none to buy!!! I thought it was excellent use of haemorrhage, but he still didn't win because he didn't manage to get his plague down in time before 3 piles were exhausted. Hmmmm...

I don't know, this still sounds like it needs too much prep to be worthwhile. :P

Perhaps...but I'll keep play testing it cos I like the concept, and anyway...haemorrhages are tricky things to control and should not be taken lightly! :P

Quote
(Hospital)
I don't think you guys will get me to move on this. I still think Junk Dealer is way more like Lab in that it is essentially drawing you 2 cards, just that one of those is an enforced copper. Hospital draws you a card and then forces you to reduce hand size with no extra money. At least with Junk Dealer, chaining them is a reasonable option as it gives you some money to spend at the end of your turn, even if you end up having to trash a Junk Dealer itself with your final trash. Chaining hospitals is not that desirable given you may end up trashing something you really don't want to and there's no end pay off!! It just becomes another Village idiot strategy. Oh, I just played 4 hospitals...wow I could have spent 2 on a chapel to get that effect! Well there must be some reason they're so expensive, now...do I risk playing that 5th??? Oops, I now have no cards in hand and a bunch of hospitals to still try and play with!

Junk Dealer really is not like Lab at all.  You absolutely cannot equate +$1 with +1 card, and the big thing about Junk Dealer is that it trashes.  Trashing is the key to this and to Hospital.

Comparing to Chapel is also no good.  If both Junk Dealer and Chapel are on the board, you are very unlikely to choose Junk Dealer.

And no, you probably should not be buying 4 Hospitals unless you really want to use that overpay effect.  You would buy 1 or 2 Hospitals to trim your deck, using the extra +action to play more terminals and eventually getting to the point where you have a thin deck with 1 Hospital that maybe won't get played again.

Well you can equate $1 to 1 copper card! Admittedly, it is not equatable to any other card, but remember that any other card may be a Victory or curse or some other useless card to you. At least the Junk Dealer gives you the guarantee of being able to spend some money after playing one or more of them. Hospital doesn't do that, and it becomes less playable the more you thin that deck.

Also, consider Herald. It's a $4+ card which potentially gives you 2 cards and 2 Actions. AND if you buy one for $5 you put one of your best cards on top of your deck.

No, I'm sticking to my guns here...$4+


Quote
I've come up with an idea for the card which I think might work now:

Barber $5 - ACTION

+1 Plague token. You may discard up to 3 Plague tokens. - While this is in play gain 1VP for every plague token discarded this turn.

The timing on the end is a bit strange.  A "while this is in play" effect is active as long as the card is in play, so it doesn't make sense to attach a specific window of time on it ("this turn").  Instead, it should say: "While this is in play, +1VP token when you discard a Plague token".

I think this is a weak card that is occasionally pretty strong (note: not necessarily a bad thing; not every card can or should be powerful).  Even at its most outrageous though, I don't think it eclipses Goons.  So it is reasonable.  I would actually suggest giving it +$2.  If you add that, it is often like Monument but with a bit more potential (especially when stacked).  You really want to give the player some money to spend to mitigate the possibility of getting into an unending game state where you spend your whole turn getting VP tokens and doing nothing else.  If the player has coins to spend, they are encouraged to buy something and progress towards a game ending condition.

Well your wording changes the effect. Consider Processing Barber...you would not get the VP tokens for discarding plague with Barber my way, but you would with yours.

Actually, looking at it again my wording is still not very good though is it...?!

OK I'll change it to your way!

Quote
Yeah I think it might work....but wouldn't it be "one fewer cards"....?

I don't think so, but now I am not sure... and now that I check, it seems like "one less" might be preferred anyways just because of common usage, despite the fact that "cards" is a countable noun.   :o

I prefer to get the grammar right and don't like some of the "Oh, it's common usage" excuses...so I'll check it out some time. Consider though:

"I bought one fewer CDs at the shop. I bought one more CD at the shop."
« Last Edit: January 22, 2015, 12:42:21 pm by Vislor »
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eHalcyon

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #26 on: January 22, 2015, 06:31:58 pm »
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As you say it's a balance thing...I don't want the plague to be EASY to get rid of. Also, no matter what the win conditions are (ie 3 piles empty and only a couple of Estates/Duchies each) then it's still the player who has managed their plague best who wins isn't it? Doesn't really matter if the bigger VPs don't get bought in every game.

Again, the danger with Plague is that you can get to a game state where even Estates are too expensive to buy.  You said that plague tokens are infinite, some diseases give out 1-2 plague tokens every turn, and you can have multiple players playing multiple regular plague-giving attacks between each of your turns.  That gives a very real possibility of having everybody locked out of every VP card.

As for managing Plague, this depends on how manageable it actually is.  With the concept in the OP, it would probably come down to who got lucky with lining up +Buys and getting a good disease into play rather than actual plague management.  Even as is, it could be pretty swingy and come down to luck rather than good play.  As you test, keep an eye on the balance and make sure that it is actually manageable.

Quote
How about this idea? When you have more than 5 plague tokens at the end of your turn gain a disease:

Disease $0* - DURATION ATTACK

When you gain this it goes straight into your play area.
At the start of your turn you may gain a plague token. If you do, carry out the attack.
At the start of your next turn pass this to the play area of the player to your left.
When another Disease is gained while this is in your play area, put this to the bottom of the Diseases pile and discard all your plague tokens.

So the question is, what is the intention behind the concept?  How do you think it will play out, and how do you want it to play out?  The changes here are a pretty big departure from the previous concept. 

The original Diseases were powerful effects that a player could gain to get an advantage.  This version is a neutral injection of chaos into the game.  It's neutral because the disease will pass around the table, and it's chaotic because it will somewhat randomly help another player clear all their plague tokens.  It also has less of an impact than before because players can opt not to trigger the attack (note: less of an impact does not mean it is worse as a concept).

So what is your goal with Disease cards?

Quote
(Hospital) Well you can equate $1 to 1 copper card! Admittedly, it is not equatable to any other card, but remember that any other card may be a Victory or curse or some other useless card to you. At least the Junk Dealer gives you the guarantee of being able to spend some money after playing one or more of them. Hospital doesn't do that, and it becomes less playable the more you thin that deck.

Also, consider Herald. It's a $4+ card which potentially gives you 2 cards and 2 Actions. AND if you buy one for $5 you put one of your best cards on top of your deck.

No, I'm sticking to my guns here...$4+

In a well built deck, +1 card will usually be something much better than a Copper. Herald is a strong card, but it takes work to get to that point.  If you don't have a deck with high action density, it whiffs and is just a pure cantrip, worth almost nothing.  Even in an action-dense deck, it gives you far less control than an actual +2 cards, +2 actions.

When you cost a card, the most important thing (behind playtesting, of course) is to consider its function and compare it to other, official cards with the same role.  Hospital is a cantrip trasher with a bonus.  The family is Upgrade, Junk Dealer and Rats.  Rats has more of a penalty than a bonus (it doesn't actually thin you deck), while the other two cost $5.

Compared to Upgrade, Hospital is certainly better at trashing $0 junk like Coppers, Curses and Ruins.  Estate trashing is debatable, though I'd usually give it to Upgrade giving you Silver or $3 engine components (though you don't always want the available $3 cards).  Hospital has added utility in sometimes helping you play more terminals.  Upgrade has added utility in sometimes letting you convert good cards into better cards.

All in all, they are pretty even.  And I can make similar comparisons with Junk Dealer as well.

To your specific points: in the early game, you can usually buy something after playing Hospital too.  Junk Dealer has only a tiny edge there.  Junk Dealer also becomes less playable as you thin your deck, so that's not a valid point.  Maybe Hospital is weaker than Junk Dealer (debatable!) but it's certainly not so much weaker that it drops to $4.  They are really very close in strength.

Quote
(Barber) Well your wording changes the effect. Consider Processing Barber...you would not get the VP tokens for discarding plague with Barber my way, but you would with yours.

Actually, looking at it again my wording is still not very good though is it...?!

OK I'll change it to your way!

Why wouldn't you get the VP tokens with your version?  You used "while this is in play" which is in effect while the card is in play, including during Procession.  Perhaps what you actually intended was:

"When you discard this during clean-up, +1VP token for each Plague token discarded this turn."

For this version, the concern is whether the players can track how many tokens were discarded.  It seems like something that would be easy to forget.

Quote
I prefer to get the grammar right and don't like some of the "Oh, it's common usage" excuses...so I'll check it out some time. Consider though:

"I bought one fewer CDs at the shop. I bought one more CD at the shop."

It would be "I bought one fewer CD at the shop".
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #27 on: January 23, 2015, 11:58:43 am »
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How about this idea? When you have more than 5 plague tokens at the end of your turn gain a disease:

Disease $0* - DURATION ATTACK

When you gain this it goes straight into your play area.
At the start of your turn you may gain a plague token. If you do, carry out the attack.
At the start of your next turn pass this to the play area of the player to your left.
When another Disease is gained while this is in your play area, put this to the bottom of the Diseases pile and discard all your plague tokens.



So the question is, what is the intention behind the concept?  How do you think it will play out, and how do you want it to play out?  The changes here are a pretty big departure from the previous concept. 

The original Diseases were powerful effects that a player could gain to get an advantage.  This version is a neutral injection of chaos into the game.  It's neutral because the disease will pass around the table, and it's chaotic because it will somewhat randomly help another player clear all their plague tokens.  It also has less of an impact than before because players can opt not to trigger the attack (note: less of an impact does not mean it is worse as a concept).

So what is your goal with Disease cards?

Well the original idea was to increase plague towards the end of the game as people started greening, and to make sure there was always a way for plague tokens to play a part in the game if people wanted them to but didn't have the Kingdom cards which gave them out. I know some of the diseases don't give them out though, which kind of destroys that idea anyway, so it didn't work very well!

Ok, so the new idea is to have them increase plague/attacks if plague becomes a problem for a particular player. ie: plague spreads. However, the mechanism I'd thought of also allows a way for plague to be got rid of when another disease enters play. Somehow you are miraculously cured of one disease if another disease breaks out! It does need some work, but I think this is a good concept and helps with your suggestion that plague could break the game if not kept in check. I've actually just realised that the concept of passing to the left doesn't achieve what I wanted to which was to delay the potential attack by a turn each time, so it should have been pass to the right! However, maybe you're right about it being too chaotic and should just stay in your own play area until someone else gains a disease (anyone with a disease cannot gain a new one!)

Quote
(Hospital) Well you can equate $1 to 1 copper card! Admittedly, it is not equatable to any other card, but remember that any other card may be a Victory or curse or some other useless card to you. At least the Junk Dealer gives you the guarantee of being able to spend some money after playing one or more of them. Hospital doesn't do that, and it becomes less playable the more you thin that deck.

Also, consider Herald. It's a $4+ card which potentially gives you 2 cards and 2 Actions. AND if you buy one for $5 you put one of your best cards on top of your deck.

No, I'm sticking to my guns here...$4+


In a well built deck, +1 card will usually be something much better than a Copper. Herald is a strong card, but it takes work to get to that point.  If you don't have a deck with high action density, it whiffs and is just a pure cantrip, worth almost nothing.  Even in an action-dense deck, it gives you far less control than an actual +2 cards, +2 actions.

When you cost a card, the most important thing (behind playtesting, of course) is to consider its function and compare it to other, official cards with the same role.  Hospital is a cantrip trasher with a bonus.  The family is Upgrade, Junk Dealer and Rats.  Rats has more of a penalty than a bonus (it doesn't actually thin you deck), while the other two cost $5.

Compared to Upgrade, Hospital is certainly better at trashing $0 junk like Coppers, Curses and Ruins.  Estate trashing is debatable, though I'd usually give it to Upgrade giving you Silver or $3 engine components (though you don't always want the available $3 cards).  Hospital has added utility in sometimes helping you play more terminals.  Upgrade has added utility in sometimes letting you convert good cards into better cards.

All in all, they are pretty even.  And I can make similar comparisons with Junk Dealer as well.

To your specific points: in the early game, you can usually buy something after playing Hospital too.  Junk Dealer has only a tiny edge there.  Junk Dealer also becomes less playable as you thin your deck, so that's not a valid point.  Maybe Hospital is weaker than Junk Dealer (debatable!) but it's certainly not so much weaker that it drops to $4.  They are really very close in strength.

In a well built deck you are liable to start drawing either good cards or all those lovely Victory cards you have been purchasing before long...hospitals and well built decks do not work well together!!

Also let's consider the other two $5 cantrip trashers. Upgrade and Junk Dealer. Let's imagine you have a hand adding up to $7 (a common Dominion problem) and can choose whether the last action card in your hand to play is Hospital, Upgrade or Junk Dealer. With Junk Dealer you get to play a card and trash whatever you pick up (or a lower value money card already in hand) and still have enough money to buy a Province. With Upgrade you get to choose from whatever is in your hand after picking up to Upgrade into something better and still buy something good. With Hospital you have to trash either whatever you pick up or something already in your hand with no benefit. I'm buying Upgrades and Junk Dealers every time over Hospital.......UNLESS I overpay for the hospital to remove plague, and in that case I'm paying as much as you want it to be worth or more anyway.

Quote
I prefer to get the grammar right and don't like some of the "Oh, it's common usage" excuses...so I'll check it out some time. Consider though:

"I bought one fewer CDs at the shop. I bought one more CD at the shop."

It would be "I bought one fewer CD at the shop".
[/quote]

But how many CDs have you bought? .....  :-\ ........
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eHalcyon

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #28 on: January 23, 2015, 03:43:34 pm »
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Ok, so the new idea is to have them increase plague/attacks if plague becomes a problem for a particular player. ie: plague spreads. However, the mechanism I'd thought of also allows a way for plague to be got rid of when another disease enters play. Somehow you are miraculously cured of one disease if another disease breaks out! It does need some work, but I think this is a good concept and helps with your suggestion that plague could break the game if not kept in check. I've actually just realised that the concept of passing to the left doesn't achieve what I wanted to which was to delay the potential attack by a turn each time, so it should have been pass to the right! However, maybe you're right about it being too chaotic and should just stay in your own play area until someone else gains a disease (anyone with a disease cannot gain a new one!)

Well, I'm not sure if it is your intention, but this is how it plays out:

The turn ends and I have 5 plague tokens.  I gain a disease, putting it in my play area. 
Next turn, I gain a plague token and use the attack. 
At the end of that turn, I have 6 plague tokens.  I immediately gain a new disease.  The previous disease goes back to the pile, I discard all plague tokens.
The turn after that, I can choose to gain a plague token to attack or not. 

It's only after this that the disease has any chance of passing around.  The situation may be a lot weirder if multiple people are at the brink.

Quote
In a well built deck you are liable to start drawing either good cards or all those lovely Victory cards you have been purchasing before long...hospitals and well built decks do not work well together!!

That comment was regarding your suggestion that Junk Dealer is like Lab, showing why you really can't equate +$1 with +1 card.  But you are mistaken -- Hospitals would be found in well built decks because cantrip trashers are used to create well built decks.  That is their primary purpose!

Quote
Also let's consider the other two $5 cantrip trashers. Upgrade and Junk Dealer. Let's imagine you have a hand adding up to $7 (a common Dominion problem) and can choose whether the last action card in your hand to play is Hospital, Upgrade or Junk Dealer. With Junk Dealer you get to play a card and trash whatever you pick up (or a lower value money card already in hand) and still have enough money to buy a Province. With Upgrade you get to choose from whatever is in your hand after picking up to Upgrade into something better and still buy something good. With Hospital you have to trash either whatever you pick up or something already in your hand with no benefit. I'm buying Upgrades and Junk Dealers every time over Hospital.......UNLESS I overpay for the hospital to remove plague, and in that case I'm paying as much as you want it to be worth or more anyway.

That is just one scenario, and you've made some bad assumptions about how you should be building the deck.  Cantrip trashers are played mostly to trash Estates and Coppers.  As I've already outlined above, Hospital is almost always better at trashing Copper than Upgrade, and occasionally better at trashing Estates.  It's also usually better at trashing Shelters.  Even in that scenario, you will probably have $5 or $6 to spend with Hospital, which is fine.

Here's a different scenario -- your hand is [cantrip trasher], 2 Swindlers and 2 Coppers and the card you draw with the trasher is another Copper.  Upgrade leaves you with $4 to spend.  Junk Dealer lets you hit $5.  Hospital lets you hit $6.

There are many other scenarios where you'd prefer Hospital over the other two.  If there is a good engine but only one contested (regular) village available, Hospital can be a little bit of extra support.  If you opened two terminals (double Swindler is a classic), Hospital can really pay off.  If you intend to get more than one terminal over the course of the game (really, really common), Hospital can help.

If you're choosing between Hospital and Upgrade, Hospital is tons better if you have Shelters and Estate is the only $2.  Hospital is also way better than Upgrade if Poor House is on the board and not something you actually want (because otherwise every Copper becomes a bad terminal). 

This is not to say that Upgrade is terrible, of course -- you may get to turn Estates into Menageries, or Fortresses into $5s, or all sorts of other shenanigans.  The point is that these three cards all perform the same core function of cantrip trashing.  On any given board, when you'd buy one of them for $5, you should usually be willing to buy any of them for $5 because they do mostly the same thing. 

The specifics of which one is better depends on the rest of the board.  Junk Dealer has a consistent bonus.  Upgrade's effect can sometimes make it a lot better, sometimes a lot worse.  Hospital has fewer situations where it is bad and also has scenarios where it's really good.  But in general, they are all pretty close to each other.

Quote
But how many CDs have you bought?

I actually bought zero CDs because they are outdated. ;)

"CD" should be singular because it is refering to the one CD that is being left out.  So, here are example sentences:

I bought one board game. 
I bought one more game.  I bought two games.
I bought two more games.  I bought four games.
I bought one fewer game.  I bought three games.
I bought two fewer games.  I bought one game.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #29 on: January 26, 2015, 06:45:30 am »
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Ok, so the new idea is to have them increase plague/attacks if plague becomes a problem for a particular player. ie: plague spreads. However, the mechanism I'd thought of also allows a way for plague to be got rid of when another disease enters play. Somehow you are miraculously cured of one disease if another disease breaks out! It does need some work, but I think this is a good concept and helps with your suggestion that plague could break the game if not kept in check. I've actually just realised that the concept of passing to the left doesn't achieve what I wanted to which was to delay the potential attack by a turn each time, so it should have been pass to the right! However, maybe you're right about it being too chaotic and should just stay in your own play area until someone else gains a disease (anyone with a disease cannot gain a new one!)


Well, I'm not sure if it is your intention, but this is how it plays out:

The turn ends and I have 5 plague tokens.  I gain a disease, putting it in my play area. 
Next turn, I gain a plague token and use the attack. 
At the end of that turn, I have 6 plague tokens.  I immediately gain a new disease.  The previous disease goes back to the pile, I discard all plague tokens.
The turn after that, I can choose to gain a plague token to attack or not. 

It's only after this that the disease has any chance of passing around.  The situation may be a lot weirder if multiple people are at the brink.

Ah, no, I added in the caveat that a player with a disease cannot gain a new one.

Quote
In a well built deck you are liable to start drawing either good cards or all those lovely Victory cards you have been purchasing before long...hospitals and well built decks do not work well together!!

That comment was regarding your suggestion that Junk Dealer is like Lab, showing why you really can't equate +$1 with +1 card.  But you are mistaken -- Hospitals would be found in well built decks because cantrip trashers are used to create well built decks.  That is their primary purpose!

Well the Hospital helps you build a good deck, that much is obvious...it's a trasher. But the hospital doesn't play well IN a well built deck because you're just forced into trashing good cards from then on in with no bonus like those which Upgrade or Junk Dealer offer.

Quote
Also let's consider the other two $5 cantrip trashers. Upgrade and Junk Dealer. Let's imagine you have a hand adding up to $7 (a common Dominion problem) and can choose whether the last action card in your hand to play is Hospital, Upgrade or Junk Dealer. With Junk Dealer you get to play a card and trash whatever you pick up (or a lower value money card already in hand) and still have enough money to buy a Province. With Upgrade you get to choose from whatever is in your hand after picking up to Upgrade into something better and still buy something good. With Hospital you have to trash either whatever you pick up or something already in your hand with no benefit. I'm buying Upgrades and Junk Dealers every time over Hospital.......UNLESS I overpay for the hospital to remove plague, and in that case I'm paying as much as you want it to be worth or more anyway.

That is just one scenario, and you've made some bad assumptions about how you should be building the deck.  Cantrip trashers are played mostly to trash Estates and Coppers.  As I've already outlined above, Hospital is almost always better at trashing Copper than Upgrade, and occasionally better at trashing Estates.  It's also usually better at trashing Shelters.  Even in that scenario, you will probably have $5 or $6 to spend with Hospital, which is fine.

Here's a different scenario -- your hand is [cantrip trasher], 2 Swindlers and 2 Coppers and the card you draw with the trasher is another Copper.  Upgrade leaves you with $4 to spend.  Junk Dealer lets you hit $5.  Hospital lets you hit $6.

There are many other scenarios where you'd prefer Hospital over the other two.  If there is a good engine but only one contested (regular) village available, Hospital can be a little bit of extra support.  If you opened two terminals (double Swindler is a classic), Hospital can really pay off.  If you intend to get more than one terminal over the course of the game (really, really common), Hospital can help.

If you're choosing between Hospital and Upgrade, Hospital is tons better if you have Shelters and Estate is the only $2.  Hospital is also way better than Upgrade if Poor House is on the board and not something you actually want (because otherwise every Copper becomes a bad terminal). 

This is not to say that Upgrade is terrible, of course -- you may get to turn Estates into Menageries, or Fortresses into $5s, or all sorts of other shenanigans.  The point is that these three cards all perform the same core function of cantrip trashing.  On any given board, when you'd buy one of them for $5, you should usually be willing to buy any of them for $5 because they do mostly the same thing. 

The specifics of which one is better depends on the rest of the board.  Junk Dealer has a consistent bonus.  Upgrade's effect can sometimes make it a lot better, sometimes a lot worse.  Hospital has fewer situations where it is bad and also has scenarios where it's really good.  But in general, they are all pretty close to each other.

I'm still not moving. Junk Dealer and Upgrade both make it more likely you can add a better card to your deck on the turn you play them(particularly in the early game when you will not be playing so many terminals but trashing coppers and estates). Also, extra actions are not actually all that expensive a commodity in Dominion...consider crossroads, squire, villages etc...

Quote
But how many CDs have you bought?

I actually bought zero CDs because they are outdated. ;)

"CD" should be singular because it is refering to the one CD that is being left out.  So, here are example sentences:

I bought one board game. 
I bought one more game.  I bought two games.
I bought two more games.  I bought four games.
I bought one fewer game.  I bought three games.
I bought two fewer games.  I bought one game.

You're probably right, but I was thinking of it in terms of the number of games being "one more, or one fewer". As in, I bought three games, which is fewer games than four games. How many fewer games? One fewer games. However this approach may well be wrong...as then you would have to say I bought one more games instead of one more game. And that doesn't sound right! So I am almost certainly wrong.

Either that or almost everyone else in the history of the English language is wrong and I'm right...........which wouldn't be a first! :P

;)
« Last Edit: January 26, 2015, 06:48:42 am by Vislor »
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Awaclus

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #30 on: January 26, 2015, 07:42:04 am »
0

Well the Hospital helps you build a good deck, that much is obvious...it's a trasher. But the hospital doesn't play well IN a well built deck because you're just forced into trashing good cards from then on in with no bonus like those which Upgrade or Junk Dealer offer.

Junk Dealer doesn't turn your unlucky hand with 4 Smithies into a double Province turn. Neither does Upgrade. Hospital can do that. The one coin is basically never worth sacrificing a good card for, and upgrading a good card into a slightly better card is fine on paper but in practice you'd rather just have the card that you actually bought in the first place, but having an extra +action when you need it and wouldn't have it otherwise is incredibly important and oftentimes, you'd gladly trash one of your Smithies for that when it happens.

I'm still not moving. Junk Dealer and Upgrade both make it more likely you can add a better card to your deck on the turn you play them(particularly in the early game when you will not be playing so many terminals but trashing coppers and estates). Also, extra actions are not actually all that expensive a commodity in Dominion...consider crossroads, squire, villages etc...

Junk Dealer and Upgrade make it more likely you can add a better card to your deck on the turn you play them, yes, but Hospital guarantees that you can add a good card to your deck on the turn you buy it. You need engine components in the early game and Hospital is an engine component, JD and Upgrade aren't.

Normally, the reason why you will not be playing so many terminals in the early game is that you don't have any +actions so you can't buy too many terminals. If you already have +actions because your trasher gave them to you for free, you will be able to buy much more terminals in the early game, which results in faster cycling, which results in even faster trashing, which results in even faster cycling, and you'll be able to add your payload super early and build an extremely strong engine.

Also, all cards are pretty expensive, because they cost a buy. You can normally have only two buys before your first shuffle, which means that adding a Crossroads is pointless because you can't possibly have more than 1 terminal Action in addition to it. Therefore, it's a bad idea to buy a splitter that does nothing useful in addition to being a splitter, and then you don't have any splitters turns 3 and 4 which means that you don't want to buy too many terminal Actions now. Buying a Hospital isn't pointless because even if we ignore the splitter part, it's better or roughly as good as many other cheap trashers, and now you have a splitter which means that you can rather safely buy another terminal now, and two more terminals on turns 3 and 4. That's insanely good, and you'll have a working engine in no time at all.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #31 on: January 26, 2015, 08:27:23 am »
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Well the Hospital helps you build a good deck, that much is obvious...it's a trasher. But the hospital doesn't play well IN a well built deck because you're just forced into trashing good cards from then on in with no bonus like those which Upgrade or Junk Dealer offer.


Junk Dealer doesn't turn your unlucky hand with 4 Smithies into a double Province turn. Neither does Upgrade. Hospital can do that. The one coin is basically never worth sacrificing a good card for, and upgrading a good card into a slightly better card is fine on paper but in practice you'd rather just have the card that you actually bought in the first place, but having an extra +action when you need it and wouldn't have it otherwise is incredibly important and oftentimes, you'd gladly trash one of your Smithies for that when it happens.

Well there'll always be an edge case won't there. And even then, imagine you pick up a couple of your other amazing Hospitals with one of those smithies....you're gonna want to play them to keep the chain going aren't you? And yes, you're gonna have to trash more good cards to do that given how well built your deck is.

I'm still not moving. Junk Dealer and Upgrade both make it more likely you can add a better card to your deck on the turn you play them(particularly in the early game when you will not be playing so many terminals but trashing coppers and estates). Also, extra actions are not actually all that expensive a commodity in Dominion...consider crossroads, squire, villages etc...


Junk Dealer and Upgrade make it more likely you can add a better card to your deck on the turn you play them, yes, but Hospital guarantees that you can add a good card to your deck on the turn you buy it. You need engine components in the early game and Hospital is an engine component, JD and Upgrade aren't.

Normally, the reason why you will not be playing so many terminals in the early game is that you don't have any +actions so you can't buy too many terminals. If you already have +actions because your trasher gave them to you for free, you will be able to buy much more terminals in the early game, which results in faster cycling, which results in even faster trashing, which results in even faster cycling, and you'll be able to add your payload super early and build an extremely strong engine.

Also, all cards are pretty expensive, because they cost a buy. You can normally have only two buys before your first shuffle, which means that adding a Crossroads is pointless because you can't possibly have more than 1 terminal Action in addition to it. Therefore, it's a bad idea to buy a splitter that does nothing useful in addition to being a splitter, and then you don't have any splitters turns 3 and 4 which means that you don't want to buy too many terminal Actions now. Buying a Hospital isn't pointless because even if we ignore the splitter part, it's better or roughly as good as many other cheap trashers, and now you have a splitter which means that you can rather safely buy another terminal now, and two more terminals on turns 3 and 4. That's insanely good, and you'll have a working engine in no time at all.

Hospital is an engine component, but also an engine destroyer. It won't work too well if you keep playing it after the midgame.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #32 on: January 26, 2015, 08:35:01 am »
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Well there'll always be an edge case won't there. And even then, imagine you pick up a couple of your other amazing Hospitals with one of those smithies....you're gonna want to play them to keep the chain going aren't you? And yes, you're gonna have to trash more good cards to do that given how well built your deck is.

It's not an edge case. And if you pick up a couple of your other amazing Hospitals with one of those Smithies: play one of the Hospitals, trash the other one. Why did you even buy three Hospitals in the first place?

Hospital is an engine component, but also an engine destroyer. It won't work too well if you keep playing it after the midgame.

Which is why you stop playing it when it stops being beneficial. It hardly matters when you already have a reliable engine after three shuffles.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #33 on: January 26, 2015, 08:40:11 am »
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Well there'll always be an edge case won't there. And even then, imagine you pick up a couple of your other amazing Hospitals with one of those smithies....you're gonna want to play them to keep the chain going aren't you? And yes, you're gonna have to trash more good cards to do that given how well built your deck is.

It's not an edge case. And if you pick up a couple of your other amazing Hospitals with one of those Smithies: play one of the Hospitals, trash the other one. Why did you even buy three Hospitals in the first place?

So you have one hospital in your deck, allowing you to trash one card each time you play it and play one extra action. Wow. Awesome engine!

Hospital is an engine component, but also an engine destroyer. It won't work too well if you keep playing it after the midgame.


Which is why you stop playing it when it stops being beneficial. It hardly matters when you already have a reliable engine after three shuffles.

A reliable engine by playing hospital once every shuffle? Riiiiight!


ETA: Sorry, in case I sound ungrateful for feedback, I really am kind of playing Devil's advocate a bit here! Still not 100% sure about the card tbh.

And I'm guessing the answer is never buy more than 2 hospitals early game.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2015, 08:49:36 am by Vislor »
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #34 on: January 26, 2015, 08:50:08 am »
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So you have one hospital in your deck, allowing you to trash one card each time you play it and play one extra action. Wow. Awesome engine!


A reliable engine by playing hospital once every shuffle? Riiiiight!

I wasn't suggesting that your first Hospital should be the only card you buy in the game.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #35 on: January 26, 2015, 08:54:10 am »
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So you have one hospital in your deck, allowing you to trash one card each time you play it and play one extra action. Wow. Awesome engine!


A reliable engine by playing hospital once every shuffle? Riiiiight!


I wasn't suggesting that your first Hospital should be the only card you buy in the game.

So it depends what else is around then...much like all the other cards. Personally I'd usually wait a bit to buy Hospital so that I could overpay on it to get rid of a plague token or two. Actually, it's interesting that there is that later game backup reason to buy hospital...Also there may be a curser around and the money is often better spent early game boosting your currency somehow either with real $ or phantom $.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #36 on: January 26, 2015, 09:01:43 am »
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So it depends what else is around then...much like all the other cards. Personally I'd usually wait a bit to buy Hospital so that I could overpay on it to get rid of a plague token or two. Actually, it's interesting that there is that later game backup reason to buy hospital...Also there may be a curser around and the money is often better spent early game boosting your currency somehow either with real $ or phantom $.

Yeah, it requires another splitter and a terminal action with at least +3 cards, and preferably a +buy as well. But those are usually present, and you should certainly almost always open Hospital.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #37 on: January 26, 2015, 02:31:34 pm »
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The bottom line is that it is on par with Junk Dealer and Upgrade.  Different circumstances and boards will change which is preferable, but they are about equal overall.  Hospital is certainly a $5 card.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #38 on: January 27, 2015, 04:05:01 am »
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Here's a different scenario -- your hand is [cantrip trasher], 2 Swindlers and 2 Coppers and the card you draw with the trasher is another Copper.  Upgrade leaves you with $4 to spend.  Junk Dealer lets you hit $5.  Hospital lets you hit $6.

In this scenario, Upgrade is actually the best because it gives you $5 to spend and you can turn a swindler into something costing $4, so you have actually spent $9 and 2 buys. You CAN have $6 with Junk Dealer, just at the expense of one of your Swindlers, but yes, Hospital would be better than Junk Dealer in this situation as you can get rid of a copper, but once the coppers are gone from the deck what you gonna do? Also, what if you only have one swindler and a Province, say?


The bottom line is, Junk Dealer and Upgrade are useful early, mid and late game. Hospital is most useful early game, therefore it's a weaker card.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2015, 04:56:11 am by Vislor »
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #39 on: January 27, 2015, 04:48:07 am »
+1

In this scenario, Upgrade is actually the best because it gives you $5 to spend and you can turn a swindler into something costing $4

Trashing one of your Swindlers in that scenario is an awful idea, unless you have to do that in order to hit $5 for the last Wharf in the supply or something. You lose a Swindler and you lose an opportunity to get rid of a Copper, and you don't generally want those things to happen unless you have too few Coppers or too many Swindlers (technically possible in a Swindler game, but rare).


once the coppers are gone from the deck what you gonna do?

Play all of the cards in your deck and then, I don't know, buy two Provinces or something. Every turn.

The bottom line is, Junk Dealer and Upgrade are useful early, mid and late game. Hospital is most useful early game, therefore it's a weaker card.

Chapel is also most useful early game, so is it weaker than Moat, which is useful early, mid and late game? No. Besides, Junk Dealer is 100% useless in mid and late game. Upgrade isn't completely useless because sometimes the ability to turn $4 cards into Duchies is useful, but that's hardly better than the ability to turn a stall turn into a good turn which Hospital has.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #40 on: January 27, 2015, 08:54:04 am »
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In this scenario, Upgrade is actually the best because it gives you $5 to spend and you can turn a swindler into something costing $4


Trashing one of your Swindlers in that scenario is an awful idea, unless you have to do that in order to hit $5 for the last Wharf in the supply or something. You lose a Swindler and you lose an opportunity to get rid of a Copper, and you don't generally want those things to happen unless you have too few Coppers or too many Swindlers (technically possible in a Swindler game, but rare).

It really depends what's available for $4 as to whether it's an awful idea or not. You might be able to pick up a Smithy and a Jester in that turn by upgrading one of your swindlers as opposed to just buying one Smithy. I'd prefer Smithy, Jester, Swindler, copper in my deck as opposed to Smithy, Swindler, Swindler. But the tactics of course depend on each draw.

once the coppers are gone from the deck what you gonna do?


Play all of the cards in your deck and then, I don't know, buy two Provinces or something. Every turn.

And trash a Province every time you play hospital?

The bottom line is, Junk Dealer and Upgrade are useful early, mid and late game. Hospital is most useful early game, therefore it's a weaker card.


Chapel is also most useful early game, so is it weaker than Moat, which is useful early, mid and late game? No. Besides, Junk Dealer is 100% useless in mid and late game. Upgrade isn't completely useless because sometimes the ability to turn $4 cards into Duchies is useful, but that's hardly better than the ability to turn a stall turn into a good turn which Hospital has.

You can play Junk Dealer if you want to gamble for a better card though, you may end up trashing a Swindler but if you draw a gold/smithy or something then you're laughing. I see it as a gambler's card which gives you a little to fall back on if things don't work out. Hospital doesn't.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2015, 08:56:52 am by Vislor »
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #41 on: January 27, 2015, 09:06:45 am »
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It really depends what's available for $4 as to whether it's an awful idea or not. You might be able to pick up a Smithy and a Jester in that turn by upgrading one of your swindlers as opposed to just buying one Smithy. I'd prefer Smithy, Jester, Swindler, copper in my deck as opposed to Smithy, Swindler, Swindler. But the tactics of course depend on each draw.

You shouldn't prefer a Jester and a Copper over a Swindler in a deck where you want both Jester and Smithy. Copper is an awful card.

And trash a Province every time you play hospital?

Yes. Which is 0 times because you stop playing the Hospital.

You can play Junk Dealer if you want to gamble for a better card though, you may end up trashing a Swindler but if you draw a gold/smithy or something then you're laughing. I see it as a gambler's card which gives you a little to fall back on if things don't work out. Hospital doesn't.

You can also play Hospital if you want to gamble for a better card.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #42 on: January 28, 2015, 05:05:31 am »
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It really depends what's available for $4 as to whether it's an awful idea or not. You might be able to pick up a Smithy and a Jester in that turn by upgrading one of your swindlers as opposed to just buying one Smithy. I'd prefer Smithy, Jester, Swindler, copper in my deck as opposed to Smithy, Swindler, Swindler. But the tactics of course depend on each draw.


You shouldn't prefer a Jester and a Copper over a Swindler in a deck where you want both Jester and Smithy. Copper is an awful card.

Not as bad as curse, ruins or estate, or any unplayable action.

And trash a Province every time you play hospital?


Yes. Which is 0 times because you stop playing the Hospital.

So it becomes worse than copper from then on.

You can play Junk Dealer if you want to gamble for a better card though, you may end up trashing a Swindler but if you draw a gold/smithy or something then you're laughing. I see it as a gambler's card which gives you a little to fall back on if things don't work out. Hospital doesn't.


You can also play Hospital if you want to gamble for a better card.

The difference is you don't get a backup bonus if the gamble doesn't pay off.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #43 on: January 28, 2015, 05:22:02 am »
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It really depends what's available for $4 as to whether it's an awful idea or not. You might be able to pick up a Smithy and a Jester in that turn by upgrading one of your swindlers as opposed to just buying one Smithy. I'd prefer Smithy, Jester, Swindler, copper in my deck as opposed to Smithy, Swindler, Swindler. But the tactics of course depend on each draw.


You shouldn't prefer a Jester and a Copper over a Swindler in a deck where you want both Jester and Smithy. Copper is an awful card.

Not as bad as curse, ruins or estate, or any unplayable action.

But not much better. It doesn't draw a card or help you draw more cards with other cards and it's not a sufficient payload.
And trash a Province every time you play hospital?


Yes. Which is 0 times because you stop playing the Hospital.

So it becomes worse than copper from then on.

So does Chapel.

You can play Junk Dealer if you want to gamble for a better card though, you may end up trashing a Swindler but if you draw a gold/smithy or something then you're laughing. I see it as a gambler's card which gives you a little to fall back on if things don't work out. Hospital doesn't.


You can also play Hospital if you want to gamble for a better card.

The difference is you don't get a backup bonus if the gamble doesn't pay off.

Well, basically the only situations where you need to gamble for a better card are when your hand is full of terminals, or when your hand is full of stop cards, or when your splitter is something like Squire which doesn't give you a +card and you have a hand full of them. In situation 1, Junk Dealer has to draw a splitter, Hospital just has to draw whatever because it's already a splitter. In situation 2, Junk Dealer has to draw a splitter, which then has to draw a +cards; Hospital just has to draw a +cards because it's already a splitter. In situation 3, the extra +action will be useless, and the +coin is not. That's two cases where Hospital is a lot superior, and one case where it's slightly inferior.

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #44 on: January 28, 2015, 06:58:46 am »
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Not as bad as curse, ruins or estate, or any unplayable action.

But not much better. It doesn't draw a card or help you draw more cards with other cards and it's not a sufficient payload.

It's more sufficient than any of those cards I mentioned though. I'm not saying it's a good card, just that I'd rather have the combo I mentioned previously in my deck.


So it becomes worse than copper from then on.

So does Chapel.

Which costs $2.


The difference is you don't get a backup bonus if the gamble doesn't pay off.


Well, basically the only situations where you need to gamble for a better card are when your hand is full of terminals, or when your hand is full of stop cards, or when your splitter is something like Squire which doesn't give you a +card and you have a hand full of them. In situation 1, Junk Dealer has to draw a splitter, Hospital just has to draw whatever because it's already a splitter. In situation 2, Junk Dealer has to draw a splitter, which then has to draw a +cards; Hospital just has to draw a +cards because it's already a splitter. In situation 3, the extra +action will be useless, and the +coin is not. That's two cases where Hospital is a lot superior, and one case where it's slightly inferior.

Sorry, I assume splitter means +2 actions...I'm not that familiar with forum terms.

Well in that case, it just depends whether there's any more +2 actions cards around. If not, your hospital is necessary but also liable to trash engine components. Engine is probably not the ideal strategy if Hospital is the only "splitter" available.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #45 on: January 28, 2015, 07:16:40 am »
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So it becomes worse than copper from then on.

So does Chapel.

Which costs $2.

The same goes for Junk Dealer and Upgrade, which both cost $5. Chapel gives neither card nor action, both of which Hospital and the other two offer. The difference is which other bonus the card gives on top of it: Junk Dealer gives a coin, Upgrade gains a card, Hospital gives an action. It's not a $4. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a $5, though. Some cards are just not very good to price. If you think that another $5 Village is a bad idea (I don't think i play Festival or Bazaar that often), either change something about the card or scrap it.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #46 on: January 28, 2015, 07:28:25 am »
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Not as bad as curse, ruins or estate, or any unplayable action.

But not much better. It doesn't draw a card or help you draw more cards with other cards and it's not a sufficient payload.

It's more sufficient than any of those cards I mentioned though. I'm not saying it's a good card, just that I'd rather have the combo I mentioned previously in my deck.

And then you'd lose games against opponents who wouldn't.


So it becomes worse than copper from then on.

So does Chapel.

Which costs $2.

And would still be a good card at $6. It doesn't matter that it's "worse" than Copper, what matters is that now, instead of 7 useless cards that your engine has to be able to draw, you have only one.


The difference is you don't get a backup bonus if the gamble doesn't pay off.


Well, basically the only situations where you need to gamble for a better card are when your hand is full of terminals, or when your hand is full of stop cards, or when your splitter is something like Squire which doesn't give you a +card and you have a hand full of them. In situation 1, Junk Dealer has to draw a splitter, Hospital just has to draw whatever because it's already a splitter. In situation 2, Junk Dealer has to draw a splitter, which then has to draw a +cards; Hospital just has to draw a +cards because it's already a splitter. In situation 3, the extra +action will be useless, and the +coin is not. That's two cases where Hospital is a lot superior, and one case where it's slightly inferior.

Sorry, I assume splitter means +2 actions...I'm not that familiar with forum terms.

Well in that case, it just depends whether there's any more +2 actions cards around. If not, your hospital is necessary but also liable to trash engine components. Engine is probably not the ideal strategy if Hospital is the only "splitter" available.

Splitter means a card that can "split" an action into two or more. So it means anything with +2 actions, Throne Room, King's Court, Golem, Herald, etc. And yes, it's true that engine is not the ideal strategy if Hospital is the only splitter, but engine is also not the ideal strategy when Junk Dealer is in the kingdom and there are no splitters at all.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #47 on: January 28, 2015, 08:18:00 am »
0


So it becomes worse than copper from then on.

So does Chapel.

Which costs $2.


The same goes for Junk Dealer and Upgrade, which both cost $5. Chapel gives neither card nor action, both of which Hospital and the other two offer. The difference is which other bonus the card gives on top of it: Junk Dealer gives a coin, Upgrade gains a card, Hospital gives an action. It's not a $4. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a $5, though. Some cards are just not very good to price. If you think that another $5 Village is a bad idea (I don't think i play Festival or Bazaar that often), either change something about the card or scrap it.

The same does not go for those cards are there is a fall back bonus. Hospital's bonus is useless unless you draw another action card.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #48 on: January 28, 2015, 08:52:31 am »
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So it becomes worse than copper from then on.

So does Chapel.

Which costs $2.


The same goes for Junk Dealer and Upgrade, which both cost $5. Chapel gives neither card nor action, both of which Hospital and the other two offer. The difference is which other bonus the card gives on top of it: Junk Dealer gives a coin, Upgrade gains a card, Hospital gives an action. It's not a $4. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a $5, though. Some cards are just not very good to price. If you think that another $5 Village is a bad idea (I don't think i play Festival or Bazaar that often), either change something about the card or scrap it.

The same does not go for those cards are there is a fall back bonus. Hospital's bonus is useless unless you draw another action card.

Why would you trash your Coppers unless you were going to always draw other Action cards?
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #49 on: January 28, 2015, 05:27:11 pm »
+2

Vislor, you said this earlier:

The aim of this set is to encourage buying more of the Actions and finding other ways to get to Victory than just BM Province/Colony rushes which is what I seem to end up losing to most often, even if I hit a really interesting combo or Alt VP strategy.

Based on this and your recent arguments, it sounds like you aren't very familiar with engine building overall.  This may be leading you to underestimate how powerful cantrip trashing is.

There are many different kinds of engines, but a common tempo is to trash down in the early game, build up in the mid-game and then end the game very quickly after that (e.g. multiple provinces per turn, or a controlled 3-pile ending).  Sometimes the trashing and the building occur simultaneously, accelerating as the deck becomes tighter.

Hospital, Junk Dealer and Upgrade all fill a similar niche.  They are cantrip trashers that you use to trash down as you build your engine.  In almost any strategy where you'd want a Junk Dealer, you should be about as happy to have an Upgrade or a Hospital.  The primary exception is games with Shelters or with Poor House, in which case Upgrade is usually much worse.  Sometimes you'll prefer Upgrade (e.g. Fortress, boards with upgrade-chain tricks), sometimes you'll prefer Hospital (e.g. villages highly contested, lots of good terminals that you want to spam) and sometimes you'll prefer Junk Dealer (no special example; Junk Dealer doesn't have any stand-out awesome use cases, it's just generally good). 

Usually 1-2 copies of these trashers is good for engine building.  You might get more Upgrades because they can Upgrade each other to $6 cards when the trashing is done.  With Junk Dealer and Hospital, the third copy usually won't be worth the opportunity cost.  In the late game, trashers become dead cards, but that doesn't matter -- they've already cleared away more junk and made your deck much more efficient.  You may occasionally gamble with these cards, but Junk Dealer certainly isn't a better gambling card.  You can gamble with JD if you need the extra $1, just as you might gamble with Hospital if you need the extra action. 

In the kind of deck that you should be building, drawing another action card is not a problem.  In fact, a well-built engine probably won't need to gamble at all.  It'll just be drawing through the whole deck consistently.

From earlier:

Here's a different scenario -- your hand is [cantrip trasher], 2 Swindlers and 2 Coppers and the card you draw with the trasher is another Copper.  Upgrade leaves you with $4 to spend.  Junk Dealer lets you hit $5.  Hospital lets you hit $6.

In this scenario, Upgrade is actually the best because it gives you $5 to spend and you can turn a swindler into something costing $4, so you have actually spent $9 and 2 buys. You CAN have $6 with Junk Dealer, just at the expense of one of your Swindlers, but yes, Hospital would be better than Junk Dealer in this situation as you can get rid of a copper, but once the coppers are gone from the deck what you gonna do? Also, what if you only have one swindler and a Province, say?


The bottom line is, Junk Dealer and Upgrade are useful early, mid and late game. Hospital is most useful early game, therefore it's a weaker card.

That's false.  From the scenario you can surmise that this is one of the boards where the best opening was Swindler/Swindler.  You don't want a $4 cost card over that Swindler.  Also, Hospital lets you attack twice, which can be a big deal.

Your bottom line is wrong.  All three cards are most useful early game, and they are strong for the same reason -- cantrip trashing.  Late game utility is entirely dependent on the board.  Hospital's +action is as likely to be useful late game as Junk Dealer's +$1.  More likely, I'd say.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2015, 05:31:00 pm by eHalcyon »
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dondon151

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #50 on: January 29, 2015, 01:45:43 pm »
+1

I can definitely think of scenarios in which I'd upgrade a Swindler into a $4 cost card, even if I opened Swindler/Swindler.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #51 on: January 29, 2015, 02:38:09 pm »
0

I can definitely think of scenarios in which I'd upgrade a Swindler into a $4 cost card, even if I opened Swindler/Swindler.

There are always exceptions.  But I think more often you'd prefer to trash junk and keep the Swindler.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #52 on: February 02, 2015, 05:41:24 am »
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I can definitely think of scenarios in which I'd upgrade a Swindler into a $4 cost card, even if I opened Swindler/Swindler.

There are always exceptions.  But I think more often you'd prefer to trash junk and keep the Swindler.

Sure, but once the junk's gone you're gonna have to trash one of those swindlers aren't you? I don't think that's a very clever strategy...Especially if you're relying on hospital for the extra actions...which is in fact it's only bonus over Junk Dealer or Upgrade.

Consider the differences between Treasury and Walled Village. They are both pretty similar to the differences between Junk Dealer and Hospital.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2015, 06:41:08 am by Vislor »
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #53 on: February 02, 2015, 02:31:09 pm »
+1

Consider the differences between Treasury and Walled Village. They are both pretty similar to the differences between Junk Dealer and Hospital.

The difference between Smithy and Hunting Grounds is technically the same as the difference between Village and a 1-pile City, but in reality, the difference between Village and a 1-pile City is much bigger, because you buy Villages and Smithies in different circumstances and the extra +1 card is usually more powerful in the situations where you have bought a Village or a City than in the situations where you have bought a Smithy or a Hunting Grounds.

Likewise, Treasury and Walled Village are very much different from Junk Dealer and Hospital. You don't buy a Treasury when what you really want is a Junk Dealer, and you don't buy a Walled Village when what you really want is a Hospital — i.e. you don't buy them when you need trashing, you buy them when you need +$ and +actions, respectively. The difference between getting +$ from a card you bought for +$ and getting +actions from a card you bought for +actions is not comparable to the difference between getting +$ from a card you bought for trashing and getting +actions from a card you bought for trashing.


If you want a comparison that actually somewhat works, let's say on turn 3 you play a Lookout which reveals Copper, Copper, Necropolis. You obviously leave a Copper on your deck, but without knowing the rest of the kingdom, it's very hard to say which you would do more often; trash the Copper, or trash the Necropolis. Copper is pretty much always bad, but there are times when Necropolis is even worse, and other times when it's actually good. I probably trash Necropoleis over Coppers more often than not, but it's certainly not the difference between a $4 card and a $5 card especially when said $5 card is one of the most powerful cards in the entire game.


EDIT: Actually, I think you could just make it a flat $5 card that always removes one plague token on-buy.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2015, 02:32:37 pm by Awaclus »
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eHalcyon

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #54 on: February 02, 2015, 04:35:03 pm »
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Consider the differences between Treasury and Walled Village. They are both pretty similar to the differences between Junk Dealer and Hospital.

Awaclus has already touched on this, but the comparison to Treasury and Walled Village isn't valid. 

Just to start, the difference between Junk Dealer and Hospital is not at all like the difference between Treasury and Walled Village.  In the former, you are merely trading off +$1 and +1 action.  In the latter, you are also trading between two different top-deck abilities.  Treasury's is much, much stronger than Walled Village.  WV only works when its function isn't fulfilled.  In a regular engine, WV almost never top-decks itself, making it nothing more than an expensive regular Village.  Treasury, however, gives you an almost-permanent boost to every turn until you start greening, aiding you in picking up costlier engine components.  When you start greening, Treasury's top-decking gives you additional reliability in reaching higher price points.

But there is a bigger reason why the comparison is invalid, and that is the simple fact that Hospital and Junk Dealer are trashers.  You really seem to be underestimating how good that trashing is.  This quote is really telling:

Sure, but once the junk's gone you're gonna have to trash one of those swindlers aren't you? I don't think that's a very clever strategy...Especially if you're relying on hospital for the extra actions...which is in fact it's only bonus over Junk Dealer or Upgrade.

Once the junk is gone, your engine should be humming.  Whether you got to that state with Junk Dealer or Hospital, it doesn't matter -- the card has done its job.  You don't need to trash one of those Swindlers because you don't need to play your trasher anymore.  Your junk is gone!  That was the whole point!

Let me try a different approach here.  Consider these two prototypical cards:

Quote
Cantrip Trasher
+1 Card
+1 Action
Trash a card from your hand.

Quote
Cantrip Coin
+1 Card
+1 Action
+$1

Which of these two do you think is stronger?  How expensive should each card be?
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #55 on: February 03, 2015, 04:39:38 am »
0


Once the junk is gone, your engine should be humming.  Whether you got to that state with Junk Dealer or Hospital, it doesn't matter -- the card has done its job.  You don't need to trash one of those Swindlers because you don't need to play your trasher anymore.  Your junk is gone!  That was the whole point!

Let me try a different approach here.  Consider these two prototypical cards:

Quote
Cantrip Trasher
+1 Card
+1 Action
Trash a card from your hand.

Quote
Cantrip Coin
+1 Card
+1 Action
+$1

Which of these two do you think is stronger?  How expensive should each card be?

Well the engine is only humming if you have more "splitters" other than hospital - OR.....more cantrip coins. Therefore I consider cantrip coin a more useful card. I would price it at $4 and cantrip trasher at $3.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #56 on: February 03, 2015, 05:00:26 am »
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Well the engine is only humming if you have more "splitters" other than hospital - OR.....more cantrip coins. Therefore I consider cantrip coin a more useful card.

Then you'd be wrong. Cantrip coins are not engine components, they are payload.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #57 on: February 03, 2015, 05:11:36 am »
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Well the engine is only humming if you have more "splitters" other than hospital - OR.....more cantrip coins. Therefore I consider cantrip coin a more useful card.

Then you'd be wrong. Cantrip coins are not engine components, they are payload.

Um, not sure I understand the game Dominion then. My understanding was to win the game you had to buy the Victory cards. How else do you do that without payload? (or indeed buy any other cards)
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #58 on: February 03, 2015, 06:28:50 am »
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Well the engine is only humming if you have more "splitters" other than hospital - OR.....more cantrip coins. Therefore I consider cantrip coin a more useful card.

Then you'd be wrong. Cantrip coins are not engine components, they are payload.

Um, not sure I understand the game Dominion then. My understanding was to win the game you had to buy the Victory cards. How else do you do that without payload? (or indeed buy any other cards)

First you build a deck that actually works by trashing and buying engine parts, then you add payload. If you add payload early, it's going to take longer before your deck starts actually working. You need enough economy to buy the engine parts, but not more.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #59 on: February 03, 2015, 06:40:24 am »
0


First you build a deck that actually works by trashing and buying engine parts, then you add payload. If you add payload early, it's going to take longer before your deck starts actually working. You need enough economy to buy the engine parts, but not more.

Sure, but cantrip coin is never a card you don't want to play. Cantrip trasher is. Your engine strategy relies on the availability of splitters - if there aren't any (and hospital won't work as one after the junk is gone), it is not a strategy which will work.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #60 on: February 03, 2015, 06:53:47 am »
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First you build a deck that actually works by trashing and buying engine parts, then you add payload. If you add payload early, it's going to take longer before your deck starts actually working. You need enough economy to buy the engine parts, but not more.

Sure, but cantrip coin is never a card you don't want to play. Cantrip trasher is. Your engine strategy relies on the availability of splitters - if there aren't any (and hospital won't work as one after the junk is gone), it is not a strategy which will work.

What's your point?
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #61 on: February 03, 2015, 07:05:15 am »
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What's your point?

That cantrip coin is more often more useful than cantrip trasher.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #62 on: February 03, 2015, 07:31:08 am »
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What's your point?

That cantrip coin is more often more useful than cantrip trasher.

That doesn't follow from anything you said, plus it's not true.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #63 on: February 03, 2015, 07:36:15 am »
+1


What's your point?

That cantrip coin is more often more useful than cantrip trasher.

What's your point?

That cantrip coin is more often more useful than cantrip trasher.

That doesn't follow from anything you said, plus it's not true.

Playtest. Use Peddler and declare that it costs $4. Use another card and declare that it does just cantrip trashing. You will see the difference.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #64 on: February 03, 2015, 05:19:18 pm »
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Once the junk is gone, your engine should be humming.  Whether you got to that state with Junk Dealer or Hospital, it doesn't matter -- the card has done its job.  You don't need to trash one of those Swindlers because you don't need to play your trasher anymore.  Your junk is gone!  That was the whole point!

Let me try a different approach here.  Consider these two prototypical cards:

Quote
Cantrip Trasher
+1 Card
+1 Action
Trash a card from your hand.

Quote
Cantrip Coin
+1 Card
+1 Action
+$1

Which of these two do you think is stronger?  How expensive should each card be?

Well the engine is only humming if you have more "splitters" other than hospital - OR.....more cantrip coins. Therefore I consider cantrip coin a more useful card. I would price it at $4 and cantrip trasher at $3.

Cantrip Coin is correctly priced at $4.  However, Cantrip Trasher pretty much cannot cost less than $4.  The cantrip trasher is by far stronger than the cantrip coin.  At $4, the cantrip trasher is arguably stronger than Sea Hag, the highest rated $4 card.  If you put it at $3, I would probably open with two of them more than 90% of the time that I could.  At $4, I would open with it just as often.  It's actually arguable that the Cantrip Trasher is too strong for $4, but it can't cost $5 because Upgrade and Junk Dealer exist.

You are correct that "cantrip coin is never a card you don't want to play" (ignoring edge cases...), but that is not a great indication of strength.  Pearl Diver is also a card that is always fine to play, but it is really weak.  The impact of cantrip trasher is far more powerful than cantrip coin.  Trashing is that good! 

I was hoping you would at least acknowledge that cantrip trasher needs to be a $4 card at least.  The next comparison would have been to buff both cards to make them Village Trasher and Village Coin, i.e. Hospital and Bazaar.  I guess that approach has failed.

It really sounds like you are unfamiliar with engines in Dominion.  You keep saying that the strategy fails once the junk is gone, but it is exactly the opposite.  That moment is not the end, it is the beginning*.  Once the junk is gone, your deck is free to do great things.

*Though actually, the beginning is a little earlier because you should already be building and accelerating before the junk is completely gone.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #65 on: February 03, 2015, 06:14:00 pm »
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You need to get lucky with the kingdom to make engines work. They're quite a rare strategy in my experience. Also rats is £4 and forager is £3. Both are arguably better than can trip trasher.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #66 on: February 03, 2015, 06:23:47 pm »
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You need to get lucky with the kingdom to make engines work. They're quite a rare strategy in my experience. Also rats is £4 and forager is £3. Both are arguably better than can trip trasher.

Engines are absolutely not a rare strategy.  Engines are dominant on most boards.  This is probably your key misconception and the reason for the confusion here.

Rats is much weaker than Cantrip Trasher because you can't use them to decrease your deck size.  The extra Rats are actually a liability except in very niche cases.  Forager is a very good card (ranked #7 for $3 cards), but the lack of card draw is a liability, limiting your hand size and slowing down your cycling.  +Buy and +$ gives Forager more use in the late game, but the lost cycling still means it is slower than cantrip trasher.

Edit:

Here is a nice primer on "The Five Fundamental Deck Types".  Most relevant will be the articles on Engine and Combo (because many combos benefit from strong trashing).

Big Money is most dominant in the base set, without expansions, but engines are often dominant there too.  This article on the first game engine is a great illustration of that.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2015, 06:32:27 pm by eHalcyon »
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #67 on: February 04, 2015, 03:54:27 am »
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Engines are dominant on most boards.

This. You can almost always build an engine, and when you can, it's almost always the best strategy.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #68 on: February 04, 2015, 04:53:29 am »
+1

Spice Merchant $4 - trash treasure for 2 cards + 1 action OR 2 money + 1 buy

That's better than can trip trasher.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #69 on: February 04, 2015, 04:55:08 am »
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Spice Merchant $4 - trash treasure for 2 cards + 1 action OR 2 money + 1 buy

That's better than can trip trasher.

It's not. It's limited to Treasures, and you have to trash before drawing.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #70 on: February 04, 2015, 05:39:11 am »
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Spice Merchant $4 - trash treasure for 2 cards + 1 action OR 2 money + 1 buy

That's better than can trip trasher.

It's not. It's limited to Treasures, and you have to trash before drawing.

It also has more options though. And what you and eHalcyon are suggesting for can trip trasher is that it removes junk, ie coppers and estates. It also has a good later game usage as you can trash silver if necessary and still get the $2 AND an extra buy so you can always keep getting copper if you want to keep using it. can trip trasher becomes useless after the junk is gone.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #71 on: February 04, 2015, 06:18:47 am »
0

Spice Merchant $4 - trash treasure for 2 cards + 1 action OR 2 money + 1 buy

That's better than can trip trasher.

It's not. It's limited to Treasures, and you have to trash before drawing.

It also has more options though. And what you and eHalcyon are suggesting for can trip trasher is that it removes junk, ie coppers and estates. It also has a good later game usage as you can trash silver if necessary and still get the $2 AND an extra buy so you can always keep getting copper if you want to keep using it. can trip trasher becomes useless after the junk is gone.
So you can trash the Copper to get +$2 and +1 buy, which you will spend on another Copper, i.e. it's as if you just had two Coppers in your deck. Why did you even trash the Coppers in the first place if you want to have two Coppers in your deck? Spice Merchant can be used to trash something to get a double Province turn or threaten a 3-pile ending or something if you need that +buy, but otherwise it's entirely useless in the late game. A cantrip trasher removes Coppers, Estates, Curses, Ruins and Silvers. Spice Merchant only removes Coppers and Silvers. Trashing a Copper from your hand essentially gives you a -$1 that turn, trashing an Estate doesn't, and trashing an Estate is better for your near future economy too.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #72 on: February 04, 2015, 06:51:26 am »
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So you can trash the Copper to get +$2 and +1 buy, which you will spend on another Copper, i.e. it's as if you just had two Coppers in your deck. Why did you even trash the Coppers in the first place if you want to have two Coppers in your deck? Spice Merchant can be used to trash something to get a double Province turn or threaten a 3-pile ending or something if you need that +buy, but otherwise it's entirely useless in the late game. A cantrip trasher removes Coppers, Estates, Curses, Ruins and Silvers. Spice Merchant only removes Coppers and Silvers. Trashing a Copper from your hand essentially gives you a -$1 that turn, trashing an Estate doesn't, and trashing an Estate is better for your near future economy too.

Cos then you can use the spice merchant again if you still have coppers. Ruins are rare...curses aren't as rare but still fairly rare. You only have 3 estates. You have 7 copper to get rid of if you want to play engine.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #73 on: February 04, 2015, 07:09:11 am »
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Cos then you can use the spice merchant again if you still have coppers.

Yes because you want to get rid of those Coppers because the only reason you want a Spice Merchant is to get rid of your Coppers and possibly get extra +buy. You don't want to ruin it by spending the extra +buy on more Coppers when you're finally done getting rid of them.

Ruins are rare...curses aren't as rare but still fairly rare. You only have 3 estates. You have 7 copper to get rid of if you want to play engine.

Sure, a Spice Merchant is usually enough to get a working engine going on. But you get it a lot earlier if you trash Estates early instead of Coppers.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #74 on: February 04, 2015, 07:10:19 am »
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Being able to target only Copper makes Spice Merchant able to at best do 70% of the trashing job a full cantrip trasher can, and in the presence of junkers it can easily fall to 50% or less. Junk Dealer and anything along its lines can do 100% of that job, and that difference is worth more than Spice Merchant's little side benefits. Especially when junk like Estates and Curses are much worse than Copper.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2015, 07:11:35 am by TheOthin »
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #75 on: February 04, 2015, 07:29:12 am »
0

Being able to target only Copper makes Spice Merchant able to at best do 70% of the trashing job a full cantrip trasher can, and in the presence of junkers it can easily fall to 50% or less. Junk Dealer and anything along its lines can do 100% of that job, and that difference is worth more than Spice Merchant's little side benefits. Especially when junk like Estates and Curses are much worse than Copper.

Yeah, I know Junk Dealer's better, that's why it's a $5 cost card. It trashes something and effectively draws you a card and a copper every time you play it. Spice Merchant draws you 2 cards (which is better if you have more engine components to draw) and still trashes the junky copper card.

Bazaar is a good comparison here as well. Village costs $3. Bazaar costs $5. The only difference is the drawing of phantom copper which is attributed $2.

Remove Junk Dealer's phantom copper and you have can trip trasher - therefore remove the $2 attributed to that card. Can trip trasher should cost $3.

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #76 on: February 04, 2015, 07:37:41 am »
+2

Bazaar is a good comparison here as well. Village costs $3. Bazaar costs $5. The only difference is the drawing of phantom copper which is attributed $2.

Remove Junk Dealer's phantom copper and you have can trip trasher - therefore remove the $2 attributed to that card. Can trip trasher should cost $3.
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The difference between Festival and Woodcutter is +2 Actions in effect, and +2$ in cost. Therefore each +Action adds $1 to the cost.

I'll do the same with Moat. Adding +2 Actions to Moat will obviously be balanced at $4... right?
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #77 on: February 04, 2015, 07:42:20 am »
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*QI sirens*

The difference between Festival and Woodcutter is +2 Actions in effect, and +2$ in cost. Therefore each +Action adds $1 to the cost.

I'll do the same with Moat. Adding +2 Actions to Moat will obviously be balanced at $4... right?

I didn't say anything about adding or removing actions...
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #78 on: February 04, 2015, 07:48:50 am »
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*QI sirens*

The difference between Festival and Woodcutter is +2 Actions in effect, and +2$ in cost. Therefore each +Action adds $1 to the cost.

I'll do the same with Moat. Adding +2 Actions to Moat will obviously be balanced at $4... right?

I didn't say anything about adding or removing actions...
The point is more general than that, though. A basic component doesn't add or subtract a fixed amount of worth from a card; it all depends on what the rest of the card does. +Coin is worth more on a village (which you can happily spam and run your engine off) than it is on a cantrip trasher (which you only want to play for as long as you have junk in your deck, and which you only want a couple of copies of), so your argument for cantrip trasher's costing $3 doesn't hold.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #79 on: February 04, 2015, 08:16:50 am »
+1

*QI sirens*

The difference between Festival and Woodcutter is +2 Actions in effect, and +2$ in cost. Therefore each +Action adds $1 to the cost.

I'll do the same with Moat. Adding +2 Actions to Moat will obviously be balanced at $4... right?

I didn't say anything about adding or removing actions...

Dry Oasis, $1
+1 Card
+1 Action
Discard a card.

Also if you use Spice Merchant to trash a Copper and then buy another one, you played a terminal Silver. Wow, even Woodcutter can do better than that.

I really don't see why you don't just play a game or two. Try a cantrip trasher at $4. You will see how absurdly strong it is. Try another strong as the competition. Try Jack of All Trades. Try Sea Hag. See if they can compete with cantrip trashing. They can't.

I know what i'm talking about, i have tried to make a cantrip trasher work, myself. At one point it costed $2 but only entered your deck after your next reshuffle, which was still too good. By now it costs a Potion and trashes the Potion from play, which i hope will finally make it balanced.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #80 on: February 04, 2015, 08:28:10 am »
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Being able to target only Copper makes Spice Merchant able to at best do 70% of the trashing job a full cantrip trasher can, and in the presence of junkers it can easily fall to 50% or less. Junk Dealer and anything along its lines can do 100% of that job, and that difference is worth more than Spice Merchant's little side benefits. Especially when junk like Estates and Curses are much worse than Copper.

Yeah, I know Junk Dealer's better, that's why it's a $5 cost card. It trashes something and effectively draws you a card and a copper every time you play it. Spice Merchant draws you 2 cards (which is better if you have more engine components to draw) and still trashes the junky copper card.

Junk Dealer can always be played, whether it's a Copper, a Curse, a Ruins, a Shelter, and Estate, even if there's something in your hand you don't necessarily wanted to get rid of but don't really mind losing, either. Without a Copper or silver in hand, Spice Merchant is junk. And hey, guess i'll play Junk Dealer to get rid of it.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #81 on: February 04, 2015, 10:29:53 am »
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Also if you use Spice Merchant to trash a Copper and then buy another one, you played a terminal Silver. Wow, even Woodcutter can do better than that.


Actually it's a terminal Copper. It would have to be a serious edge case where you ever want to use the +buy from Spice merchant to buy a Copper... You only buy Spice Merchant to get rid of Copper; you don't buy it as a half woodcutter, half-lab, and then buy coppers to feed it.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #82 on: February 04, 2015, 10:45:25 am »
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Being able to target only Copper makes Spice Merchant able to at best do 70% of the trashing job a full cantrip trasher can, and in the presence of junkers it can easily fall to 50% or less. Junk Dealer and anything along its lines can do 100% of that job, and that difference is worth more than Spice Merchant's little side benefits. Especially when junk like Estates and Curses are much worse than Copper.

Yeah, I know Junk Dealer's better, that's why it's a $5 cost card. It trashes something and effectively draws you a card and a copper every time you play it. Spice Merchant draws you 2 cards (which is better if you have more engine components to draw) and still trashes the junky copper card.

Bazaar is a good comparison here as well. Village costs $3. Bazaar costs $5. The only difference is the drawing of phantom copper which is attributed $2.

Remove Junk Dealer's phantom copper and you have can trip trasher - therefore remove the $2 attributed to that card. Can trip trasher should cost $3.
I didn't say anything about the coin; I'm talking about the trashing power itself. Any universal trasher, including a flat cantrip trasher, can trash 100% of the junk in your deck, while Spice Merchant can only trash up to 70% and the least troublesome 70% at that.

Cost scales are not that straightforward, either. Copper --> Silver is +$1 for a cost increase of $3. Gold --> Platinum is +$2 for a cost increase of $3. Market Square --> Market is +$1 for a cost increase of $2 but drops the Reaction effect in the process. Thief --> Noble Brigand is +$1 for the same cost, with the Attack changed a bit but generally for the better.

Also if you use Spice Merchant to trash a Copper and then buy another one, you played a terminal Silver. Wow, even Woodcutter can do better than that.
Not even that. You play Spice Merchant, trash a Copper, and use up the buy on another Copper so your deck composition is unaffected, you've just produced $2 with two cards and an action. That's the same as playing Abandoned Mine and a Copper.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #83 on: February 04, 2015, 06:00:25 pm »
+2

There are only 2 instances in which I would use Spice Merchant's +$/+buy: either it's late in the game and I need the +$ or +buy, or it's early in the game and I'm not confident that +cards will fetch me the +$2 that I need to hit $5.

Spice Merchant is strong more because of its cantrip-ness and cycling than it is for its flexibility. Unlike Cantrip Trasher, it can't trash Estates, which is actually pretty huge. Trashing an Estate substantially increases your deck's money density on top of whatever you are buying to improve your deck. Trashing a Copper usually first decreases your deck's money density before you buy something to improve your deck.

Vislor, I hate to invoke argument from authority, but you are the sole representative of a side in an argument against established, experienced Dominion players. It seems that your view on the value of cantrip trashing is based on your lack of experience, which is okay as long as you can admit to yourself that your lack of experience is causing you to misjudge cards. We've tried demonstrating to you why cantrip trashing is strong from a theoretical standpoint, but it seems that the only way to convince you for sure is to let you play more games with cards such as Upgrade and Junk Dealer (and even Lookout and Forager) so that you can accurately grasp the strength of cantrip trashing in engine-building.

At some point in your Dominion experience, you probably thought, "Chapel is bad, why would you want to trash cards." This is just a different version of the "Chapel is bad" experience. You'll come around in due time.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #84 on: February 05, 2015, 07:47:55 am »
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Fine, I'm prepared to concede that can trip trasher is a tricky card to price. I am quite experienced though (although only against the same few players), and have all available sets and have played roughly 5 games a week for the last 2 years. It is my favourite game and I have spent quite a while thinking and reading about strategies. I know all you guys think engine is the best in most circumstances, but in my experience that is not necessarily true. Yes it's nice when you pull it off, and I think you can absolutely crush certain strategies if you devise the right engine against a weaker one, but it is not always the be all and end all. Most boards afford a huge variety of strategies, and you will not always be best off going for an engine even if there's one available. I think the best strategy changes just as frequently as the cards themselves and often a combination of strategies can work just as well too. Engines depend on a number of things being available together, that reduces the likelihood of it's availability as a strategy. Even then they can take a long time to build and get right, you will probably quite often just be getting started once other players already have a couple of provinces. Yes they will slow down, but you'd better hope that 3 piles don't run out before your engine kicks in! Tricky....

I also should add that I play with Platinum and Colonies in most games, and that tends to put a higher emphasis on payload and platinum itself.

That said, yes I understand can trip trashing is a hugely helpful kickstarter to the engine strategy. It does not, however, mean you can't have a good $4 card (hospital). The extra action on hospital means you will try and play it to play engine components (if you have no other +actions in hand) and will therefore start self-destructing your engine once it is built. It's almost like a tempter and is going to be a dangerous card to keep playing if you're relying on the +actions. However, it is actually quite a boring card anyway and I can see why Donald has never produced it, it's real interest in my set comes from the overpay to remove plague tokens ability. What would people think about:

Hospital $4+ - ACTION

+1 Card. +2 Actions. Discard one of your plague tokens. When you buy this you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpay you may trash a card from your discard pile.

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #85 on: February 05, 2015, 08:57:15 am »
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Fine, I'm prepared to concede that can trip trasher is a tricky card to price. I am quite experienced though (although only against the same few players), and have all available sets and have played roughly 5 games a week for the last 2 years. It is my favourite game and I have spent quite a while thinking and reading about strategies. I know all you guys think engine is the best in most circumstances, but in my experience that is not necessarily true. Yes it's nice when you pull it off, and I think you can absolutely crush certain strategies if you devise the right engine against a weaker one, but it is not always the be all and end all. Most boards afford a huge variety of strategies, and you will not always be best off going for an engine even if there's one available. I think the best strategy changes just as frequently as the cards themselves and often a combination of strategies can work just as well too. Engines depend on a number of things being available together, that reduces the likelihood of it's availability as a strategy. Even then they can take a long time to build and get right, you will probably quite often just be getting started once other players already have a couple of provinces. Yes they will slow down, but you'd better hope that 3 piles don't run out before your engine kicks in! Tricky....

I've played roughly 8 games a day for the last 2 years. Well, anyway, it sounds like you're (usually?) playing the game with more than 2 players. 3+ player games are vastly different from 2-player games, and most people on these forums play almost exclusively 2-player games, so that's probably why there was a disagreement. If you're designing cards mainly for your own playgroup, and you think you won't play a lot of 2-player games, then having some cards that wouldn't be balanced in 2-player games might not be a problem if they work for you.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #86 on: February 05, 2015, 04:06:07 pm »
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I am quite experienced though (although only against the same few players), and have all available sets and have played roughly 5 games a week for the last 2 years.

Right, so you've played just over 500 games in the last 2 years. And you've also played them against the same few people, so your play group has developed its own sort of metagame. Maybe one guy always prefers going for a certain kind of strategy, and everyone has a view of that strategy because that guy doesn't execute it well, or he always gets countered, or something.

Awaclus has 2764 games logged on Goko, and he doesn't always play the same few people. The consensus about Dominion cards that this community has reached is based in part on the experiences of users who have played over 10000 games each. So while I think you may be somewhat experienced, it would not be inaccurate to say that you're still a neophyte in comparison to many of the users here.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #87 on: February 05, 2015, 04:37:02 pm »
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I can confirm that having more players lessens the viability of engines. One important reason would be that important engine pieces like Fishing Village might run out before you can get more than 3 of them. Also attacks will hit you more often, which can actually raise the importance of trashers, but also drags out the game, raising the chances for successful slog strategies. Just my two cents.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #88 on: February 05, 2015, 04:48:41 pm »
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I agree with both Awaclus and dondon here.  The player count could definitely have an effect on your perceptions, and groupthink is a thing too.  Playing with Platinum and Colonies actually makes engines more viable, because the extra source of strong VP makes the game longer, giving the engine more time to become unstoppable.

Having more players makes engines more difficult because of competition over engine components as well as how fast the non-engine players can drain the VP piles together.  1v1, the non-engine has a more difficult time ending the game before the engine can come back and take the lead.  There is also the fact that Big Money strategies can get lucky and win despite being inferior overall; having more players just increases the chance that one player hits some optimal shuffle luck.

That said, yes I understand can trip trashing is a hugely helpful kickstarter to the engine strategy. It does not, however, mean you can't have a good $4 card (hospital). The extra action on hospital means you will try and play it to play engine components (if you have no other +actions in hand) and will therefore start self-destructing your engine once it is built. It's almost like a tempter and is going to be a dangerous card to keep playing if you're relying on the +actions. However, it is actually quite a boring card anyway and I can see why Donald has never produced it, it's real interest in my set comes from the overpay to remove plague tokens ability. What would people think about:

Hospital $4+ - ACTION

+1 Card. +2 Actions. Discard one of your plague tokens. When you buy this you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpay you may trash a card from your discard pile.

You can have a good $4 card, sure, but that doesn't mean you should have cards that are too good.  Hospital would be in that boat.  As we've tried to explain, Hospital is very comparable to other cantrip trashers like Junk Dealer and Upgrade.  Which of them is stronger isn't important (I think Hospital would often be stronger, but others have disagreed already and that's fine), but they are all definitely in a similar class.  Hospital is very clearly a $5 card.

Your notion about Hospital self-destructing does not follow from its optimal use case.  Even though it is a village, you shouldn't treat it as such.  Its primary use is as a trasher, just like Upgrade and Junk Dealer.  The +actions are just a nice little bonus that can help you out, letting you get more terminals earlier before you invest in other villages.  Likewise, the +$1 from Junk Dealer is just a nice little bonus that can sometimes help you afford a card you otherwise couldn't.  The mistake is in underestimating the value of the +actions, or overestimating the value of the +$1.  The big thing on those cards is still the cantrip trashing.



On your new version of Hospital, I think it sounds OK.  I would actually suggest dropping the overpay entirely, or maybe using the same overpay you had before.  Just make Hospital a plague-cleanser through and through.
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dondon151

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #89 on: February 05, 2015, 04:56:26 pm »
+1

I've also noticed that when I play 3-player with my friends, sometimes instead of one of them making the decision that would best increase his chances of winning in the long-term, he would make a decision that would most increase my chance of losing. Collusion and king-making exist in 3-player, especially in a frequent play group.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #90 on: February 06, 2015, 05:54:59 am »
+1

I think I've got it!!!

Hospital $4 - ACTION

+1 Card. +2 Actions. You may discard one of your plague tokens. If you do, trash a card from your hand.


or if that's still too powerful make the village effect happen after the discard and trashing effect.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 07:57:23 am by Vislor »
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #91 on: February 06, 2015, 10:17:53 am »
+1

I think I've got it!!!

Hospital $4 - ACTION

+1 Card. +2 Actions. You may discard one of your plague tokens. If you do, trash a card from your hand.


or if that's still too powerful make the village effect happen after the discard and trashing effect.

You have to consider what happens when this card is in a set with no cards that can cause you to take a Plague token... in that case it's just a $4 Village. I like this idea, but I think you need to add to it a way for the card itself to give plague tokens as well; even if it just gives a couple on-gain.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #92 on: February 06, 2015, 06:34:25 pm »
+1

I think I've got it!!!

Hospital $4 - ACTION

+1 Card. +2 Actions. You may discard one of your plague tokens. If you do, trash a card from your hand.


or if that's still too powerful make the village effect happen after the discard and trashing effect.

You have to consider what happens when this card is in a set with no cards that can cause you to take a Plague token... in that case it's just a $4 Village. I like this idea, but I think you need to add to it a way for the card itself to give plague tokens as well; even if it just gives a couple on-gain.
Although a very similar thing holds for Fortress: without trashing, it's just a $4 Village.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #93 on: February 07, 2015, 07:28:40 pm »
+1

I think I've got it!!!

Hospital $4 - ACTION

+1 Card. +2 Actions. You may discard one of your plague tokens. If you do, trash a card from your hand.


or if that's still too powerful make the village effect happen after the discard and trashing effect.

You have to consider what happens when this card is in a set with no cards that can cause you to take a Plague token... in that case it's just a $4 Village. I like this idea, but I think you need to add to it a way for the card itself to give plague tokens as well; even if it just gives a couple on-gain.
Although a very similar thing holds for Fortress: without trashing, it's just a $4 Village.

True. The only difference is that there's way more cards that trash than cards that give plague tokens.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #94 on: February 07, 2015, 08:42:28 pm »
+2

Maybe this?

Hospital
$4 - Action
+1 Card
+2 Actions
Discard one of your plague tokens.  If you did, trash a card from your hand.

When you buy this, you may overpay for it.  For each $1 you overpaid, gain a plague token.

It's a little strange thematically, but not completely inexplicable.  I'd wonder if it can end up too harsh with Possession (now you overpay for Hospital and you gain a whole bunch of plague tokens!) but I think it can work.  I made the "discard a plague token" mandatory because usually you'd want to anyway, and this simplifies the card a little bit.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #95 on: February 07, 2015, 09:20:37 pm »
0

Possess someone into being such a bad doctor they catch a bunch of terrible diseases!
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #96 on: February 08, 2015, 04:32:31 pm »
+1

I like eHalcyon's fix. I think it's not even weird thematically.

One thing you could do is, instead of overpaying for plague tokens, just make Hospital come with 1 or 2 plague tokens and remove the overpay.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #97 on: February 09, 2015, 04:19:28 am »
+1

Ok, yeah, good thinking guys. I think I'll scrap the overpay and make it come with 2 plague tokens. It'll be kind of like you're going somewhere riddled with disease but it will eventually make you better!
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #98 on: February 09, 2015, 05:23:30 am »
+3

Gain two bad things as fodder when gaining a $4 card? That seems... established.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #99 on: February 09, 2015, 01:16:03 pm »
0

Gain two bad things as fodder when gaining a $4 card? That seems... established.

This is nicer though, since Death Cart's Ruins don't always collide.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #100 on: February 10, 2015, 03:52:02 am »
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Gain two bad things as fodder when gaining a $4 card? That seems... established.

This is nicer though, since Death Cart's Ruins don't always collide.

Correct, but they do instantly hurt you and you have to wait til next shuffle before the chance to use Hospital.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #101 on: February 10, 2015, 08:30:37 pm »
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Gain two bad things as fodder when gaining a $4 card? That seems... established.

This is nicer though, since Death Cart's Ruins don't always collide.

Correct, but they do instantly hurt you and you have to wait til next shuffle before the chance to use Hospital.

To be clear, I'm not saying that it's a flaw that Hospital's junk is better than Death Cart's junk.  I'm just noting the fact.

The plague token effect actually won't hurt at all with Hospital, at least at first, because you'll be buying Hospitals early and using those tokens to trash down long before you get to greening.  It gets interesting later though.  Your first 3 Hospitals would get you 6 plague tokens which let you trash 6 cards, but the next one would leave you with an extra Plague token if the game doesn't otherwise have junking.  So do you stop at 3 Hospitals, or do you trash something decent, or do you buy more fodder to get rid of the extra plague tokens?  Junking and plague-giving cards add other factors to consider.  It's an interesting tension.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #102 on: February 11, 2015, 04:04:05 am »
0

Gain two bad things as fodder when gaining a $4 card? That seems... established.

This is nicer though, since Death Cart's Ruins don't always collide.

Correct, but they do instantly hurt you and you have to wait til next shuffle before the chance to use Hospital.

To be clear, I'm not saying that it's a flaw that Hospital's junk is better than Death Cart's junk.  I'm just noting the fact.

The plague token effect actually won't hurt at all with Hospital, at least at first, because you'll be buying Hospitals early and using those tokens to trash down long before you get to greening.  It gets interesting later though.  Your first 3 Hospitals would get you 6 plague tokens which let you trash 6 cards, but the next one would leave you with an extra Plague token if the game doesn't otherwise have junking.  So do you stop at 3 Hospitals, or do you trash something decent, or do you buy more fodder to get rid of the extra plague tokens?  Junking and plague-giving cards add other factors to consider.  It's an interesting tension.

It depends on your strategy as there may be alt VP cards which you want earlier in the game....Nobles, Harem, Feodum etc. You are still paying one more per plague token for all those cards.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #103 on: February 11, 2015, 10:53:30 am »
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I can't imagine that a single leftover Copper could ever hurt enough that you would consider both wasting a buy AND trashing a card you wouldn't otherwise trash just to get rid of it.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #104 on: February 11, 2015, 12:15:13 pm »
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I can't imagine that a single leftover Copper could ever hurt enough that you would consider both wasting a buy AND trashing a card you wouldn't otherwise trash just to get rid of it.

You might want the extra village though.

@Vislor, for most alt VP rush strategies you would skip Hospital.  You don't need trashing as much, and often wouldn't need villages either.  Nobles may be the exception, as it does have a place as an engine component.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #105 on: February 11, 2015, 12:42:28 pm »
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Either way, i don't see a reason why Hospital and Death Cart shouldn't be allowed to have differently "good" junk. The cards are vastly different, anyhow.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #106 on: February 11, 2015, 12:46:43 pm »
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Either way, i don't see a reason why Hospital and Death Cart shouldn't be allowed to have differently "good" junk. The cards are vastly different, anyhow.

Yes, exactly.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #107 on: March 12, 2015, 10:15:04 am »
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Am rethinking about Surgeon now. Is this too good?

Surgeon $6 - ACTION

$2. You may trash a Victory card from your hand. If you do, gain 1VP token per $ it costs or 2VP tokens if it has a potion in its cost.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #108 on: March 12, 2015, 04:43:44 pm »
+2

Am rethinking about Surgeon now. Is this too good?

Surgeon $6 - ACTION

$2. You may trash a Victory card from your hand. If you do, gain 1VP token per $ it costs or 2VP tokens if it has a potion in its cost.

The Potion clause is unnecessary complexity; it only applies to Vineyards and nobody who goes to the trouble of buying Vineyards is going to trash it for just 2VP.

This is more effective than Bishop for both coin and VP gaining, but it is restricted to VP cards only.  Balance-wise, I think it is fine testing as is (minus the Potion clause).  But the card is not that interesting because of how similar it is to Bishop.  The original was at least set apart by returning cards to the Supply, which has a different impact on games.  But you correctly noted that it would slow the game down a lot.  I noted afterwards that trashing instead would just make it too similar to Bishop, and that still holds here.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #109 on: March 19, 2015, 08:44:27 am »
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Am rethinking about Surgeon now. Is this too good?

Surgeon $6 - ACTION

$2. You may trash a Victory card from your hand. If you do, gain 1VP token per $ it costs or 2VP tokens if it has a potion in its cost.

The Potion clause is unnecessary complexity; it only applies to Vineyards and nobody who goes to the trouble of buying Vineyards is going to trash it for just 2VP.

This is more effective than Bishop for both coin and VP gaining, but it is restricted to VP cards only.  Balance-wise, I think it is fine testing as is (minus the Potion clause).  But the card is not that interesting because of how similar it is to Bishop.  The original was at least set apart by returning cards to the Supply, which has a different impact on games.  But you correctly noted that it would slow the game down a lot.  I noted afterwards that trashing instead would just make it too similar to Bishop, and that still holds here.

Ok I'll take out the potion clause. I still think there's a space for this card, if used well it is much better than Bishop and I don't see the problem with similar cards. I mean, look how many village cards there are in the game. It's not a problem for me, even if (statistically unlikely) both Bishop and Surgeon crop up in the same game.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #110 on: March 19, 2015, 12:43:46 pm »
+1

There are lots of villages because there needs to be a reasonable chance of having +actions come up in a random kingdom. Likewise for other vanilla cards.  More specialized cards don't get repeated so much.  Notice how the three existing VP token cards ate all very different.  Notice how only one card is untrashable even though the Fortress clause could easily be slapped onto other vanilla cards.

It's fine to try though, certainly.  Just not that interesting.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #111 on: March 20, 2015, 09:19:28 am »
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Ok, but I think the difference here comes with how it really encourages you to trash Victory cards. Bishop doesn't really do that because you are getting fewer VPs for trashing them than they are worth. That's why I think this card works well opposite Bishop.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #112 on: March 20, 2015, 09:40:01 am »
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Ok, but I think the difference here comes with how it really encourages you to trash Victory cards. Bishop doesn't really do that because you are getting fewer VPs for trashing them than they are worth. That's why I think this card works well opposite Bishop.

Well, it works equally well for Estates, which are the VP cards most commonly trashed.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #113 on: March 20, 2015, 10:15:48 am »
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Ok, but I think the difference here comes with how it really encourages you to trash Victory cards. Bishop doesn't really do that because you are getting fewer VPs for trashing them than they are worth. That's why I think this card works well opposite Bishop.

Well, it works equally well for Estates, which are the VP cards most commonly trashed.

But with surgeon in the game, trashing Duchies and Provinces not only gets them out your deck but boosts the VP count as well.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #114 on: March 20, 2015, 12:27:05 pm »
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Ok, but I think the difference here comes with how it really encourages you to trash Victory cards. Bishop doesn't really do that because you are getting fewer VPs for trashing them than they are worth. That's why I think this card works well opposite Bishop.

Bishop is fine for trashing most VP cards.  You lose a VP on Province, but that's usually worthwhile.  And Bishop can be used on other cards as well.  Compared to Surgeon, Bishop gets you equal value on Estates and additional value on Coppers and other junk while costing less, plus the option to cannibalize other parts of your deck for more points in the end game. Surgeon gives greater return on other VP and no benefit to opponents.

But it doesn't really explore new strategy space.  Any strategy where you use Surgeon can be done about as well with Bishop. You get extra points on Duchy and Province and alt VP, but that only lets it catch up to Bishop's points from teaching other things.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #115 on: March 25, 2015, 06:51:14 am »
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Am now trying Surgeon with +2 coin tokens instead of $.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #116 on: March 25, 2015, 06:57:25 am »
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So...after playtesting hospital, I concede it is too good at $4 so will make it $5. The best option might actually have been to make it overpay for plague tokens, but I don't like that thematically so am just going for the gain 2 plague on buy. But, hold on, what about underpay, could that be an interesting strategy?

Hospital $3- - ACTION

+1 card. +2 actions. Discard one of your plague tokens. If you do trash a card from your hand.
_________________________________________________________

When you buy this you may underpay for it to a minimum of $0. If you do, gain a plague token per $1 you underpaid.


Or is that just way too crazy good?!

Maybe +1 card. +1 action?
« Last Edit: March 25, 2015, 07:00:20 am by Vislor »
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #117 on: March 25, 2015, 12:45:10 pm »
+1

When you buy this card, you actually want plague tokens to fuel trashing.  Making the card cheaper should give you a penalty, not a bonus.
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #118 on: April 08, 2015, 07:33:46 am »
0

UPDATE

Dominion: Pestilence

The following rules and cards are in play every time you use at least one card which would give plague tokens from Pestilence.

There are 72 plague tokens.

Each plague token you carry adds $1 to the cost of buying all victory cards.

You can only have a maximum of 12 plague tokens. If you would be forced to go above 12 plague tokens instead gain a curse. You can only be forced to gain a curse once per turn in this way.

Privy $0* – ACTION (this is not in the supply)

+1 Action. When you play this return it to the privy pile. Discard one of your plague tokens.
__________________________________________________________________________________
During your buy phase you may gain one privy for free without using up a buy.

Diseases $0* – DURATION ATTACK (this is not in the supply)

Deck of ten different cards. Shuffle and place face up. If you have 6 or more plague tokens at the end of your turn you gain the top disease. It goes directly into your play area and takes effect from the start of your next turn. It is not discarded during cleanup. At the start of each of your turns you may gain a plague token, if you do carry out the attack. This does not use up an ACTION. If you already have a disease you cannot gain a new disease. If there is already a Disease in play when you acquire one, the Disease already in play is then put to the bottom of the Diseases pile and that player discards all their plague tokens. Thus only one Disease is allowed in play at one time. The Disease is not an ACTION TREASURE or VICTORY card. It does go into your deck at the end of the game.

Pox – Each other player gains a plague token.

Bubonic Plague – Each other player gains 2 plague tokens.

Syphilis – Each other player gains a curse and a plague token.

Leprosy – Each other player with 4 or more cards discards a card. They also gain a plague token.

Dysentery – Each other player gains a privy and a plague token.

Gout – Each other player gains an Estate and a plague token.

Typhoid – Each other player discards a treasure card or reveals a hand with no treasures. They also gain a plague token.

Famine - Each other player gains a copper and a plague token.

Rickets – Each other player discards an action card or reveals a hand with no actions. They also gain a plague token.

Tapeworm – While this is in play each other player gets +1 buy this turn but trashes the first thing they buy costing at least $1. They also gain a plague token.



And now, the cards!!!

Doomsday Book $0* - ACTION

+2 Actions. Trash this. Draw a card for each plague token you have. This costs $1 per plague token you have.

Flea $1 - ACTION REACTION (20 card supply deck)

+2 Actions.
_________________________________________________________________________________
When you play this gain a Flea. When you discard this other than during cleanup it jumps to the player on your left's discard pile. When you trash this discard one of your plague tokens.

Contaminate $2 – ACTION

+$1. +1 buy. Place a plague token from the supply onto a supply deck of your choice. When a player gains a card if there are any plague tokens on it he gains one of them.

Quack $2 - ACTION INFECTION

+$1. You may gain a plague token. Everyone passes one of their plague tokens to the left. You may discard one of your plague tokens.

Astrologer $3 - ACTION

+1 Action. Name a card. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Put the named cards into your hand and the rest back in any order.

Bath House $3 – VICTORY TREASURE

1VP. $1. When you gain this discard half of your plague tokens (round up).

Church $3 - ACTION DURATION REACTION

+1 card. Now and next turn +1 buy. Draw an extra card in this turn’s cleanup phase.
__________________________________________________________________________________
If you are attacked while this is in play you may discard a card to be unaffected.

Amputation $4 – ACTION INFECTION

$3. Draw one less card after cleanup this turn.
__________________________________________________________________________________
When you gain this gain 1 plague token.

Barber $4 – ACTION INFECTION

+$1. +1 Plague token. You may discard up to 3 Plague tokens. While this is in play +1VP token when you discard a Plague token.

Leech $4 - ACTION ATTACK

+$1. Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of their deck and trashes one costing up to $4 that you choose. The rest are discarded. You may gain any or all of the trashed cards.

Town Crier $4 – ACTION

$2. Look at the top card of your deck. Either put it into your hand or discard it and each other player gains a copy.

Charity $5 – TREASURE ATTACK

$1. Each other player discards the top two cards of their deck. If they discard any treasure, place a coin token on the Charity mat. If they don't, they gain a plague token.
__________________________________________________________________________________
You may take a coin from the Charity mat.

Haemorrhage $5 - ACTION INFECTION

+1 Action. Name an Action, Treasure or Victory card. Reveal cards from the top of your deck and trash cards of that type until you reveal the named card. Put that card into your hand and discard the rest. Gain a plague token for every card you trashed.

Hospital $5 – ACTION INFECTION

+1 Card. +2 Actions. Discard one of your plague tokens. If you did, trash a card from your hand.
__________________________________________________________________________________
When you gain this gain 2 plague tokens.

Infection $5 - ACTION ATTACK

+3 cards. Each other player gains a plague token.

Monastery $6 - ACTION

Reveal a non-treasure card from your hand costing up to $7. Gain a copy from the supply.

Surgeon $6 - ACTION

+2 coin tokens. You may trash a Victory Card from your hand. If you do, gain 1VP token per $ it costs.

Autopsy $7 - ACTION

+1 Action. You may put your deck into your discard pile. Put one card from it into your hand.

Royal College of Physicians $7
– VICTORY

2VP for every 2 Golds in your deck.

The Black Death $8 - ACTION INFECTION

+2 buys. +2 plague tokens. During your buy phase +$2 per plague token you have. Discard the top 2 cards of your deck. If you discard 2 treasures, +2 plague tokens and at the end of your turn pass this to the player on your right's discard pile.
_________________________________________________________________________________
When you trash this everyone discards all their plague tokens.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2015, 05:04:12 am by Vislor »
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #119 on: April 08, 2015, 07:41:20 am »
0

My favourite card:

Haemorrhage!
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #120 on: April 08, 2015, 07:50:26 am »
0

Btw Surgeon can also be awesome when you add $1 to the cost of Victory cards per plague token you have.

Which may mean it needs nerfed with a "remove all/some of your plague tokens" clause, but I'll playtest some more.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2015, 04:15:27 am by Vislor »
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #121 on: April 09, 2015, 04:30:39 am »
0

New card:

Witch Doctor $3 - ACTION REACTION

Draw until you have 6 cards in hand. When one of your cards is trashed you may reveal this. If you do, discard a plague token.


Not very exciting but I needed some more source of draw in the set.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #122 on: April 09, 2015, 08:06:14 pm »
0

New card:

Witch Doctor $3 - ACTION REACTION

Draw until you have 6 cards in hand. When one of your cards is trashed you may reveal this. If you do, discard a plague token.


Not very exciting but I needed some more source of draw in the set.

The reaction needs to go beneath a horizontal line.  Also, as written, Witch Doctor allows you to discard all plague tokens when just one card is trashed.  Remember, you are allowed to reveal the same reaction multiple times.  If you want to get around that, you need to discard or set aside the reaction.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #123 on: April 10, 2015, 04:49:19 am »
0

New card:

Witch Doctor $3 - ACTION REACTION

Draw until you have 6 cards in hand. When one of your cards is trashed you may reveal this. If you do, discard a plague token.


Not very exciting but I needed some more source of draw in the set.

The reaction needs to go beneath a horizontal line.  Also, as written, Witch Doctor allows you to discard all plague tokens when just one card is trashed.  Remember, you are allowed to reveal the same reaction multiple times.  If you want to get around that, you need to discard or set aside the reaction.

Oh well, I can just put you may reveal this once, can't I? BTW thanks for all your feedback as and when I post in this thread, v useful and insightful!
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #124 on: April 10, 2015, 05:01:37 am »
+3

Oh well, I can just put you may reveal this once, can't I?

No, because once you have revealed it, you put it back into your hand, and then you can reveal "another" one and there's no way to tell if or not it's the one you already revealed. It's going to look a bit suspicious at the point when you have revealed more copies of the card than you have cards in hand, though.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2015, 05:04:19 am by Awaclus »
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #125 on: April 10, 2015, 05:42:24 am »
0

No, because once you have revealed it, you put it back into your hand, and then you can reveal "another" one and there's no way to tell if or not it's the one you already revealed. It's going to look a bit suspicious at the point when you have revealed more copies of the card than you have cards in hand, though.

Ah, good point. Okay thanks! It's probably better like this then:

Witch Doctor $3 - ACTION REACTION

Draw until you have 6 cards in hand.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When one of your cards is trashed you may discard this. If you do, discard one of your Plague tokens and draw a card.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2015, 12:02:23 pm by Vislor »
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #126 on: April 10, 2015, 07:05:23 am »
0

BTW, a general comment about this set is that it mixes better than it plays on its own. Plague tokens also lengthen the game considerably allowing longer term strategies to really come into their own which I quite like. A Pestilence heavy game plays for about 1.5 - 2 hrs rather than the usual 45 mins - 1 hr.

Oh, and the "Miracle cure" effect when someone else gains a disease is fun and makes for interesting strategic decisions!
« Last Edit: April 10, 2015, 07:50:45 am by Vislor »
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #127 on: April 14, 2015, 04:56:16 am »
0

OK, so it's back to being only when you buy Victory cards that the cost is increased by plague tokens.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #128 on: April 18, 2015, 10:07:55 am »
+1

Ok, I've been waiting almost 3 months for this day. Ratcatcher has now been revealed, and I really want to see what people say about this cantrip trashing discussion now.

When I first saw Ratcatcher, I didn't understand how it could exist. Cantrip trashing for $2. Ok, so of course the reserve makes it a little different from the hypothetical card discussed here. Being a reserve means 2 drawbacks. It will miss the shuffle more often, like a Duration. And, you get the benefit at least 1 turn later than normal. Though that only matters if you reshuffle during that turn. Oh, also since it only works at start of turn, you can't rely on drawing the cards you want to trash during your turn. But on the other side, it has things that make it better than normal cantrip trasher; mainly that it never becomes a dead card or a risk to play.  And you never have trouble lining it up with your junk.

Anyway, it was said here that cantrip trasher is far stronger than cantrip coin, and that it cannot cost less than $4. I would have agreed, except I'd seen Ratcatcher. Now I don't know what to think. Should you open double Ratcatcher every time? Does it cost $2 because at $3 it would be unfair to someone who opens 5/2, like Chapel? Is Hospital balanced because Ratcatcher exists?
« Last Edit: April 18, 2015, 10:10:57 am by GendoIkari »
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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #129 on: April 18, 2015, 10:42:08 am »
0

Ok, I've been waiting almost 3 months for this day. Ratcatcher has now been revealed, and I really want to see what people say about this cantrip trashing discussion now.

When I first saw Ratcatcher, I didn't understand how it could exist. Cantrip trashing for $2. Ok, so of course the reserve makes it a little different from the hypothetical card discussed here. Being a reserve means 2 drawbacks. It will miss the shuffle more often, like a Duration. And, you get the benefit at least 1 turn later than normal. Though that only matters if you reshuffle during that turn. Oh, also since it only works at start of turn, you can't rely on drawing the cards you want to trash during your turn. But on the other side, it has things that make it better than normal cantrip trasher; mainly that it never becomes a dead card or a risk to play.  And you never have trouble lining it up with your junk.

Anyway, it was said here that cantrip trasher is far stronger than cantrip coin, and that it cannot cost less than $4. I would have agreed, except I'd seen Ratcatcher. Now I don't know what to think. Should you open double Ratcatcher every time? Does it cost $2 because at $3 it would be unfair to someone who opens 5/2, like Chapel? Is Hospital balanced because Ratcatcher exists?

I think the extra turn makes a significant difference, and that it actually will miss the reshuffle often.   You'll be getting it early, when shuffles are short, and its trashing keeps it that way.  I also think double Ratcatcher could totally be a thing.  Will have to think about it more, but it hasn't changed my opinion on a pure cantrip trasher yet.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #130 on: April 20, 2015, 05:03:41 am »
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Ok, I've been waiting almost 3 months for this day. Ratcatcher has now been revealed, and I really want to see what people say about this cantrip trashing discussion now.

When I first saw Ratcatcher, I didn't understand how it could exist. Cantrip trashing for $2. Ok, so of course the reserve makes it a little different from the hypothetical card discussed here. Being a reserve means 2 drawbacks. It will miss the shuffle more often, like a Duration. And, you get the benefit at least 1 turn later than normal. Though that only matters if you reshuffle during that turn. Oh, also since it only works at start of turn, you can't rely on drawing the cards you want to trash during your turn. But on the other side, it has things that make it better than normal cantrip trasher; mainly that it never becomes a dead card or a risk to play.  And you never have trouble lining it up with your junk.

Anyway, it was said here that cantrip trasher is far stronger than cantrip coin, and that it cannot cost less than $4. I would have agreed, except I'd seen Ratcatcher. Now I don't know what to think. Should you open double Ratcatcher every time? Does it cost $2 because at $3 it would be unfair to someone who opens 5/2, like Chapel? Is Hospital balanced because Ratcatcher exists?

I've not seen Ratcatcher yet but have playtested Hospital quite a bit. It is good at $5 because it is not only village trasher but the removal of plague makes it a double benefit. It does however get interesting later in the game when you have to trash better cards to remove any extra plague you may have been given by some other means. Of course if you have no plague it is just a village, but they cost 3 on their own anyway, so yes, I think $5 is a good cost for the hospital card.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #131 on: April 20, 2015, 05:30:41 am »
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I have actually been rethinking Hospital a bit now because of how it turns plague into being something too good (well, early game in particular). Maybe it should be like this:

Hospital $4+ - ACTION

+1 Card. +2 Actions. Discard one of your plague tokens.
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When you buy this you may over pay for it. If you do trash a card from your hand or discard pile per $1 you overpay.
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #132 on: April 21, 2015, 07:18:01 am »
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Am now thinking about this for Hospital as it may still have been too good and favours the 5/2 split.

Hospital $4 - ACTION

+1 Card. +2 Actions. You may discard a plague token. If you don't, trash a card from your hand.
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When you gain this gain 2 plague tokens.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #133 on: April 21, 2015, 12:53:16 pm »
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Am now thinking about this for Hospital as it may still have been too good and favours the 5/2 split.

Hospital $4 - ACTION

+1 Card. +2 Actions. You may discard a plague token. If you don't, trash a card from your hand.
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When you gain this gain 2 plague tokens.

This card is stronger than the overpay version.  It's just the unlimited trasher again. The overpay one sounds fine, actually.

Edit: auto-correct typo
« Last Edit: April 21, 2015, 07:41:07 pm by eHalcyon »
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Vislor

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Re: Dominion: Pestilence
« Reply #134 on: July 16, 2017, 07:38:38 am »
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Am in the process of revisiting this set and just came up with a new card:

Dirty Silver $4 - TREASURE DURATION

$2 now and next turn. While this is in play another player may steal it from you during their buy phase. If they do they gain a plague token.

It is totally untested so far! As far as stealing goes my first instinct is that it would be better seen as a gain to the discard pile rather than to be put straight into the player's hand. Any feedback appreciated, I have a feeling it is going to need some changes! Would a treasure duration even work?!
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