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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.

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(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)".

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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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