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[kn1tt3r]

BLOCKADE ($4) / Action-Reaction

+1 Action
+1 Buy
-----------
When another player plays an action card, you may reveal this from your hand. If you do, the playing of the action card has no effect.
You may reveal Blockade only once each turn.


What do you think?
Not sure about the exact wording since I'm no native speaker, but what I wanted to express is that after a revealed Blockade the played card has no effect whatsoever, i.e. it also doesn't consume an action.
I originally had it at "+1 card, +1 action, +1 buy", which might be a bit too strong, but i'm not sure.

[DStu]

First of all it's kind of a targeted attack. You also have the problem to stay honest, as there is no real possibility to be sure how many Blockades you have in your hand and thus how many you are allowed to reveal. Maybe discard it? (Might have small edge-case issues with the same topic in combination with future attacks, Secret Chamber and a reshuffling. So maybe set-aside and discard)  Or is it meant that you only may reveal one Blockade/turn no matter how many you have on your hand?

As cantrip it's definitely too strong, or better may lead to uninteresting games because you can load up with them and nobody dares to buy another single action. Also of course in the presence of Blockade a Blockade does not need to be a cantrip anymore. Even with this version I don't know if I really like it that you can disturb both action-chains and BigMoney+X so easily by (just) passing on a better Silver. Of course against BigMoney it might not be worth it to pass on a $4 to have the chance to prevent one opponent to play an action. But against chains ... hitting the Village, or hitting the Smithy, or the Lab, not speaking of KCs, and it's basically half a Militia, where you yourself kind of decide what it hits, and which doesn't cost you an action. And which works one turn earlier.

[kn1tt3r]

First of all it's kind of a targeted attack. You also have the problem to stay honest, as there is no real possibility to be sure how many Blockades you have in your hand and thus how many you are allowed to reveal. Maybe discard it? (Might have small edge-case issues with the same topic in combination with future attacks, Secret Chamber and a reshuffling. So maybe set-aside and discard)  Or is it meant that you only may reveal one Blockade/turn no matter how many you have on your hand?

You can only reveal one Blockade, no matter how many you have.

And it's meant to be not targeted, meaning that you can reveal it once each player's turn. I don't know whether the term "turn" is defined in the rules, but here I don't mean it in the sense isotropic does. 

What I find interesing overall is that it may lead to some strategical changes, e.g you'd want to buy way more important terminals (if one terminal is blocked, you can just play another one).

Regarding the cost and power of the card you have to take into account that you basically buy a mostly crappy card just to prevent some other action to be played (in case you draw it the right time). It might be quite powerful in Conspirator/Peddler decks, but in most games I don't know if it's always worth a buy.

[DStu]

And it's meant to be not targeted, meaning that you can reveal it once each player's turn. I don't know whether the term "turn" is defined in the rules, but here I don't mean it in the sense isotropic does. 

That might also scale wrong in multiplayer. In 4 players, you have potentially 3 opponents that could block you, in the worst case up to 3 cards.

[kn1tt3r]

And it's meant to be not targeted, meaning that you can reveal it once each player's turn. I don't know whether the term "turn" is defined in the rules, but here I don't mean it in the sense isotropic does. 

That might also scale wrong in multiplayer. In 4 players, you have potentially 3 opponents that could block you, in the worst case up to 3 cards.

Then maybe a wording like "Each turn only one played action card can be blocked this way"...?

[rinkworks]

One issue is that it will slow games down.  If I have a chain of actions in my hand, ready to play, I'm not going to want to slap them down quickly, thus revealing to my opponents that may or may not have Blockades what they might choose to block.  I'm going to play a Lab, wait to see if it gets blockaded, then play a Village, wait again, then play Margrave, wait again, and so on.

At present, long chains of Conspirators, Laboratories, and Grand Markets already take a while to slap down on the table, especially when you're playing your whole deck every turn, so often I'll just play three Labs at a time and take my total of +6 Cards in a single chunk.  A reaction card like this means everybody has to slow down the playing of their turns -- ironically, even when no one has a Blockade in hand.

The mechanic is interesting otherwise, so I wonder if the effect might be achieved some other way.  Maybe a targeted discard attack is effectively the same thing?  Every other player reveals his hand and discards an action card that you choose.   It's not quite the same, but just about.  That's a very powerful attack, though -- Donald said he tested a card like that, and it didn't go over well with his testing group.  But I don't know why a form of this idea couldn't work somehow.

[LastFootnote]

The mechanic is interesting otherwise, so I wonder if the effect might be achieved some other way.  Maybe a targeted discard attack is effectively the same thing?  Every other player reveals his hand and discards an action card that you choose.   It's not quite the same, but just about.  That's a very powerful attack, though -- Donald said he tested a card like that, and it didn't go over well with his testing group.  But I don't know why a form of this idea couldn't work somehow.

Each other player with at least 5 cards in hand reveals 4 cards from his hand and discards one of them that you choose.

[rinkworks]

The mechanic is interesting otherwise, so I wonder if the effect might be achieved some other way.  Maybe a targeted discard attack is effectively the same thing?  Every other player reveals his hand and discards an action card that you choose.   It's not quite the same, but just about.  That's a very powerful attack, though -- Donald said he tested a card like that, and it didn't go over well with his testing group.  But I don't know why a form of this idea couldn't work somehow.

Each other player with at least 5 cards in hand reveals 4 cards from his hand and discards one of them that you choose.

That's essentially what I understand Donald's failed card was, although I don't know for sure and what the price and vanilla bonuses would have been.  That matters too.  Anyway, this is still too strong (for my taste, anyway).  I play with this version in my own local group:

Mercenary
$5 - Action
+$2
Each other player with at least 4 cards in hand chooses one card from his hand and reveals the rest.  You choose one of the cards for him to discard.

Thus, you may only discard the second-best card, as the victim can choose one to grant immunity to.  It's plenty strong and usually preferable to Militia.  The bonus being +$ instead of +Cards means that the card doesn't cycle as quickly and won't be played as often.

The other interesting way I've seen is to pick any card to have discarded, but then the victim gets to draw a card to replace it.

But now we're getting further away from approximating the proposed reaction card's effect.

[LastFootnote]

The mechanic is interesting otherwise, so I wonder if the effect might be achieved some other way.  Maybe a targeted discard attack is effectively the same thing?  Every other player reveals his hand and discards an action card that you choose.   It's not quite the same, but just about.  That's a very powerful attack, though -- Donald said he tested a card like that, and it didn't go over well with his testing group.  But I don't know why a form of this idea couldn't work somehow.

Each other player with at least 5 cards in hand reveals 4 cards from his hand and discards one of them that you choose.

That's essentially what I understand Donald's failed card was, although I don't know for sure and what the price and vanilla bonuses would have been.  That matters too.  Anyway, this is still too strong (for my taste, anyway).  I play with this version in my own local group:

Mercenary
$5 - Action
+$2
Each other player with at least 4 cards in hand chooses one card from his hand and reveals the rest.  You choose one of the cards for him to discard.

Thus, you may only discard the second-best card, as the victim can choose one to grant immunity to.  It's plenty strong and usually preferable to Militia.  The bonus being +$ instead of +Cards means that the card doesn't cycle as quickly and won't be played as often.

Read my post a little more carefully. The effect I suggested also allows you to grant immunity to at least one card in your hand.

EDIT: If anything, I would have guessed that your version of the card was too strong. The ability to leave someone with only the first, fourth, and fifth best cards in their hand seems perilously close to wiping out their turn unless their best card is a real doozy.

[rinkworks]

Read my post a little more carefully. The effect I suggested also allows you to grant immunity to at least one card in your hand.

EDIT: If anything, I would have guessed that your version of the card was too strong. The ability to leave someone with only the first, fourth, and fifth best cards in their hand seems perilously close to wiping out their turn unless their best card is a real doozy.

Sorry, you're absolutely right -- I totally misread what your card said.  You're also right that my version is a touch strong.  I've playtested it with 3-player, and it hasn't been as bad as I thought it might be, but I have certainly occasionally run into nasty situations and am considering changing it to "5 or more."  Which would basically be what you had.

[play2draw]

I think another problem with this card is that it will tend to encourage people just playing big money. Typically I'd prefer cards that encourage more variety rather than less.

As far as this being somewhat targeted is concerned... I don't really have an issue with that specifically. If your gaming group thinks Dominion would be a better game with targeted attacks, go right ahead and try out some ideas (and share them with us!). I do feel that Donald's decision to keep Dominion politics-free is a very good and reasoned one, but other gaming groups might like a Dominion with a tense, slowed-down, "take-that" feel to it.

I've actually been mulling through my head ideas on making a fan-expansion that focuses on adding such "political" cards (ideally for games with 3+ players). A card similar to this may be a good fit.