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[Infthitbox]

Treacherous Tonic
1P

+2 Cards
+P

Trash a card at random from your hand.

Art direction: Dark alleyway, two people, one pulling a (focus of art) bottle of liquid from the inside of his coat, the other (slightly desperate looking) reaching with feeble hands.

I'm aware that +P cards don't exist because they are useless in isolation, but this one can at the very least help pick up additional copies of itself (flavor!). The trash a card at random is the inherent risk of the tonic. I'm not sure what the coin component of the cost should be.

[LastFootnote]

I don't think "trash a card at random from your hand" is ever going to fly, unfortunately. I mean you might buy it once for novelty, but other than that its application seems very limited.

[Infthitbox]

I can see myself playing it at the end of an action chain when I have treasures/junk in my hand I want out of my deck and nothing else is available to trash them. Sure, its not the best trasher around, and eventually you will want to stop playing it, but I don't think its quite as limited as "you'll never buy it".

[LastFootnote]

I can see myself playing it at the end of an action chain when I have treasures/junk in my hand I want out of my deck and nothing else is available to trash them. Sure, its not the best trasher around, and eventually you will want to stop playing it, but I don't think its quite as limited as "you'll never buy it".

Perhaps you're right. It really depends on whether you have some way to discard Provinces and other stuff that you haven't played but still want. I think giving it a Potion cost makes it much less desirable, though. And how many copies of it will you really want?

[Infthitbox]

The top-down flavor of the card demands potion cost, but that can easily be changed. However, if it is going to give a potion as part of the effect, it will be useless unless there is something to be bought with those potions. Having it be potion-costed means that at the very least, it can be used towards buying more.

Re: provinces. I don't know that I expect to be playing this card during the part of the game where I can hit provinces with it. And if I really do want to hit everything in my hand that's not a province, well, how lucky am I feeling?

[LastFootnote]

The top-down flavor of the card demands potion cost, but that can easily be changed. However, if it is going to give a potion as part of the effect, it will be useless unless there is something to be bought with those potions. Having it be potion-costed means that at the very least, it can be used towards buying more.

Yeah, but do you want more? How many Tonics are you planning on buying? My guess is two at most. So the +P doesn't really matter much. Transmute helps you get more Transmutes, but it's considered the weakest card in Alchemy.

[Asper]

Even if i just have junk in my hand that i want to trash, the +2 cards ruin it. How about letting the player discard any number of cards first? This way, you can at least protect cards at the cost of not using them. Possibly also make it a Treasure worth, don't know, $2P. Like:

Tonic, P, Treasure
$2P
When you play this, discard any number of cards. The player to your left picks a card from your hand. Trash it.

Edit: Sorry, i forgot a Treasure allows simply playing it last. So i guess i'm in favour of a discard option and giving it +1action.

Brewmaster, P, Action
+1 Action
+$2
+P
Discard any number of cards. The player to your left picks a card from your hand. Trash it.

[Burning Skull]

Treacherous Tonic
1P

+2 Cards
+P

Trash a card at random from your hand.

The flavour is super cool, but other than that this card seems to be just pointless. Maybe add some VP on it?

[Davio]

Or maybe something like this (makes it an attack):

Shuffle your hand and randomly trash a card from it.
If you trashed a card this way, either you gain a copy of the trashed card or each other player does, your choice.


This way you can at least get a trashed Province back.

[Infthitbox]

Treacherous Tonic
1P

+2 Cards
+P

Trash a card at random from your hand.

The flavour is super cool, but other than that this card seems to be just pointless. Maybe add some VP on it?

Well, I'm assuming you mean have it add some VP chips, not be worth VP, otherwise you could buy it and not really ever play it.

What if it was:

Treacherous Tonic
1P

+P

Trash a card at random from your hand. If you trash a card this way, +3 VP.


Now it feels a lot like Bishop, except better in the early game when the average card in your hand won't be very good.

Or maybe something like this (makes it an attack):

Shuffle your hand and randomly trash a card from it.
If you trashed a card this way, either you gain a copy of the trashed card or each other player does, your choice.


This way you can at least get a trashed Province back.

This seems like a legitimate way to make the card playable, but does lose some of the top-down flavor I was initially going for.

[tristan]

First of all, I like that you started with a theme first and then added the mechanism. The Martin Wallace of Dominion fan card designers. 

Second, virtual Potion is an interesting idea but is slightly weaker than virtual coins due to Alchemist and Apothecary. I once played around with a Potion Market (virtual Potion instead of virtual coin and some additional stuff) but it did not work too well in most decks as it was too expensive. Your card has the advantage of being a decent purchase if you draw your potion but do not have enough coins to buy more expensive potion cards.

To me its main advantage seems to be the virtual potion and not the card draw or the random trashing. In junking heavy games you might play it for some time but I guess in most games it will just be a "Well, I got 2 Coppers and a Potion so I cannot buy the Familiar. But alas, Treacherous Tonic is better than nothing." kind of thing.

The Bishop-y version might be more balanced but I would stick with +1VP. +3VP is definitely overpowered and might even break the game (if everybody just buys Potions, Tonics and Villages). Perhaps +2 Cards and +1VP is too strong but I think it would definitely be better than +3VP.

[Infthitbox]

First of all, I like that you started with a theme first and then added the mechanism. The Martin Wallace of Dominion fan card designers. 

Second, virtual Potion is an interesting idea but is slightly weaker than virtual coins due to Alchemist and Apothecary. I once played around with a Potion Market (virtual Potion instead of virtual coin and some additional stuff) but it did not work too well in most decks as it was too expensive. Your card has the advantage of being a decent purchase if you draw your potion but do not have enough coins to buy more expensive potion cards.

To me its main advantage seems to be the virtual potion and not the card draw or the random trashing. In junking heavy games you might play it for some time but I guess in most games it will just be a "Well, I got 2 Coppers and a Potion so I cannot buy the Familiar. But alas, Treacherous Tonic is better than nothing." kind of thing.

The Bishop-y version might be more balanced but I would stick with +1VP. +3VP is definitely overpowered and might even break the game (if everybody just buys Potions, Tonics and Villages). Perhaps +2 Cards and +1VP is too strong but I think it would definitely be better than +3VP.

Yeah, 3 was just a number. It feels like 1 is too weak, and totally not worth the risk of the random trashing (which again, for the theme of the card I'd prefer it trash at random). Maybe I should playtest it, not sure if I can get my friends to go for that.

[eHalcyon]

Treacherous Tonic
1P

+2 Cards
+P

Trash a card at random from your hand.

The flavour is super cool, but other than that this card seems to be just pointless. Maybe add some VP on it?

Well, I'm assuming you mean have it add some VP chips, not be worth VP, otherwise you could buy it and not really ever play it.

You would want to play it at least some of the time.  The incentive is to get +P in order to buy more of this card, because it is worth VP.  The original version doesn't have that incentive because it's basically just Most without protection.

For the Bishop-y version, 1VP is definitely way too weak.  Just compare with Bishop, which doesn't cost Potion, doesn't trash randomly, and lets you get a lot more than 1VP when you play it.

[Infthitbox]

Treacherous Tonic
1P

+2 Cards
+P

Trash a card at random from your hand.

The flavour is super cool, but other than that this card seems to be just pointless. Maybe add some VP on it?

Well, I'm assuming you mean have it add some VP chips, not be worth VP, otherwise you could buy it and not really ever play it.

You would want to play it at least some of the time.  The incentive is to get +P in order to buy more of this card, because it is worth VP.  The original version doesn't have that incentive because it's basically just Most without protection.

For the Bishop-y version, 1VP is definitely way too weak.  Just compare with Bishop, which doesn't cost Potion, doesn't trash randomly, and lets you get a lot more than 1VP when you play it.

Yeah, I guess that's a good point. I guess it probably needs to be worth 2VP as a card to make the initial version worthwhile.

[Infthitbox]

Okay, just played a first playtest game with the following version of Treacherous Tonic:

1P

+2 cards
+P

Trash a card at random from your hand.
 
2 VP

-----------------------

Kingdom:

Coin of the Realm, Raze, Scrying Pool, Alchemist, Dungeon, Guide, Golem, Artificer, Bridge Troll

Events: Alms, Lost Arts


Suffice it to say that the Tonic was terrible in the kingdom. This was a 3-player game, and one of the players (not me!) went very deep on tonics, which lead to a hilarious role-play that fit the card perfectly. However, I played Alchemist-Scrying Pool with my Lost Arts token on Alchemist, and played 8 Bridge Trolls to buy 9 Provinces one turn, and clean up the remaining 2 (1 to the non-tonic player) and a bunch of Duchies the following turn.


Going to try it out in more of a sloggy kingdom, where it might actually be a reasonable pickup.


EDIT:

Kingdom:

Pawn, Smugglers, Familiar, Treacherous Tonic, Militia, Nomad Camp, Cultist, Explorer, Rabble, Relic

Unsurprisingly, the Tonic was reasonable in this game. I only picked up one copy, as I got pretty lucky, always hitting my potion with enough cash to pick up familiar. After the curses ran low, I picked up a tonic. One of the other players picked up a couple and hit some junk out of his deck, but my accelerated junking carried the day. If the third player hadn't randomly piled on the Pawns, the Tonics would have been pretty good buys for a while.