Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Pages: [1]

Author Topic: Traveller line: nuns and heretics  (Read 5477 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

GeneralRamos

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 151
  • Respect: +104
    • View Profile
Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« on: December 15, 2015, 06:05:15 pm »
0

As you might guess from a few of the more recent cards I've posted here (the clergy Traveller line, Cloister, etc.), I'm starting to develop a church-themed set of cards. Tentatively calling it Holy Order. This is a second Traveller line I'm still working out. It's a split-path line: the supply card is Sinner, which you can exchange for either a Novice or a Heretic.


Essentially a Smithy with a negative VP, with reduced price to reflect it. Sinner actually requires a curse to activate the Traveller line, so in kingdoms without cursers you need to buy a Curse. Unlike previous Traveller lines, the upgrades in this set are all conditional to make advancement harder. The lines are only 3 cards long, after all.


Putting it on your Tavern mat is optional, but you cannot perform the upgrade part unless it is on the mat. So you presumably will only do so if you know you can buy a Province this turn or are likely to do so faster than it would cycle through your deck again. The main action is to pick any action card from your deck to play.


A double lab that lets you transform a Victory card into VP tokens and is an improved curse trasher compared to Sinner.


The dark side. Duration that stays in play until the conditions are met for advancing (so a comparable delay effect to nun for advancement). Does nothing for you the turn you play it, but afterward is like playing a Village and Smithy. With a curse "penalty" (see below). Great defense against hand-size attacks, but not as good a defense as Library.


Curses are points. Encourages piling out from here, with the combination of +Buy (get Curses) and trashing Victory cards (Estate).

Another card from the set might be more thematic for the exchange condition on Sinner, at least for the convent branch:

It's a non-supply card, a minor sifter, that serves as a defense in relation to another card (coming soon). I welcome suggestions of how that might be implemented. Or not.
Logged

scott_pilgrim

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1102
  • Respect: +2144
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2015, 06:11:51 pm »
+1

How do I know how much I get if I trash Vineyard or Feodum with Nun?
Logged

GeneralRamos

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 151
  • Respect: +104
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2015, 06:27:54 pm »
0

How do I know how much I get if I trash Vineyard or Feodum with Nun?
Oooo, right. Has anyone come up with a good wording to specify VP cards with a fixed number? Or do I need to retool to relate to cost. Or Specify Estate-Duchy-Province?
Logged

Gubump

  • Torturer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1532
  • Shuffle iT Username: Gubump
  • Respect: +1677
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2015, 06:32:02 pm »
0

How do I know how much I get if I trash Vineyard or Feodum with Nun?
Oooo, right. Has anyone come up with a good wording to specify VP cards with a fixed number? Or do I need to retool to relate to cost. Or Specify Estate-Duchy-Province?

How about this ({} means VP):

Nun:
+3 Cards
+1 Action
Trash up to 3 Curses from your hand.
Trash a Victory card from your hand. If it cost...
$4 or less: +1{}
From $5 to $7: +3{}
$8 or more: +6{}
(This is not in the Supply)
Cost: $8*
Action
Logged
All of my fan card mockups are credited to Shard of Honor and his Dominion Card Image Generator (the new fork).
If you're having font issues with the generator, click this link and click on the button to request temporary access to the demo server that loads the font.

faust

  • Cartographer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3377
  • Shuffle iT Username: faust
  • Respect: +5142
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2015, 07:31:18 pm »
+1

Comments:

Sinner: I think too cheap? It is essentially a Smithy, and exchanging it somewhere down the road is not too hard, so it should cost $4 as well I think. It is even better than Smithy in games with Cursers.

I would prefer it if the exchange conditions to get Novice and Heretic were different.

Novice: This is essentially the best action in your deck. Too strong in my opinion. Also I don't get why it's Reserve type. Can't it just read "While this is in play, when you buy a Province, you may exchange this" for very little gameplay difference?

Nun: Double lab+Bishop. The wording has issues, and the proposed fix so far is ugly. The Curse-trashing seems kinda minor. I suggest making it trickier by doing something like this: "Trash 3 cards from your hand. +VP equal to the cost in coins of the most expensive card trashed."

Heretic: This just seems crazy OP. It's an Action Hireling until you buy a Province, which in itself is already a solid $5 or $6. You gain a Curse, which just won't bother you at all because among Sinner/Heretic alone you can already make sure that Curse is trashed on the same turn. Then you get a Princed Library, which is much better than Hireling. In Colony games and megaturn engines you will never have to discard this.

Arch-Heretic: And that's just plain weird. After all these overpowered cards, here comes one that's quite weak. It's good payload for sure, but you know, you have to get your first Province without that payload. It also turns Curses into Estates. Big deal. It's not like you suddenly want to keep Estates.
Logged
You say the ocean's rising, like I give a shit
You say the whole world's ending, honey it already did

Co0kieL0rd

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 743
  • Respect: +863
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2015, 08:48:49 pm »
0

These are very creative ideas! I made a Traveller line myself and I'm sure there's still a lot of potential with this mechanic. However, I have agree with basically all of scott_pilgrim's points. In addition, I think trashing Victory cards from the supply is a bad idea because it involves no risk, closes out the game too fast and destroys points other players could have had. Arch-Heretic is actually too powerful not as a card for your deck but as a feature. Your other Travellers warp the game a little. Arch-Heretic probably breaks it.
Logged
Check out my fan cards!
Dominion: Seasons - a small set Asper and I made that revolves around a unique and original mechanic
Roots and Renewal - this set is about interacting with the Supply and manipulating your opening turns
Flash cards - trying out a new concept

LastFootnote

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7495
  • Shuffle iT Username: LastFootnote
  • Respect: +10721
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2015, 01:20:22 am »
+1

Heretic wording correction:

Quote
At the start of each of your turns until you next buy a Province: +1 Action, gain a Curse, and draw until you have 7 cards in hand.

When you discard this from play, you may exchange it for an Arch-Heretic.
Logged

tristan

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1138
  • Respect: +193
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2015, 08:18:10 am »
0

Sinner is fine. Even with Cursers you might not draw it together with a Curse so it could take some time until you can exchange it.
Novice discards the deck and digs for a particular Action card. Contrary to faust's claim this is not overpowered but probably slightly weaker than a Golem. If it weren't a Traveller it would probably be fairly priced at 5$ or 6$.
I don't like Nun. It incentivizes earlier greening as you now have a double Lab that liquidates the VPs of Victory cards. In Tournament games the reward for an early Province purchase are weaker cards (admittedly potenitally more of them) that do not quasi set aside Victory cards. So Nun seems too strong on the first glance.

The Heretic line is crazily overpowered. I like the idea of self-junking your deck with curses that later become Estates though.

About Confession, it is a major and not a minor sifter. Hell, it is better than Warehouse which is perhaps the best sifter. Makes perhaps more sense to view it as a Lab variant.
I like cards that incentivize earlier greening but Confession is simply too strong. You could change it to "discard two cards", then it would be worse than a Warehouse but still a pretty decent freebie.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2015, 08:19:35 am by tristan »
Logged

GeneralRamos

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 151
  • Respect: +104
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2015, 09:32:20 am »
0

I reworked the cards, but I'll get the mock-ups up later. For now, text.

Confession:
+2 Card; +1 Action; You may trash a Curse. If not, discard a card. | In games using this, when you buy a Duchy, you may gain a Confession (This card is not in the Supply.)
I don't think it's stronger than Warehouse, strictly speaking. Warehouse is choose the best 4 cards out of 7; Confession is choose the best 5 out of 6. But it's also harder to get than Warehouse, since you can only get it by buying a Duchy. (I recognize the version originally posted had it gainable with any Victory. It was originally imagined with Duchy or Duchy and Province.) I've moved the curse-trashing ability to this instead of Sinner, since it makes more sense thematically and now fits in with sinner's new exchange conditions.

Sinner:
-2 VP; +2 Cards  When you discard this from play, reveal your hand. If you have a Confession...
in play, you may exchange this for a Novice
in hand, you may exchange this for a Heretic
The conditions for moving into one line vs. the other are now different, but both dependent on the same card. The curse trashing moved to Confession, and the different conditions does not now oppose Heretic line's self-cursing.

Novice
Two options. 1) keep it more or less as is, but revert it to a regular action (not Reserve) and change the exchange conditions to "While this is in play, if you buy a Province, you may exchange this..."; 2) change it to a regular action that reveals cards until revealing two actions; choose one of them to play it. Still on the fence about which.

Heretic
Essentially just changed it so that it only stays out to the next turn. But I might need to add some sifting ability in that draw (set aside Curses or Victories?) to make it a bit stronger. That or extend the draw-up-to ability to the turn you play it as well as turn two. Exchange condition still dependent on buying a Province

Nun
+1 Action; 3 Cards; You may trash a card from your hand; You may trash a Victory card from your hand and gain +VP equal to 2 less than its cost in $.
This roughly puts the VP gain equal to its face value for many VP cards, some more, some less.

Arch-Heretic
Still working on this. I'd like to keep the Curse = 1VP, but the wording is entirely too long and doesn't leave me much space on top to do what I want. Another idea I'm toying with for it is:
+$3
Put this on your Tavern mat. Each other player reveals a Confession from their hand. If not, they gain an Excommunication (essentially an untrashable Curse). | While this is on your Tavern mat, when another player trashes a Curse or Hex, they put it in their discard instead. [Or alternately, ...Curses and Hexes cannot be trashed.] | When you buy a Victory card, discard this from your Tavern mat.
But as it stands, there's too much text. I need a simpler way to accomplish this. Or part of it.
Logged

Gubump

  • Torturer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1532
  • Shuffle iT Username: Gubump
  • Respect: +1677
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2015, 12:37:24 pm »
0

Arch-Heretic
Still working on this. I'd like to keep the Curse = 1VP, but the wording is entirely too long and doesn't leave me much space on top to do what I want. Another idea I'm toying with for it is:
+$3
Put this on your Tavern mat. Each other player reveals a Confession from their hand. If not, they gain an Excommunication (essentially an untrashable Curse). | While this is on your Tavern mat, when another player trashes a Curse or Hex, they put it in their discard instead. [Or alternately, ...Curses and Hexes cannot be trashed.] | When you buy a Victory card, discard this from your Tavern mat.
But as it stands, there's too much text. I need a simpler way to accomplish this. Or part of it.

How about this:

Arch-Heretic:
+$3
Put this on your Tavern mat. Each other player may reveal a Confession from his hand. If he doesn't, he gains an Excommunication.

While this is on your Tavern mat, when a Curse or Hex card is trashed, put it into its owner's discard pile. When you buy a Victory card, discard this. (This is not in the Supply)
Cost: $8*
Action - Attack - Reserve

Excommunication:
-1{}

When you trash this, put it into your discard pile.
Cost: $0
Hex

Also, as Faust said, Novice is strictly stronger than any Actions you have in your whole deck, so I would go with option #2.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2015, 12:42:01 pm by Gubump »
Logged
All of my fan card mockups are credited to Shard of Honor and his Dominion Card Image Generator (the new fork).
If you're having font issues with the generator, click this link and click on the button to request temporary access to the demo server that loads the font.

GeneralRamos

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 151
  • Respect: +104
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #10 on: December 16, 2015, 03:05:10 pm »
0


I should probably also make Excommunication non-supply, so you can't give it out with Smuggler. It will be used with some other cards, but still working that out.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2015, 03:07:47 pm by GeneralRamos »
Logged

Asper

  • Governor
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4995
  • Respect: +5345
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2015, 07:28:45 pm »
0

Ideas for the older versions:
If you want Arch-Heretic (which i don't think is such a good name) to make Curses worth VP, why don't you just make it a VP card like Duke? Is that because it stacks?

Nun could refer to "basic" or "non-kingdom" Victory cards, limiting it to Estate, Duchy, Province and Colony. That sounds sad at first, but the only alt-VP cards that are always worth the same are Tunnel, Harem, Nobles, Island, and Farmland. Oh, and Dame Josephine.
Logged

tristan

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1138
  • Respect: +193
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #12 on: December 17, 2015, 02:07:42 am »
+1

About Confession, you are right that it is not strictly stronger than Warehouses in all circumstances. But on average it is clearly better. Warehouse is a strong 3$ and Confession, as a normal Kingdom card, would we a strong 4$ or weak 5$ (and, as eHalcyon has pointed out to me several times, should not exist as it is a card which DXV playtested and this very card turned out to be too strong for 4$ yet could not exist at 5$ due to Lab).
I like the idea of Confession being gained via buying Duchies. You might wanna consider whether you wanna make it a bit easier to gain Confession and change the wording to "when you gain a Duchy" such that gainer cards like Feast, Altar, Smugglers, Bridge/Highway + Workshop/Ironworks/Armory would also make you gain a Confession.

Why did you nerf Sinner? Its mere playing effect is now worth between 1$ and 2$ so I do not get why (of course thematically it makes sense) the card has the negative VPs. As far as I understood it the negative VPs are there to punish you if you fail to exchange Sinner.

Nun can now liquidiate alt-VPs into VPs at the cost of Estates providing 0VPs if liquidated. I preferred the previous version as the wording was simpler and as Estates are always present.

I do not like Excommunication. Curses are already harsh enough. It definitely should be non-Supply though due to Ambassador.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2015, 02:11:39 am by tristan »
Logged

JacquesTheBard

  • Conspirator
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 246
  • Respect: +249
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #13 on: December 17, 2015, 02:36:15 am »
0

Confession already has a weaker version in the main game of Dominion. It's Fugitive. And it's stage three in the peasant line.

Confession needs to be a good bit weaker. Perhaps discard two cards instead of one? You can still package it with victory cards.
Logged

GeeJo

  • Coppersmith
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 47
  • Respect: +87
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #14 on: December 17, 2015, 04:34:01 am »
+1

For Nun, why not just have it set aside victory cards until the end of the game, rather than trashing them? That solves the issue of variable VP victory cards, avoids using VP tokens outside of a set that focuses on them, and avoids potential infinite games using corner cases like Island/Graverobber.
Logged

Co0kieL0rd

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 743
  • Respect: +863
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #15 on: December 17, 2015, 05:22:53 am »
+1

Confession already has a weaker version in the main game of Dominion. It's Fugitive. And it's stage three in the peasant line.

Confession needs to be a good bit weaker. Perhaps discard two cards instead of one? You can still package it with victory cards.

I don't think it needs to, as you can only gain it with a Duchy which is sufficiently difficult already. On average, this equals an extra "discard one card" per shuffle, as the Duchy will be dead in your hand. How this plays out in conjunction with Nun I cannot tell.

Ideas for the older versions:
If you want Arch-Heretic (which i don't think is such a good name) to make Curses worth VP, why don't you just make it a VP card like Duke? Is that because it stacks?

Nun could refer to "basic" or "non-kingdom" Victory cards, limiting it to Estate, Duchy, Province and Colony. That sounds sad at first, but the only alt-VP cards that are always worth the same are Tunnel, Harem, Nobles, Island, and Farmland. Oh, and Dame Josephine.

Yes, the strongest alt-VP cards are usually those that scale and it wouldn't even make sense to "junk" your deck with those if you were going to trash them with Nun anyway, most of them for only 2 VP. Limiting her to basic Victory cards seems logical and more elegant.

"Arch-Heretic" does sound rather weird. I suggest "Blasphemer" as a name for him.
Logged
Check out my fan cards!
Dominion: Seasons - a small set Asper and I made that revolves around a unique and original mechanic
Roots and Renewal - this set is about interacting with the Supply and manipulating your opening turns
Flash cards - trying out a new concept

tristan

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1138
  • Respect: +193
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #16 on: December 17, 2015, 05:44:03 am »
0

In my opinion Archheretic sounds fine. It's like Archenemy, a bit dramatically sounding but that's okay.
Logged

GeneralRamos

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 151
  • Respect: +104
    • View Profile
Re: Traveller line: nuns and heretics
« Reply #17 on: December 17, 2015, 08:18:53 am »
0

Ideas for the older versions:
If you want Arch-Heretic (which i don't think is such a good name) to make Curses worth VP, why don't you just make it a VP card like Duke? Is that because it stacks?
Actually, I hadn't thought of it. But stacking might be an issue, depending on wording. Anyhow, I just decided that it wasn't worthy of the end of the line. I sorta shifted the ability down to Heretic, while removing the self-clogging of keeping all those curses. It now exchanges them for +VP, if you align your curses with Heretic being in play.

Nun could refer to "basic" or "non-kingdom" Victory cards, limiting it to Estate, Duchy, Province and Colony.
Perfect. Adopting this.

About Confession... as a normal Kingdom card, would we a strong 4$ or weak 5$ (...too strong for 4$ yet could not exist at 5$ due to Lab).
I like the idea of Confession being gained via buying Duchies. You might wanna consider whether you wanna make it a bit easier to gain Confession and change the wording to "when you gain a Duchy"
I've adjusted its nominal value to 4*. Making it obtainable only by buying a Duchy mitigates the pricing problem of between 4  and 5, since you buy a dead card with it. And I have followed the suggestion to change it to "when you gain."

I do not like Excommunication. Curses are already harsh enough. It definitely should be non-Supply though due to Ambassador.
Yeah, it's non-supply now. There won't be nearly so many of them as Curses. Still deciding on the numbers. I welcome suggestions.

"Arch-Heretic" does sound rather weird. I suggest "Blasphemer" as a name for him.
An Arch-Heretic is the leader of a heresy, like Marcion or Valentinus. Blasphemer thematically would precede Heretic. Arch-Heretic was kind of a placeholder until I could think of another near-synonymous term. But I may opt to make Heretic the 8* name, and use Blasphemer or Sectarian for the 5*.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2015, 08:20:26 am by GeneralRamos »
Logged
Pages: [1]
 

Page created in 0.053 seconds with 21 queries.