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[Fragasnap]

I have a problem in a card I have designed and have been sitting on for Dominion: Greed. I am mostly sitting on it because the card relies upon Attack cards, but is not itself an Attack card (nor does any mechanism of the card ensure the inclusion of Attack cards--the card has a horizontal rule already), so there are instances when it appears in a Kingdom without Attacks that will make it completely useless.
However, the card is one of the more compelling and game-altering cards I have created, so I am loathe to simply cut it.

The particulars of the card are largely unimportant. My point is this question: Can a Kingdom card be compelling enough to justify the risk of turning some Kingdoms into 9-card Kingdoms?
What if a card like Goons read "In 50% of games using this, cards from this pile cannot be bought\gained." Would Goons still be worth having in Dominion just for how interesting Goons is? Is there a different percentage point that would make it acceptable\unacceptable (and what would that percentage be)?
Conspirator is already sometimes completely useless: Is that okay? Is there a threshold number of conditionally useless Kingdom cards that should be avoided?

[iguanaiguana]

There's a lot of kingdoms with no attacks.

[Accatitippi]

I don't know, if you cannot even gain the card it sounds pretty bad for the kingdoms without attacks.
What if you went the other way round:
make a kingdom card that is a weak, simple attack, and include your card whenever that attack is in the kingdom. That way you avoid cluttering the original card.

[dedicateddan]

Moat and Secret Chamber are pretty bad without attacks on the board. So, there is some precedent

[Accatitippi]

Moat and Secret Chamber are pretty bad without attacks on the board. So, there is some precedent

Yes, but they can still be pretty useful, so you will consider gaining them (and most of the time, choose not to)  . Fragasnap's example cannot even be gained, so it makes for true 9 cards kingdoms.

Edit: Maybe knowing how your card works can make it easier for us to have an informed opinion in merit.

[beri]

Just add a line saying "Setup: if there are no Attack cards in the Kingdom, add one and play this game with 11 Kingdom cards."

[tristan]

I have a problem in a card I have designed and have been sitting on for Dominion: Greed. I am mostly sitting on it because the card relies upon Attack cards, but is not itself an Attack card (nor does any mechanism of the card ensure the inclusion of Attack cards--the card has a horizontal rule already), so there are instances when it appears in a Kingdom without Attacks that will make it completely useless.

After you have randomly selected 10 Kingdom cards you could simply switch your card for another one if no Attack is present.
About your concrete question, I do not think that a Kingdom with only 9 cards is a big issue. There are ample of Kingdoms in which there only 4 or 5 different Kingdom cards are actually gained and used.

[xyz123]

Don't some cards have built in self-synergies to prevent this though? For example, Urchin is a non-terminal attack so it will never be impossible to gain Mercenary. Graverobber gives you a reason to trash good cards so there could always be something you want to retrieve from the trash, etc.

That said with random kingdom generation there are several scenarios where you could get dead cards, for example Throne Room or King's Court were everything else is alt-vp or kingdom treasures.

[GendoIkari]

So there's a few cards which don't work fully in all Kingdoms.

All reactions that react to attacks, of course.
Tunnel whenever there's no way to discard.
Conspirator if there's only terminals.
Apprentice if there's no Potion-cost cards.

The key is that all of these can still be bought and used in every game. But they just become much less likely to be worth it. Especially the Conspirator one; you need rare edge cases to consider buying that instead of Silver on a board with all terminals.

Depending on what your card does, I think the best solution would be to have some sort of functionality that's not dependent upon attacks. Even if it's just a small vanilla bonus.

[Drab Emordnilap]

My favorite solution to this problem is one suggested earlier in the thread: give it to set up clause that adds an attack pile to the game. That may or may not work depending on how complex your card is, in terms of real estate on the card. If you posted the specifics of the card, people might be able to help you tweak it in someway to get around these issues.

[Asper]

I'd try to avoid the dead pile and change the card if necessary. Take my Road as an example. It started out as a kingdom card, costing $3. People said, it's cool to have a terminal that returns to your hand, but what if there are no Villages? So it always comes with a Village. (To be fair, the fact that Lost Arts exist made it necessary, too). Your card doesn't need to always come with an attack card. It could. But if i guess correctly what you are referring to, you could just have its change its cost depending on the presence/playing of attack cards, instead of what you are currently doing.

[Marcory]

Can it come with a weak attack of some sort? For example:

Good Card--Action-Reaction $5

Do stuff. Gain an [Inflation].

[Inflation]. Action-Attack $0*
+$1
Each other player gains a Copper. Return this to the [Inflation] pile.
-------
This card is not in the supply.

[Fragasnap]

I was mostly interested in whether or not such Kingdom cards could be good enough to exist, but since people seem to be so interested in particulars:

Blockhouse
Types: Victory
Cost: $6
Worth 1VP for each Attack in your deck.You can't buy this unless another player played an Attack on his previous turn.

(VP value is not finalized) (it might be changed so player's cannot gain it, rather than simply cannot buy it)

Just add a line saying "Setup: if there are no Attack cards in the Kingdom, add one and play this game with 11 Kingdom cards."

A setup clause is going to look messy on the thing regardless because it already has a horizontal rule to separate its value from its "can't-buy" condition. Even if it didn't have that problem, inserting a setup clause to add an Attack to the Kingdom is less than desirable because I don't want to stamp on Young Witch's identity and I would not like 12-card Kingdoms to be a thing. A setup clause would really need to remove itself and replace it, but that strikes me as odd.

make a kingdom card that is a weak, simple attack, and include your card whenever that attack is in the kingdom. That way you avoid cluttering the original card.

I have considered having another card that adds Blockhouse to the Supply instead. That still has the 12-card Kingdom issue. Even without that, the Attack cannot be something simple just so that Blockhouse can be used since other players have to play Attacks for you to be able to gain Blockhouses. Even if the Attack were made good enough to be worth playing around Blockhouse, it would make the play patterns of Blockhouse less dynamic since there would be an obvious synergy with the extra Attack pile.

[Doom_Shark]

Well, I don't have much experience making fan cards myself, but I think that the easiest tweak to make it work would be to replace the cannot buy clause with the oft suggested setup clause that always ensures a simple attack in the kingdom and just deal with the twelve-card kingdom possibility, though you would have to randomize it with young witch, which (no pun intended) is nigh impossible without rigging the randomization.

[tristan]

The most simple algorithm to deal with this problem is, during selection, to either exchange Blockhouse for another card if no Attack card is present or to draw until you find an Attack card and randomly discard another randomizer.
This is after all just a fan card so there is no need to add anything to the actual card text.

[ThetaSigma12]

You could say "Setup: if there is no attack present add an extra kingdom card that is an attack." That way you can't have 12 kingdom piles, since young witch is an attack.

[Jack Rudd]

You could say "Setup: if there is no attack present add an extra kingdom card that is an attack." That way you can't have 12 kingdom piles, since young witch is an attack.

You can: Young Witch could be the extra kingdom card.