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[Aquila]

The Industrial Revolution followed and built on the Renaissance. So does this fan set, borrowing Renaissance's mechanics with the aim of making cards calling for good skill. You can put it with any of the official sets, though you'll probably want Renaissance for its components.

Set Play Themes: resource control, mega turns

Mechanics: new ones in -1 Action, card costs, and landscapes you buy once that do something only right away. Also Durations, Coffers, Villagers, Artifacts, overpaying.
Unlike Renaissance, simplicity hasn't been a focus. New mechanics explained after the list of cards below.

(Card images have been removed from this post, a) because I want to improve how they look, and more importantly b) using internet images as I had could have infringed legal usage rights)



Landscape cards:
 




The New Mechanics

-1 Action: Exhausted

Exhausted - State
When you next have unused Actions (Actions, not Action cards) during your Action Phase, immediately return this and -1 Action.

Villagers make getting +1 Action much easier. So here's the opposite, -1 Action; just like the -$1 token but for Actions. After you take Exhausted, whenever you next have 1 or more Actions left during your Action phase, you immediately lose one and return this, whether you're in the middle of resolving an Action or not. If you end your Action phase still having Exhausted, it will stay over to next turn, and be returned right at the start to take away your starting Action. You could spend a Villager at any time during your Action phase to return this at any time; this can be quite important to pay off Exhausted at turn start to enable the Action phase. And you're only allowed one Exhausted at a time, for simplicity and balance reasons.

Card costs
(Shorthanded to [ ])
Instead of or as well as a coin symbol, some of these cards have a card back where the cost is. It means that instead of or as well as $, your cards are involved in the cost. They could in theory be from anywhere so long as you own them, but in this set each cost comes from hand since it's more of an actual expense. Below the line, there will be a description of the cost.
You might think of Animal Fair having the option of an Action in hand as a cost. It's an option, card costs are not.
For abilities that care about costs: this is another different kind of cost to join Potion and Debt. You can't remodel a $ cost card into a [ ] or $[ ] cost or vice versa, or [ ] into Debt or Potion costs. Each differently described card cost is also incomparable, no matter how much $, Debt or Potion is with them and even though some might be distinctly easier to pay than others. So you can't remodel a [ ] into a differently described [ ], but you could remodel [ ] into $1[ ] or $2[ ] if the described cost on each card is identical.

Prospects
Just like Projects, they're effects you buy once and then put a cube on. But unlike Projects, they are one-offs that happen straight away rather than effects that last for the rest of the game. So the cubes are used to track that you have bought the Prospect and can't get it again.
In other words, they're all like Seize the Day, but the rules require the cube to track buying them.

THE CARDS INDIVIDUALLY
An explanation of each card, then my thoughts on its design positives (+) and negatives (-). I have confidence in every card here; I only mention the negatives to keep modest and realistic, and maybe they raise helpful points. There are plenty of interactions between these cards (it's a set), which I keep quiet about so you can have the fun of finding them out. Some reflect Renaissance, others don't.

Advancing Village - Action Duration, $3 cost.
+2 Villagers
At the start of your next turn, +1 Card.

This first card has gone through many variations. I wasn't going to make a set called Revolution and not have an Advancing Village, it's what villages do during an industrial revolution. Here's some simplicity that you're not going to see further down; get some Villagers, keep some for next turn when you get a bigger hand.
+: it's a Village that advances to next turn, more flexibly than Village Green.
-: it might be favoured as a Caravan variant too often.

Campsite - Action, [ ] cost.
+1 Card
+2 Actions
-
[ ]: To buy this, reveal and discard 2 Victories.

Well here we have it, both Villages come first alphabetically. This one sets itself apart by being a card cost; have 2 Victories in hand, which you need to discard, to afford it. Campers need green space.
+: When you get a dud hand filled with green, you don't mind picking up an extra Village. It's useful, but doesn't improve deck power by itself so it's not easy mode.
-: it may be too easy to get.

Chemist - Action, $4 cost.
+1 Card
+1 Action
Choose one: discard a card for +1 Villager; or spend a Villager for +1 Card and +1 Action.

Chemical industries improved significantly. This has two modes, shrink hand to collect Villagers or enlarge hand by spending Villagers. This Villager spending gives the Lost City effect, and is separate from spending Villagers normally.
+: it's simple resource management and mega turn draw potential.
-: could there be a better way to use Villagers to draw?

Colliery - Action, $6[ ] cost.
+1 Buy
Take Exhausted. If you do, + $1 per Action you have in play.
-
[ ]: To buy this, trash 2 copies of a card costing $3 or more from your hand.

Coal mines fuelled the factories, with an infamous amount of manpower. Here's the first card using Exhausted; it's effectively a double Action, one card that uses two Actions on play. If you play it and already have Exhausted (that'd be by Thrones or by playing it at the Buy phase), you just get a Buy. Played 'properly' it can give impressive payload, but can be hard to play well in multiples.
There's a dual cost too. You need both $6 and two cards costing $3+ to Treasure Map to afford this.
+: powerful payload strategy that can possibly exist and be balanced with a big card cost and Exhausted.
-: the cost may be a bit extreme as is.

Dismiss - Action, $5 cost.
+1 Card
+1 Action
You may discard a card, to reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a card that shares a type with it but has a different name. Put it into your hand and discard the rest.

Change a card in your hand for one in your deck that you need more right now, be it an Action you need to play earlier in the turn, or a better Treasure, or an actually useful Victory, etc.
+: a card that will help any deck and is failsafe to pick up, but better skill enhances how useful it is.
-: it's wordy.

Entrepreneur - Action Reaction, $2 cost.
+1 Action
+ $1
If the Entrepreneur Supply pile is empty, +1 Card.
-
When another player trashes a card, you may return this to the Supply, to gain a card costing up to $5.

He starts out as a Copper in Action form. But you invest with him; if either the pile empties or you catch someone else trashing with him in your hand, he can become a much better card. There's a catch to be aware of. When someone reacts with him, the pile is filled up more. Players are kept on their toes as the entrepreneurs seek out their next venture.
+: this weakens trashing whilst adding player interaction, two great things.
-: there's the potential for frustration with some players. And in this set, card costs lessen the likelihood of trashing and the usefulness of gaining a $ cost.

Farm - Action Duration Victory, $5 cost.
+1 Action
Set aside any number of Victory cards from your hand face up. At the start of your next turn, put them into your hand.
-
2 VP

Make your expanding green space fit your engine, tucking it all out the way. You'll need several of these to keep it up.
+: it's a nice thing to collect, a Victory card that can fit into the modern engine meta.
-: you can already do what this does with plenty of official cards, just not increasing your score at the same time. No testing yet, the cost or terminality may be issues.

Furnace - Action, $4 cost.
When you gain this or play it: trash a card from your hand. If it costs $4 or more, +2 Coffers. If it isn't a Treasure, you may trash another card from your hand.

A trasher that works on buy for immediate use. Good cards can become Coffers, and non-Copper junk fuel to burn more junk. When a Furnace trashes itself, you get both Coffers and more trashing.
+: some interesting decision making involved.
-: possibly too strong or doing too much.

Glassworks - Action, $2 cost.
+ $2
You may take Exhausted. If you do, +1 Coffers.
-
When you gain this, you may spend any amount of your $. +1 Villager per $1 you spent.

Glassworks range widely in size, from small domestic businesses to industrial scale. Bigger establishments come with more workforce. Overpay for Villagers on a cheap card, quite simple, only you can Workshop-gain it during your turn and it'll work too. The on-play effect can let you turn an extra Action into a Coffers. So it can in effect let you convert your Villagers info Coffers and vice versa.
+: Simple and effective, hopefully.
-: + $2 +Coffers could be too much for a $2 to give, especially if opened with.

Jailer - Action Attack Duration, $5 cost.
Each other player with exactly 5 cards in hand reveals their hand and sets aside a card that you choose. After they draw their next hand, they put it into their hand.
At the start of your next turn, +3 Cards.

Put one of their cards behind bars for a turn, but next turn it will be released into their hand of 5. Decimate their combos, do general damage, but do so carefully so as not to make their next turn too good. Keep in mind you can't lock someone up from a hand of 6 so easily.
+: an Attack needing some skill that fits right in the mega turn theme.
-: maybe too strong initially, the same as Pillage.

Local Art - Treasure, $5 cost.
When you play this, put a card from your hand onto your deck for + $2.
-
When you gain this, +4 Cards, +1 Buy, then play any number of Treasures from your hand.

An expression of the local area, drawing the people of your kingdom near. You can gain this to draw 4 cards; then you can play Treasures, which makes buying it not so bad, and overall gives it a lot of different uses depending on when you gain it and what kind of deck you have. The on-play is a weak Silver to balance this, though it's sometimes useful.
(There was a Foreign Art in the set that's now back in the works, explaining the name).
+: a lot of uses makes for a lot of different strategies available with this.
-: it's very radical and could easily be imbalanced.

Playwright - Action, $3 cost.
+1 Action
Look at the top 2 cards of your deck. You may trash one of them. Put the rest back in any order.
This turn, when you play an Action of which there's a copy in the trash, take the Pen.

Pen - Artifact
At Clean-up, you may set aside an Action when you discard it from play. If you do, at the start of your next turn, play it.

It just seemed cute to have writers squabble over a pen like treasurers a key, as well as extending the Renaissance theme directly. Play the Playwright and then a copy of an Action in the trash, and you get a better Prince. So players decide what Actions take the Pen, choosing carefully or adapting to what opponents trash so as to write the story of stronger turns more often than everyone else.
+: this seems like a nice way to get an Artifact.
-: perhaps too game defining, or not simple enough.

Revolters - Action Attack, $4 cost.
+ $2
Each other player may take Exhausted or lose a Villager. Those who do neither gain a Curse.
-
When you gain this, each player (including you) gets +1 Villager.

They've been worked too hard in awful conditions, and they want your opponents' workers to agree with them. An Attack that tries to take an Action away from the opponents. Forcibly doing this would be imbalanced, so they can instead have a crow for their troubles.
+: it adds a new decision for players to think about.
-: it's a shame that this is basically a curser, that trashing and the Curses emptying make the -1 Action part trivial.

Spinning Jenny - Action Treasure, $5 cost.
+3 Cards
+1 Buy
If it's your Buy phase, then for the rest of the turn, cards with no [ ] cost in the Supply have one that reads, "to buy this, discard 2 cards".

An invention that improved spinning threads to weave into fabrics, and this spins cards through your deck quickly. It can be terminal Action +3 Cards +1 Buy, which already exists and is useful, or it can be a Treasure for non-terminal Buy phase draw. If you do the latter, you'll have to discard cards to buy stuff so you can't use it all.
+: It gets you thinking resourcefully about your cards, and it's an Action Treasure which is also nice in the set.
-: Discarding 2 cards might be too harsh, but at 1 it's a bit too good in big money decks.

Steam Engine - Action, [ ] cost.
+1 Action
Do this up to 3 times: take Exhausted. If you do, you may play an Action from your hand twice.
-
[ ]: To buy this, trash a Gold from your hand.

The first steam engines could be attached to several different machines. That's what you can do here, Throne up to 3 of your Action cards for an extra Action each time. It's just like going Throne Room - play, Throne Room - play, Throne Room - play, only you need the one Throne card not 3. This powerful effect is expensive though, and you get it in two stages: first get a Gold, then cash it in for a shiny new steam engine.
+: it's an elegant and thematic effect.
-: could easily be too strong, or swingy; you really don't want to draw this dead!

Textile Mill - Action, $5 cost.
+3 Cards
You may take Exhausted. If you do, +2 Cards.

A big place needing lots of people, quickly spinning cards through the deck. Yes, I decided to make both textile industry things draw. This gives you a choice on how much you draw. If you want more, you'll use an extra Action for it. There are times you want less.
+: one of the simplest things to do with Exhausted, and it's effective. It could take on an Artifact too, as an alternative Exhausted option.
-: could either be weak overall or too good with big money.

Timepiece - Action Duration, $4 cost.
+1 Action
Now and at the start of your next turn, look at the top 4 cards of your deck, discard any number and put the rest back in any order.

One plans ahead much better when they know the time. Sort out the top of your deck to be vaguely what you need, and move things you don't want there on. What you need now can be different starting next turn.
+: this has many different uses, yet isn't useful all the time.
-: two sort effects on one card may be too much for some people.

Trade Circle - Action reaction, $4 cost.
Choose one: gain a Silver; or trash a Silver from your hand for + $4.
-
When a card moves to your deck or discard pile from anywhere except the Supply not during Clean-up, you may discard this to draw the card and get +1 Coffers.

You can get Silvers and/or trade them away for more money. This can be quite niche, so the Reaction adds more function. With the various ways to move your cards around during your turn, you can easily swap this for one such moved card get a Coffers bonus.
+: a new and hopefully interesting Reaction space.
-: possibly the reaction window is too open.

Wastelands - Victory, [ ] cost.
4VP
-
[ ]: To buy this, trash 3 Actions and/or Treasures from your hand.
When this pile empties, it counts as 2 toward game end.

The more wasteland you own, the implication is the more productive your factories are. It rewards having few useful cards in your deck at game end, and has an on-gain that helps achieve this.
+: it makes a new way to win the game that takes strategy and skill. Opening it is bad most of the time, but can be done sometimes.
-: the VP could scale with the number of non-Victories in the deck (which it used to), so it's more defined as alt VP.


Prospects
Just like Projects, they're effects you buy once and then put a cube on. But unlike Projects, they are one-off boosts that happen right now rather than ones that last for the rest of the game. So the cubes are there to track that you have used the Prospect and can't use it again.

Commission - Prospect, $2 cost.
+1 Buy
Return to your Action phase. Replay the last Action you played this turn that's still in play twice. (Put your cube on it, then on this when it leaves play.)

A single KC when you need it most.
+: it's simple, yet using it isn't always easy.
-: wordy.

Conscription - Prospect, $1 cost.
+1 Buy
Choose one: discard your hand, +1 Villager per card discarded; or +$1 per Villager you have.

Resource conversion to time optimally. Change your Villagers into economy once, so hoarding them can be a strategy. Or if there are no Villagers cards, you can change your hand into Villagers.
+: more new strategies is good.
-: some people may want to try using this twice?

Consumerism - Prospect, $0+ cost.
+5 Buys
You may overpay for this by $2 so non-Victory cards cost $2 less for the turn, or by $4 for all cards.

A big load of free buys with an optional Princess effect to pay for. Use for essential early purchases or build to a massive $ mega turn.
+: lets big spikes of $ by design or by accident always work out.
-: it will take a lot for the Victory cost reduction to be meaningful. $3 overpay may be more realistic.

Demonstration - Prospect, $0 cost.
+1 Buy
Each player (including you) discards their hand and draws the same number of cards. Return to your Action phase.

There are times a change of hand would be just right for you, and there are times when you know the opponents have a good turn. Choose how and when to use this best.
+: a one-time attack suits competitive players whilst not degenerating the game too heavily.
-: there are times when everyone has a good or bad hand, and this isn't advantageous then. Choosing who discards would help avoid this but also be too political.

Dividends - Prospect, $0 cost.
+1 Buy
If you have the same number of Actions and Treasures in play, +1 Coffers and +1 Villager per 1 of each type.

Count the number of times each type appears across the cards in play (Crown will be one for both), then if they're the same you get a Coffers and Villager for every Action (consequently every Treasure too) you have in play. Free tokens you might work to getting or take whenever it's convenient.
+: There are lots of ways this set and Renaissance can get the same number of each type in play, making hopefully compelling replayability.
-: could alternatively feel mundane, if one never works for lots of them.

Imports - Prospect, $4 cost.
Gain a card from the trash.
-
Setup: add an extra kingdom pile to the trash.

You can either gain a single copy of a unique card for $4, or if there's other trashing (really, tfb) you can regain a trashed Province for $4.
+: unrestricted gain from the trash is safe on a Prospect, and the added pile can be interesting.
-: it might be mundane too often.

Manufacture - Prospect, $2 cost.
+1 Buy
Choose one to gain: a card costing up to $4; a copy of a card you have in play; or a Duchy.

A cheap acquisition, because you make it yourself. It has a distinct early game option in gaining a $4 for $2, a late game boost in VP, and a middle game boost in gaining a copy of a good card you have in play.
+: it's an elegant way to get 3 different uses on the same card.
-: the late option in a Duchy might be comparatively weak.

Migration - Prospect, $1 cost.
+1 Buy
Trash an Action from your hand to put your deck and discard pile into your hand. Return to your Action phase.

Put your whole deck into hand at once, at the cost of an Action card. Time it when you have the right Action to lose and there's enough stuff in the deck.
+: A new means of card movement opens up new strategies.
-: maybe too cheap or swingy, if the Action to trash comes too late.

Prediction - Prospect, $2 cost.
+1 Buy
Put any number of cards you have in play that would be discarded this turn onto your deck.

Replay stuff next turn. When do you really need to do this?
+: an effective one-off.
-: it should work? Maybe it's a bit uninteresting.

Progress - Prospect, $2 cost.
+1 Buy
Take half the tokens on this (round up) as Coffers, the rest as Villagers.
-
When a card costing $4 or more is gained, add a token to this.

A passive accumulation of tokens that players have to time taking. When do you need them, can you take them away from opponents when they really need them, can you try waiting for more?
+: lots of strategy to consider.
-: can be hard to remember adding a token each time.

Stocks - Prospect, $1+ cost.
You may overpay for this. +1 Coffers per $1 overpaid.

Save some of your money from a turn for later.
+: overpay for Coffers can be achieved on a one-off.
-: timing may be trivial, that you always do it on a $3/4 or 4/3 start to get $5s.

Takeover - Prospect, [ ] cost.
Gain a Victory card.
-
[ ]: To buy this, reveal and discard 2 Actions.

One of your Provinces/Colonies this game is quite cheap. When will you get it?
+: simple.
-: possibly just a boring speedup to the game? Or it rewards bad play?

Conclusions
And that's the end. I hope you've enjoyed looking through these as much as I enjoyed making them. Maybe you've seen a mistake or flaw somewhere, in which case don't be afraid to tell. No design can be called perfect or final without criticism, and part of the thrill of the design process is identifying and making gradual improvements.

[Asper]

I suggest to post less cards at once. I understand why you would want to share all of your ideas at once with us, but given there are no pictures, this is an incredibly long wall of text. Many people won't even start reading it, as they will get tired of it before finishing. I'm saying this before taking any look at your actual cards, just as a friendly tip: Less at once means more detailed feedback, and probably more altogether.

Now I'll check some random cards and give my 2 cents:

Taskmaster - Action, +1 card +4 actions. If there are any unused actions at the end of your turn, draw 2 less cards for your next turn’s hand, down to 3. $4 cost.

On a German forum I already encountered something like this, where spending all your Actions was necessary to achieve something. I think it's not too great to punish somebody for overproducing, though. As I said about LastFootnote's Charlatan already, overproduction is in itself a punishment, as you waste something you put effort in. That said, it doesn't look unbalanced. With +3 Actions it'd maybe even pass as a regular 4$? I don't know. Or just give the penalty every time. Just, I'd suggest to not punish for failing to use your potential.

Potteries - Action, +4 cards. You may use a second action on this. If you do, +1 buy, + $2. $6 cost.

You might like to check out my Town/Road (click the link in my signature) on how I did spending two Actions on one card. It seemed easier to me back then. And I'd say it is if you only do one card with that ability, but here of course you made it a recurring thing. Which means that yes, you have to learn something new, but you get a whole new bunch of cards that use that thing. That said, I'm not sure how good or bad Potteries is. It seems better than Hunting Grounds, but I'm not sure how much better.

Advancing Village - Action, +1 card, +2 actions. If this was played from your hand, take an Action Token. $5 cost.

I don't get what you say about "replaying itself infinitely". If the +1 Action token just gives you +1 Action, however would you play this card again?

Executive - Action, +1 card. Discard any number of Treasure cards. Take an Action Token per card discarded. While this is in play, when you spend an Action Token you may use the action on the last one you played.

I don't get the last part. Is the +1 Action Token supposed to be something like Royal Carriage? Because if it's just "When you play an Action card, you may use an Action token to get +1 Action", what would "use it on the last one you played" even mean?

[navical]

I suggest to post less cards at once. I understand why you would want to share all of your ideas at once with us, but given there are no pictures, this is an incredibly long wall of text. Many people won't even start reading it, as they will get tired of it before finishing. I'm saying this before taking any look at your actual cards, just as a friendly tip: Less at once means more detailed feedback, and probably more altogether.

Definitely this.

Executive - Action, +1 card. Discard any number of Treasure cards. Take an Action Token per card discarded. While this is in play, when you spend an Action Token you may use the action on the last one you played.

I don't get the last part. Is the +1 Action Token supposed to be something like Royal Carriage? Because if it's just "When you play an Action card, you may use an Action token to get +1 Action", what would "use it on the last one you played" even mean?

I assume it's meant to be

While this is in play, when you spend an Action token, you may replay the last Action you played instead of getting +1 Action.

Although I can't find a perfect wording either, I think that's clearer?

[Aquila]

I suggest to post less cards at once.

Good call. I should thank you both for reading what you have.

Edit: so I split them up according to their mechanics. Reverted as they looked more clumsy dotted around. I am slowly working on images for each card.

Executive - Action, +1 card. Discard any number of Treasure cards. Take an Action Token per card discarded. While this is in play, when you spend an Action Token you may use the action on the last one you played.

I don't get the last part. Is the +1 Action Token supposed to be something like Royal Carriage? Because if it's just "When you play an Action card, you may use an Action token to get +1 Action", what would "use it on the last one you played" even mean?

So you play Executive, and discard some Treasures to get some action tokens. If there are no actions left after this, you would pay a token to gain +1 action in the usual way. You can choose to play an action from your hand at this point.
Or you can use the action you just got from the token on the Executive, since it is the last action you played. So it would still count as using an action, and you would again have none left.
Now the difficulty with wording; suppose after the Executive you play Potteries, then pay another token and use the action on the Potteries. You are using 'a second action' on it and would get the Woodcutter effect. If you were to 'replay' the Potteries like with Royal Carriage you would replay the card and get 4 cards again.

I hope this makes sense since it helps to explain this:

Advancing Village - Action, +1 card, +2 actions. If this was played from your hand, take an Action Token. $5 cost.

I don't get what you say about "replaying itself infinitely". If the +1 Action token just gives you +1 Action, however would you play this card again?

I should explain that when I wrote the commentary for each card in my own notes, the rule on Executive was always what action tokens did. I changed them for simplicity and then made Executive to keep the effect. I just forgot to update this.
So with an Executive in play, you'd play Advancing Village, gain a token, which you use on Advancing Village, gain another token, etc.

Edit: adjusted the comments on each card.

[Asper]

Hum, I'm really not sure I like the idea of being allowed to re-play cards that are already in play. It seems wonky with Durations, at least. If you want to keep that ability, you should fix up Executive instead of altering other cards that give out the token: "While this is in play, when you play an Action card from your hand, you may first spend any number of +1 Action Tokens to play that card that many additional times."
That would stack with several, though. An alternative would be to just introduce an own type of token: "Take that many Executive Tokens..."

[Aquila]

Some adjustments thanks to your feedback.

I guess a lot of confusion arises with this whole 'second action' idea. If we remove that things should be easier. I can do what I did to the unnamed remodeler, 'choose one... You may use two actions on this'.

Glassworks - action. Choose one: return up to 2 cards from your hand to the piles they came from, and you may gain a card costing exactly the sum of the returned cards; or draw up to 6 cards in your hand. You may use two actions on this. $5 cost.

Should play just the same, only Thrones let you do one then the other too.

Potteries - Action, choose one: +3 cards; or +1 buy, + $2. You may use two actions on this. $6 cost.

I feared that playing Village-this to draw 4 cards twice would be too strong, so it's down to 3 but hopefully a lot simpler. I'm toying with adding 'when you gain this, take 2 action tokens.'

Steelworks - Action. Choose one: draw up to 9 cards in hand, then put 3 cards from your hand on the bottom of your deck; or reveal your hand, and if there are… 3 or more Treasures, + $2; 3 or more Actions, +2 actions; 1 or more Victory cards, +1 buy. You may use two actions on this. $5 cost.

This is quite a bit stronger; you can reveal your hand twice for 3 actions and/or $4, but it'll be harder to get with a 4 card hand.

Textile Mill - Choose one: +1 card per card in your hand, discard up to 3 cards then put your hand on top of your deck in any order; or gain a card costing up to 4 into your hand. You may use two actions on this. $5 cost.

The Workshop part gains to hand to work better with the first part, but would two 4s to hand be too strong?

A change to Taskmaster to be similar to Lost City's balance:

Taskmaster - Action, +1 card +4 actions. When you gain this, draw 2 less cards for your next turn’s hand, down to 3.

The skill element is still there. There could be some complex reason to gain one just for the effect.

These changes should make Executive and Expert much simpler:

Executive - Action, +1 card. Discard any number of Treasure cards. Take an Action Token per card discarded. While this is in play, when you spend an Action Token you may replay the last action you played instead of +1 action. $6 cost.

Expert - Action. Choose one: +1 card, +1 action, +1 coin or +1 buy, then replay the last action you resolved that is not an Expert. $5 cost.

About replaying durations, the instructions for Royal Carriage seem to imply you can only do so on the turn you play them, and not on their later effects. If you do so the card stays out with it for easy tracking. It wouldn't make sense with Hireling otherwise. And it can't replay reserves as they're never in play after they're resolved. So, with the cards changed to be like this, the same rule would apply, the action token (Executive) or Expert card staying with the duration.

Hopefully improvements.

[Chris is me]

It's not at all clear what "you may use 2 actions on this" means. To me, it reads "you may play this card and have it consume 2 actions instead of 1", with no additional effect.

Do you actually mean "You may use an additional Action to play this card a second time"?

[faust]

Consumerist - Action attack duration. Each other player reveals their hand at the start of their turn and plays all Treasure cards, then pays all their $. They may gain a card costing up to the amount. At the start of your next turn: +1 card + $2. $5 cost.

Split your opponents' total coins for the turn in two. It has them gain a card to save Black Market-like confusion, particularly involving debt, and it prevents on-buy effects too. This may be strong, or at least swingy in its impact.

This has serious problems with Crown. You are forced to play Crown, but it's your Action phase, so uh I suppose you can throne an Action. What if I draw more Treasures? Do I have to play them? Am I allowed to play them? And what if I discard some of the Treasures in my hand? Am I still required to play them?

Similar problems, to a lesser extent, occur with Counterfeit - did I play the counterfeited card and have thus fulfilled the requirement to play it, or does Consumerist line up the cards in your hand for play and you have to play them even when they stop being in your hand? And if I Counterfeit Rocks to gain a Silver in hand, what about that?

Unfortunately, I do not have a good idea of how to fix these issues while keeping the premise. Other than that, I would add that gaining a card at the start of your turn rather than at its end is usually considered a bonus, so I'm not sure the attack is strong enough to be worth it.

[Shvegait]

It's not at all clear what "you may use 2 actions on this" means. To me, it reads "you may play this card and have it consume 2 actions instead of 1", with no additional effect.

Do you actually mean "You may use an additional Action to play this card a second time"?

These cards give you an extra optional effect, if you pay Actions. Think of how Butcher lets you pay Coin tokens, and then that gives you an extra benefit. Here, you pay Actions for the extra benefit.

Take Potteries for example (using the version from the first post). When you play it, it's just like Hunting Grounds. Then, you can pay another Action (if you have one) for +1 Buy, +$2.

I find the wording on these cards a bit confusing, especially considering the explanation on how Action tokens work. The card texts themselves should be enough to explain how the card works. The alternating back and forth between 1st action part and 2nd action part seems too complicated. The concept of "using two actions" is certainly ambiguous and should be reworded.

I think the concept could work somehow like this, for example:

Potteries - $6 Action - +3 Cards, You may pay an Action. If you did, +1 Buy, +$2.

This wording would be consistent with Storyteller, but still might be a little ambiguous on its own because Action is an overloaded word in Dominion (see Diadem). Actually, if you want to be consistent with Diadem, you may want to say "You may pay an unused Action", but I'm not sure that's necessary.

As for Action tokens, you could make them work just like Coin tokens from Guilds. Instead, you would have, during your Action phase, you may spend an Action token, for +1 Action. I think that is what you intended, though I'm not sure. I would think, though, to prevent some rules problems or confusion, you would want to limit when Action tokens can be spent to after completely resolving an Action, or whenever you "may pay an Action".

Unfortunately, by Executive changing Action tokens into Royal Carriage effects, the only reasonable time to be able to spend Action tokens is after completely resolving an Action, which doesn't work nicely with the "may pay an Action"/"use two Actions on this" cards. Honestly, though, Executive is overpowered and probably needs to change anyway. A single Executive and a single Bridge can end the game in just a few turns, as soon as you can get 7 or 8 Action tokens and collide Executive and Bridge.

Some interesting card effects here. Haven't even looked beyond the Action theme yet.

[Aquila]

Some good observations, thank you all.

Consumerist - Action attack duration. Each other player reveals their hand at the start of their turn and plays all Treasure cards, then pays all their $. They may gain a card costing up to the amount. At the start of your next turn: +1 card + $2. $5 cost.

Split your opponents' total coins for the turn in two. It has them gain a card to save Black Market-like confusion, particularly involving debt, and it prevents on-buy effects too. This may be strong, or at least swingy in its impact.

This has serious problems with Crown. You are forced to play Crown, but it's your Action phase, so uh I suppose you can throne an Action. What if I draw more Treasures? Do I have to play them? Am I allowed to play them? And what if I discard some of the Treasures in my hand? Am I still required to play them?

Similar problems, to a lesser extent, occur with Counterfeit - did I play the counterfeited card and have thus fulfilled the requirement to play it, or does Consumerist line up the cards in your hand for play and you have to play them even when they stop being in your hand? And if I Counterfeit Rocks to gain a Silver in hand, what about that?

Unfortunately, I do not have a good idea of how to fix these issues while keeping the premise. Other than that, I would add that gaining a card at the start of your turn rather than at its end is usually considered a bonus, so I'm not sure the attack is strong enough to be worth it.

This may skew game mechanics too far, but:
"Each other player starts their next turn with a Buy Phase, in which they keep their hand revealed and play all Treasures. (They still have a Buy Phase after their Action Phase.)"
The potential this has is when a player can hit 8 but only with the actions he has. Instead he gets two buy phases with less than 8 to spend.

It's not at all clear what "you may use 2 actions on this" means. To me, it reads "you may play this card and have it consume 2 actions instead of 1", with no additional effect.

Do you actually mean "You may use an additional Action to play this card a second time"?

These cards give you an extra optional effect, if you pay Actions. Think of how Butcher lets you pay Coin tokens, and then that gives you an extra benefit. Here, you pay Actions for the extra benefit.

Take Potteries for example (using the version from the first post). When you play it, it's just like Hunting Grounds. Then, you can pay another Action (if you have one) for +1 Buy, +$2.

I find the wording on these cards a bit confusing, especially considering the explanation on how Action tokens work. The card texts themselves should be enough to explain how the card works. The alternating back and forth between 1st action part and 2nd action part seems too complicated. The concept of "using two actions" is certainly ambiguous and should be reworded.

I think the concept could work somehow like this, for example:

Potteries - $6 Action - +3 Cards, You may pay an Action. If you did, +1 Buy, +$2.

This wording would be consistent with Storyteller, but still might be a little ambiguous on its own because Action is an overloaded word in Dominion (see Diadem). Actually, if you want to be consistent with Diadem, you may want to say "You may pay an unused Action", but I'm not sure that's necessary.

How does this read:
"Choose one: +3 cards; or +1 buy +$2. You may use a second action on this to replay it."

As for Action tokens, you could make them work just like Coin tokens from Guilds. Instead, you would have, during your Action phase, you may spend an Action token, for +1 Action. I think that is what you intended, though I'm not sure. I would think, though, to prevent some rules problems or confusion, you would want to limit when Action tokens can be spent to after completely resolving an Action, or whenever you "may pay an Action".

I never did explain did I? Well this is exactly what I thought.

Unfortunately, by Executive changing Action tokens into Royal Carriage effects, the only reasonable time to be able to spend Action tokens is after completely resolving an Action, which doesn't work nicely with the "may pay an Action"/"use two Actions on this" cards. Honestly, though, Executive is overpowered and probably needs to change anyway. A single Executive and a single Bridge can end the game in just a few turns, as soon as you can get 7 or 8 Action tokens and collide Executive and Bridge.

Ah yes, I had kept my Canal in mind but I suppose a Bridge-Silver opening would be too fast. If I limited the number of Treasures it could discard to 2?

[faust]

Consumerist - Action attack duration. Each other player reveals their hand at the start of their turn and plays all Treasure cards, then pays all their $. They may gain a card costing up to the amount. At the start of your next turn: +1 card + $2. $5 cost.

Split your opponents' total coins for the turn in two. It has them gain a card to save Black Market-like confusion, particularly involving debt, and it prevents on-buy effects too. This may be strong, or at least swingy in its impact.

This has serious problems with Crown. You are forced to play Crown, but it's your Action phase, so uh I suppose you can throne an Action. What if I draw more Treasures? Do I have to play them? Am I allowed to play them? And what if I discard some of the Treasures in my hand? Am I still required to play them?

Similar problems, to a lesser extent, occur with Counterfeit - did I play the counterfeited card and have thus fulfilled the requirement to play it, or does Consumerist line up the cards in your hand for play and you have to play them even when they stop being in your hand? And if I Counterfeit Rocks to gain a Silver in hand, what about that?

Unfortunately, I do not have a good idea of how to fix these issues while keeping the premise. Other than that, I would add that gaining a card at the start of your turn rather than at its end is usually considered a bonus, so I'm not sure the attack is strong enough to be worth it.

This may skew game mechanics too far, but:
"Each other player starts their next turn with a Buy Phase, in which they keep their hand revealed and play all Treasures. (They still have a Buy Phase after their Action Phase.)"
The potential this has is when a player can hit 8 but only with the actions he has. Instead he gets two buy phases with less than 8 to spend.

A hopefully simpler solution I thought of:

"While this is is play, when another player starts their turn, they reveal their hand and set aside all Treasure cards. Then they play the cards set aside in any order."

This still has weirdness with Crown, but the rules should be clear; any additional Treasures are not played. It nerfs Counterfeit since you don't get to trash anything, but that's fine.

On power level: I get that, but hitting $8 is only really important late-game; maybe the attack hurts very early as well if you would reach $5 with Action + Treasures. Mid-game, gaining the card and being able to play it the same turn may well be a bonus; providing virtual +buy may be a bonus too. Attacks that are sometimes beneficial can work (see Haunted Woods) and it's an interesting way to attack a player, but I think the other effects of the card are too weak.

[Shvegait]

How does this read:
"Choose one: +3 cards; or +1 buy +$2. You may use a second action on this to replay it."

I think this might be OK, but I would drop the word "second" because it's confusing (or re-word depending on what you want the card to do). Consider the case where you do use a second action to replay it. Then you are faced with the same choice: "You may use a second action on this to replay it". But what does that mean now? Are you not allowed to, because it would be a "third" action? Or are you allowed to? For that particular play of the action card, it's only your "second" action. That's the reason I think something like "You may pay an Action to replay this" would be more clear.

Also keep in mind that as written, this lets you pick +3 Cards each time, if you want. Note that the first play is a Smithy, but each subsequent play is a Hunting Grounds (because you don't have to play another card from your hand for the effect). So this might be too strong, when there are cheap villages.

[Asper]

How does this read:
"Choose one: +3 cards; or +1 buy +$2. You may use a second action on this to replay it."

You're running into a few of the troubles I tried to avoid with my Road (yes, this is shameless self-advertizing in a way, but maybe it'll be insightful, after all):
First, it's a hard to track how many buys and coins you have. Admittedly, my Road can't track the Actions it used, either - but here you're counting 3-dimensional: Coins, Buys AND Actions.
Second, my card isn't in the supply as a +1 Action token on it would draw your deck. That still works with Champion, though that's a bit harder to achieve and kinda over the top either way. Here it's worse, because the card actually generates unlimited amounts of coins and buys, which means putting the token here and drawing one=Victory.
Third, Road comes with a Village for the reason that it gets easier to balance without being useless from time to time.
Lastly, the wording: If I played this at first with a Herold, Throne Room or something like that, I never spent a "first" action on it, so may I actually use a "second" one?

[Aquila]

OK, so the wording is still misleading. What it needs to convey is when you play the action, you have the option of using one extra action on it to replay it, but avoid 'replaying' it for such cases as Champion. Maybe...
"You may use an action to do this twice."

Tracking which effect you choose each time is a valid point. When it comes to the number of times you replay an action with Executive or Expert or if you 'use it twice' you can put an action token on the card for each extra time. An idea for indicating which effect you chose is put the token on the picture for one effect and on the text for the other. For some tracking cases (such as maybe KC-Pawn or Courtier) you just have to be creative.

[Asper]

Other suggestions:

"Choose one: A; B
You may pay/expend/use up/lose one of your Actions, to choose a second time (the choice may be the same)."

or:
"Choose one: A; B
If you have unused actions, you may choose a second time (the choice may be the same). If you do: -1 Action"

[Aquila]

Appreciate the suggestions, but I think I like the 'do this twice' format the best. It already exists on Remake. And I think it should go first, so that running through the effects in order one doesn't think they can use an extra action to then choose two more times. So like this:

Action. You may use an extra action to do the following twice. Choose one: trash a card from your hand and gain a card costing up to 2 more than the trashed card; or look through your discard pile and put a card from it into your hand. 5 cost.
Canal - +1 buy. You may use an extra action on this. If you do, cards everywhere cost 2 less this turn, but not less than 0. For the first time Canal is played on your turn, when you gain a card, you may gain a Treasure costing up to 4. 5 cost.
Colliery - +1 card. You may use an extra action to do the following twice, or two extra actions for three times: +2 coins, discard a card. 4 cost.
Glassworks - You may use an extra action to do the following twice. Choose one: return up to 2 cards from your hand to the piles they came from, and you may gain a card costing exactly the sum of the returned cards; or draw up to 6 cards in your hand. 5 cost.
Potteries - You may use an extra action to do the following twice. Choose one: +3 cards; or +1 buy, +2 coins. 6 cost.

Does this make complete sense? Do they need the 'extra' there?

And two other proposed tweaks:

Cameo - Treasure, +$2. Take an Action Token. You may put a card from your hand on top of your deck. $4 cost.

Generally more playable.

Patency - When you first gain this, set aside 2 different Action cards other than Patency from the Supply costing up to a total of $8. When you play this, it becomes the action on the left until it is resolved, then, unless this has left play, the one on the right. $7 cost.

Wording adjustment that should play durations and reserves in a balanced way. Put a Reserve on the left and the right card never gets played as Patency goes to the Tavern mat, leaving play.
If a Duration is the left card, then we follow on from what was discussed earlier with Royal Carriage's interaction with durations; it is resolved after the immediate turn's effects are completed, not the later ones. Patency will then become the right card, thereby cancelling the next turn effects. So no shenanigans with Tactician or Hireling.
And if either are on the right, they play normally.
Well, that was wordy... I hope you get it.

[Shvegait]

Appreciate the suggestions, but I think I like the 'do this twice' format the best. It already exists on Remake. And I think it should go first, so that running through the effects in order one doesn't think they can use an extra action to then choose two more times. So like this:

Colliery - +1 card. You may use an extra action to do the following twice, or two extra actions for three times: +2 coins, discard a card. 4 cost.

Does this make complete sense? Do they need the 'extra' there?

A problem with this wording is that it's not clear what happens if you choose not to use an extra action. I know you intend it to mean that you do the part that follows a single time, but it's not clear from the wording. The way it reads, you don't actually get any benefit from playing the card at all unless you spend additional actions. Something like "Otherwise, do it once" is needed, which could be in parentheses.

I like Asper's suggestion of "If you have unused Actions, you may ... -1 Action". It doesn't require any additional rules and it's not too wordy. The only problem is that it doesn't work nicely with every possible clause you have after it, but if you have something like discard a card, it's pretty clean.

How about this?

Colliery - +1 Card, +1 Action. Do this three times: If you have any unused Actions, you may discard a card, for -1 Action, +$2.

[Aquila]

Updated the OP with wording changes and hopefully clearer commentary on each card.

Appreciate the suggestions, but I think I like the 'do this twice' format the best. It already exists on Remake. And I think it should go first, so that running through the effects in order one doesn't think they can use an extra action to then choose two more times. So like this:

Colliery - +1 card. You may use an extra action to do the following twice, or two extra actions for three times: +2 coins, discard a card. 4 cost.

Does this make complete sense? Do they need the 'extra' there?

A problem with this wording is that it's not clear what happens if you choose not to use an extra action. I know you intend it to mean that you do the part that follows a single time, but it's not clear from the wording. The way it reads, you don't actually get any benefit from playing the card at all unless you spend additional actions. Something like "Otherwise, do it once" is needed, which could be in parentheses.

I like Asper's suggestion of "If you have unused Actions, you may ... -1 Action". It doesn't require any additional rules and it's not too wordy. The only problem is that it doesn't work nicely with every possible clause you have after it, but if you have something like discard a card, it's pretty clean.

I went with do it once, since as you said the format wouldn't work very well for all the multiple action cards, so I decided to keep them all the same. That said, it could work (now I notice Diadem says 'unused actions'). Here they both are:

Colliery - +1 card. You may do the following once, use an extra action to do it twice, or two extra actions for three times: + $2, discard a card.

Colliery - +1 Card, +1 Action. Do this three times: If you have any unused Actions, you may discard a card, for -1 Action, +$2.

Potteries - Action, You may use an extra action to do the following twice. Choose one: +3 cards; or +1 buy, + $2.

Potteries - choose one: +3 cards; or +1 buy, + $2. If you have any unused actions, you may choose again for -1 action.

I could even try the second use format again:

Potteries - +4 cards. If you have any unused actions, you may do: -1 action, +1 buy, + $2.

I would appreciate opinions as to what format is best.

And so this isn't all just a discussion on how to word cards properly, I'll put the question out:

Consumerist - Action attack duration. Each other player reveals their hand at the start of their turn and plays all Treasure cards, then pays all their $. They may gain a card costing up to the amount. At the start of your next turn: +1 card + $2. $5 cost.

Split your opponents' total coins for the turn in two. It has them gain a card to save Black Market-like confusion, particularly involving debt, and it prevents on-buy effects too. This may be strong, or at least swingy in its impact.

...

This may skew game mechanics too far, but:
"Each other player starts their next turn with a Buy Phase, in which they keep their hand revealed and play all Treasures. (They still have a Buy Phase after their Action Phase.)"
The potential this has is when a player can hit 8 but only with the actions he has. Instead he gets two buy phases with less than 8 to spend.

A hopefully simpler solution I thought of:

"While this is is play, when another player starts their turn, they reveal their hand and set aside all Treasure cards. Then they play the cards set aside in any order."

This still has weirdness with Crown, but the rules should be clear; any additional Treasures are not played. It nerfs Counterfeit since you don't get to trash anything, but that's fine.

On power level: I get that, but hitting $8 is only really important late-game; maybe the attack hurts very early as well if you would reach $5 with Action + Treasures. Mid-game, gaining the card and being able to play it the same turn may well be a bonus; providing virtual +buy may be a bonus too. Attacks that are sometimes beneficial can work (see Haunted Woods) and it's an interesting way to attack a player, but I think the other effects of the card are too weak.

I realised making Consumerist start turns with buy phases gets really wonky with Villa, so before bothering to get the wording sussed, is his attack too weak based on faust's reasoning?

[Aquila]

Having got some good playtesting done, I thought I'd post some updates. Here are the main ones:

• I've put all the cards that use multiple actions under the type 'Multi'. It's a clean solution that makes wording much shorter and simpler. All Multi cards call for -1 action to do extras in various ways, and the rule simply is you can't do such effects of you have none left.
• Advancing Village (was 5 cost 1 card 2 actions take token) now gives tokens when you gain cards. It seemed better to not simply give tokens out on a simple cantrip, but to make it a bit more challenging to get them.
• Cameo similarly gives its token if you do top-deck a card. It's bumped up to 5 like the other silver+ Treasures.
• Glassworks now trashes cards rather than returns them to the Supply. It actually progresses to the game end now, and plays nicely.
• Consumerist is now called Hawker, actually a thing, and reads:

  each other player reveals their hand and sets aside all Treasure cards. They take another Buy Phase after their next one with them, with +1 buy. At the start of your next turn: + $3.
• Entrepreneur now gives +1 buy on pile empty. It basically takes what Labourer ​tried in being a delayed Market, so Labourer can now go.
• Executive is now called Magnate:

  discard up to 2 cards. Take an action token per card discarded. While this is in play, when you spend an action token, instead of +1 action you get: +1 card, and you may play an Action card from your hand twice.
• Patency is now Patent, again actually something real, and it needed​ to become a Multi. You choose one set aside Action, and can then do the other for -1 action.
• Revolters was weak, and easily stopped by BM. It's now:

  At the start of each other player's Buy Phase during their next turn, they get -1 action. If they have no actions left, they gain a Curse. At the start of your next turn, +1 action.

  It doesn't quite seem right as is, it'll need a bit more work.
• Steelworks is now:

  draw up to 8 cards, then discard down to 5; or reveal your hand, and if there are... 2 or more Actions, +2 actions; 2 or more Treasures, +1 buy; 2 or more Victories, + $2.
• Textile Mill is now:

  +2 cards and gain a Silver to hand; or look at the top 5 cards of your deck, discard any number, then put the rest back with any number from your hand in any order.

And there are outtakes:
Labourer (+1 action, +1 buy, if 3 or more actions have been used this turn +1 card +1 coin) didn't look very interesting alongside Entrepreneur, as explained above.
Taskmaster (+1 card +4 actions, on buy draw 2 less cards for next hand) lost its appeal once I started thinking action tokens.
Toxic Waste (while in play cards not in supply cost 1 less, when other player plays a card costing 1 or less they gain Curse) tried too hard to be different, and was potentially too strong. I could make Revolters a much simpler curser.

The OP has had an overhaul to make it a hopefully simpler read.

[ThetaSigma12]

I haven't really read through everything, but kudos for updating an expansion based on playtesting! That doesn't happen a lot.

[Aquila]

Some more definite updates.

Just by putting each Multi with Fishing Village it was clear which ones looked balanced and which weren't:

• Colliery was insane, but removing the +card has reined it in. I'm now trying it as an overpay card, $2 +1 action token per 1 overpay. Looking fine at the moment.
• Glassworks got decks going too fast, with trash and good draw together. It's an outtake.
• Potteries was so good it's silly. Straight to the outtakes.
• Textile Mill was in the same boat as Potteries, with +2 cards +2 coins (in the form of to hand silver) together. But with Potteries gone, I'm trying +3 cards on it instead.

No problems with the others yet.

And Hawker's been weak. I've got an idea in line for a fix, but it hasn't been tested yet.

And three promising new cards:

Incinerator - Action, $3 cost.
+1 buy
Trash up to 2 cards from your hand. If you trashed a Curse, trash up to 2 more cards from your hand and + $1.

Innovator - Action Multi, $5 cost.
Choose one, or do both in either order and -1 action:
+ $3 and play up to three Treasures from your hand; or pay all your $ to buy a card immediately, gaining it to your hand.

Locusts - Action, $4 cost.
+1 card
+1 action
Set this aside. Trash a card from your hand and one from the Supply costing up to $5 other than Locusts.
At the end of your turn, trash this and gain a Locusts.

[ThetaSigma12]

Incinerator - Interesting. Reminds me of Plastic Brain's Medicine. It might be a tad too good with curses or a bit swingy.

Innovator - IDK about the -action, but the rest should be just gaining. "Spend all of your $, then gain a card to your hand costing up to the total $ spent." I don't think you need the option to do only one, right now the card seems too good. I could really be underestimating the -action though.

Locusts - Looks really good. A cantrip trasher for 4, that gives you a free $5? Sure, it has limited uses but it's a guaranteed opener. Even with 5, you need to grab one to at least contest the pile.

[Aquila]

Innovator - IDK about the -action, but the rest should be just gaining. "Spend all of your $, then gain a card to your hand costing up to the total $ spent." I don't think you need the option to do only one, right now the card seems too good. I could really be underestimating the -action though.

Playtesting hasn't been that thorough like this, but it's come a long way to get to something close to balanced. It's fair at buying Treasures, as you lose out on total coins for the Buy Phase, it's buying Actions that's been the trouble. You either need enough virtual coin played before and 2 actions left, or enough Treasure in hand and 3 actions, to play the Action card of choice straight away. Both involve a bit more than just a Village, so it's not so scary an opener.

I think you have a card similar to this on your thread, one called Munitions, that buys a card like this onto your deck for $3 cost. Maybe I should test it for strength.

Locusts - Looks really good. A cantrip trasher for 4, that gives you a free $5? Sure, it has limited uses but it's a guaranteed opener. Even with 5, you need to grab one to at least contest the pile.

Hmm, it doesn't gain the card costing up to 5 but trashes it from the Supply. That would of course be too strong.
Did you maybe misread it because it says '...costing up to 5' and not '5 or less'?

[Asper]

Here's a more boring version that doesn't need a Village in the kingdom to work (which would be my main critizism of the "spend several actions" mechanic, and one of the reasons my Road always comes with a Village):

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
Lose any amount of $. Gain a card costing at most the amount you lost to your hand.

Obvious comparisons are Minion and Royal Seal. Royal Seal can use its effect later in your turn and can't be drawn dead, but it's topdecking is quite a bit weaker, lacking both the implicit +1 Card and the implicit +1 Buy.

[ThetaSigma12]

About Multi cards, I am against the subtype. You don't need a new type for each mechanic, intrigue didn't come with "choosing" type cards. You say it's for simplicity but it doesn't make things simpler. Even if you want to keep the type, I'd change it.

Regarding the multi cards, I think you should have -1 Action tokens. Whenever you would have to spend an action (other than playing a card), if you have no actions you may take a -1 Action token. These are basically the same as debt. You can't take more -1 Action tokens if you have some and you have to play them off with Actions.

[spiralstaircase]

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
Lose any amount of $. Gain a card costing at most the amount you lost to your hand.

Without support from other +Action +Money cards, one copy of this card gains you a card costing up to $2, which seems *really* weak for a $5.  Multiple copies let you gain a bigger card, but at the cost of also copper-stuffing yourself.  I think at least it needs "You may".

[GendoIkari]

I'm not getting why you would ever buy Banner. It does nothing for you at all on play, compared to Embargo's $2. And then, while Embargo can hurt or shut down an opponent's strategy if it's different from yours, Banner only affects the first time they purchase the card, and even then instead of giving them a Curse, it gives them a one-shot terminal.

Or you could put it on the pile you want to buy to make it only cost $4 instead of $5 or something, maybe that was the intent? Although then it's just a terminal Copper. I'm not sure when you would ever actually want to spent the money and action space to get one.

[Aquila]

Here's a more boring version that doesn't need a Village in the kingdom to work (which would be my main critizism of the "spend several actions" mechanic, and one of the reasons my Road always comes with a Village):

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
Lose any amount of $. Gain a card costing at most the amount you lost to your hand.

Obvious comparisons are Minion and Royal Seal. Royal Seal can use its effect later in your turn and can't be drawn dead, but it's topdecking is quite a bit weaker, lacking both the implicit +1 Card and the implicit +1 Buy.

This is coming back to how it first was, though without the Treasure playing. I hadn't considered that was why it was too good, so I will give this a go. Thanks.

I have looked at Town and Road, and they are good. Champion as you say is the main snag, so my only real question with them is, is a Town-Page opening broken?

Just saw your last post, agree with 'you may'.

About Multi cards, I am against the subtype. You don't need a new type for each mechanic, intrigue didn't come with "choosing" type cards. You say it's for simplicity but it doesn't make things simpler. Even if you want to keep the type, I'd change it.

So what are your thoughts on the Gathering type? I find the text on the cards to be self-explanatory, but I suppose it's easier for players to see 'gathering' and think 'we put VP tokens on this pile then'. This is what led me to do the Multi type. It's easier for newer players to read 'Multi' and think 'this is a card we can use more than 1 action on' than read the text. I can also save card space by not having to write common rules about applying -1 action on each card.

But, having said all of this, what you say next is interesting:

Regarding the multi cards, I think you should have -1 Action tokens. Whenever you would have to spend an action (other than playing a card), if you have no actions you may take a -1 Action token. These are basically the same as debt. You can't take more -1 Action tokens if you have some and you have to play them off with Actions.

Make this turn strong with actions to sacrifice the next? I think you can implement this mechanic in a Reserve:

Textile Mill
Do these in either order: +3 cards; look at the top 5 cards of your deck, discard any number, then put the rest back with any number from your hand in any order.
Put this on your Tavern mat.
-
At any time during your Action Phases, you may discard this from your Tavern mat for -1 action.

If this works it can save using tokens at all.

@Gendo: I've only just got to playtest banner, I'll reply later if it doesn't work. Your thoughts are fair; I guess ultimately the card came from groping with the idea of putting cards on different Supply piles. This was kind of a final possibility before fully concluding the idea doesn't work at all.

[Asper]

Here's a more boring version that doesn't need a Village in the kingdom to work (which would be my main critizism of the "spend several actions" mechanic, and one of the reasons my Road always comes with a Village):

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
Lose any amount of $. Gain a card costing at most the amount you lost to your hand.

Obvious comparisons are Minion and Royal Seal. Royal Seal can use its effect later in your turn and can't be drawn dead, but it's topdecking is quite a bit weaker, lacking both the implicit +1 Card and the implicit +1 Buy.

This is coming back to how it first was, though withou the Treasure playing. I hadn't considered that was why it was too good, so I will give this a go. Thanks.

I have looked at Town and Road, and they are good. Champion as you say is the main snag, so my only real question with them is, is a Town-Page opening broken?

First of all, I see no good reason to open with Town in this case. Except maybe that you don't mind losing Town to Warrior as much, and Road can't be trashed. For a moment after writing this I thought that costing Road at 3$ might solve the issue, but either you'll just get it after you have Champion out, or a player might try to drain the pile before you get one, at which point you also get one, and Warrior does what it does best, namely ruin the game by trashing your key cards. If I'm at that, I'll admit that I hate Warrior with passion, so Road/Champion never shows up for me as I have come to veto the Page line.

Champion is part of a card that, in my opinion, is a terrible play experience either way. Call it apologetic, but I can't help but feel this makes the problem less dire. However, not everybody sees it that way. So, if you DO like the Page line, does Road ruin the game? I don't think so. First of all, all Road does is draw your deck. But drawing your deck isn't exactly something only Road can do. True, you can draw a deck of any size with a single Road. But how many times do you have to spend 4$ to make it halfway likely to draw one regularly? It's a super strong combo - but Champion is super strong regardless of Road, and as Road does NOTHING but draw, perhaps you can get something better instead? As I said, drawing your deck isn't exactly impossible without Road, so maybe I can have all of this with a deck that's better in the meantime, possibly gets me to Champion faster? Even if Road WAS a must-buy in Page games, just like with Chapel, there's still plenty of wrong decisions to make besides this one. Road/Champion is not Rebuild. I hope this sheds some light on my view on this.

The only thing that irks me is that, technically, Road allows for infinite turns. To fix this, I could add a condition to the wording: +2 Cards. If you drew any cards this way, put this in your hand."

[GendoIkari]

Wanderers feel like they should be events. I like the idea of a rotating event pile, though. But making them events follows naturally from the rules that exist, instead of thinking of them as a new type of card that "can't be gained or trashed".

[Asper]

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
Lose any amount of $. Gain a card costing at most the amount you lost to your hand.

Without support from other +Action +Money cards, one copy of this card gains you a card costing up to $2, which seems *really* weak for a $5.  Multiple copies let you gain a bigger card, but at the cost of also copper-stuffing yourself.  I think at least it needs "You may".

It certainly should be "you may". An alternative would be a version that takes debt:

+1 Action
+2$
(If you have no <dept>,) you may gain a non-victory card costing up to 8$ to your hand. Take <1> per $ the card costs.

[Aquila]

Wanderers feel like they should be events. I like the idea of a rotating event pile, though. But making them events follows naturally from the rules that exist, instead of thinking of them as a new type of card that "can't be gained or trashed".

Yes, I do agree with this, because the Wanderers are a bit too swingy as they are. Making them rotate so each player can access them during a full round of turns is fairer. The current cards would need a revamp, and, well, what would they do that current events don't? Or would they still be bought? Could they be things to use actions on, or could they be passive effects? I have these ideas going around at the moment.

[faust]

So what are your thoughts on the Gathering type? I find the text on the cards to be self-explanatory, but I suppose it's easier for players to see 'gathering' and think 'we put VP tokens on this pile then'. This is what led me to do the Multi type.

The Gathering type exists only so that Defiled Shrine can refer to these cards. Unless you need to refer to such cards specifically, there is no need for an extra type.

[ThetaSigma12]

So what are your thoughts on the Gathering type? I find the text on the cards to be self-explanatory, but I suppose it's easier for players to see 'gathering' and think 'we put VP tokens on this pile then'. This is what led me to do the Multi type.

The Gathering type exists only so that Defiled Shrine can refer to these cards. Unless you need to refer to such cards specifically, there is no need for an extra type.

Ditto. Cards should not have a type solely based on their on-play effect.

[GendoIkari]

So what are your thoughts on the Gathering type? I find the text on the cards to be self-explanatory, but I suppose it's easier for players to see 'gathering' and think 'we put VP tokens on this pile then'. This is what led me to do the Multi type.

The Gathering type exists only so that Defiled Shrine can refer to these cards. Unless you need to refer to such cards specifically, there is no need for an extra type.

Ditto. Cards should not have a type solely based on their on-play effect.

Reserve says hi. Though I'm on record as stating that reserve really shouldn't be a type. Or at the very least, Distant Lands shouldn't be one. The rest of them should have probably been reactions. But as it stands, reserve means nothing other than "has the on play effect of moving to your tavern mat in addition to other effects."

[ThetaSigma12]

So what are your thoughts on the Gathering type? I find the text on the cards to be self-explanatory, but I suppose it's easier for players to see 'gathering' and think 'we put VP tokens on this pile then'. This is what led me to do the Multi type.

The Gathering type exists only so that Defiled Shrine can refer to these cards. Unless you need to refer to such cards specifically, there is no need for an extra type.

Ditto. Cards should not have a type solely based on their on-play effect.

Reserve says hi. Though I'm on record as stating that reserve really shouldn't be a type. Or at the very least, Distant Lands shouldn't be one. The rest of them should have probably been reactions. But as it stands, reserve means nothing other than "has the on play effect of moving to your tavern mat in addition to other effects."

Yeah, Reserve type is a stretch. But I think we can all more or less agree that Multi should not be a type.

[Q]

Great cards, especially the playtesting&updating and the Action token concept. It could be implemented via a one-shot non-Supply Reserve card but the token is simpler in practice.

About Advancing Village, I like the cap but think that it still so good that it might have to cost 4. Its main advantage over Coin of the Realm is that the later frequently stays on the Tavern mat when you shuffle wheras Advancing Village accumulates tokens. Because of that you might even open with it in some Kingdoms.

Incinerate does not need an extra buy. All the trashers that do have one, Forager, Trading Route and Salvager, are also (conditional) payload cards which can make use of the extra buy whereas a multitrasher rarely does. I like that Incinerate makes Cursers slightly weaker.

Locusts runs into scaling issues. Assuming that every player only buys one Locusts you can use it on average 5 times in a 2P game, 3.3 times in a 3P game and so on. So perhaps use 4x # players Locusts per pile in a game?
It is hard to judge though what x should be in the case of an 'on average x times and then self-destruct' cantrip trasher that costs 4.
I like how thematic the card is with the pile eating.

[Aquila]

About Advancing Village, I like the cap but think that it still so good that it might have to cost 4. Its main advantage over Coin of the Realm is that the later frequently stays on the Tavern mat when you shuffle wheras Advancing Village accumulates tokens. Because of that you might even open with it in some Kingdoms.

Agree with everything here. First I compared AV to Village, sometimes it looked worse when it gave no immediate actions, but in balance an action token is better than a +action. Then that it can give 2 of them makes it good in the games you can do so. Yes, it feels like it should cost more, and testing showed no problems with that.

Incinerate does not need an extra buy. All the trashers that do have one, Forager, Trading Route and Salvager, are also (conditional) payload cards which can make use of the extra buy whereas a multitrasher rarely does. I like that Incinerate makes Cursers slightly weaker.

Take the +buy off and it looks weak compared to Chapel. It isn't there to try making it a later payload card, trying to get the $1 often wouldn't be a good idea. It's there so players can simply buy a Curse if they want to try accelerating their trashing, especially for the games with no cursing Attack, and if not it gives reason to choose it over Chapel in such a game, something for it to do after the deck is trimmed. It was +action and gain a Curse on buy at first, but a) this set didn't need an extra non-terminal and b) who wants to be forced to get junk with their trasher?

Locusts runs into scaling issues. Assuming that every player only buys one Locusts you can use it on average 5 times in a 2P game, 3.3 times in a 3P game and so on. So perhaps use 4x # players Locusts per pile in a game?
It is hard to judge though what x should be in the case of an 'on average x times and then self-destruct' cantrip trasher that costs 4.
I like how thematic the card is with the pile eating.

Too many Locusts I feared would empty the piles too fast, but that was during the first version when they gained and trashed on play rather than end of turn. They may be slow enough now to merit several. They could always be a 12 card pile like Port though, so everyone can get an even share of them in any size of game.


And I'll put this one out as well - I hope thanks to Theta's post above I have revived Potteries. Playtesting at present seems to show as much:

Dairy - Action Reserve, $5 cost.
+2 cards
+1 buy
+ $2
At the start of your Buy Phase, put this on your Tavern mat.
-
At any time during your Action Phases, you may discard this from your Tavern mat and -1 action.

I put Textile Mill in this format, but it's a really tight squeeze on cardspace. This feels similar to Wine Merchant but plays differently enough. For the issue of theme, I renamed it Dairy, you send the produce to your tavern.

[ThetaSigma12]

Incinerate does not need an extra buy. All the trashers that do have one, Forager, Trading Route and Salvager, are also (conditional) payload cards which can make use of the extra buy whereas a multitrasher rarely does. I like that Incinerate makes Cursers slightly weaker.

Take the +buy off and it looks weak compared to Chapel.
[/quote]
Doesn't everything look weak compared to Chapel?

[Q]

I doubt that Incinerate makes you want to buy Curses. It is a net extra trashed card plus a Coin at the cost of having to draw an additional, dead card and match it with Incinerate.
Note that the net extra card that you can trash if you trashed a Curse is only something you opt to do if you have Incinerate and 4 junk cards in your hand and this no earlier than after the 2nd shuffle. You rarely have lot of nonterminal draw at this point to increase your handsize so you are more likely to draw Incinerate with only 2 or 3 junk cards.

This is why Incinerate is probably more of a hedge against Cursers than a card that incentives you to buy Curses.

[Aquila]

I'm not getting why you would ever buy Banner. It does nothing for you at all on play, compared to Embargo's $2. And then, while Embargo can hurt or shut down an opponent's strategy if it's different from yours, Banner only affects the first time they purchase the card, and even then instead of giving them a Curse, it gives them a one-shot terminal.

Or you could put it on the pile you want to buy to make it only cost $4 instead of $5 or something, maybe that was the intent? Although then it's just a terminal Copper. I'm not sure when you would ever actually want to spent the money and action space to get one.

I'm going to take out the problematic Banner. Seeing that it's a variant on a principle that has come up more than once on this forum, that of putting a supply card onto a different pile, I thought it good to write my thoughts against it for any fan card creators who come to the same idea. With the introduction of split piles I anticipate this being more likely.
Banner was this:

Banner - Action Victory, $4 cost.
Return this to the supply. Move a Banner onto a different Supply pile that doesn't have a Victory on top. Cards on that pile cannot be gained or bought before it is.
-
When you buy this, gain the card under it.
-
1VP

It wouldn't just change 5-costs into 4, but any cost; Platinum, and even Fortune and the other Debt-cost cards could all be bought for $4, with the intention that the player would get a junk card with it for balance. With hindsight, Banner isn't really a junk card. You can use an action to remove it from your deck and put it on a pile irrelevant to the game, even if that's Curse, and you can then run the risk of giving the same power to your opponents.

Besides this, you could use it aggressively to try denying piles to your opponents, like those that cost cheaper or those that depend on being bought like Mint. This denies the pile to yourself too, which you may not always want to work around.
I'd like to use a card mocked up on these forums as a reference to what would happen with a card that makes large on this denying effect, being of less benefit to the buyer's deck:


Both Rabbits and Banner have in-built ways to still allow gaining cards from the piles they sit on. With a card that doesn't, a game with it and no extra buys would see any chosen pile completely denied, taken out the game. No player will want to use a precious buy and turn on that card just to open up the cards underneath, as it will not progress the deck's payload.

Rabbits' impact on a game will vary depending on the presence of other sources of +buy. If there are no others, the only way to gain a card from a pile it sits on, and avoid the total denial problem, is by playing another Rabbits. This boils down to two outcomes: either there are few Rabbits out because few are bought, and a player is likely denied a key card to their strategy because they don't have a Rabbits on a turn they can afford it; or there are many out because many are bought, and that leads seamlessly to my conclusion. And if there are other buys, Rabbits become more like attempts at junking the opponent, but that eventually come right back at you.

My conclusion with all such kingdom cards that move onto other piles is this: they may add extra variety to games, but, with the greatest respect to kru5h and his Rabbits, I do not personally feel they are a welcome addition. They take away from all the central strategy elements of the game and instead make it more a mindless process of 'buy whatever's available and see what happens'.

And from there I find it's impossible to balance Banner. No cost is fair yet effective, for if it's too low it's too powerful at letting players buy whatever they want, if it's too high you can totally eliminate more piles, and if it's in the middle like at $4, as Gendo said it has little point.

[Holger]

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
Lose any amount of $. Gain a card costing at most the amount you lost to your hand.

Without support from other +Action +Money cards, one copy of this card gains you a card costing up to $2, which seems *really* weak for a $5.  Multiple copies let you gain a bigger card, but at the cost of also copper-stuffing yourself.  I think at least it needs "You may".

It certainly should be "you may". An alternative would be a version that takes debt:

+1 Action
+2$
(If you have no <dept>,) you may gain a non-victory card costing up to 8$ to your hand. Take <1> per $ the card costs.

This version is far too strong; it's better than a Grand Market and a Capital (minus 1 buy) put together on one card.

[Asper]

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
Lose any amount of $. Gain a card costing at most the amount you lost to your hand.

Without support from other +Action +Money cards, one copy of this card gains you a card costing up to $2, which seems *really* weak for a $5.  Multiple copies let you gain a bigger card, but at the cost of also copper-stuffing yourself.  I think at least it needs "You may".

It certainly should be "you may". An alternative would be a version that takes debt:

+1 Action
+2$
(If you have no <dept>,) you may gain a non-victory card costing up to 8$ to your hand. Take <1> per $ the card costs.

This version is far too strong; it's better than a Grand Market and a Capital (minus 1 buy) put together on one card.

I admit that the +2$ together with the gaining to hand are too much and one should be dropped.

[Aquila]

I'm finding it hard to decide which Innovator variant is better at the moment, the one I have on the OP with Treasure play and needing 2 actions, or Asper's variant not involving debt at $4 cost. Neither show themselves imbalanced, but the former is certainly hard to work out when throned.

But one card I have plans to change is Expert. Look at the card and you might at first think 'that's nice, a really flexible card', like me. But, what does it actually add to a game? How does it impact a kingdom/board? Someone else's first impression of the card was 'boring' and now I see why - it's nearly always just a strictly better version of another card, nothing different.

So I thought about fusing it into Patent, so that it could become thematic:

Patent - Action, $6 cost.
Choose one: +1 card, +1 action, +1 buy or + $1 , then treat this as the card on your Patent mat.
-
When you first gain this, choose an Action card from the Supply costing up to $4 that is not on any other player's Patent mat. Put it on your Patent mat.

Functionally, it might play better at $7 cost allowing $5-costs on the mat. More usability, but maybe more problems with it.

[Aquila]

More updates which may be of interest:

Hawker interferes with Buy Phases following a different premise:

Hawker - $5 cost
Until your next turn, each other player may only buy 0 or 2 cards during their Buy Phases.
At the start of your next turn:
+1 buy
+ $2

The vanilla might be on the weak side for $5. Or it could be balanced like this for $4, a bit more playtesting needed yet. It does do more consistent damage though, unlike before.

Magnate and Advancing Village have had a swap around in how they gain action tokens:

Magnate - $5 cost
While this is in play: the first two times you gain a card, take an action token; when you spend an action token, instead of +1 action play an Action card from your hand twice.

Advancing Village - $3 cost
+1 card
+1 action
You may discard a card. If you do, take an action token.

Each can now be cheaper. +cards on Magnate-d tokens seems unnecessary by how it now plays out, but it may be that its gaining and playing tokens are to be separated so that you choose one or the other. It can collect quite a horde of them.
AV is kind of boring, and I may add some kind of on-trash ability to make it interesting; first that comes to mind is gain a card costing up to $4.

Blueprints is queer and doesn't add anything interesting to the game after all, returning Victories to the Supply. It's really narrow. And Incinerator doesn't seem to quite make sense, and it's likewise narrow. So I'll take those out and add this:

Blueprints - $3 cost
+1 buy
+ $1
Trash a card from your hand. + $1 per $2 it costs. If it isn't an Action or Treasure card, trash up to 2 more cards from your hand.

Revolters can give an action token on its second effect instead of +1 action, don't see why not. It should help the card more.

And I think I have a solution coming together for the Wanderers, but I'll leave that for later.

[Holger]

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
Lose any amount of $. Gain a card costing at most the amount you lost to your hand.

Without support from other +Action +Money cards, one copy of this card gains you a card costing up to $2, which seems *really* weak for a $5.  Multiple copies let you gain a bigger card, but at the cost of also copper-stuffing yourself.  I think at least it needs "You may".

It certainly should be "you may". An alternative would be a version that takes debt:

+1 Action
+2$
(If you have no <dept>,) you may gain a non-victory card costing up to 8$ to your hand. Take <1> per $ the card costs.

This version is far too strong; it's better than a Grand Market and a Capital (minus 1 buy) put together on one card.

I admit that the +2$ together with the gaining to hand are too much and one should be dropped.

Even if you drop the "to hand", it's still close to strictly better than Grand Market.
If you only drop the +$2 instead, it's far better than Capital when used on non-Victory cards, but can't be used on Provinces, which might or might not be balanced.
Either way, the card seems too similar to an existing card to me; thus I'd rather stay closer to Asper's original card. What about adding a Storyteller-like clause to it?

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
You may play a Treasure from your hand. Pay any amount of $. You may gain a card to your hand costing at most the amount you paid.

This would be close to a non-terminal Armory even if you only play a Silver, and potentially far better with more virtual $.

[Aquila]

The new Wanderers

Randomiser card:

Shuffle the Wanderers pile at the start of each game. During their Action Phase a player may use an action to play the top Wanderer, moving it to their play area until they are returned to the bottom of the pile at the stated time.

They are a pile of landscape cards that players may or may not want in their games, and for those who want it sometimes there can be this randomiser card. Whether the general rule of only 2 events/landmarks/Wanderers piles would be followed or if they would be separate from this I'm undecided.

The cards:

Warband - put 2 cards from your hand onto your deck. Each other player with more than 4 cards in hand does the same. Return: end of your turn.

Roadshow - each player draws up to 6 cards in hand, and looks through their discard pile and puts a card from it into their hand. Return: end of your turn.

Circus Troupe - each player reveals their hand to the player on their left, and they choose a card. Each player then draws a card and puts the chosen card onto their deck. Return: end of your turn.

Forger - move a Copper from the Copper pile onto a different Supply pile of your choice. Cards under it cannot be gained or bought before it is. Return: end of your turn.

Yes, I said what I did earlier about moving cards onto other piles, but most of the problems come from the feature being usable multiple times and throughout the game when on a kingdom card. On this Wanderer I think it works.

Scrounger - each player trashes up to 2 cards from their hand. Return: end of your turn.

Caravaneer - while this is in play, if a player has at least $2 unspent at the start of Clean-up, they draw 2 extra cards for their next turn's hand. Return: start of your next turn.

Secret Dealer - each player puts their deck into their discard pile and gets +1 buy at the start of their next turn. Return: end of your next turn.

Roadblock - while this is in play, after cards are drawn or gained into a player's hand other than at Clean-up, they are immediately discarded. Return: end of your next turn.

Royal Visit - while this is in play, after cards are discarded or trashed from a player's hand other than at Clean-up, they are returned to their hand. Return: end of your next turn.

Refugees - +1 action. Each player takes an action token. Reveal the Wanderer that is second from top. Return: end of your turn.

You can keep it constantly revealed, so you could move the top card up to make the second card's instructions visible.

So this set is all about card movement, including several things you couldn't see on an Action card. Each one will have a very different impact depending on its timing and the kingdom, to hopefully provide many new experiences.

[Asper]

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
Lose any amount of $. Gain a card costing at most the amount you lost to your hand.

Without support from other +Action +Money cards, one copy of this card gains you a card costing up to $2, which seems *really* weak for a $5.  Multiple copies let you gain a bigger card, but at the cost of also copper-stuffing yourself.  I think at least it needs "You may".

It certainly should be "you may". An alternative would be a version that takes debt:

+1 Action
+2$
(If you have no <dept>,) you may gain a non-victory card costing up to 8$ to your hand. Take <1> per $ the card costs.

This version is far too strong; it's better than a Grand Market and a Capital (minus 1 buy) put together on one card.

I admit that the +2$ together with the gaining to hand are too much and one should be dropped.

Even if you drop the "to hand", it's still close to strictly better than Grand Market.
If you only drop the +$2 instead, it's far better than Capital when used on non-Victory cards, but can't be used on Provinces, which might or might not be balanced.
Either way, the card seems too similar to an existing card to me; thus I'd rather stay closer to Asper's original card. What about adding a Storyteller-like clause to it?

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
You may play a Treasure from your hand. Pay any amount of $. You may gain a card to your hand costing at most the amount you paid.

This would be close to a non-terminal Armory even if you only play a Silver, and potentially far better with more virtual $.

Saying this was almost strictly better than Grand Market is like saying Candlestick Maker was close to strictly better than Market. You can't just ignore a +1 Card on a nonterminal Action card. That's not to say I don't like the Treasure suggestion.

[Q]

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
Lose any amount of $. Gain a card costing at most the amount you lost to your hand.

Without support from other +Action +Money cards, one copy of this card gains you a card costing up to $2, which seems *really* weak for a $5.  Multiple copies let you gain a bigger card, but at the cost of also copper-stuffing yourself.  I think at least it needs "You may".

It certainly should be "you may". An alternative would be a version that takes debt:

+1 Action
+2$
(If you have no ,) you may gain a non-victory card costing up to 8$ to your hand. Take  per $ the card costs.

This version is far too strong; it's better than a Grand Market and a Capital (minus 1 buy) put together on one card.

I admit that the +2$ together with the gaining to hand are too much and one should be dropped.

Even if you drop the "to hand", it's still close to strictly better than Grand Market.
If you only drop the +$2 instead, it's far better than Capital when used on non-Victory cards, but can't be used on Provinces, which might or might not be balanced.
Either way, the card seems too similar to an existing card to me; thus I'd rather stay closer to Asper's original card. What about adding a Storyteller-like clause to it?

Innovator, Action, 5$
+1 Action
+2$
You may play a Treasure from your hand. Pay any amount of $. You may gain a card to your hand costing at most the amount you paid.

This would be close to a non-terminal Armory even if you only play a Silver, and potentially far better with more virtual $.

Saying this was almost strictly better than Grand Market is like saying Candlestick Maker was close to strictly better than Market. You can't just ignore a +1 Card on a nonterminal Action card. That's not to say I don't like the Treasure suggestion.

You potentially gain a card to your hand, hence Holger's comparison to Grand Market.

[Aquila]

It would be great if I find this Innovator to be balanced:

Innovator - $4 cost
+ $2
You may play a Treasure from your hand. You may pay any number of $ to gain a card costing the amount to your hand.

Doing all your buying in the Action Phase might be too broken with Mission, so it may need Black Market's wording.

And here are some ideas that seem so simple I wouldn't be surprised if I saw them on these forums somewhere.
A better Canal:

Canal - $5 cost
+1 buy
Cards (everywhere) you haven't gained copies of this turn cost $2 less, but not less than $0.

The more interesting AV:

Advancing Village - Action Reaction, $4 cost
+1 card
Take an action token. You may discard a card, to take another action token.
-
When this enters your hand, you may play it immediately. (Discard it at your next Clean-up.)

And this Workshop variant:

Steelworks - Action Attack, $5 cost.
Gain a card costing up to $4; or if you have used 3 or more actions this turn (counting on this) it may cost $5. Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of their deck, trashes one costing the same as the card you gained, and discards the rest.

The current Steelworks would be called Glassworks if this turns out well. I was looking for something that would work as a Conspirator variant counting used actions during a turn, and saw how a Workshop could potentially do. Fairly boring by itself, I then added the Attack.

[Aquila]

Implementing -1 action as a State
There are several things to keep in mind when you want a card to have -1 action, and I think having a State (6 copies, 1 per player) makes things work almost perfectly:

Exhaustion - State
When you next have actions left, return this and -1 action.

You need to explain that you must have actions left for it to work, and you don't want to take up lots of card space on it. But even better, the absence of Villages isn't an issue, because you just lose the action whenever you can.

So the changes to my cards would be:

Colliery - Action, $2+ cost
+ $2
Discard a card.
If you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to do this again.
-
When you buy this, you may overpay for it. Take an action token per $1 overpaid.

After resolving this, you can use an action token (same manner as CotR) to remove Exhaustion.

Dairy - action, $5 cost
+2 cards
+1 buy
+ $2
Take Exhaustion.

This is a bit beastly when Throned.

Innovator - Action, $4 cost
+ $2
Play up to 3 Treasures from your hand. You may buy a card immediately; if you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to gain the bought card to your hand.

Perhaps the 'bigger' Innovator could work like this. You can acquire immediate power, but it's only useable if you have 2 actions left afterward.

Refinery - Action, $5 cost
Choose one: trash a card from your hand and gain a card costing up to $2 more than the trashed card; or look through your discard pile and put a card from it into your hand.
If you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to do the other choice.

Glassworks - Action, $5 cost
Choose one: draw up to 8 cards in hand, then discard down to 5; or reveal your hand, and if there are…
2 or more Treasures, +1 buy;
2 or more Actions, +2 actions;
2 or more Victories, +$2.
If you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to do the other choice.

Textile Mill - Action, $5 cost
Choose one: +3 cards; or look at the top 5 cards of your deck, discard any number, then put the rest back with any number from your hand in any order.
If you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to do the other choice.

The choice element still works nicely on these.

Revolters - Action attack duration, $4 cost
Each other player gets -1 action at the start of their Buy Phase next turn, but not less than 0. If they have 0 left, they gain a Curse; if there are no Curses left, a Copper.
At the start of your next turn, take an action token.

This one can't change. I don't think it's possible to make a -1 action Attack without making it hit at the Buy Phase (and Exhaustion always hits the Action Phase) because of a certain Enchantress. Such an Attack played with her every turn would lock everyone else out of playing any Actions altogether.

[Aquila]

I've overhauled the OP again with updates, and I've done some mock-ups. Here are the changes explained:

Exhaustion - State
When you next have unused actions and it's your Action Phase, return this and -1 action.

Finalising what Exhaustion actually does. It only hits at the Action Phase.


Advancing Village doesn't have the option to discard on play, for simplicity and balance. It also can't be instantly played if it enters hand during your Action Phase, as making terminal draw non-terminal is crazy. It also calls for a little bit more play skill.


No changes to Blueprints, a neat enough trasher for the set. There's been a curious Actions and Treasures sub-theme developing, so it does fit.


No mechanical change to Canal, this hasn't been imbalanced yet though I've still to put it with Cornucopia.


Colliery needed to change when it took on Exhaustion. You can choose to carry Exhaustion over to your next turn to wait and see if you draw any Actions to play, and if you do you can spend an action token then to play them. If not, you keep your tokens. With the overpay it had, you could get too big a store of them, and that meant too many early Provinces.

Here's a new idea, making Colliery the top of a split pile. I had the idea of this Treasure, since action tokens could make it work well. Tried it, but it was too much like a cheap early Platinum as a plain kingdom card. The fix I came to was this:

New Element - $5 cost.
When you play this, it's worth $5 -$1 per card in your hand, down to $0.
-
You may only buy this if you have a Colliery in play. When you buy this, return the Colliery to the Supply.

It seems to gel together with Colliery fine, I just wonder if the bottom part couldn't be better.


Cameo takes on the name Diary, it seemed better thematically. No change otherwise, it works well.


Entrepreneur is great, I see no need to change it.

Glassworks - Action, $5 cost.
Draw up to 8 cards in hand, then discard down to 5.
If you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to reveal your hand and gain a card costing exactly $1 per type (Action, attack etc.) in your hand.

I did rename Steelworks to Glassworks, and with the Exhaustion change it needed a rebalance. You could do the draw and discard and make it non-terminal if you then revealed 2 Action cards, that as well as the possibility of +coins and buys. Too much power. Now you have to do the sift first, and the second part works with types in a different, hopefully interesting way.


Hawker makes the 0 or 2 cards buying work across the turn, because of Black Market and Innovator below.

Innovator - Action, $5 cost.
Choose one: + $2, play up to 3 Treasures from your hand, and you may buy a card, gaining it onto your deck; or +2 cards.
If you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to do the other choice.

Dairy has gone for now, because I noticed how similar it was to Innovator (and hence I felt better about renaming Cameo to Diary, would be silly to have both names). This gets exactly the same vanilla with Exhaustion, though the buy is a little different. Perhaps now there's too much going on and it's too complex a card?


As Locusts are now a hex, I renamed the card Pigeon. No other change.


I renamed Refinery Potteries. It's prettier and feels a bit more Dominion-y. It's the same, complex like Innovator.

Revolters - Action Attack Duration, $4 cost.
Until your next turn, if each other player has 1 or fewer unused actions at the start of their Buy Phase, they gain a Curse; or if there are no Curses, a Copper.
At the start of your next turn, take an action token.

A wording change for Revolters, including giving out Coppers when the Curses run out. Diadem isn't attacked by this anymore.

Steelworks - Action Attack, $5 cost.
Gain a card costing up to $4; or if you have used 3 or more actions this turn it may cost $5.
Each other player reveals the top 3 cards of their deck; if one costs the same as the card you gained (they choose one if there are 2 or more), they may trash it or gain a Curse.

Steelworks's attack looks deeper into the other players' deck, 3 cards that are put back afterwards, and gives the option to gain a Curse instead of trash the card, because Knight attacks aren't popular.


No changes to Textile Mill. It gives a lot of control over your cards, but Exhaustion is a significant setback.


Tutor's discard and draw now applies just to cards neither Action nor Treasure, not 'Victory or none of these types'. It's shorter, simpler, and saves potential tracking issues like with played then discarded Nobles.


No change to Wastelands yet. In some games it's added a very nice rewarding challenge, trying to keep your deck small enough by the game end. But sometimes someone concentrating on them will 'seal themselves in' and make themselves unable to do any more until the game ends. The other players need only wait until they get more points before ending, a pretty boring wait.

As cards have left, I thought of new ones and given them a little testing.

Night Shift - Night Duration, $5 cost.
Take Exhaustion; if you do, and the previous turn wasn't yours, take another turn after this one.

Thinking of Exhaustion has really helped me think of simpler cards that use them. How about a really good one that takes it for the start of your next turn? From there, this just followed on. It has such a natural feel to it, right down to its theme.

Parade - Victory, <8> cost.
Worth 8VP - VP equal to the difference in the number of Actions and Treasures in your deck.
-
You may only buy this if you have the same number of Actions and Treasures in play.

This one accentuates the Actions and Treasures thing in this set. There are Action-heavy engine strategies, and there's big money, but this encourages a balance of the two.

And finally, a big group that makes even more of Actions and Treasures, and tries out a bunch of different mechanics:

Components - Action Traveller, $3 cost
Return this and another Components from your hand to the Supply. If you do return 2 Components, gain a Prototype.
-
When you gain this, gain a Silver onto your deck.

A Traveller that upgrades Treasure Map style. Though you may choose to buy this just for a top-decked Silver at the same cost.

Prototype - Action Traveller, $5* cost.
Take two action tokens.
Trash a Treasure from your hand. Gain a Treasure costing up to $3 more to your hand.
You may discard this. If you don't, then at Clean-up exchange this for a Patent, Spinning Mule or Steam Engine.
(This is not in the Supply.)

A card that discards itself on play, so it can be played several times in the same turn. This mechanic can run into several issues, but Prototype should be safe from most of them. It has no issues with tracking, and it's impossible to make infinite turns with this as it's a non-Supply card.
It's only a 3 stage Traveller as Components are hard enough to upgrade. But the final step is a choice of three.

Patent - Action, $6* cost.
Choose one: +1 card, +1 action, +1 buy or + $1, then this becomes the card on your Patent mat.
-
When you first gain this, put an Action card from the Supply that isn't on another player's Patent mat onto your Patent mat.
(This is not in the Supply.)

Yes, Patent has moved. It created too much first-buyer advantage as a Kingdom card. Here, it can afford to go for any card cost as the timing and difficulty to get 1 of them balances it out, and the Patent mat banning can be fair as if there's a good target for it, probably one of the alternative upgrades will be good too, Steam Engine. So a Patent race won't leave the loser hopeless.

Spinning Mule - Action, $6* cost.
+1 card
+1 action
While this is in play, after you play a Treasure, +1 card.
(This is not in the Supply.)

The Treasures upgrade. It started as a permanent duration but you could get it so soon in some games that it dominated. You get the cards after resolving for no other reason than working better with New Element above.

Steam Engine - Action, $6* cost.
While this is in play, the next 3 times you gain a card take an action token, and when you spend an action token, instead of +1 action you may play an Action card from your hand twice.
(This is not in the Supply.)

And here's Magnate, moved, renamed and buffed a little. When it was a kingdom card, really you just wanted one of them. I already had Spinning Mule as an idea I was testing, and when I noticed how it upgraded Treasures similarly to this with Actions, this whole group happened.

And that's the lot. Wanderers I'll do later. (Is this still tl;dr?)

[Co0kieL0rd]

Aquila, you have very interesting and original ideas. Such shall be graced with my coveted commentaries!

The action tokens and Exhaustion state are cool concepts and I can see them work out in general, even though Exhaustion is a pretty harsh restriction in engines but shouldn't matter too much in the early game where most cards you play are treasures.

I'll comment on your cards individually and also point out some wording issues.

Advancing Village: This introduces the action token and its benefits perfectly. The card might have some accountability issues with its reaction but you made them rare enough and that's fine for a fan card. I find it hard to assess its power. Doesn't it suck when you draw it during your action phase? It's just a cantrip when you play it, then. And in an engine, where most cards are drawn during your action phase (as opposed to only the 5 cards in your starting hand) and you rarely have any spare actions, this should be hardly better than Village. I see it on the same power level as Ghost Town. What makes this cost $4?

Blueprints: Seems like a decent card. It needs a "(rounded up)" or "(rounded down)" clause.

Canal: This is a great Bridge variant that can't be used to drive piles in a megaturn, cleverly implemented, powerful but limited. I like it.

Colliery/New Element: These two have a cute synergy but I fell like it's not enough to make New Element good. It's even weaker than Poor House with its very harsh penalty for any cards in hand (no just treasures). How many games did you play with it where you found, "wow, this is a power card that needs to cost $5"?
Besides, you can improve the wording of both cards. Colliery should say "you may take it to play this again", otherwise it's unclear what "do" refers to.
New Element could go with a sleek "You can only gain this if you have a Colliery in play, and when you do, return it to the Supply." It also doesn't need "When you play this" in its instructions. For reference, look at Fool's Gold, or any other kingdom treasure for that matter; they don't need that clause to say what they're worth.

Diary: Doesn't seem strong to me but I probably can't accurately asses how much an action token it worth. Design-wise it's very elegant, though.

Entrepreneur: I like how this card becomes like five times more powerful when its pile is empty, but the case where the player who wins the split dominates the game can be mitigated by the other players. Another clever idea.

Glassworks: Why does it care about card types? Since it has nothing to do with your set's theme, this seems like an unnecessary limitation to its gaining power. Its draw is not even stronger than Embassy and taking Exhaustion is a harsh penalty. To compensate for that, Glassworks could care for differently named cards instead.

Hawker: If an opponent only has 1 buy (which is most of the early game, sometimes the whole game) you can lock them out of the game with an egine that plays a Hawker every turn. That would be very bad. Also there's an edge case with Villa: Your opponent has Hawker in play. You buy a Villa, return to your action phase but then don't play the Villa and end your turn so you can't buy another card. What happens? Do you have to return the Villa? That would make no sense. The problem with this kind of card that wants to restrict players to certain actions is that in Dominion there's usually another option that's somehow ambiguous and allows them to exploit a loop-hole.

Innovator: A very potent and flexible engine enabler and component! I find it difficult to fully wrap my head around it so I'll need to play with it to find out how to best use it.

Night Shift: I like this card a lot! Zero actions is an adequate drawback for an extra turn. You were bold to put this card out here so shortly prior to Nocturne's release. I can imagine there being a similar card in it. There might even be a State that does the exact same thing as Exhaustion.

Parade: This rewards a "good stuff deck" probably more than any other card. My intuition says 8 VP per card (whose cost you can spread over two turns) is enough to forego building a treasure-less deck. But you need a lot of buying power to keep up with the engine that reliably gains 1-2 Provinces each turn, if there's one available.

Pigeon: Eh, doesn't thrill me particularly. From an thematic perspective, I would rather have the card named "Pigeons" and show a swarm of those gray-black city dwellers, than the charming bird in the current artwork.

Potteries: Seems decent but is it really that strong? I would have said it's one of the weaker $5-cards.

Revolters: I have several problems with this. First, its wording is ambiguous. "If each player has..." sounds like a condition referring to all other players counted together. Instead it should simply say "if another player has". Second, it's a curser for mere $4, and a Village on your next turn. On top of that, it gives Coppers once the Curses are out. There's only one official card that does that, and probably for good reason; it's the strongest attack in Dominion and it costs $5. Revolters seems broken to me. I advise you reword it as follows:
Until your next turn, if another player has used up their actions at the start of their Buy Phase, they gain a Curse. At the start of your next turn, take an action token.
This is simpler, unambiguous, and more balanced.

Steelworks: A gainer that gets very powerful in engines and has a brutal attack as well. This is vastly overpowered and my initial suggestion is to drop the cursing part. I would also give your opponents less options to make the card less wordy:
Each other player reveals the top 3 cards of their deck, trashes one costing the same as the card you gained and puts the rest back in any order.

Textile Mill: It's a fine Smithy variant regarding its power level. But I'm afraid there will be way too much looking and sorting going on (I hated that in my first games with Secret Chamber) so it will become obnoxious.

Tutor: This is probably your most balanced card. A premium engine enabler for $3 whose slowness should balance it somewhat.

Wastelands: This card's theme is very cleverly implemented. I like how it takes late greening to another level. Still, 15 cards total might be a bit harsh. OTOH, 5VP for $5 is a lot and it takes some skill to estimate if going for Wastelands is gonna work out in a game, as well as to make sure you can take the weight of a high green card densitiy in your deck towards the end. If you're going for Wastelands, watch out for Mountebank, Greed, Embassy, Messenger, Governor etc.

Now I feel quite exhausted myself. Gonna look at the Travellers another day.

[Asper]

Colliery seems a lot like like the card Donald has described Diadem had started out as.

[Aquila]

Wow, what great feedback. Thank you!

Advancing Village: This introduces the action token and its benefits perfectly. The card might have some accountability issues with its reaction but you made them rare enough and that's fine for a fan card. I find it hard to assess its power. Doesn't it suck when you draw it during your action phase? It's just a cantrip when you play it, then. And in an engine, where most cards are drawn during your action phase (as opposed to only the 5 cards in your starting hand) and you rarely have any spare actions, this should be hardly better than Village. I see it on the same power level as Ghost Town. What makes this cost $4?

It started out being able to react all the time, and it just looked very scary with terminal draw, especially seeing how other Villages are drawn dead. I suppose that is its forte over the others, so I may carry on with it, but I just fear it's too automatic. Like with all of these cards, concentrated playtesting will tell.

Blueprints: Seems like a decent card. It needs a "(rounded up)" or "(rounded down)" clause.

Just adding (round down) to what I have is in-keeping with the 2E Bishop, I'll go with that.

Colliery/New Element: These two have a cute synergy but I fell like it's not enough to make New Element good. It's even weaker than Poor House with its very harsh penalty for any cards in hand (no just treasures). How many games did you play with it where you found, "wow, this is a power card that needs to cost $5"?
Besides, you can improve the wording of both cards. Colliery should say "you may take it to play this again", otherwise it's unclear what "do" refers to.
New Element could go with a sleek "You can only gain this if you have a Colliery in play, and when you do, return it to the Supply." It also doesn't need "When you play this" in its instructions. For reference, look at Fool's Gold, or any other kingdom treasure for that matter; they don't need that clause to say what they're worth.

Being a Treasure, New Element can be played after all the other Treasures have been (except Fortune and sometimes Bank). It's nearly always yielded at least $3; I've hardly ever trashed with a deck going for this pile, and the Coppers really help. But maybe this is a disadvantage in itself, and it merits a cheaper cost. Perhaps you should be able to keep your Colliery.
I like the wording changes, except for 'playing' Colliery again. You could end up playing one of them several times over, especially with Champion. So it needs one of these:
'Discard a card for +$2. If you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to play this again'
+$2. Discard a card. If you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to discard a card and + $2.
Basically, the latter lets you get the coins even if your hand is empty, and the first doesn't.
Though Asper's comment is interesting. I've always seen this as changing a card in your hand into a Silver, and if it would be too similar to Diadem I would choose the second of my suggestions so it can only work twice in one play.

Glassworks: Why does it care about card types? Since it has nothing to do with your set's theme, this seems like an unnecessary limitation to its gaining power. Its draw is not even stronger than Embassy and taking Exhaustion is a harsh penalty. To compensate for that, Glassworks could care for differently named cards instead.

Truth be told it's yet to be properly tested in this form, but it certainly needed a change. Indeed looking for types isn't in-keeping with this set. I chose it because it holds potential to gain expensive cards when put in the right kingdom, which looked appealing. But yes, how often would you want to go Exhausted to gain a ~$5 when you only have a 5-card hand? Maybe it isn't the best second part.
Edit: Or could it start non-terminal then become terminal if you gain something?

Hawker: If an opponent only has 1 buy (which is most of the early game, sometimes the whole game) you can lock them out of the game with an egine that plays a Hawker every turn. That would be very bad. Also there's an edge case with Villa: Your opponent has Hawker in play. You buy a Villa, return to your action phase but then don't play the Villa and end your turn so you can't buy another card. What happens? Do you have to return the Villa? That would make no sense. The problem with this kind of card that wants to restrict players to certain actions is that in Dominion there's usually another option that's somehow ambiguous and allows them to exploit a loop-hole.

Yes, all good points. Perhaps the best fix could be something like this?
Until your next turn, when another player buys their first card during their turn, they gain a card costing up to $2.

Pigeon: Eh, doesn't thrill me particularly. From an thematic perspective, I would rather have the card named "Pigeons" and show a swarm of those gray-black city dwellers, than the charming bird in the current artwork.

Cantrip trashers don't feel that thrilling, I agree. The Supply trashing was the fun bit, some interesting interactions with some piles. It's emptying out other cards as this pile empties itself, and if you don't like the speed of that just make yours hit Silvers. It just needed a benefit to the buyer and well the trash just seemed to fit best. Yeah, I guess a monarch could buy a flock of pigeons for himself, rather than one carrier pigeon.

Potteries: Seems decent but is it really that strong? I would have said it's one of the weaker $5-cards.

I noted that Donald tried a card that got anything from the discard, and found it too strong to do. I think it might have been on a card doing Militia as well? When it worked well, like getting a Gold, I kinda felt what Donald meant, but on a terminal $5 the effect should be balanced.

Revolters: I have several problems with this. First, its wording is ambiguous. "If each player has..." sounds like a condition referring to all other players counted together. Instead it should simply say "if another player has". Second, it's a curser for mere $4, and a Village on your next turn. On top of that, it gives Coppers once the Curses are out. There's only one official card that does that, and probably for good reason; it's the strongest attack in Dominion and it costs $5. Revolters seems broken to me. I advise you reword it as follows:
Until your next turn, if another player has used up their actions at the start of their Buy Phase, they gain a Curse. At the start of your next turn, take an action token.
This is simpler, unambiguous, and more balanced.

All sound words here, great wording, though I'd like it to hit with 1 action left if someone just plays pure money (a newer player may be scared into it). But would that bump it up to 5 or make it too plain strong? This is almost an Attack Village after all.

Steelworks: A gainer that gets very powerful in engines and has a brutal attack as well. This is vastly overpowered and my initial suggestion is to drop the cursing part. I would also give your opponents less options to make the card less wordy:
Each other player reveals the top 3 cards of their deck, trashes one costing the same as the card you gained and puts the rest back in any order.

Yes, your outside perspective has helped me see sanity here. The cursing option was really shooting myself in the foot.

Textile Mill: It's a fine Smithy variant regarding its power level. But I'm afraid there will be way too much looking and sorting going on (I hated that in my first games with Secret Chamber) so it will become obnoxious.

True. Card control isn't for everyone. I suppose by and large this isn't an easy set to play.

Food for thought here.

[jonaskoelker]

Nice cards, would play, 10/10.

A few comments:

Canal - Action, $5 cost.
+1 buy
This turn, cards you haven't yet gained a copy of cost $2 less, but not less than $0.

This can be Throned for great cost reduction, but the once-per-name clause limits the abuse. You may want to consider "<separating horizontal line> While this is in play, cards [...]", in the style of Highway. You did mention Bridge, so probably you're already aware of the abuse potential.

New Element - $5 cost.
When you play this, it's worth $5 -$1 per card in your hand, down to $0.
-
You may only buy this if you have a Colliery in play. When you buy this, return the Colliery to the Supply.

If I play two Collieries, what do I return to the Supply? Suggestions "When you buy this, return a Colliery from play to the Supply." Alternatively, "When you buy this, return all Collieries from play to the Supply." — then you can only buy one per turn (edge case Villa). Maybe it should say "all your Collieries"—though the only card you can play outside of your own turn is Caravan Guard, IINM.

Glassworks - Action, $5 cost.
Draw up to 8 cards in hand, then discard down to 5.
If you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to reveal your hand and gain a card costing exactly $1 per type (Action, attack etc.) in your hand.

If I have Village and Militia, does 'Action' count once or twice? That is, do I gain a $2- or $3-cost card? There's probably not room on the card for any clarifying text.

The same wording is unambiguous on Courtier because no single card has the same type twice.

Night Shift - Night Duration, $5 cost.
Take Exhaustion; if you do, and the previous turn wasn't yours, take another turn after this one.

If you already have Exhaustion, do you take an extra turn? I think not.

Prototype - Action Traveller, $5* cost.
Take two action tokens.
Trash a Treasure from your hand. Gain a Treasure costing up to $3 more to your hand.
You may discard this. If you don't, then at Clean-up exchange this for a Patent, Spinning Mule or Steam Engine.
(This is not in the Supply.)

If you draw your deck, including two of these and a treasure, and you have your +1 card token on this, you can trash the Copper, Silver and Gold piles. That seems a bit explosive; but on the other hand, this scenario isn't something you achieve on shuffles one through four, I guess. I would encourage playtesting with this scenario in mind to evaluate how broken it is.

(I didn't read the wall-of-text cards.)

[Aquila]

Thanks jonas.

Canal - Action, $5 cost.
+1 buy
This turn, cards you haven't yet gained a copy of cost $2 less, but not less than $0.

This can be Throned for great cost reduction, but the once-per-name clause limits the abuse. You may want to consider "<separating horizontal line> While this is in play, cards [...]", in the style of Highway. You did mention Bridge, so probably you're already aware of the abuse potential.

Throning it is fine. The worst abuse you could do is with different alt VP cards.
... Which at first seems safe, until I remember the Castles. I'm thinking it would take sufficiently long setup to save this from being broken, and instead a good combo?

New Element - $5 cost.
When you play this, it's worth $5 -$1 per card in your hand, down to $0.
-
You may only buy this if you have a Colliery in play. When you buy this, return the Colliery to the Supply.

If I play two Collieries, what do I return to the Supply? Suggestions "When you buy this, return a Colliery from play to the Supply." Alternatively, "When you buy this, return all Collieries from play to the Supply." — then you can only buy one per turn (edge case Villa). Maybe it should say "all your Collieries"—though the only card you can play outside of your own turn is Caravan Guard, IINM.

Oh yeah, that's true. I may end up changing the bottom bit anyway.

Glassworks - Action, $5 cost.
Draw up to 8 cards in hand, then discard down to 5.
If you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it to reveal your hand and gain a card costing exactly $1 per type (Action, attack etc.) in your hand.

If I have Village and Militia, does 'Action' count once or twice? That is, do I gain a $2- or $3-cost card? There's probably not room on the card for any clarifying text.

The same wording is unambiguous on Courtier because no single card has the same type twice.

I meant to say 'different type', but it never happened. Oops.

Night Shift - Night Duration, $5 cost.
Take Exhaustion; if you do, and the previous turn wasn't yours, take another turn after this one.

If you already have Exhaustion, do you take an extra turn? I think not.

The intention is not, 'if you do' I hope makes that clear. Every card should check you take Exhaustion before giving bonuses, so they're never free.

Prototype - Action Traveller, $5* cost.
Take two action tokens.
Trash a Treasure from your hand. Gain a Treasure costing up to $3 more to your hand.
You may discard this. If you don't, then at Clean-up exchange this for a Patent, Spinning Mule or Steam Engine.
(This is not in the Supply.)

If you draw your deck, including two of these and a treasure, and you have your +1 card token on this, you can trash the Copper, Silver and Gold piles. That seems a bit explosive; but on the other hand, this scenario isn't something you achieve on shuffles one through four, I guess. I would encourage playtesting with this scenario in mind to evaluate how broken it is.

Prototype isn't a Supply card, so it should never see any token on it.

[jonaskoelker]

Thanks jonas.

You're more than welcome

Throning [Canal] is fine [but what about Castles?]

Even if you KC a Canal you only have 4 buys, so it's not bonkers broken, merely very, very good—but if you can KC it once you can probably do it thrice. But that's a 3-card combo (Canal, Castles, TR/KC/RC/&C) which is merely very, very good, so nothing to worry about I'd say.

I might be taking a minority position, but I don't think strategic gravity wells* are a bad things per se. I think what makes many strategic gravity wells unappealing is that they make games formulaic. I don't think this would happen with Canal.

(*) cards or combos which you basically have to build your deck around when they show up, and such that you evaluate all other cards only in relation to the key card/combo—Rebuild, Page, Cultist, Hermit/Market Square and (sometimes) Tournament are examples.

My conclusion: I successfully brought to your attention something you were already aware of

I meant to say 'different type' [on Glassworks], but it never happened. Oops.

'Glad I could help and I think 'different type' is an elegant solution.

[The intention is that Night Shift doesn't give you an extra turn if you already have Exhaustion. I hope 'if you do' makes that clear.]

I think all other cards that take Exhaustion say "if you don't have Exhaustion, you may take it and <do conditional effect>". I think consistency is good—deviation raises the question "why?", and the only answer I can come up with that I like is "all the consistent phrasings are awful", which I think is not true. I think the following is fine: "If you don't have Exhaustion, take it; if you did and the previous turn wasn't yours, take another turn after this one."

The thing that pushes the wording in a clunky direction is that's it's tricky to elegantly convey the parenthesis structure of "if condition 1 then ((do thing 1) and (if condition 2 then do thing 2))".

Alternatively, you could say "if (condition 1 and condition 2) then (do thing 1 and do thing 2)"—i.e. "if the previous turn wasn't yours and you don't have Exhaustion, take Exhaustion and take an extra turn after this one".

Note that this way, if you want to play Night Shift just to take Exhaustion but for no "other" benefit, you can only do so if the last turn wasn't yours—that is, condition 2 also has to be true for you to do thing 1. That seems about as strategically relevant as the addition of "you may" to Throne Room, probably even less.

It could matter if you could be possessed in such a way that the turn prior to your possessed turn was yours, but I think that's impossible.

Prototype isn't a Supply card, so it should never see any token on it.

Derp.

[Aquila]

The Wanderers, revamped and mocked up.

The randomiser card:

Shuffle the Wanderers pile. Keep them face down except for the top one. During the Action Phase a player may use an action to play the top Wanderer, moving it to their play area then returning it to the bottom at the end of their turn.

They join events and landmarks, and IRL you could shuffle this randomiser into their deck to decide when they're used, or include them freely by choice. (This card is portrait mainly so the instructions are easier to read).
To explain the concept: the Wanderers are a set of cards that cycle as they're used, each one giving something extra you can do in your action phase. I thought mechanically this could open up a lot of new possibilities, those that you couldn't do on a kingdom Action card because playing them every turn or more than once in a turn wouldn't work. Also, each card affects every player to reduce swinginess.

I came up with several different ideas that could work, but saw that a set of them should follow a mechanical theme. This makes them a bit easier to understand, softens swinginess further and helps form synergies between each card. This set is about card movement.

The result: a pile that has very varied impact on each game depending on the timing and order of each card, and adds the challenge of players considering everybody when deciding to go for one, whether or not they will get a better deal than anyone else.

The cards, 10 of them:

Each player sets any number of cards aside from their hand, draws that many, then puts the set aside cards onto their deck in any order.

Swap cards in your hand with the top of your deck. It would get a bit redundant done more than once in a turn, but it's fine on a Wanderer. Opens up a few tricks.

Each player discards down to 3 cards in hand, and gains a copy of a non-Victory card they discarded.

Everyone must decide whether to get a better turn now and take some junk, or make this turn weaker and gain something good.

Each player looks at the top card of their deck and may discard it, then draws a card from the player to their right's deck.

A new one not yet tested. Card movement affecting everyone pointed me towards a Masquerade variant.

Each player draws up to 6 cards in hand, and looks through their discard pile and puts a card from it into their hand.

Potentially a great boost. But who will get the most benefit?

Each player trashes up to 2 cards from their hand.

Timing and what each other player has are both crucial factors to this one.

+1 action. Each player puts their deck into their discard pile.

Looks a bit boring, but there are times when this is golden, especially with some interactions in this set.

Put 2 cards from your hand onto your deck. Each other player with 4 or more cards in hand does the same.

Almost a pure attack, but sometimes this will be helpful to you.

While this is in play, after cards are discarded or trashed from a player's hand, they are returned to their hand. (Keep until next turn).

Very likely a Wanderer will adopt a duration effect, hence their orange colour (though as it turns out, there's only one here). This mostly prevents your hand getting smaller, good if you're discarding, bad if you're trashing junk. 'After' cards are discarded or trashed for Militia effects, so you aren't endlessly discarding and putting back. The user gets it for two turns; the times this could be an unfair advantage I hope are rare enough...?

Move this onto any Supply pile. Cards that enter or leave the pile are immediately trashed. A player may play this even if it leaves the Wanderers pile. (This is never returned.)

When this card is used, it leaves the Wanderers pile, so its timing will be the only thing that varies (as well as making each other Wanderer more frequent). Having groped with the idea of blocking Supply piles for ages I've come to this, making players use actions rather than buys to get around the effect. Moving things to the trash hopefully saves any confusion and is clean with existing mechanics, and well it's card movement.

+1 action. Each player takes an action token. Reveal the Wanderer second from top.

Turn the next card down over and keep it visible. Perhaps those next two Wanderers make a neat combo you want to use. If that's so, you've got an action token to make it happen.

(For those who read the Wanderers before, some cards left because they didn't fit the card movement theme. Another, which discarded cards that entered your hand, left because it was a pure attack, and more often than not it was a stop card.)

And there they are. I'll get to the amendments suggested above later.

[Asper]

Revolution is a pretty well-made set in my opinion. I'll just single out a few cards that I felt I could say something relevant about:

I like Diary. Comparing it to Festival, which has a +buy but can be drawn dead and doesn't have its action staying around, it seems more than decent. I feel that often the topdecking will be useful instead of a downside. A very elegant design.

Advancing Village seems weird. Often the only way to play it as a Village will be when drawing it during cleanup, which is usually equal to it being in your hand at the start of your turn. After that it's a cantrip basically. I think you could have had a similar functionality much more easily, like:
"+1 Card
Take an Action token. If you have no Action cards other than Advancing Village in play, you may play an Action card from your hand."

[Aquila]

Big update
I went off doing this, then came back to it with a fresh look. A look at how the cards combine together as a set, as well as individual improvements. I saw fit to make a lot of changes. The OP has had another overhaul with them and improvements to presentation.

If you're interested, a list of the changes:


Exhaustion - changed to Exhausted to fit the tense of the other States. You 'immediately' return it to make its priority to your next action clearer.


Advancing Village - down to $3 cost. This distinguishes it more as a Village you can open with.

Advancing Village seems weird. Often the only way to play it as a Village will be when drawing it during cleanup, which is usually equal to it being in your hand at the start of your turn. After that it's a cantrip basically. I think you could have had a similar functionality much more easily, like:
"+1 Card
Take an Action token. If you have no Action cards other than Advancing Village in play, you may play an Action card from your hand."

This is certainly easier to get your head around at first. I kept it the same as it can do what this does and more, in particular with interactions in this set.


Blueprints - changed the $ you get to a flat $2, and I've tried to make it more exciting by letting you play it straight away when you buy it by taking Exhausted. Yes you're playing an Action in the Buy phase, but I don't think there's anything broken in that with this card. If nothing else it justifies the +buy on it.


Colliery - removed New Element. Split piles are not what this set is about, and Colliery isn't so bad as a pile of its own. It also repeats the instructions when you take Exhausted; it looks clumsy, but the interaction with Champion and other things that count 'playing' actions is foolproof.


Components - has +1 action so it's easier to return them if they fail to connect in good time.
   Prototype - So that the text can be bigger, I give the type 'Machine' to all of its upgrades. I can also make another Machine if it needs to be there.
   Spinning Mule - is now a Treasure itself.
   Steam Engine - gets action tokens on discarding cards, up to 3, and has a wording change that ensures Exhausted takes priority if you spend a token with 0 actions left.

Glassworks is an outtake, as neither types nor differently named cards are a theme the set wants to focus on.

Hawker is an outtake, it just doesn't work as an Action card.

Innovator is an outtake for now, it's too hard to get your head around.


Night Shift - up to $6 cost, because you're happy to pay $6 for it and it feels strong enough.


Parade - no longer costs debt as nothing else in the set does, and changed the bottom to get around gaining it; you trash it if you don't meet the criteria.

Pigeon is an outtake for similar reasons to New Element, to lessen the Supply interaction going on in the set. It's still there, but it's subtle.


Potteries - is no longer get a choice or Exhaust for both. You trash a card, then Exhaust to make it a big Remodel. If the new card is cheap enough, it goes to hand.


Revolters - as suggested, it no longer gives out Coppers after Curses, and it only hits with 0 actions left, not 1 as well.


Steelworks - costs $4, and is no longer an Attack; instead, you can trash it at your Night phase to take an action token for every card you gained in the turn. You can do this whether you play it as an Action or a Night card.


Textile Mill - it made the mistake of draw and sort together, a combo that takes forever to play. Its now a Smithy you can double play by taking Exhausted. Because this is short text and because it fits, it also has the overpay for action tokens that Colliery used to have.


Tutor - corrected a typo.


Wastelands - instead of triggering 5 VP with few cards in the deck, it triggers with few non-Victories in the deck.

Onto some Wanderers changes:

Circus Troupe draws first, then puts cards back. Much easier.

Royal Visit is an outtake; it was the only Duration effect in the set and didn't belong.
In its place, a new one:

Botanist - discard up to 3 cards, then draw that many. Each other player discards then draws the same number of cards.

A Cellar where the user chooses how many cards everyone changes.

And the other new ones:

Barometer - Action Duration - $4 cost.
Now and at the start of your next turn: name a type (Action, Attack, etc). Reveal the top 5 cards of your deck. Put the cards with the named type back in any order and discard the rest.

A now and next turn sifter that lines up cards of the same type for your next draw. What you choose when will depend on your current situation, something that changes often in this set.

Diversion - Action Attack, $5 cost.
+ $3
You may put your deck into your discard pile.
When you gain this or play it, each other player takes Diverted.

Diverted - State
Non-Victory cards you buy are gained onto this. After you shuffle your deck, if there are any cards on this, discard them and return this.

As one Attack, Steelworks, left, another needs to take its place. This one uses a State and delays the opponents' buys from entering their deck until a shuffle later.
Looking at the forum now, I admit this is rather similar to principles other fan cards follow, especially Gazbag's freezing mechanic.

Local Art - Treasure, $5 cost.
$2
When you play this, if you have any unused actions, you may play the top Wanderer.
-
Setup: include the Wanderers.

A Treasure that can play Wanderers, provided you saved an action from your Action phase. This makes it different each play, and can make each Wanderer be better or worse. It's certainly risky and needs a fair bit of testing.

Purist - Action Treasure, $4 cost.
If it's your Action phase, +4 actions.
If it's your Buy phase, this is worth $1, and if you haven't played any non-Treasures this turn, +1 card.

It makes big either the Action phase or a pure Buy phase.

Taskmaster - Action, $4 cost.
+1 card
+1 action
When you play an Action from your hand, you may first turn an unturned Taskmaster you have in play sideways and take Exhausted. If you do both, play the Action twice.

Basically a Royal Carriage that looks 'forward' to Actions played later rather than 'back' to one just played, delaying the action it uses for then. Nothing else does this turning thing, but I didn't know how else to implement one use per card.

[Asper]

Aquila, you wrote that Advanced Village as is was harder to wrap your head around but could do tricks which my suggested version can't. At the risk of sounding like I tried to push my wordings on you (which I'm probably doing, so feel free to ignore me), I think that if you change my suuggestion to check for cards played instead of those in play, multi-card combinations like Farmlands-Rats, Summon on non-drawing cards, Inherited Advanced Villages and your 2 card-drawing Treasures become the only cases where it makes any difference. Or am I wrong here? Main purpose of the change is to eliminate the interaction with Durations and self-trashers like Mining Village, btw.

So my tweaked suggestion would be:

Advanced Village, 2$, Action
+1 Card
Take an Action Token. If you played no cards other than copies of Advanced Village before, +1 Action.

[Aquila]

I find that you read Advancing Village at first and it puzzles you, but when you get it, it's fairly intuitive. Your version doesn't have that initial puzzle so much Asper. As well as what you include for triggers, my thoughts were that 'outside of your Action phase' also means outside of your turn, so Minion, Council Room, Lost City, Margrave, and within this set the Wanderers.

But I do get why you're suggesting your change now; your pushing has helped so thank you! Ultimately, if this is better played outside of the Action phase, why is it an Action? That Ghost Town is a good comparison, you draw it any time and it can do similar.
I still think this reaction fits well in the set, so I'm thinking the card could be improved by moving the taking an action token to just the reaction and having a different top. Maybe:

Advancing Village - Action Reaction, $3 cost.
+3 cards
Discard a card.
-
When this enters your hand outside of your Action phase, you may discard it to draw a card and take an action token.

The set could do with some more draw too. But anyway, between this and Asper's suggestion, which is the nicer card?

[Gazbag]

Yo, I like these cards! Here's a few thoughts...

Barometer: This seems pretty weak to me, a terminal stop card that gives no immediate bonus has to be really powerful to be worth getting and I'm not sure this gets there. I think this really wants +1 action or +$1 or something.

Diversion: If I changed how Ice tokens worked to trigger off shuffles I'd probably use a state like this instead of tokens, so that's great. I'm not sure this should be a Chancellor itself though, I get that the idea is that it lets you get past diversions faster but I think it's pretty easy to do that anyway and it kind of just trivialises the attack, maybe?

Local Art: Wanderers come from miles around to see the local art! A lot of the Wanderers seem like they wouldn't be as helpful during the buy phase as they are for your opponents so I'm not sure about that, maybe the Wanderers don't affect other players when played with this? That could be neat. There are few problems I have with certain Wanderers too, maybe I'll get to that later.

Purist: A treasure-action being a purist is strange to me, but I guess he wants a pure deck of either all actions or all treasures or maybe it's a bronze dude or something? +4 actions is a lot of actions, whoo boy! It's probably balanced at $4 - Port basically gives +3 actions and +1 card, but it does add a ton of +actions to the game so it lets you build really big. The treasure part seems much weaker, it's basically a bad Peddler. I guess it means you can open this with Silver and it'll be good on the first shuffle before transitioning into a big Necropolis, I think the top of this is good enough on it's own though.

Taskmaster: Exhausted means this basically does nothing if there's no village right? And it's basically a throne room with +1 card when it works? I don't know, I think it needs a way to always do something. Am I understanding it right?


Err what was up with the wanderers? Oh yeah the courier seems like a bad thing to have in the game, I don't think a single spy effect is enough to make this not miserable for someone often enough. I think it needs either a much bigger search space or to be from hand or be something else. I don't think any current wanderers gain cards, that could be an okay replacement? Fits the messenger like theme too so could keep the same name. I also feel like Warband should be 5 or more cards, randomly taking people down to a 2 card hand occasionally doesn't seem like much fun to me, I can't really see the benefit of it. That's just a small tweak though.

[Chappy7]

Nothing else does this turning thing, but I didn't know how else to implement one use per card.

I'd just do it like Necromancer does

[Asper]

I find that you read Advancing Village at first and it puzzles you, but when you get it, it's fairly intuitive. Your version doesn't have that initial puzzle so much Asper. As well as what you include for triggers, my thoughts were that 'outside of your Action phase' also means outside of your turn, so Minion, Council Room, Lost City, Margrave, and within this set the Wanderers.

Yeah, but all of these will (usually) be identical to the card being in your hand at the start of your turn, except perhaps for Margrave and Minion, so my wording actually does do the same in those cases.

[Aquila]

More great feedback!

Barometer: This seems pretty weak to me, a terminal stop card that gives no immediate bonus has to be really powerful to be worth getting and I'm not sure this gets there. I think this really wants +1 action or +$1 or something.

Truth be told, this is untested. At first it had +1 action then I thought let's try it non-terminal first. Your first impression may make me change my mind here.

Diversion: If I changed how Ice tokens worked to trigger off shuffles I'd probably use a state like this instead of tokens, so that's great. I'm not sure this should be a Chancellor itself though, I get that the idea is that it lets you get past diversions faster but I think it's pretty easy to do that anyway and it kind of just trivialises the attack, maybe?

I'm with you here. If I can think of another nice way to fast buys that doesn't trivialise this that's what I'll do. Because Diverted makes cards be 'gained onto' it, doing Tracker or Armory wouldn't work as by specifying another gain location you can choose to avoid Diverted...

Local Art: Wanderers come from miles around to see the local art! A lot of the Wanderers seem like they wouldn't be as helpful during the buy phase as they are for your opponents so I'm not sure about that, maybe the Wanderers don't affect other players when played with this? That could be neat. There are few problems I have with certain Wanderers too, maybe I'll get to that later.

You actually commented on the Wanderers. I worried they'd be dismissed as too confusing or random. The main changes that occur are with the handsize ones after you play other Treasures first - Warband and Collector can be played to purely Attack, and Roadshow could be insane. Though to play them just for yourself may be worth exploring.

Purist: A treasure-action being a purist is strange to me, but I guess he wants a pure deck of either all actions or all treasures or maybe it's a bronze dude or something? +4 actions is a lot of actions, whoo boy! It's probably balanced at $4 - Port basically gives +3 actions and +1 card, but it does add a ton of +actions to the game so it lets you build really big. The treasure part seems much weaker, it's basically a bad Peddler. I guess it means you can open this with Silver and it'll be good on the first shuffle before transitioning into a big Necropolis, I think the top of this is good enough on it's own though.

+4 actions is what Exhausted cards like, balanced with no draw. The Treasure part helps reflect the Actions or Treasures sub-theme of the set. Maybe I'm too afraid of the Treasure part drawing a card and could make the setback easier than skipping the whole Action phase.

Taskmaster: Exhausted means this basically does nothing if there's no village right? And it's basically a throne room with +1 card when it works? I don't know, I think it needs a way to always do something. Am I understanding it right?

If you have Exhausted with 0 actions left, it will carry over to next turn and take away the starting action. So it doesn't strictly need a Village, it would make spiky play. A Village will of course help though.
My wording on the update post is probably confusing. It's a cantrip on play, then it waits until a good target is played. It then gets turned to indicate that it gets 'used', and you take Exhausted to Throne the target.
It started as 'while this is in play, when you play an Action you may Exhaust to play it twice', but felt it should be only work once per card.

Nothing else does this turning thing, but I didn't know how else to implement one use per card.

I'd just do it like Necromancer does

This is a funny thing. Face down cards in your play area do not count as 'in play'; you can't trash cards set aside by Haven with Bonfire. So I think this would come to unnecessary complications if not now then easily in the future.

Err what was up with the wanderers? Oh yeah the courier seems like a bad thing to have in the game, I don't think a single spy effect is enough to make this not miserable for someone often enough. I think it needs either a much bigger search space or to be from hand or be something else. I don't think any current wanderers gain cards, that could be an okay replacement? Fits the messenger like theme too so could keep the same name. I also feel like Warband should be 5 or more cards, randomly taking people down to a 2 card hand occasionally doesn't seem like much fun to me, I can't really see the benefit of it. That's just a small tweak though.

Everything here is sensible, Courier I'm thinking should pass from hand, and draw a card first so there's some self bonus and to avoid the 'next such player' thing on Masquerade. Warband probably shouldn't try to go down to 2 cards. Collector can gain cards, as its reason to be played.

[quoting me on Advancing Village]
Yeah, but all of these will (usually) be identical to the card being in your hand at the start of your turn, except perhaps for Margrave and Minion, so my wording actually does do the same in those cases.

Ah yes, this is true. Another difference comes to mind as I read this: played immediately in these situations, the starting action token next turn could let you play an Action after a carried-over Exhausted is returned.

[Gazbag]

Oh right yeah I totally misread Taskmaster, I thought you had to take Exhausted before you played another action but wouldn't be able to unless you had a village but I see now that you take it after you play another action, my bad! Look I do it too Asper!

I also forgot that collector gains a card but I'll forgive myself on that because Wanderers are a little confusing and there could totally be a more standard gaining one too.

[Aquila]

The more I think about them and play with them, the less I like the Wanderers. They do seem to take away from the game of Dominion, using actions for power from outside the deck. And well as said above, they're weird. So take away the actions they use and make them work automatically, the simplest way being right at the start of the turn, change what they do so that they're simple but effective, then change the theme, and I arrive at this idea: Weather, global effects that change each turn.

Rules
They are a pile of 10 landscape cards which you shuffle before each game, and keep face up. Before each of his turns, the player going first discards the top Weather (just as you discard Boons), and each player gets the effect of the Weather immediately at the start of their next turn (they do not get it for extra turns through Outpost or its variants), before any other 'at the start of your turn' effects. The Weather for next turn is revealed at the same time, so players know what's coming. When the pile is empty, it is reshuffled into a new pile. The last card of the pile is set aside, then discarded when the new deck is made.
Including them in a game would follow the same rules as Shelters, Platinum and Colony; if the first card randomly selected is a Revolution, or the majority of them are Revolutions, include them. (Though of course they're fan cards, and you can use them anyhow.)

So here they are:

Sunny - +1 card, +1 action

An extra action for a bigger Action phase. +1 card as well as it didn't seem enough of an impact.

Stormy - take Exhausted

The opposite, -1 action. But if you're already Exhausted from last turn you get nothing.

Cloudy - +2 cards, put 2 cards from your hand onto your deck

Card movement will always have an effect on your turn. This gets you to plan a bit.

Windy - discard 2 cards, +2 cards

A Cellar fixed at 2 cards. Could be good, could be bad.

Rainy - if you have 4 or more cards in your hand, take one and put it anywhere in your deck

1 less card in your hand by Secret-Passaging something.

Dew - +1 buy, + $1

Buying vanilla.

Snowy - this turn, cards (everywhere) cost $1 more

And the opposite, sort of.

Frost - this turn, cards are gained onto your deck

Mostly good, but bad for Victories.

Fog - +1 card, take Diverted, put a non-Victory card from your hand costing from $3 - $6 onto Diverted (or reveal you can't)

A fairly significant card is removed from your deck for a shuffle, and cards you buy are delayed with it. Could be too swingy, but it's there because it works as a one-off effect.

Changing - set this and the next two Weathers aside, then discard them. For this turn, each player gets both Weathers in the order they were set aside in

This one basically makes two Weathers appear at once, to make things a bit more different each game. You don't know what's coming, though. There are 10 cards, but with this the pile will run through 8 turns.

My main reason for having landscapes like this is to make the set's play theme about adaptation; action tokens and Exhausted don't just mean engines, they mean flexibility in your Action phase, and adding reasons to adapt your turn makes hopefully interesting use of that flexibility.

Does this work?

[Commodore Chuckles]

I really like this.

My first impulse was "blech" because this seemed similar to Boons and Hexes... but this is way better than those, actually.

The fact that the Weather just happens, without having to buy anything, avoids the potential of introducing weak cards the way the Boons did. It's also nice that it happens to everyone, which avoids swinginess. Finally, the fact that you know what's coming introduces strategy instead of just pure randomness. This is what Boons and Hexes should have been.

Nitpicks on the cards themselves:

It's awkward that most of them are adjectives but a few aren't. "Fog" should be "Foggy." I admit that "Dewy" and "Frosty" sound awkward, though.

Frost could maybe be "Dry" instead, since dry weather is something that could be positive or negative, like the effect.

Fog definitely looks obnoxious! Getting deprived of an important card will always be frustrating, and possibly game-deciding.

I like Snowy. It's cool that you found a way to make a cost-increasing effect work without problems with stacking or other things.

[Holunder9]

The fact that the Weather just happens, without having to buy anything, avoids the potential of introducing weak cards the way the Boons did. It's also nice that it happens to everyone, which avoids swinginess. Finally, the fact that you know what's coming introduces strategy instead of just pure randomness. This is what Boons and Hexes should have been.

Totally agree, this is a cool idea that is less random than Boons/Hexes (although the effects of Boons/Hexes are admittedly more elaborate).

[Gazbag]

These seem pretty sweet! I think they do a much better job of doing the symmetrical effect than Wanderers, because you had to use an action to play Wanderers and could play them in the Action phase you'd only ever use them when you could break the symmetry. I imagine these will have a similar effect on the game to Heirlooms like Goat and Lucky Coin. But whether they speed the game up or slow it down will depend on the order of the weathers.

I'm not sure on a few of these effects though. Cloudy and Windy are pretty similar, I think one of those could be replaced. Stormy is quite swingy early and just kills turns later on so I'm not sure how fun that would be and Foggy seems a bit much, I think it could just give Diverted. Of course because of the nature of these it's not about making them "balanced" like normal cards, it's more about whether the weather is fun.

Also Dew isn't a weather, that's the biggest problem. You could have something like clear or mild or maybe like hail or sleet.

[Chappy7]

These are really cool! Well done!

I agree that Fog and Stormy could be too swingy/unfun.  Maybe fog could let you divert a card from your hand or discard pile? That way it's less likely to nab your only Upgrade/Wharf/other important card.

I admit, I came late to this party and haven't thoroughly read through this whole thread, but if I'm understanding right, when stormy comes up neither player can use any actions this turn, correct? (Barring Villa or other shenanigans) I spose that is balanced, but maybe it would be more fun if it didn't make you lose your turn.  I'm guessing you don't want to use the -card token in your expansion, or else that might work.  It could do what Envious does? Idk, I guess I don't have great suggestions, I just think Stormy might not be very fun.

I love Snowy, Rainy and Frost.  Those look like they'd be really interesting to play with

[Aquila]

Yeah, Fog can easily be Foggy, and dew isn't really weather itself, is it? Come to think of it, nor is frost. These can easily be changed.

Certainly both Stormy and Fog(gy) as they are can make things swingy. It's good to have a distinctly bad Weather, one to watch out for and keep in mind. In Revolution, Stormy is just that, and there are enough ways to adapt to it. But sure, in a random game with no Revolutions it may not be the best. Chappy7's suggestion of the -card token is a great one (and indeed a lot of Adventures things work - you could probably make a Weather set to go with the expansion, and you could have exotic weather too), and I'd probably change Stormy to that to make the Weather something players can freely choose to add. Then again, not every kingdom calls for adaptation.

So, Fog. The only reason I made it divert a card at first is because Diverted was worded to let it happen. But now I see that it also means Diverted will definitely be returned after the next shuffle, which suits the flow of the Weather better. So it could just not have a cost range or type limit at all. There should then just be the interest of working around the delayed buys for a time.

Are these sound answers?

[Awaclus]

As worded, Frost has pretty bad antisynergy with junkers, given that all cards are gained onto your deck.

[ThetaSigma12]

(First of all, this has been bugging me for a while, it should be +1 Bonus, not +1 bonus. Capitalize the word.)

I like your take on LaLight's weather cards. What I would suggest though is having about half of them be "Clear Skies" or so that has no effect. Constant changing effects every turn will make the game far too unpredictable and probably too much to handle, whereas the occasional scattered effect would be nice. Also, maybe have it so you can see ahead so nothing comes upon you too fast. And probably try to keep the effects simple and not game-changing, like the Vanilla Boni ones could just have one bonus apiece, a free Lost City/Grand Market might be too much to give.

[Commodore Chuckles]

As worded, Frost has pretty bad antisynergy with junkers, given that all cards are gained onto your deck.

Well, it says "this turn," which... maybe implies it only affects you if it's your turn? I'm not sure what "this turn" means, actually, because, if I understand the rules correctly, each Weather remains in affect for n turns, where n is the number of players, right?

[Aquila]

Good catches here.

As worded, Frost has pretty bad antisynergy with junkers, given that all cards are gained onto your deck.

True. So 'this turn, cards you gain are put onto your deck.'
Each card is written like an Action is, directed to the individual player. Otherwise it's a case of putting 'each player gets' on each card, which is a bit clumsy looking imo. So 'this turn' here follows Bridge.

(First of all, this has been bugging me for a while, it should be +1 Bonus, not +1 bonus. Capitalize the word.)

You're right... That makes the distinction between Action cards and actions less clear. I'll get to changing this as I update them. Seeing this is the case, what about 'action token' Vs 'Action token'?

I like your take on LaLight's weather cards. What I would suggest though is having about half of them be "Clear Skies" or so that has no effect. Constant changing effects every turn will make the game far too unpredictable and probably too much to handle, whereas the occasional scattered effect would be nice. Also, maybe have it so you can see ahead so nothing comes upon you too fast. And probably try to keep the effects simple and not game-changing, like the Vanilla Boni ones could just have one bonus apiece, a free Lost City/Grand Market might be too much to give.

I thought this seemed familiar as I came to it. Well, I can at least say these aren't direct rip-offs of LaLight's cards, I'd forgotten about them. Sorry nonetheless.
The Clear Skies idea: this was my thinking when I did both Cloudy and Windy, to dilute the bigger changes a bit. But going with what Gazbag said earlier about both together being uninteresting, one (Windy) could leave for a blank. I could also/instead add 2 more blanks to bring them up to a 12 card pile cycling through 10 turns, for rounder numbers.
You can see the Weather coming for the next turn; the top one is discarded, then it's 'active' for the round of turns, and the next one becomes visible as well. You get a turn to think about it. Current rules are the pile's face up, so that probably means players can look through the whole thing. Perhaps it should be face down and the top turned over when one is discarded.
Sunny may be too much, I suppose, but Dew (Market) seems okay. It's getting the balance between effects not breaking the fun of games and their making a definite impact every time.

[Awaclus]

As worded, Frost has pretty bad antisynergy with junkers, given that all cards are gained onto your deck.

Well, it says "this turn," which... maybe implies it only affects you if it's your turn? I'm not sure what "this turn" means, actually, because, if I understand the rules correctly, each Weather remains in affect for n turns, where n is the number of players, right?

This turn means this turn, and it doesn't imply anything. Each Weather gets "activated" again at the start of each player's turn.

[Aquila]

So here are the changed Weathers, and shortly the OP will be updated with them.

Bonuses capitalised, Frost is now Dry and wording corrected, Fog is Foggy and any card can be diverted, Dew is Showery, and there are 2 added blanks called Mild.

I have other ideas for changes, here are the first two:
Old New

Advancing Village - Action Reaction, $3 cost.
+3 Cards
Discard a card.
-
When this enters your hand, you may discard it to take an Action token.

It's already been considered, but here it is again, fixed up. The new idea feels more like an Action, can react with terminal draw somewhat safely, the top and bottom combine quite nicely, and it doesn't seem imbalanced. But perhaps it's too useful too often.

And if there's Weather, surely a card called Barometer has to do something with it:
Old New

Barometer - Action Duration Forecast, $4 cost.
+1 Action
Name a type. Reveal the top 5 cards of your deck. Put the cards with the named type back in any order and discard the rest.
You may leave this in play and discard it at the start of your next turn, to be unaffected by Weather.

I'm not exactly confident here; you'd first think a barometer would let you see the Weather in advance, but with already being able to see next turn's, will it help much to see the turn after next's? So I thought a Lighthouse might work, choose to opt out of next Weather, but you have this weird optional Duration-ish thing that finishes before your turn, really just for tracking. Sure, a start of next turn bonus would help tidy it up, but I don't want to detract from the sort effect, I think that's nice. And there's this Forecast type just to indicate that the game definitely includes the Weather.
So, can this go somewhere, or should the name Barometer go?

[Asper]

Fun fact: Weather cards that change conditions of play every turn for all players also are an expansion to my favourite non-Dominion board game, Lifeboat.
I think the conditions there were Stormy, Rough Seas, Foggy, Dead Calm, Rain, Muggy, Hot, Windy and, for reasons that I'm not entirely sure of, Sunday. Clear Sky did nothing but shuffle the discards back into the pile.

Also, I'm not entirely sure whether this is coincidence, but my Edicts both have a similar color scheme and look as your weather cardss, being blue sideways cards that define rule changes. Most basically do things like your weather cards, but as Edicts don't change mid-game, I also made a few of them just alter the setup. Check them out if you like.

[Aquila]

Fun fact: Weather cards that change conditions of play every turn for all players also are an expansion to my favourite non-Dominion board game, Lifeboat.
I think the conditions there were Stormy, Rough Seas, Foggy, Dead Calm, Rain, Muggy, Hot, Windy and, for reasons that I'm not entirely sure of, Sunday. Clear Sky did nothing but shuffle the discards back into the pile.

This is nice. So Clear Sky makes things a bit more random than the Weather here and sometimes there will be a weather that never shows up? I don't know the game Lifeboat, but I imagine in Dominion you'd prefer to have an idea what's coming and strategize, than have it fully random. Changing may be unpleasant for this reason.

Also, I'm not entirely sure whether this is coincidence, but my Edicts both have a similar color scheme and look as your weather cardss, being blue sideways cards that define rule changes. Most basically do things like your weather cards, but as Edicts don't change mid-game, I also made a few of them just alter the setup. Check them out if you like.

I did bear your Edicts in mind and tried to make them different. I just thought sky blue was the colour for Weather cards. But yes, Edicts make more definite impacts on kingdoms than Landmarks, which only imply them with VP, and you achieve different things to them too. It's a nice way to make the various strategies available in Dominion more and less relevant, and they should improve the game

I went ahead and put all my current updates on the OP at once. The changes:

Advancing Village - that new version I thought of is broken, it can go on infinitely with draw to X. The old version stays.


Blueprints - theme change to Furnace. Remodel basically is blueprints. For the most part, all the Exhausted cards now involve an industrial building.


Canal - it's strong enough to go to $6 cost. It's rather easy to make a Province-Duchy deck with it.


Purist - down to +3 Actions, 4 was too many and now the Action and Treasure parts look more comparable.


Components - a general cleanup of the group. This is no longer a Traveller and specifies gaining a Prototype from its pile.
Prototype came to confusion when it was Throned before. Now it works cleanly by being a Machine itself (and not a Traveller) and saying 'exchange this for a Machine'; you can either get a final upgrade, or another Prototype to essentially make self-discard.
Patent no longer has +Buy as an option, but the +Cards, +Actions and +$ are doubled to 2 each. This makes it more consistently the power card it should be.

Two new ones:

Foreign Art - Treasure, $5 cost.
$4
+1 Buy
When you play this, take Diverted and put this on it.

Local Art's out, of course, as the Wanderers are. But the name can come back if I can think of something good for it. This works fine, you delay your big buys with it, or if you go for Victories it's like a Treasure Wine Merchant.

Innovator - Action, $5 cost.
Choose one: discard any number of cards, + $1 per card discarded; or draw up to 6 cards in hand.
You may take Exhausted. If you do, get the other choice.

The name's something of a placeholder, he isn't an industrial building. As yet untested, but it has that instinctive feel that it will work. Unlike the last Innovator, this one is quite easy to track.

[Asper]

Fun fact: Weather cards that change conditions of play every turn for all players also are an expansion to my favourite non-Dominion board game, Lifeboat.
I think the conditions there were Stormy, Rough Seas, Foggy, Dead Calm, Rain, Muggy, Hot, Windy and, for reasons that I'm not entirely sure of, Sunday. Clear Sky did nothing but shuffle the discards back into the pile.

This is nice. So Clear Sky makes things a bit more random than the Weather here and sometimes there will be a weather that never shows up? I don't know the game Lifeboat, but I imagine in Dominion you'd prefer to have an idea what's coming and strategize, than have it fully random. Changing may be unpleasant for this reason.

Sorry, meant to reply to this earlier. Clear Skies also has the effect that there are more rounds without weather effects, without having to print more than one blank. But yes, there absolutely can be games where one weather never comes up. It's not as much of an issue in Lifeboat, because the game is heavily communication based and randomness can be cancelled out by convincing others to backstab somebody, but I certainly see that people might dislike the fact that a card they wait for fails to appear in Dominion (or another appears too often). It wasn't so much of a suggestion, more like an interesting anecdote, or so I thought.

[Gazbag]

Seems like good fan cards aren't getting much attention at the moment, I'll try and do my bit to fix that I guess...

Advancing Village: That new one did look busted, I agree with going back to the other one.

Furnace: This cards seems like Remake level strong to me, even ignoring the exhaust to play it immediately mechanic. Personally I don't think cards that can trash 2 or more cards at once and give economy at the same time should cost less than $5. It's not like broken trashers are particularly uncommon among the official cards though so maybe it isn't a problem. I do think that the exhaust to play immediately mechanic isn't the best fit for a $4 cards though, just because if you get it on turn 1 the exhaust doesn't do anything because you aren't playing any actions turn 2 regardless. 

Canal: I like this, $6 seems like a good cost for it. It's still probably broken half the time because cost reduction, but at least you can't accidentally buy out the Provs in one turn like with Bridge/Troll. This is thronable, I assume the wording is annoying as an in-play effect or something?

Purist: Good change, 4 actions seemed bonkers on this.

Components: Seems hard to trigger considering it adds 2 Silvers to your deck, I guess that balances being able to open with 2? Are Spinning Mule and Steam Engine in the OP the other machines? Steam Engine might have tracking problems? Maybe not? Patent and Steam Engine both seem much stronger than Spinning Mule to me, I guess that's fine.

Foreign Art: Wow seems really strong, in an engine this diverting itself is basically a bonus because you want to draw it at the end of the turn. Diverting other things does make this less good in earlier parts of the game but I'm not sure it matters all that much considering how good this is as endgame payload? Less good in money, there the diverting actually matters. Insane engine payload though, should probably just be +$3 to be honest.

Innovator: So individually these two effects are Watchtower and Secret Chamber. Two weak effects, is being able to exhaust for both really enough to make this worth $5? I know there's some self synergy there but I think this is really weak and could probably cost $3?

[Aquila]

Fun fact: Weather cards that change conditions of play every turn for all players also are an expansion to my favourite non-Dominion board game, Lifeboat.
I think the conditions there were Stormy, Rough Seas, Foggy, Dead Calm, Rain, Muggy, Hot, Windy and, for reasons that I'm not entirely sure of, Sunday. Clear Sky did nothing but shuffle the discards back into the pile.

This is nice. So Clear Sky makes things a bit more random than the Weather here and sometimes there will be a weather that never shows up? I don't know the game Lifeboat, but I imagine in Dominion you'd prefer to have an idea what's coming and strategize, than have it fully random. Changing may be unpleasant for this reason.

Sorry, meant to reply to this earlier. Clear Skies also has the effect that there are more rounds without weather effects, without having to print more than one blank. But yes, there absolutely can be games where one weather never comes up. It's not as much of an issue in Lifeboat, because the game is heavily communication based and randomness can be cancelled out by convincing others to backstab somebody, but I certainly see that people might dislike the fact that a card they wait for fails to appear in Dominion (or another appears too often). It wasn't so much of a suggestion, more like an interesting anecdote, or so I thought.

I found it an interesting anecdote, though I admit that didn't come over very clearly. I thought it would be good to draw the comparisons for general game design theory, and I appreciate seeing here how the Weather affects Lifeboat, how the same idea differs to add fun to a different kind of game.

Furnace: This cards seems like Remake level strong to me, even ignoring the exhaust to play it immediately mechanic. Personally I don't think cards that can trash 2 or more cards at once and give economy at the same time should cost less than $5. It's not like broken trashers are particularly uncommon among the official cards though so maybe it isn't a problem. I do think that the exhaust to play immediately mechanic isn't the best fit for a $4 cards though, just because if you get it on turn 1 the exhaust doesn't do anything because you aren't playing any actions turn 2 regardless. 

I get what you say about economy. I guess the $ are there to justify the +Buy from an earlier version; for some reason a multi trasher with +Buy appeals, and that's the basis for this card. Now I've got this exhaust-to-play on it, that justifies the +Buy and the $ could go.
And about turn 1, it still seems OK despite Exhausted doing nothing, as you typically only trash an Estate, and this hinders its trashing ability later.

Canal: I like this, $6 seems like a good cost for it. It's still probably broken half the time because cost reduction, but at least you can't accidentally buy out the Provs in one turn like with Bridge/Troll. This is thronable, I assume the wording is annoying as an in-play effect or something?

Wording should be fine as a while-in-play, I just haven't come to the conclusion of needing it yet. If it needed to go to $6, then likely it could need a further nerf and this would be it. +1 Buy + $4 is already hefty, but Throning it to 2 Buys + $12 is rather generous.

Components: Seems hard to trigger considering it adds 2 Silvers to your deck, I guess that balances being able to open with 2? Are Spinning Mule and Steam Engine in the OP the other machines? Steam Engine might have tracking problems? Maybe not? Patent and Steam Engine both seem much stronger than Spinning Mule to me, I guess that's fine.

All correct. From the feel as I've tested them, it wouldn't surprise me if the whole group was proven flawed because Components are too swingy and luck dependant. Or if they're only reliably enabled with sifters, or the Weather. Some games have seen a Spinning Mule played on turn 7 get a runaway victory (keep the Coppers, and you can draw them, the Components Silvers, the $1 on this and whatever you do with Prototype to get at least $13), other times something like a turn 17 Prototype.
Steam Engine should track OK, you can put the Action tokens on the card instead of beside them, and leave them on there for Durations.

Foreign Art: Wow seems really strong, in an engine this diverting itself is basically a bonus because you want to draw it at the end of the turn. Diverting other things does make this less good in earlier parts of the game but I'm not sure it matters all that much considering how good this is as endgame payload? Less good in money, there the diverting actually matters. Insane engine payload though, should probably just be +$3 to be honest.

This is sensible. I twigged how the engine makes Diverted almost a non-issue, but not how diverting Treasure would actually be a benefit. My thinking with $4 over $3 is that it wouldn't really have much to set it apart from Gold except its +Buy, and it could go to $6 if it needed to, but that's not the best reasoning to go with.
If this were an Action, might there be something more to it?

Innovator: So individually these two effects are Watchtower and Secret Chamber. Two weak effects, is being able to exhaust for both really enough to make this worth $5? I know there's some self synergy there but I think this is really weak and could probably cost $3?

Yeah, an untested idea, full discard then draw just seemed strong at first.

Thanks for the feedback and the compliment.

[Kudasai]

[[[MACHINE SERIES]]]
Components - Cool concept. On a competitive level I'm not a big fan of cards that have to line themselves up (Urchin, Treasure Map) due to how swingy they can be, but they are fun. The top decking Silver could make for some interesting openings and with calculated play you can setup your Prototype cards nicely. I just wonder if the Silver gaining could be optional. Without sifting cards, the extra Silvers just hurt your chances of your Components hitting.

Prototype - This is a nice jumping off point that empowers both Action based strategies (Steam Engine/Patent) and Treasure based strategies (Spinning Mule). I like the option to keep a Prototype to get more plays out of it in order to better hone future Machine cards.

Spinning Mule - Seems pretty strong, but only with pure Treasure decks. Once you have just 1 Spinning Mule you can probably draw your deck every time it's in play. So the on play is pretty one dimensional, but there is a lot of subtly in how you get to that point. Do you trash down (if able) so your Components hit more frequently, but at the cost of Treasure drawing power later? Seems like a sound and fun decision making process. I would also add that this card is pretty worthless without a +Buys on the board, so maybe this needs a +Buy? It does after all take a while to get it and it would distinguish it even more from Patent, which is great, but also does not have a +Buy. Then again, if Spinning Mule is the only source of +Buys, it would probably be the only Machine a player would buy. Maybe both need a +Buy? In terms of formatting, there should be a line separating the above Coin and the lower text.

Steam Engine - I really enjoy the other cards in this "Traveler-like" line. They seem to fit in well with when you get them and their purpose seems clear. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for Steam Engine. The wording is a bit awkward and it doesn't seem to fit in with what the other cards are and are not doing. Components is a nice little colliding game; Prototype builds up either Spinning Mule or Patent nicely (nice thematic choice by the way!); Spinning Mule is good with Money; and Patent is good with Engines. Steam Engine gives Action tokens, so the Prototype phase seems less important and it's just kind of a hard to interpret Throne Room. I think it could be good on it's own, but I just wonder if it needs to be a part of this Machine series.

Patent - Really cool idea! Being the 1st player to get Patent will certainly be beneficial, but the additional choices are broad enough that even coming in 2nd or 3rd shouldn't be too much of a heart-ache. Seeing how getting this first is highly dependent on your Components colliding, I again think the Silver gaining should be optional. There are a few wording issues here though. As it's currently worded, the Patent card only becomes the card on your Patent mat in name only; it doesn't actually play it. I made a mockup of how it could be worded. I also cleaned up the bottom portion to be more in-line with official card wording. It plays exactly the same though!



[[[ACTION TOKENS]]]
Have you considered changing "Take an Action token" to something like "+1 Power"? Kind of how "Take a Coin token" was changed to "+1 Coffers". It could go a long way in terms of clearing the wording up. In your cards there's a lot going on with "Actions", "Action cards" and "Action Tokens". Personally my brain stops registering the difference if I see "Action" too much.

Also, has there every been a version where Action tokens could only be cashed in at the start of your Action phase? Would make for some hard, but interesting gameplay.

[Aquila]

This feedback is inspirational, Kudasai. I'll get right back to it, but first a few things from before:

Foreign Art - maybe as it is but giving $3 would be an interesting card as either late game or engine payload? The original intent was very strong payload with self divert as a setback so it plays well every other shuffle through the deck. So here's another go:

Dairy Farm - Action, $5 cost.
+2 Cards
+1 Buy
+ $2
At Clean-up, instead of discarding this, take Diverted and put this on it.

Now it draws cards and is a very strong bonus. But if you do end up drawing the whole deck, getting Your Dairy Farms at the end of the draw will see some of them not much more than Woodcutters, so they play less effectively. Instant self Divert can lead to multiple plays of the same card with enough cycling, so it needs this funny wording to avoid that.

Diversion - It wasn't used very often, since handing out Diverted as an Attack can be rather mild for the cost of a terminal Action. But, I twigged that it was a one-off Attack, and so:

Lose one Treasure, put another in. This set wants a few Treasures in it, and hopefully this one's interesting.
Diverted doesn't look so good a name now so much as Delayed.


Back to Kudasai:
Power - why not indeed? Cards would be simpler to read, and just by thinking of Power tokens on a mat, there's a feeling straight away that a card or two could care for the amount of Power you have (like Gazbag's Barbarian/Warlord in Ice Age with Coffers, but it feels more fitting to me to do it with Action tokens, you can sacrifice playing Actions now for doing bigger things later). And that would give some reason for both Power and Villages in the same game.

Components' Silver gain being optional makes interesting choices with Mule whilst retaining its individual function. With your other suggestions I'm seeing how opening with 2 of them won't be so broken as with 2 Treasure Maps, which was my worry.

Actually using Prototype's self-discard as something you want to do rather than just because you can do self-discard safely makes so much sense. Honestly, that's all my thinking was here.

Your wording for Patent is definitely better, but I think it needs to 'be the card until it leaves play' like Overlord? It's going to be wordy, and I see no way round it. Short of putting the bottom instructions on the Patent mat itself or something.

You question Steam Engine's place in the series; I put it there for the contrast with Mule at first, then Patent joined in because some games would be a pretty sad race for the standout best Patent, and Steam Engine could be a fine consolation prize for the losers. Patent is a lot more flexible now than what it used to be though.
But, I put together your thoughts on Prototype and the idea of Power count and came up with this:

Steam Engine - Reveal a number of cards from the top of your deck equal to your Power. Discard the non-Actions, then play the Actions in any order.

Prototype would give +2 Power, which could either go to playing better Patents or be stored up for this. Is this an improvement?

Spinning Mule did have a Buy on it but it was dominating when you could get it early. So, taking the Buy off this and Patent I was toying with this new idea:

Replica - Action Duration Machine, 0* cost.
When you play your first Replica this turn, if you have 3 or more Power, gain a Machine from its pile.
At the start of each of your turns for the rest of the game: +1 Buy and + $1.
(This stays in play. This is not in the Supply.)

If you want Buys, wait a bit longer. I put the $ with it to make it feel more worthwhile, and last minute made it count Power to be a bit harder to continue.

[Kudasai]

Back to Kudasai:
Power - why not indeed? Cards would be simpler to read, and just by thinking of Power tokens on a mat, there's a feeling straight away that a card or two could care for the amount of Power you have (like Gazbag's Barbarian/Warlord in Ice Age with Coffers, but it feels more fitting to me to do it with Action tokens, you can sacrifice playing Actions now for doing bigger things later). And that would give some reason for both Power and Villages in the same game.

Components' Silver gain being optional makes interesting choices with Mule whilst retaining its individual function. With your other suggestions I'm seeing how opening with 2 of them won't be so broken as with 2 Treasure Maps, which was my worry.

Actually using Prototype's self-discard as something you want to do rather than just because you can do self-discard safely makes so much sense. Honestly, that's all my thinking was here.

Your wording for Patent is definitely better, but I think it needs to 'be the card until it leaves play' like Overlord? It's going to be wordy, and I see no way round it. Short of putting the bottom instructions on the Patent mat itself or something.

You question Steam Engine's place in the series; I put it there for the contrast with Mule at first, then Patent joined in because some games would be a pretty sad race for the standout best Patent, and Steam Engine could be a fine consolation prize for the losers. Patent is a lot more flexible now than what it used to be though.
But, I put together your thoughts on Prototype and the idea of Power count and came up with this:

Steam Engine - Reveal a number of cards from the top of your deck equal to your Power. Discard the non-Actions, then play the Actions in any order.

Prototype would give +2 Power, which could either go to playing better Patents or be stored up for this. Is this an improvement?

Spinning Mule did have a Buy on it but it was dominating when you could get it early. So, taking the Buy off this and Patent I was toying with this new idea:

Replica - Action Duration Machine, 0* cost.
When you play your first Replica this turn, if you have 3 or more Power, gain a Machine from its pile.
At the start of each of your turns for the rest of the game: +1 Buy and + $1.
(This stays in play. This is not in the Supply.)

If you want Buys, wait a bit longer. I put the $ with it to make it feel more worthwhile, and last minute made it count Power to be a bit harder to continue.

Power - Well I am certainly glad you like the idea, and boy did you take it and make it something way more exciting then a simple wording choice! I really, really like the idea of cards caring about how much Power you have. This is a complex mechanic that probably would take careful planning, but I think it can be done. I think the first big question would be if the cards that care about Power have to use the Power to get the bonus, or if it just simply checks for it.

Patent - I don't actually think this needs "This is that card until it leaves play." In my opinion (and it is often wrong) all this does is rename the Patent when it's in play to whatever is on your patent mat. It does nothing to execute the patent mat card's instructions. Overlord renaming itself only matters for gainer cards like Disciple and Changeling, which care about name. Gaining a bunch of Overlords this way would be quite powerful, but with Patent it is a non-issue because it is not in the Supply and cannot be gained.

Steam Engine - Now this is an exciting card! I read it once and immediately had a good sense of what to do with it. Works a lot better with Prototype now as well. To me this now has a clear place in the Machine series. Spinning Mule is great Treasure draw, Patent makes one card very powerful, and now Steam Engine is great Action draw. Again, using Power to do cool stuff will likely need a lot of balancing, but it's such a cool idea.

Replica - I'll have to spend some more time thinking about this one to give worthwhile analysis, but I think you made the right call by making a Machine that gives +Buys and is not one of the already very powerful cards. This also makes your Prototyping stage more relevant. I also like how it's not trying to compete with Spinning Mule, Steam Engine and Patent; it's just there if a player needs +Buys.

I am a bit confused on the wording. Is it saying if this is your first Replica played this turn you can check your Power and gain a Machine? If so, you can use something like the Crossroads wording. I don't think there really needs to be a condition though seeing that these are permanent Duration cards. The chances of playing multiple Replica's is unlikely. Removing this text streamlines it quite a bit. Here is a quick mockup:



Really exciting stuff! Can't wait to see how it all comes together!

[Aquila]

Another fresh look and run of solo playtests leads me to another large list of updates. Here are a few:

Parade:

Parade - Victory, $5 cost.
Worth 8VP - VP equal to the difference in the number of Actions and Treasures in your deck.
-
When you gain this, if you have a different number of Actions and Treasures in play, trash it.

I felt with this that working to gain it was interesting, but building the deck so as to get the best points wasn't. Too easy to get too many points. Rather than work to balance the VP, I thought I could work this into the adaptation theme I had going on in the set. A pile of different cards with different gain conditions to work for. At the moment they're like this - each has:

Names? - Action Victory, $5 cost
+1 Card
+1 Action
-
4VP

with four different conditions:

When you gain this, if you have a different number of Actions and Treasures in play, trash it.

When you gain this, if you have any duplicate cards in play, trash it.

When you gain this, discard your hand. If you didn't discard exactly 3 cards, trash this.

When you gain this, reveal 3 cards from your hand with no matching type. If you don't, trash this.

A pile of 12 with 3 of each, and you use 2 of each for 2 players. Each is a cantrip so that when you can gain them, you don't mind adding them to your deck. It's possible to have a turn where you can get several different ones at once; I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Steelworks:

Steelworks - Action Night, $4 cost.
If it's your Action phase, gain a card costing up to $4, or if you have used 3 or more actions this turn it may cost $5.
At Night, you may trash this, to take an action token for every card you've gained this turn.

This strange mix of mechanics isn't that interesting for all its complication. It's out. But the name Steelworks I've attached to a fresh new idea that develops the Power mechanic:

Steelworks - Action, $4 cost.
+1 Power
You may gain a card costing exactly your Power in $. If it's a Victory, -2 Power.

It would be silly to go with +$, as you could go unlimited and need unlimited tokens with it. This makes a cap whilst retaining the feel of Power as currency. Seems balanced in testing.

Weather:
It's been more pleasant playing without it than with it. I get the sense it's one of those ideas that looks pretty on paper but actually isn't good in practice. All too often it's granting players bonuses or screwing them over by pure chance, and there's nothing they can do to actually adapt to the situation as intended. The idea may be nice for casual players, but it's not suiting what Revolution tries to be. With the change to Power, the set is heading towards encouraging skill and resource management, probably suiting more advanced players.
So, it seems best to disassociate the Weather with this set.

More to come later.

[Kudasai]

Parade - Very thematic! Parades often showcase different things and now this card does as well. I've been trying my hand at a VP card that cares about Action and Treasure density being the same and boy is it tough. I think you're making the right call to just make this a flat VP amount and retaining the idea through an on-gain effect. So is there a reason you're not going with Grand Market wording? Like, "You can't gain this if the number of Action and Treasure cards you have in play are not the same." The wording would be a bit more clean, but then I guess your wording allows for a Salt the Earth type effect. You can trash Parades simply to deny the points to your opponent if you think they will have an easier time satisfying the on-gain. Very cool stuff!

Steelworks - Nice to see the new card with the Power mechanic. First impression is this might be a bit slow on it's own as a gainer. But it also acts as a kind of Coin of the Realm. Seems very versatile, but requires good play to really make it worthwhile. It could make an amazing, non-terminal, non-Victory card gainer once you get your Power level up to 4-6. I imagine in most games you can only get about one Province gain off of this.

Weather - I'm sure there's a way to make this both fun and rewarding to play with, but it's late and nothing is coming to mind. I'd hate to see all those cool mock-ups go to waste!

[Holunder9]

With Renaissance around the corner and Action tokens becoming "official" I just wanted to give a quick thumbs up for the hitherto most comprehensive fan card design involving Action tokens.

[Aquila]

Parade - Very thematic! Parades often showcase different things and now this card does as well. I've been trying my hand at a VP card that cares about Action and Treasure density being the same and boy is it tough. I think you're making the right call to just make this a flat VP amount and retaining the idea through an on-gain effect. So is there a reason you're not going with Grand Market wording? Like, "You can't gain this if the number of Action and Treasure cards you have in play are not the same." The wording would be a bit more clean, but then I guess your wording allows for a Salt the Earth type effect. You can trash Parades simply to deny the points to your opponent if you think they will have an easier time satisfying the on-gain. Very cool stuff!

Heh, that denying would be seriously hard to pull off, if you get $5 to casually spend like this. To tell the truth, I thought that 'you may only gain this if...' could cause some to think they can still buy it, and what happens then. Self trash is safe from this, and it conveniently gets itself around Lurker.

Steelworks - Nice to see the new card with the Power mechanic. First impression is this might be a bit slow on it's own as a gainer. But it also acts as a kind of Coin of the Realm. Seems very versatile, but requires good play to really make it worthwhile. It could make an amazing, non-terminal, non-Victory card gainer once you get your Power level up to 4-6. I imagine in most games you can only get about one Province gain off of this.

Decks concentrated purely on playing Steelworks often, with trashing and thrones, have seen them get Provinces at an average rate, 3-4 in 15-17 turns. So it seems beatable but a viable option.

Weather - I'm sure there's a way to make this both fun and rewarding to play with, but it's late and nothing is coming to mind. I'd hate to see all those cool mock-ups go to waste!

Oh, I don't mean throw them away, only take them out of this set. If they're liked I could put a separate post up for them, or try them with the tribes set. Anyway, I've come to some replacements for them, but first some other updates that need explaining:

Diverted:
I made those two changes with the machines post, but having looked again I wasn't really happy with Diverted itself. It only emphasised the speed control effected by cycling and trashing. Thick and slow decks would make Diverted very significant, thin and fast irrelevant. It wasn't really adding anything new. Taking the premise of holding cards I've come to:

Diverted - State
Non-Victory cards you buy are set aside onto this. After your Buy phase, for every $1 you have unspent, you may discard a card on this. When the last card is discarded, return this.

Making large on Wine Merchant's delay. It fits the resource control theme better, involving money and timing skill. Is the 'set aside' bit sensible? What would technically happen if you have Tracker in play?
That leads to the cards that use it. Pretty much a complete turnround from before, Foreign Art as before is more elegant than Dairy Farm in diverting itself together with what you buy for the turn. With the money you need to buy them off Diverted, $4 is fine.
Timepiece isn't so effective now as one version of Diversion I had in the works before, a Knight variant:

Diversion - Action Attack, $5 cost.
+ $2
Each other player takes Diverted. Those with 4 or fewer cards on their Diverted reveal the top 2 cards of their deck, put one costing from $3-$6 onto Diverted, and discard the rest.

It has the limitation of working on only up to 5 cards. It's softer than trashing the target cards, but with the addition of buys being diverted too.

Night Shift:
It's a 'natural' card, but it's probably the only Night card that'll be in the set and it's potentially too strong. With Power the cost of having a whole extra turn really isn't much. Nothing like a 3 card hand. So first I thought it could be an event, then about balancing it, and I landed at...

One-use Events:

Night Shift - Event, $0 cost.
Once per game: take Exhausted. If you do, and the previous turn wasn't yours, take another turn after this one.

One free resource to time carefully. It fits the resource management theme.
This would ideally need each player to have a token to put on this to track they've used it. Could that token be used more? Here are some more ideas:

Event, $0 cost.
Once per game: draw extra cards for your next hand equal to your Power.
-
In games using this, when you gain a Silver, +1 Power.

Event, $0 cost.
+1 Buy
Once per game: discard all cards on your Diverted.
-
Setup: each player takes Diverted. When you return it, take it again.

Event, $2 cost.
Once per game: if you have at least 2 Actions in play, gain a non-Victory Action card to your hand, return to your Action phase, and +1 Action.

Counts Actions in play to help prevent crazy openings.

I've seen one-use events on the forum somewhere, haven't I? Again though, I've forgotten them and these are of my own originality.

[Commodore Chuckles]

I've seen one-use events on the forum somewhere, haven't I? Again though, I've forgotten them and these are of my own originality.

You've seen them in the actual game with Inheritance.

[Aquila]

I've seen one-use events on the forum somewhere, haven't I? Again though, I've forgotten them and these are of my own originality.

You've seen them in the actual game with Inheritance.

Yes; these are trying to play differently from Inheritance so I never mentioned it. Inheritance has to be once per game for what it does. You strategise if it's worth going for and build up to it quickly. These are easy to get but call for good timing.

Still, Renaissance is exciting news. Looking forward to seeing how Action tokens 'should be done'. I've tried to make them as different as possible from +Actions here, that was one of my aims, but my views could be wrong.
Seems best to postpone this until it's out.

[Kudasai]

Diverted - Big fan of this version where you essentially have to pay $1 Coin to get your card back. Mechanics seem much more solid than relying on some-what swingy reshuffles. If this turns out to be too harsh you could remove the 1 card per turn restriction.

Tracker might allow cards to be top decked instead, but I just consider that a niche counter to Diverted.

One-shot Event - I have a one-shot Event called Treaty. Not sure if you were thinking of it. Anyways, I really like the first two options, but think the Power one takes the cake. Makes for an interesting game where Silvers both enable and clog up engines.

Should all of these give a Buy back to ensure maximum flexibility when bought?

Really cool editions!

[Aquila]

Post-Renaissance, literally.

So one of the obvious changes to make is Power to Villagers. This means that the tokens will be playable at any time rather than between Actions like CotR. That's great; I'm glad Donald found this rule works OK.
Also means, since Villagers are defined as coin tokens on a Villagers mat, that this set should have Coffers too. Well that's fine, it would fit the resource control theme. Diversion could take +2 Coffers nicely, so that a Coffers could translate to a card off Diverted. Possibly Prototype or Replica too?

None of the preview Villagers cards are the same as any in the set, but possibly other ones not revealed could be; it wouldn't surprise me if Diary needs a change. Silk Merchant does what Colliery tried to do but better, on-gain Villagers. Colliery was on the way out anyway, and that one-use event involving Power (Villagers) was to replace it. I may change how it gets Villagers anyway.

And Projects are mechanically identical to the one-use events, only they're duration effects and not one-off ones. If I make them all Projects that would at least take away the need for "once per game" on each card and things should be cleaner.Since it looks like all Renaissance Projects will be duration effects, I'll be bold and put out a few more ideas I had so this isn't all talk:

Override - Project, $6 cost.
Gain a Province.

One cheap Province to time right.

Project, $3 cost.
Gain an Estate and a Gold.

Cheap Gold that comes with an Estate so timing is less trivial. $3 cost since it seems too good with $5/2 openings.

Shady Deal - Project, $3.
Gain a card from the trash and a copy of it from the Supply.
-
Setup: add a random extra kingdom pile costing up to $5 to the trash.

Less about timing and more about raw strategy or rare and fun VP swings.

Prediction - Project, $2.
+1 Buy
Put your deck into your discard pile, then put 5 cards from the pile onto your deck.

When do you really need to make your next hand?

Project, $0
+1 Buy
If you gain the last card of a supply pile this turn, +4 Coffers.

It may not be a good idea to encourage pile emptying.
Long story short, it looks like Revolution should become an extension to the Renaissance expansion. Where Renaissance is simple Revolution can try adding some skilled depth, and at the same time Renaissance provides an abundance of simple cards that many in Revolution really like (looking at Patent in particular).
Big OP overhaul probably not until after Renaissance is released.

[Kudasai]

It's been said before, but it's really cool how much of the Renaissance mechanics, Revolution got correct! I can't wait to see what you come up with after seeing the rest of the Renaissance expansion.

I really like most of your Projects, but I wonder if this medium is the best way to execute these ideas. Projects seem to be for reoccurring things. I'm sure the way you've worded it is legitimate, but I think a players natural inclination will be to execute the Project every turn, not just once. I think keeping these as one-shot Events is the way to go. If you do keep these as Projects, my second suggestion would be to name these as nouns and not verbs.

Override - Very straight forward, but as you said, the timing on when to buy this is complex! I wonder what the new Big Money benchmark would be with one Province costing $6?

Shady Deal - This is very interesting. As worded it is a one-shot, so I'm assuming the player has to weigh getting an early $5 cost from the trash for $3, or waiting for a card from the Supply to get trashed so you can gain two copies. The latter is board dependent and may not happen often, and the former really depends on the random $5 cost in the trash. I suppose most $5 cost are good enough that you'd want one for $3 despite it possibly not meshing well with your engine.

Project - Empty Supply Pile Coffers - Another very interesting idea. This currently seems a bit swingy. The opportunity to empty a pile occurs only so many times. One player could easily get the Coffers 1 or 2 times just by luck. Keeping track of the piles to make sure your opponent doesn't get the +4 Coffers might be tedious. In the end this might actually discourage players from piling out.

[Holunder9]

I agree with Kudasai, I doubt that Prospects warrant a new type as they can be implemented as one-shot Events.

I also think that some could be more expensive. For example Night Shift is one extra turn for free. Perhaps I am too stupid but isn't a quicker build-up nearly always better than the endgame shenanigans you could do with this?
If you gave it a moderate price you would at least prevent that everybody uses it on turn 1 (even if I am wrong and this is not often the dominant strategy players could misevaluate it like I just did) which means that it does nothing.

Ravage is a pretty crazy BM enabler that could preemptively prevent engine play in multiplayer games. If your opponents build up, just wait until they gained 5 Villages and then you destroy the rest.

[Aquila]

Ah well, my OP update wasn't so stealthy after all It's as good as done and ready to read though, just still vulnerable to what the unrevealed Renaissance cards do. There's a big list of changes I'll get back with shortly.

I appreciate your feedback Holunder. The Prospects are almost untested ideas probably full of issues.

I agree with Kudasai, I doubt that Prospects warrant a new type as they can be implemented as one-shot Events.

I believe going with the new type follows Donald's thinking. The Projects could all be Events with 'once per game' on them: Inheritance is basically a Project, and likely if revised Donald would make it one, because it's easier, cleaner and fewer words on the card. Similarly, the Artifacts could have all been States, but the type change distinguishes their purpose from Deluded and Miserable.
So I would prefer that these be Projects (and renamed) over Events, as that would make things easier for a new player to pick up what they do. Yet as Kudasai said, it wouldn't be exactly clear. To distinguish their function from Projects and Events (only Inheritance is technically buyable once), I concluded a new type, which conveniently looks similar to the word Project.

I also think that some could be more expensive. For example Night Shift is one extra turn for free. Perhaps I am too stupid but isn't a quicker build-up nearly always better than the endgame shenanigans you could do with this?
If you gave it a moderate price you would at least prevent that everybody uses it on turn 1 (even if I am wrong and this is not often the dominant strategy players could misevaluate it like I just did) which means that it does nothing.

You could well be right here. In my mind both the building and the potential for an extra Province or two later would be valid considerations, but if the former always wins out a price increase is the way to go.
I overall erred on the cheap side so they would be readily available for when players think it's the best time for using them.

Ravage is a pretty crazy BM enabler that could preemptively prevent engine play in multiplayer games. If your opponents build up, just wait until they gained 5 Villages and then you destroy the rest.

Ravage is a pretty crazy idea. An alternative take on the emptying a pile for Coffers one I posted before, but as you've identified pile emptying focuses can spoil the fun rather than add to it.

[Aquila]

Post-Renaissance update changes


Diverted has been renamed Delayed, and has clearer but longer wording.


The card called Advancing Village has completely changed, but the mechanic of the old version has been kept and put onto a new card, Trade Circle. This is a cantrip +Villager, dubious, but it gets away with it by changing into a terminal. Two modes of the card to get in good balance.


Barometer has been renamed Timepiece, and now has +1 Action.


With there being a Project called Canal, the Bridge variant is now called Mail Coach. It has clearer wording.


Colliery is now an Action doubling your $ when you take Exhausted. The main novelty of the former version was the Villager on gain, which thankfully Silk Merchant does. There was nothing else going for it. I'm aware of Neirai the Forgiven's attempt at doubling $, and I'm hoping Exhausted is a way to make it balanced.


Diversion has been changed as described before, soft Knight variant with Coffers.


+1 Buy did not belong on the empty-pile Entrepreneur, so to be a slightly better Peddler it instead becomes draw to 6.


Furnace simply works on buy and play rather than take Exhausted to play, and no longer gives $ or +Buy (there were a few too many +Buy cards). But now it feels like it needs something more.

Innovator was too strong, and boring with it. Full discard then draw could easily and frequently get $8, so it was all you needed for a reasonably fast win. The new Colliery at least needs work.


Parade is down to just the Actions and Treasures gain condition. That bottom text is way too small to read every time, and the others weren't even that interesting. Going with Grand Market wording would make this text a bit bigger, and is the issue of buying it whilst not gaining it that major...?


Potteries for now has become this deck inflating variant. I reasoned that there doesn't need to be many two-Action cards with Exhausted, and those that do should be definite core engine pieces. A Remodel could fit this, but not as well as big draw or $.

Oh yeah, that Purist. There was an interesting point in the secret history of Nocturne outtakes, that Donald found cards with a choice between Actions or $ were uninteresting. I felt what he meant with this.


All this time I was saying Revolters can't hand out Exhausted. Uh, it can if other players 'may' take it... This is actually threatening now it's not a Duration.


I made this Taskmaster before I saw Mountain Village. Here's a more simple, different and compelling Throne Room variant than the former version.


A boost to +3 Cards on Exhaust for Textile Mill, to give it a little more over two Smithies than being one card. The addition of Coffers means the overpay achieves Coffers > Villagers translation, so this may be more reason to move it onto a cheaper card.


Two nerfs for Wastelands to emphasise it as alt VP, the non-Victory cap is down to 8 and the on-gain trash is down to 2 cards.

Components may gain Silvers now.

Replica doesn't really need any limitation to its gaining another Machine. The Villagers (then Power) it needed I think was only there to show what I meant by needing to manage a number of tokens on the mat.


When will this Steam Engine ever be right? This version is what I posted last time but with the added option of Exhausting at Clean-up to Scheme it, so it can be like a solo engine enabler. The Taskmaster change, though, seems to hold promise, and this doesn't stand out that differently.


A boost to Spinning Mule that lets it draw more cards with non-Copper Treasures.


Patent now has its bonuses on the mat so you can't change what you choose. This is more realistic, though it makes more different Patents available and so weakens the uniqueness advantage.


And 4 new ones:

Dismiss, a cantrip $2 that lets you discard a card to change it for a different one of a matching type in the deck.


Clayfields, as made for kru5h's design challenges thread, under the name Farm. A third Victory pile works because Renaissance doesn't have any. This $6 Hireling variant draws a card for your next hand for every Victory you gain this turn.


Local Art is back; at $4, it has a radical on-gain of drawing 4 cards then letting you play Treasures. The on-play is discard a card for $2.


Trade Circle, the new enter-hand-outside-Action-phase card. For a player to want to make this trigger, it needed to be payload and not a mere Village. So at $3, it has +Buy, +$2 if there's another Trade Circle in play, with the reaction being set aside, +1 Coffers, and play it next turn.


And the Prospects. Override is now called Takeover, Innovate is now called Manufacture, Prediction works after discarding at Clean-up so your newest buys can be included. Shady Deal didn't work, nor did the empty pile for Coffers one, and the Estate and Gold one doesn't look so convincing.
And yes, an Artifact has crept in amongst them, attached to Exhibit. Because this is now a Renaissance extension and I have Artifacts at my disposal.

More updates likely as and when all of Renaissance is revealed.

[Commodore Chuckles]

About Local Art, what does "when you first gain this on each of your turns" mean? Did you mean "when this is the first gain on your turn" similar to Messenger?

[Gubump]

Regeneration seems really weak compared to the other Prospects, and Imports just screams, "don't ever play with me," unless you're a total masochist who likes slogs and slow-ass games.

[Holunder9]

I like the idea of Advancing Village but like Sauna/Avanto it does too much. If you use some Woodcutter variant as payload it is not hard to imagine a Kingdom in which you literally have to buy no other card but Advancing Village.
Mail Coach is pretty similar to Princess.
Taskmasker is extreme: extremely good when you can Throne out of hand, extremely bad when your discard is empty.
I like Textile Mill a lot.
Dismiss looks too strong at $2. Got two Smithy variants in your hand? Discard one to find your village. What to do with that lousy Copper? Discard it to dig for that Platinum.
I like Local Art, it is extremely unique. Probably very crazy with gainers and Remodelers.

[Aquila]

So all of Renaissance is now revealed, and it looks like things have turned out nicely! There's a shared Actions and Treasures sub-theme (specifically Actions as Treasures, with Scepter and Capitalism) that helps this set be an extension even better, and the similarity clashes are light; Hideout is kind of an upgraded Tutor, and Patron being a Reaction getting a Coffers is like Trade Circle. There are some mechanical interactions that could be bad though, like with Exhausted and all of the ways to play Actions in the Buy phase, and Colliery (the double $ Action) here too.

A few things I thought of before the reveal though:

About Local Art, what does "when you first gain this on each of your turns" mean? Did you mean "when this is the first gain on your turn" similar to Messenger?

Good point, I meant the first Local Art you gain on your turn, no matter when. Changed.

Regeneration seems really weak compared to the other Prospects, and Imports just screams, "don't ever play with me," unless you're a total masochist who likes slogs and slow-ass games.

Imports certainly is for a niche audience, and that's probably a bad design. Regeneration seemed too strong in the first tests with it; the Coffers is a big bonus to add to the trashing effect, especially with how you want to trash anyway. This pushes its price up, and in so doing weakens the trash potential. So do the Coffers go and make this pure trashing? Is that an effective Prospect? I'm seeing several changes I can make to the Prospects and will get back with them.

I like the idea of Advancing Village but like Sauna/Avanto it does too much. If you use some Woodcutter variant as payload it is not hard to imagine a Kingdom in which you literally have to buy no other card but Advancing Village.
Mail Coach is pretty similar to Princess.
Taskmasker is extreme: extremely good when you can Throne out of hand, extremely bad when your discard is empty.
I like Textile Mill a lot.
Dismiss looks too strong at $2. Got two Smithy variants in your hand? Discard one to find your village. What to do with that lousy Copper? Discard it to dig for that Platinum.
I like Local Art, it is extremely unique. Probably very crazy with gainers and Remodelers.

The point on AV is true, a card that's too independent is not good design. The trash on Industrial Town could go.
The different-cards-only rule helps put Mail Coach in balance, such that it seems OK as a kingdom card. I hope it plays differently enough from Princess in these ways.
Taskmaster is risky, and I'm not entirely sure how to test it for balance.
Dismiss could indeed be $3 by my testing notes. It's probably wishful thinking that it's a $2. You'd need to work for the best situations, yet overall this has more purposeful function than something like Vagrant or indeed Border Guard.
Local Art has some crazy interactions, particularly in this set and Renaissance. Hopefully they're not broken.

Grateful for all your feedback. Next, a change proposal for Furnace:

When you buy this or play it: trash a card from your hand. If it...
costs $4 or more, +2 Coffers;
is a Treasure, +1 Villager;
isn't a Treasure, you may trash another card from your hand.

This gives the distinguishing I was looking for.

And a new idea that literally extends the Renaissance theme:

Playwright - Action, $4 cost.
+1 Action
+ $1
Look at the top and bottom cards of your deck. You may trash one of them.
This turn, when you play an Action of which there's a copy in the trash, take the Pen.

Pen - Artifact
At Clean-up, you may set aside an Action when you discard it from play. If you do, at the start of your next turn, play it.

If a player plays a Playwright then a copy of an Action in the trash, they get to Prince something for next turn. The premise was the Action in trash unlocking an Artifact, not using the word 'play' as often as possible...

Do these work?

[Kudasai]

Before I jump into your cards I should preface by saying I've recently caught the Renaissance bug and have fallen in love with simplicity all over again. So a lot of my suggestions will likely be along the lines of "Does it really need this to function?" etc. Also, I'm a bit on the sleepy side as I write this, so hopefully this is coherent.

Playwright - Overall I think this card has a nice, clean package that is easy to follow, but offers a lot of strategic options. I do believe given all it can do that it is a bit too strong. The main issue I see is that it trashes from your deck and gives +$1. The trashing is blind, but it's possible to trash an Estate from your deck and gain a $5 cost if you also have 4 Coppers in hand. This is all in addition to gaining information about your deck and later being able to gain the very powerful Pen Project.

I think if you wanna keep this in the $3-$4 cost range, you should ditch the +$1 and ability to look at the bottom of your deck. The former as a nerf and the latter more to make the card more precise. Simply looking at the top 2 cards of your deck and trashing one of them is a bit weaker and less interesting, but it streamlines the card and may allow players to focus more on how they can use the other Kingdom cards to help get certain Actions into the trash. Removing these two things could probably allow you to drop the price of Playwright down to $3 and the idea of a double Playwright opening sounds quite fun!

Whether you make these changes or not, I think the condition for getting Pen is genius! It really fits well with what Playwright does for you. If Playwright is the only trasher, it completely changes how a player will build their deck. In this scenario you essentially cannot mirror your opponent as you may trash one of your Actions and allow them to get Pen off of it. With other trashers this is less of a risk. Some may say why bother when the risk is quite high to harm yourself and help your opponent? Well, because of how good Pen is! You can't really afford to not contest it.


Also, nice new icon! Very fitting.

[Aquila]

The simpler a card can be, the better . Thanks for your feedback on this.

The top I feel should be weak and this be in the $3-$4 range, so I will take the $1 off. Think it was only there out of wanting to include more virtual $ in the set. Looking at the top 2 cards is simpler, but you'd need to add "put them back in any order" as it would be too easy to 'cheat' by accident. So top and bottom is fewer words, and has the same narrow search range I'm looking for, and the extra knowledge is only circumstantially useful...I think? A little different thing achieved anyhow. But going to $3 might just work better for strategies that really need the Pen - and I hope taking the $1 off will be enough.

But I'd like to look at Prospects next. So I thought about them, and the trail went: as big one-offs, what can they safely accomplish? Early game options that aren't completely warping; mega turns (now there's a potential fun zone!); reward skillful timing; or bonuses that scale. There should be a good pool of new and interesting things to do here, and they don't all need to be about timing.

Conscription fits the scaling and mega turn brackets...only if there are other Villagers in the game. For being too dependent, it's probably out. The former ability of Villagers with every Silver was too narrow, and Renaissance is already doing lots of on-gain Villagers. Would something like discard hand for +Villager per card discarded be interesting, or would it tread too much on Acting Troupe's toes?


Exhibit kind of fits into the timing category with its early, middle and late game boosts. It seems sound in practice, with a welcome strategy element; only with top-decking every first gain (on Emblem) as the early boost seating order becomes too much of an issue. So changing it to gain a $4 means once a player uses it for the early effect, he's happier when the Emblem gets passed on.


Manufacture isn't bad as a card needing timing and strategy, but sometimes its best use is purely as Villa and the extra Action, which feels one function too many. With the second variant idea that's taken away (not a problem with Renaissance's playing Actions in the Buy phase); so has gaining the Action and the Province requirement, so it's all about what available Action effect do you need when. Openings become a factor to consider, but is there anything broken that I've overlooked?


Night Shift is, as identified by Holunder earlier, intended to fit in a timing/mega turn sort of slot, something you can prepare for. The opening opportunities detract from this at $0 cost, so for now has been upped to $2. May be too low still.


Prediction was similar to Night Shift, too useful early on. At least, with Components it was. So off with the Chancellor bit so you have to time it when all the good stuff is in your discard.

Ravage was never going to safely work with 3+ players. And I can't be confident in Regeneration even as just trash hand, as it doesn't fit any of the categories.

Takeover is simple and safe, in the timing category.


With Regeneration gone, Stocks can try to cost $0 and give no Buy, so you really sacrifice the rest of your turn more. It kind of dabbles in all of the categories. The re-theme to Catering is because a new idea I have is obviously stocks...


...which is right here:

Nothing original about overpay for Coffers at all, but I believe it fits a Prospect nicely, in the timing and scaling categories. The question is whether it's different enough from Pageant.

And finally this wacky idea:

Imports is out if this replacement works. It fit the timing category, but brought the whole game down to do so. This Shady Deal makes Delayed an option, tries to make it stick around with Curses on it, and its payout is Golds. You get some choice over how big your deal will be. Probably in the early option category, I just hope 3 Golds and Curses isn't too much for an opening $4.

Am I on a good thinking pattern here?

[Kudasai]

Exhibit/Emblem - Big fan of this one! I think you've got some nice effects for the three stages of the game. I think the early stage effect could use a little attention though.

Early Game - Using it during one of your first 2 turns will likely turn your opening split into a $5/$4 or a $4/$4. This is nothing game breaking as we can already get these effects for free from Baker's setup and the Alms Event. So as is it's probably fine, but I wonder if you could get away with gaining two $4 cost cards?

Mid Game - You get a nice little boost here if your deck relies on a lot of $5+ cards. Seems like it would often be worth the wait.

Late Game - Now if you've been patient the whole game you get a nice little VP bump opportunity. You can essentially get 7VP for $7 (Duchy, Emblem and an Estate gained from Exhibit). This seems nice and balanced, but again if Exhibit gave 2 $4 cost cards you could make it 8VP for $7, which seems like a much more justified reward for being patient. This would work even more nicely with alt-VP costing $4 or less.

I could be completely off on the gaining 2 $4 cost card front, but $4 cost cards generally are tame enough that I don't think it would be an issue. I can see some issues with artificially low cost cards like Tournament though. In a 6 player game they could run out before the 6th player has a chance to gain any. Who designs for 6 player games anyways though!

Really cool concept though!I'll have to take a closer look at the other Prospects another time. Looking forward to it though!

[Holunder9]

Overpay for Coffers has been tried by DXV for Guilds and did not work. I think some ideas about it have flown around here with some penalty like Copper gaining. But as a one-off you cannot easily abuse it and thus don't have to worry so much about balanced so thumbs up for Stocks.

[Aquila]

And back to this set again. Keeps me fresh switching between the two. More Prospects:


Infinite Buys, is that safe for one turn? Use for essential early building or build to a massive $ mega turn.


Conscription can probably work like this, +$ per Villager you have for one turn (or discard hand for Villagers for when there are no Villager cards). It is a bit similar to Steelworks (gain card costing exactly your Villagers in $), but with how Renaissance makes Villagers very collectible I don't think Steelworks is a safe or interesting card to do anymore. A shame because it was promising; if I make it more expensive to balance it with Acting Troupe or Recruiter it becomes only situationally viable for when those cards are present.


Thought about mega turn draw and arrived at "why not the whole deck?" It can take a bit of timing and prep with the Action trash to trigger and not drawing the discard pile, but maybe $1 is a bit cheap?


And a slightly weird one. Making an early Duchy buy a valid option was one idea, and a Prototype Prospect was another so you'd only have one Machine for the game. This is a fusion of the two, hoping the power level of Prototype is right for this.

Some definite other fixes to be made, which I'll get back with.

[GendoIkari]

Wouldn't you just buy and use Consumerism every single turn? Why does it cost ?

*Edit* I think I misunderstood the basic rules for Prospects. I was thinking of it like an Event-Reserve, that you would put your cube on, and then spend the cube to get the effect whenever you wanted. But I now think that it's just an event that happens when you buy it; but the cube is a reminder that you've already done it; so can't do it again? If so, they aren't different than Inheritance; a regular event that happens to have a once per game restriction.

[Aquila]

I've been compelled into another full update all at once. OP has already been changed. A general improvement to the looks of each card, and some changes to what they do:


Being forced to remember exchanging Advancing Village to Industrial Town was bad. And if it were optional, it wouldn't work. So it's this new idea, trying to bring back the +3 Actions from the old Purist with the added snag of coming with a top-decked Silver, taken off of Components. So that the village can advance, there's a when trash ability that gains a different $3-$6 back from the trash.
So it's an efficient Village hard to connect to Actions, that can be tfb if you just wanted the Silver.


Colliery could be mad with Capitalism, so it's toned down to Bank for Actions without the non-terminal option. Might need a cap on it.


Diary I hope could go down to $4, if Patron can?


Dismiss up to $3, as formerly suggested.


Diversion's vanilla is now +$3, distinguishes it from Villain and having a +$3 in the set is good. The Attack is a bit friendlier in its place, opponents can choose to delay junk but at a recurring cost to their good buys. A bit more thought involved for them.


Foreign Art up to $6, it's that strong.


Local Art up to $5, it was mad with Sculptor so that interaction calls for a bit more now with a Bridge needed.


Playwright down to $3 with no +$, as Kudasai suggested.


Complete change for Taskmaster. I do feel there's something good about Throne from discard, so I've got a variant for Dynasties. With Mountain Village it seemed weird to have it here.
So this goes back to applying Exhausted to everything, in a much cleaner way. Doesn't quite make sense to use it on Villages as you're burning a surplus of Actions with this.


Textile Mill has had its overpay moved and it's back to 2 cards on exhaust. It should be all it needs.


Trade Circle was rather strong as you trashed right down and accumulated a big pile of Coffers doing so. Now it's trying a new reaction out, when you put a card onto your deck (through these word-for-word instructions or putting them back after a reveal, but not during shuffling) you can discard this to draw it and get a Coffers. The on-play might be dubious, just something I thought might fit.


Wastelands VP trigger down to 6 or fewer non-Victories, to be even more emphatic about the intended strategy.

Components is just the Treasure Map bit, that's plenty.


Prototype takes the Treasure line down a new path, using Coffers. It's an Action Treasure now so if Spinning Mule draws it you can still play it. There are still a good number of times you'd want to play this as an Action.


Steam Engine can't Scheme itself now, rightly or wrongly, and is worded to fit the new Prototype better.


Spinning Mule adds draw to Coffers, so you draw Treasures this way and can still play them. It can't simply explode into Action with your starting Coppers anymore, like Steam Engine you need to build up a bit first.


New wording attempt for Patent. Like this nobody can take the same Action as another player, not the combo; narrower for a stronger advantage, but it could be a bad thing. The Patent mat now has a +2 Buys side on it. Instructions are copied, but not the name and types; it can take Reaction effects and attack without being an Attack. Probably bad, it just needs to still be called Patent and to be Machine type.

Prospects:

...I now think that it's just an event that happens when you buy it; but the cube is a reminder that you've already done it; so can't do it again? If so, they aren't different than Inheritance; a regular event that happens to have a once per game restriction.

This is correct. I said it before but I feel the new type reflects Donald's thinking. If he redid Inheritance it would probably be a Project for simplicity, and Lost in the Woods an Artifact. As Prospects aren't identical in function either to (all the other) Events or Projects a new type is simplest.


Night Shift is a one-off, does it need to check the previous turn wasn't yours?


Fixed Shady Deal at 2 Golds and Curses.


New ones:

Antique - Treasure, $2* cost.
+1 Buy
While this is in play, cards cost $1 less, but not less than $0. At Clean-up, return this to the Supply.
-
This can't cost less than $2. When you buy this, +1 Buy.

A one-turn Treasure Bridge you can borrow for $2. The more you collect and play at once, the better potential payout, though a spare $2 could go on the odd one. As yet untested, but it looks promising. If it works out, then I plan to move Mail Coach to Dynasties.

Glassworks - Action, $2+ cost.
+ $2
You may take Exhausted. If you do, +1 Coffers.
-
When you buy this, you may overpay for it. +1 Villager per $1 you overpaid.

Moving overpay for Villagers onto something cheap. You can play it early to use surplus Actions (or indeed Villagers) on a store of Coffers, or simply get $3. Too much for a $2? The trouble is being different from Lackeys yet being worthwhile...

Jailer - Action Attack Duration, $5 cost.
Each other player with 5 or more cards in hand reveals their hand and sets aside a card that you choose. After they draw their next hand, they put it into their hand.
At the start of your next turn, +3 Cards.

And this guy from the weekly contest I think fits very well in here.

Removed cards:
- Mail Coach, in a vote of confidence that Antique works. It did fit ok as an off theme card, but there's a tendency to buy lots of different stuff with it, and that's not what this set is about. Your buys are more careful here.
- Parade is just...awkward, not worth the chance element it adds. The on-gain it had could be salvaged onto something else; it feels like it could work well with Coffers and Villagers, you can use them to help keep Actions and Treasures in play in balance.
- Potteries was like Mail Coach, getting general stuff, so it was rather niche. Could put the Exhausted variant back in sometime, if there isn't already enough with Exhausted.
- Replica isn't necessary, just move its buy onto Patent. I did think of a variant that would Scheme a Machine every turn, but that seemed too automatic.

So, hope this is all good. It patches up the shortage of $2s.

[Gazbag]

I'm fairly sure jailer is problematic if I'm reading it right. It's like the Council Room/Pillage "combo" in one. The cards go back to the opponents hand at the end of their turn which means they'll then have a 6 card hand during your turn and so will be effected by 2 Jailer attacks that turn and so on. With this having the same non-attack effect as Haunted Woods we know that it won't be too difficult to chain a few per turn.

[Aquila]

I'm fairly sure jailer is problematic if I'm reading it right. It's like the Council Room/Pillage "combo" in one. The cards go back to the opponents hand at the end of their turn which means they'll then have a 6 card hand during your turn and so will be effected by 2 Jailer attacks that turn and so on. With this having the same non-attack effect as Haunted Woods we know that it won't be too difficult to chain a few per turn.

Thanks for this, it's all true. I see why Woods gets away with it in being an Attack needing only one copy played, hadn't quite twigged that. Yet we want to keep the essence of why Jailer won the contest. The soundest solution I think is to have the attack work with exactly 5 cards in hand. But will that make a deck rotating 2 Jailers too automatic?
Edit: between turns handsize would be 5 every other turn (not 8...), so yes this should work? And defenses against the attack would include the Flag and Expedition. And Borrow.

[Aquila]

A few more ideas for additions and changes. OP not updated yet, but I'll do more explaining of the cards there (edit: done). Let's do the new ideas first, it's more fun that way:

Chemist - Action, $4 cost.
+1 Card
+1 Action
Choose one: discard a card for +1 Villager; or spend a Villager for +1 Card.

Discard for a Villager one time, Lost City another time. The set was lacking in cantrips, hopefully this fills that up.

Potteries - Action, $5 cost.
Take Delayed. Gain up to 2 non-Victory cards onto it with a total cost of no more than $8.

Potteries take 3 (or maybe 4). Artisan gains cards and she's a potter, so a Potteries should gain cards. It was gaining just one card of any cost until I put this post up; last minute I thought it could have this to help distinguish it from Foreign Art a bit more. Choose to get 2 cards and you sacrifice more of your Buy phase.

Steelworks - Action, $4 cost.
Trash a card from your hand. If it was...
an Action, gain a Treasure costing up to $3 more than it;
a Treasure, gain an Action costing up to $3 more than it;
a Victory, gain 2 cheaper cards to your hand.

Just like Potteries, these Steelworks have been a theme idea I could incorporate better. Here's the iron theme from the official cards made into the Remodel variant the set has been missing. A niche card.

Dividends - Prospect, $0 cost.
+1 Buy
If you have the same number of Actions and Treasures in play, +1 Coffers per 1 of each type.

What I hope is a sensible take on Parade's on-gain effect, a Prospect is neither Action nor Treasure and still checks at the Buy phase. Everyone's getting some free Coffers this game whether they work for it or get some by chance.

Progress - Prospect, $2 cost.
+1 Buy
Take half the tokens on this (round up) as Coffers, the rest as Villagers.
-
When a card costing $4 or more is gained, add a token to this.

Those who watch the weekly design contest would have seen this coming, this winner dressed up in its intended Prospect form. I still want to keep it accumulating at $4 cards so with 3+ player games there's more chance everyone can get a sensible yield from it.

Prediction - Prospect, $2 cost.
+1 Buy
Put any number of cards you have in play that would be discarded this turn onto your deck.

Kind of new card, kind of fix, Prediction goes from Harbinger-ing your next draw to Scheming it. It's reliable and a bit more fun.

And the fixes:


Colliery can still be a beast, so it's up to $7. Expensive cards in the set give reason to save up Coffers.
Furnace is also quite the power card, so the Villager function has been removed.
Jailer as described in last post.
Advocation becomes Automation, the needing Duchy bit simply changed to $6 cost. There is the interesting comparison to Takeover (Province at $6 cost), but their purpose and optimal timing are very different. Probably.

25 kingdom piles, 14 Prospects and all the other things. That's a current total of 327 cards including the randomisers. So 6 more Prospects up to 20 is 333, 6 more non-Victory piles is 399, and another Artifact would be 400. That's the ideal!

[Asper]

Wait, so with Chemist you get both the Action and the Card when you spend the Villager? Without your explanation, I would have guessed it works like Butcher in that you lose what the token does.

[GendoIkari]

Wait, so with Chemist you get both the Action and the Card when you spend the Villager? Without your explanation, I would have guessed it works like Butcher in that you lose what the token does.

Yeah it also reads to me like you should not get +1 action for spending the Villager.

Also to be clear, as worded you are allowed to choose the second option even if you have no Villagers; to just use the card as a pure cantrip. But if you do have at least 1 Villager (and 1 card in hand), then a pure cantrip is not an option.

[Aquila]

Wait, so with Chemist you get both the Action and the Card when you spend the Villager? Without your explanation, I would have guessed it works like Butcher in that you lose what the token does.

Yeah it also reads to me like you should not get +1 action for spending the Villager.

Also to be clear, as worded you are allowed to choose the second option even if you have no Villagers; to just use the card as a pure cantrip. But if you do have at least 1 Villager (and 1 card in hand), then a pure cantrip is not an option.

OK, so spending Villagers here would be a separate event to doing so with the Villager mat instruction, so I need to add +1 Action on (I think it feels nicer to keep the Villagers' Action function rather than convert them to cards).
And what you identify is what I intended Gendo, so it's not a completely trivial card to use. Could be unrealistic.

[Aquila]

It's been a long time since posting changes to this set, and would I believe it's been almost exactly a year. Menagerie has had a little impact, nothing too bad though. The first installment:

Adding card costs
Card costs I hope are as simple as they sound. Instead of $, you pay with your cards. I thought of this mechanic before Menagerie was released (through the weekly contest), and now we have Animal Fair. It's almost a card cost, but an optional one, so there's still reason for this mechanic to exist. It's another different kind of cost to join Potion and Debt, so all the same incomparable rules apply there, whilst for Chariot Race, only identical card costs will count as a tie and different ones are neither cheaper nor more expensive than each other (i.e you'll never win). Here are some changes and new cards to show what's going on:

Campsite - [ ] cost.
+2 Actions
You may discard a card for +2 Cards.
-
[ ]: To buy this, reveal and discard 2 Victories.

A simple new one, Village with the twist of an alternative cost, just 2 Victories in hand (I'll add revealing them to the mock-up later). You can get it easily if your hand duds, but it won't necessarily improve your deck much if it's low on $ payload.

Colliery - Action, $6[ ] cost.
+1 Buy
Take Exhausted. If you do, + $1 per Action you have in play with no + $ amounts in its text.
-
[ ]: To buy this, trash 2 copies of a card costing $3 or more from your hand.

Cards can be incorporated into the cost of big, powerful purchases, a bit like Potions but the cards aren't otherwise useless, and that's why I think they'd fit nicely in Revolution. Here you need both $6 and 2 copies of a $3+ cost card in hand, trashed. Colliery as previously posted was still a beast, so it got heavily nerfed. The on-play omitting Actions with +$ amounts seems fine, but the cost could be a bit extreme.

You may notice this cost is the Components game; it's a more elegant way to incorporate it, and I'm planning on dismantling the Components line to remove non-Supply piles from the set.

Foreign Art - Treasure, $6 cost.
$4
+1 Buy
When you play this, for the rest of the turn, cards with no [ ] cost in the Supply have one that reads, 'to buy this, discard 2 cards'.

Delayed compared to Exile... It is different, but I feel like Exile and the cards using it are covering the area well enough. To get the cards off Exile you at least still add more to the deck in gaining a copy, unlike Delayed where you just pay $1 to get a card off, so it seems better. So Delayed is out. Here's a new way for Foreign Art to go down though.
You're adding a card cost to everything in the Supply that doesn't already have one. So you need 2 cards in hand for every one card you want to afford. $4 may look big for a $6 Treasure, but money density is effectively reduced by the cards to discard. You're also making all your Workshop variants useless; they can't gain cards costing up to [ ]. One nag I had about this was, 'it's a Treasure that likes big draw and big hands. Don't they all?'. This quite likes junk cards, and is kind of interesting with other card costs due to its +Buy and giving plenty towards the $ costs so you can get both. Playing copies of them is strong too, you only add the card cost once, so in the absence of draw it might still do something.

Steam Engine - Action, [ ] cost.
You may play an Action from your hand twice. Then, repeat this any number of times: take Exhausted. If you do, play an Action from your hand twice.
-
[ ]: To buy this, trash a Gold from your hand.

Steam Engine can be salvaged from the Components line wreck. A card cost can save it from having to cost the awkward $8. Effectively you buy it in two stages, first get the Gold then later change it for one of these.
The on-play effect has been changed to avoid Villagers, as it won't always be with them. It's basically an infinite number of Throne Rooms, but they can't play each other and each one will always cost an Action. If you Steam Engine a Steam Engine, you can throne two things, but from then on there's nothing different, the same infinite effect.

Wastelands - Victory, [ ] cost.
4 VP
-
[ ]: To buy this, trash 3 non-Victory cards from your hand.
When the Wastelands pile empties, it counts as 2 toward game end.

Wastelands can change to a card cost to be more accessible. It wasn't easy to get $5 whilst trashing down too often, so this removes the need for $ at all and enables alt VP using entirely cards. It still likes big spiky cards in the deck, so you can still afford things whilst holding on to more copies of it. The change to constant 4VP felt more realistic, but it could take back the variable amount it had before. And the double pile-empty count I thought helped it as an alt VP strategy, since it's a heavy commitment to empty them, but this might be a bad design move.
Also, of course, opening Wastelands on the $3 turn could be overly warping. You're left with $4 in the deck and can buy a $4, but with an extra green, so the hope is that you're sufficiently handicapped.

Takeover - Prospect, [ ] cost.
Gain a Victory card.
-
[ ]: To buy this, discard 2 Actions.

And this is a case of making a card that's boring with $ cost possibly more interesting. I felt it was boring, just a mundane speedup to the game.


All these card costs have implications on the overall set design. More changes to come...

[loneXolf]

Campsite: A better village at cycling for 2 estates seems nutty for 5/2 splits.

Colliery: Reminds me of Fortune, but for actions. Feels kinda niche since it heavily requires good actions in kingdom to combo with
while being harder to get than a province. Do the two trashed cards need to be the same card?

Foreign Art: Idk what I think of this card. If you can only get 1 in play it looks weaker than gold unless you have 2 dead cards.
And for getting 2 Provinces discarding 4 cards can be rough.
Also, it gets stronger in kingdoms with cards that already have a card cost, since it removes the penalty and the +buy.

Steam Engine: Just trashing a gold seems too cheap to me. Seems like a fun card, but I can see this
instantly drawing whole decks. It doubles all actions for just -1 action each and lets you play a free Terminal.

Wastelands: I don't like how this devalues junk card attacks. It's a free Cemetery variant that cannot trash Estates that's possibly
worth +2 VP. These feel like a card you're forced to buy.

[segura]

While Throning a cantrip is a village, Throning a cantrip with Steam Engine (after the first one) is a Lost City . Even taking into account the expensive costs, that seems nutty, like a univeral Pathfinding & Lost Arts for all cards in your deck.
I guess the way to fix it is restrict it to x times.

[Aquila]

The OP has been updated with the current version of the cards. There are some new ones. I'll get around to putting a full changelog up later.
 
I'll put one image here though...

A radical change in more ways than one for Advancing Village. It's way simpler. (And does the art suit it?)

Campsite: A better village at cycling for 2 estates seems nutty for 5/2 splits.

Changed it to a plain Village. Now it's a question of whether it's too easy to get.

Colliery: Reminds me of Fortune, but for actions. Feels kinda niche since it heavily requires good actions in kingdom to combo with
while being harder to get than a province. Do the two trashed cards need to be the same card?

Changed back to including every Action, big and crazy being the objective. Yes the two cards need to be the same.

Foreign Art: Idk what I think of this card. If you can only get 1 in play it looks weaker than gold unless you have 2 dead cards.
And for getting 2 Provinces discarding 4 cards can be rough.
Also, it gets stronger in kingdoms with cards that already have a card cost, since it removes the penalty and the +buy.

Here I'm thinking the global card cost penalty could go on a draw card?

Steam Engine: Just trashing a gold seems too cheap to me. Seems like a fun card, but I can see this
instantly drawing whole decks. It doubles all actions for just -1 action each and lets you play a free Terminal.

As segura suggested as well, restricted it to up to 3 times.

Wastelands: I don't like how this devalues junk card attacks. It's a free Cemetery variant that cannot trash Estates that's possibly
worth +2 VP. These feel like a card you're forced to buy.

This is sensible, restricted the cost to Actions and Treasures only. And if it's used purely for trashing Coppers and Ruins, 4VP may be too much to give away, so it might do with having the variable amount it had before...

Edit: art update

[spineflu]

The OP has been updated with the current version of the cards. There are some new ones. I'll get around to putting a full changelog up later.
 
I'll put one image here though...

A radical change in more ways than one for Advancing Village. It's way simpler. (And does the art suit it?)

I like the art! you do that digitally or painting or?

[herw]

The OP has been updated with the current version of the cards. There are some new ones. I'll get around to putting a full changelog up later.
 [...]

wow !!! After three years it seems to be complete and comprehensive. There are many new ideas - well done. I think I start to translate it to German (German Dominion Forum) next weeks.

[Aquila]

...

I like the art! you do that digitally or painting or?

Glad you like it, I did it digitally. With a fresh eye I saw changes I needed to make, so it's a bit different now (see the original post 3 up).

Still, guess it's time I did that changelog. Some are mentioned already, so I won't cover those:

Changes:

Chemist - Action, $4 cost.
+1 Card
+1 Action
Choose one: discard a card for +1 Villager; or spend a Villager for +1 Card and +1 Action.

Chemist has +1 Action on its Villager spend option, as it should.

Farm - Action Duration Victory, $5 cost.
+1 Action
Set aside any number of Victory cards from your hand face up. At the start of your next turn, put them into your hand.
-
2 VP

Farm was too powerful as draw before, if you got a stack of them in play. Now it keeps the Victories out the deck in a more literal way, a stack of them letting you possibly do this permanently. The big hands are sometimes useful too.

Revolters - Action Attack, $4 cost.
+ $2
Each other player may take Exhausted or lose a Villager. Those who do neither gain a Curse.
-
When you gain this, each player (including you) gets +1 Villager.

Revolters is rather different now, the aim being to give it more self bonus than just terminal Copper. It now gives + $2, and in exchange lets other players avoid the curse also by losing a Villager (going right back to the initial premise as well). To make it put villagers in the game it gives them out on gain; this slows its early game threat down, and nicely scales with more players in doing this.

Trade Circle - Action reaction, $4 cost.
Choose one: gain a Silver; or trash a Silver from your hand for + $4.
-
When a card moves to your deck or discard pile from anywhere except the Supply not during Clean-up, you may discard this to draw the card and get +1 Coffers.

Trade Circle has a wider reaction window, letting it work on cards moving to anywhere in the deck or the discard pile (which it can now do because Sleigh), not including gaining. So sifters, diggers, Mandarin, Secret Passage, things like them. The on-play now gives $4 on silver trash rather than 3 Coffers, to help avoid any Coffers hoarding.

Tutor - Action Duration, $3 cost.
+1 Card
+1 Action
You may set aside a card from your hand. At the start of your next turn, if the card is an...
Action, play it;
Victory, discard it and +1 Card;
neither type, trash it.

Tutor has had its types and abilities attached to them moved around so that it can now trash Curses and Hovels as well as Treasures. Action Victories are a bit funky, so the +Card on Victories might go, but overall it's better for engines.

Prospect changes:

Consumerism - Prospect, $0+ cost.
+5 Buys
You may overpay for this by $2 so non-Victory cards cost $2 less for the turn, or by $4 for all cards.

Consumerism is more useful than infinite buys now. It gives you 5, then some options to Princess things. No overpay gives you buys when really needed, like the first version of this did, $2 helps build the deck, $4 helps a mega turn cash in. $4 might be a bit too high, so it may go to $3.

Dividends - Prospect, $0 cost.
+1 Buy
If you have the same number of Actions and Treasures in play, +1 Coffers and +1 Villager per 1 of each type.

Dividends also offers Villagers now, to make it a bit more inviting.

Manufacture - Prospect, $2 cost.
+1 Buy
Choose one to gain: a card costing up to $4; a copy of a card you have in play; or a Duchy.

Exhibit now looks like this. Artifacts on a prospect don't work, because seating order, so Emblem goes and the late option becomes a Duchy. It might be weak compared to the other 2 options. The mid game option now looks for a copy of a card you have in play, not one you've gained during the turn; much more usable.
And seeing that the Artifact's gone, Exhibit didn't seem like such a good theme anymore, so it's Manufacture.


New cards:

Spinning Jenny - Action Treasure, $5 cost.
+3 Cards
+1 Buy
If it's your Buy phase, then for the rest of the turn, cards with no [ ] cost in the Supply have one that reads, "to buy this, discard 2 cards".

Here's the cards version of Foreign Art. You often want draw in your Action phase, so this seems justified as an Action Treasure. Play any one of your Jennies as a Treasure and the universal card cost kicks in. I tried the cost at discard 1 card, but it seemed too good at big money.

New Prospects:

Commission - Prospect, $2 cost.
+1 Buy
Return to your Action phase. Replay the last Action you played this turn that's still in play twice. (Put your cube on it, then on this when it leaves play.)

Here's a one-time KC. Hopefully simple but not necessarily simple to use.

Demonstration - Prospect, $0 cost.
+1 Buy
Each player (including you) discards their hand and draws the same number of cards. Return to your Action phase.

Here's a possibility for an attack Prospect. We know how Minion is a once-per-turn attack to stop it being too oppressive or silly, and this follows a similar idea (just watch out with more players). For self benefit, you also reset your hand, so you choose whether to go aggressive or self-benefitting, or try both at once.

Imports - Prospect, $4 cost.
Gain a card from the trash.
-
Setup: add an extra kingdom pile to the trash.

You can either gain a single copy of a unique card for $4, or if there's other trashing (really, tfb) you can regain a trashed Province.


Outtakes:

Antique was too centralising, too much pressure. It should be brilliant on top of a split pile though.
Diversion, Potteries and Shady Deal are all out because Delayed is out. Exile exists now, and card costs are getting you thinking resourcefully about your cards.
Taskmaster is covered by Steam Engine, which has a nicer theme, and also Advancing Village.

[LastFootnote]

Card costs
Instead of or as well as a coin symbol, some of these cards have a card back where the cost is. It means that instead of or as well as $, your cards are involved in the cost. They can be anywhere, so long as you own them. Below the line, there will be a description of the cost.
You might think of Animal Fair having the option of an Action in hand as a cost. It's an option, card costs are not.

So to buy a Campsite, I can just fish two Victory cards out of my deck and/or discard pile, reveal them and discard them? Sure looks that way.

[Aquila]

Card costs
Instead of or as well as a coin symbol, some of these cards have a card back where the cost is. It means that instead of or as well as $, your cards are involved in the cost. They can be anywhere, so long as you own them. Below the line, there will be a description of the cost.
You might think of Animal Fair having the option of an Action in hand as a cost. It's an option, card costs are not.

So to buy a Campsite, I can just fish two Victory cards out of my deck and/or discard pile, reveal them and discard them? Sure looks that way.

Ah, whoops that is unclear. The bit you bolded is just there to say in theory a card cost could include your cards in play ($0 cost Grand Market would be a card cost), or the number of cards in your deck. If one wanted to make such a buy condition it would be possible. It would be a bit weird, not much of an actual expense, but doable. I'll change the OP to say this.

So 'reveal and discard 2 Victories' is not specifying where to discard from because it's from hand, to follow the official way of writing instructions, and revealing them because of accountability.
Would 'discard 2 Victories, revealed' be clearer?

[LastFootnote]

Yes, that would be clearer, and in fact that's why several published cards say that. Discarding is from hand by default, but revealing is not. So it either has to be "discard cards, [revealed | revealing them]" or "reveal then discard cards from your hand".